Six Weeks of Wellbeing: Week 1 Recap

Hello nuggets! Happy Wednesday! If you've been having a rough week, know that it's about half way over! And if your week has been fabulous, know that you've still got half of it left! How about that! :) Don't forget that this week sponsor spots are on sale! If you want to order 3 months, get them for the price of 2 with the code 'Imanawesomeperson'. (impossible to read, I know. It says 'I'm an awesome person' without spaces.) If you just want to try it out with one month, use the code 'happyday'!

Today concludes week one of my Six Weeks of Wellbeing project. If you didn't see last week's post, Six Weeks of Wellbeing means doing something everyday to cultivate physical/emotional health, healthy relationships and healthy actions. Find out more about the project here!

How I Did:

This past week, I didn't really bother to track what I did too thoroughly, which I'd like to do in the coming weeks. I have a few little notebooky things that I'll use! But this past week, I did some little things that seemed to add up. I worked out once and went for two long walks, which are so wonderful in this autumnal NC air. On Thanksgiving, I didn't want to limit what I ate per se, but I still wanted to, you know, not totally stuff my face. So I practiced taking lots of bites and chewing my food longer before I swallowed it. It sounds silly but I was the last one finished and I hadn't even had seconds.

I'm trying to use this project as a way to cultivate wellbeing in little ways too, not just through exercise. On Monday, I had lunch with H and a few of his guy friends. At the end of our meal, I got up to take my dishes to the trash and offered to take H's and his friends' dishes, just as a little bit of nice. To my surprise, they were actually really grateful! I heard them talking as I was walking towards the trash and they were talking so enthusiastically, I thought they were making sexist jokes about me doing the dishes haha.

But they weren't! They genuinely appreciated even a little act of niceness like that.

Oh and on Monday night, I wanted to be nice so I made cookies for my family and brought a few to H to cheer him up since he's been pretty stressed lately. Except then I found out that he had made me cookies as a little thank you for being nice! So we enjoyed our cookies haha.

So this week, I have a notebook pulled out that I'm going to use to log my good stuff and I'll recap with you next Wednesday! I'd love if anyone else wants to join me, either on a blog or just mentally. Comment with me + try to make an extra effort to do good!

Science Bit of the Day

Today, I want to talk to you about the peppered moth and how it shows an example of natural selection. Natural selection, to go back to basics, is when a certain trait in an animal helps it survive so it gets passed down to the next generation until just about all of that species has that trait. The peppered moth used to be a light white/greyish kind of thing, which was swell because it could hide among light colored trees and lichens and stuff.

But when the Industrial Revolution came along, the trees turned black from the smoke + lots of the lichens died (RIP lichens). SO, in order to blend in, the moths gradually all became black! That's called "industrial melanism", when animals change their colors because of pollution. And now that we're polluting less than in the Industrial Revolution (at least in a different way), trees aren't blackened with soot anymore (duh) and the moths are lightening again. How cool?!

Side note, I'm actually terrified of moths. Totally irrational fear but we once had a moth infestation in our house and I'd hear them in my bedroom as I tried to sleep and UGH it was just terrible. So I'm not gonna show you the pictures of the moths, just in case anyone else has that same hatred of moths (I GET YOU!). If you want to see, here are the light ones and here are the dark ones. Same moth species!