Waaaaaaaay back in December, I felt so busy and distracted that I decided this month would be Planuary
I was going to take my time and ease into my ideas and plans for the year ahead.
And then, on January 1, I woke to the news that my Dad was in the hospital and all my plans to plan went out the window.
Image description: a black and white GIF of a toddler in a floppy hat throwing money out the window of a house.
Now, obviously, my priorities are very clear here – I have to be there for my Dad and be part of the family team making sure all is well. I’m not troubling myself with concerns of what is or is not getting done otherwise.
But, even though I am not putting pressure on myself to make big plans (or any plans at all, actually), this situation requires me to balance my family care with taking good care of myself.
So, when I’m not at the hospital, I’m prioritizing rest and relaxation – and that includes some movement.
I’m still taking Khalee for walks, of course, and I’m doing stretches and yoga, all things that don’t take a lot of planning or forethought.
And, on top of that, I am doing a few exercises from one of my new favourite Instagram people – Trisha Durham – aka OhTrisha
I just love how she invites us to just move and play. I know lots of people are giving advice on how to do that but her suggestions feel especially doable right now.
Here’s a link to a ‘teacup drill’ that I particularly like even though I am awful at it so far. (Starting at awful is kind of the point.) There are no actual teacups involved – you are lying down and balancing something on your foot or hand and rolling and moving as much as you can without dropping it.
For the record, I always quickly drop it but I don’t care.
I had actually bought Durham’s book Movement Snacks back in December and it arrived late last week. I took it to the hospital with me yesterday and tried a few of the movements while my Dad was sleeping and the extra (and different) moments really helped.
If you feel like a few extra movements could add something good to your day, give her IG a try.
“I am the cake? What the hell is Christine getting on with today?”
Well, Team, I am in full cheerleader mode and I am about to go all in on an analogy.
(Or perhaps I am going all in on a metaphor, my brain won’t sort the difference right now so you can choose whichever one feels right to you.)
Just roll with it.
Sooooooo…you might be working on new habits, trying to develop new patterns, adding or subtracting things in your life, but all of those things are details.
You are good just as you are, whether you change those details or not.
You, in fact, are the cake and all of those things are icing.
Actually, truth be told, some of those things aren’t even icing, they are sprinkles or those hard little silver balls that you’re never exactly sure you should eat.
Since you are the cake, you have substance, you have worth, and you are delightful, no matter what form you are currently in.
Hell, you are terrific even if you feel like you are a bowl of cake batter at the moment.
You might be a cupcake, a sheet cake, a layer cake, a cake pop – it doesn’t matter – you are still marvellous.
Sure, you can experiment with different types of icing, with sprinkles, or with decorations, with anything that you feel would enhance your life but those enhancements are not required – you have pre-existing goodness.
So, if you try one kind of icing or a specific type of decoration and you find that it doesn’t feel right or that it doesn’t suit you, scrape that stuff right back off and start again.
You aren’t an icing display.
You aren’t a decoration shelf.
You are cake and you are good, just the way you are right now.
Please keep that in mind if those icing details ever start to feel lIke they are overshadowing your wonderful cakeishness.
So, on that note, I wish you ease and self-kindness, my delicious teammate.
Here’s your star for your efforts today.
Image description: A cartoonish drawing of a gold star with a happy face. The background is white with thin diagonal black lines running from lower left to upper right across the page.
I count workouts here and here. And I count books read here.
The Count with number 8
I was surprised to see this critique of counting. In “If your New Year’s resolution is to read more books this year, this is why you shouldn’t” Max Liu argues that counting robs us of joy. In reading for the sake of numbers, you lose the joy and pleasure of reading for its own sake.
Maybe.
Maybe that’s true for some people, for some things.
But I feel pretty joyful about both reading and working out.
I like having a number and counting reading just like count workouts. The counting part is an extra pleasure. Often, if I’m feeling lazy I’ll watch a show rather than read or workout but I know that working out and reading make me happier. So for me it’s an extra incentive to do a thing that I know makes me happier. I love reading, love exercising, but sometimes getting started can be a challenge. Not for everyone, I know, but for me it’s a reminder to do a thing I love.
In Ask Fieldpoppy, resident fit feminist advice giver Cate takes on this question of challenges and says that the external framework (say working out 223 times in 2023) is part of the story, it’s not the whole story, or even the most important part. She writes that it’s about meaning and “…to make any of these things meaningful — and to set yourself up for success – you need to know what “meaningful” means to you.”
So if counting gets in the way of thinking about why reading or running or strength training matters for you, if it just becomes a thing you log and tick off a box, then maybe counting and number based challenges aren’t for you. For me it’s true that the happy feeling of logging a workout or entering a book read is part of the story, it’s always an add on. The important feeling is immersion in another world, in the case of reading, or the feeling of connecting with my energy and strength, in the case of working out. For me, counting doesn’t take away from that.
It helps, I think, that I am gentle with myself when I don’t meet a numerical goal. I’m happy to start over and I don’t tend to punish myself or dwell on my failures. For me, challenges are all about the positive motivation and if I miss a day or don’t make a goal, I pretty quickly move on. I also set reasonable goals so more often than not I make them.
How about you? Are you a counter? A fan of numerical challenges? Or do you find as Liu suggests that counting, like comparing, is a thief of joy? Let us know what you think in the comments.
I’m going to borrow from my writing coaching practice again today.
When people want to get started/get back into writing they often look for ways to do it ‘right’ – the right time of day, the right way, the right number of words.
And while I tend to fall into that trap a lot of the time myself (Thanks, ADHD brain. Sigh.) I have also found this quote that helps me escape that trap.
The only way to write is well and how you do it is your own damn business.
A.J. Liebling
I know that the idea of writing ‘well’ adds its own kind of pressure so I remind myself (and my students) that the ‘well’ part comes in later drafts. Before we can get to the part where our writing is good, we have to do the part where we write something, anything, at all.
The same is true for any fitness or well-being habits that you want to develop.
It’s easy to fall into the trap of trying to do it perfectly, of trying to find the perfect plan, of beating ourselves out (and up) in the name of doing things ‘right.’
But if you are trying to get into the habit of exercising or meditating or journaling or stretching, you don’t have to follow a precise method. You can choose to do things that you like and that you feel like you will be able and willing to do regularly.
Sure, you can look for information and advice to help you make decisions about what to do but, just like with writing, the way you do it is your own damn business.
You can have a very specific plan with specific milestones or you can have a variety of activities that you cycle through according to your inclinations on a specific day. Or you can do some sort of combination of the two.
You can do what works for you because no matter which you choose…
If you repeatedly move the muscles you want to strengthen, body is going to respond.
If you repeatedly do a meditation practice, your brain will respond.
I mean, obviously, you will get different results from different approaches and different types of efforts.
And, you’ll want to be sure that you match your expectations to your efforts.
Someone who does yoga for 30 mins every day is probably going to be bendier than someone who does yoga for 10 mins each weekend. That doesn’t mean it is wrong or pointless to do 10 mins of yoga on the weekend, it means that you have to adjust your expectations of how bendy you will get as a result.
(In a writing context, matching your expectations to your efforts looks like recognizing that daily writing gets you to a word count faster than once-a-week writing. However, you may only have 5 minutes a week to spare so why not spend it writing? Moving slowly is still moving. 💚)
But, once you have made sure your expectations match your efforts, you are free to do what you want to do. (You can do what you want to do even if you haven’t matched things up but you may end up being hard on yourself about the results and I want you to be kind to yourself as much as possible.)
If you want to build a base level of fitness, a foundational habit of meditation, a solid practice of self-care, doing it your own way is a great way to get started and build momentum.
You don’t have to do it perfectly, you don’t have to follow anyone’s plan, again, how you do it is your own damn business.
So, Team, while you are working in the way you want to work, please be kind to yourself, do what you can with the time and resources you have, and celebrate every single success.
Here are your stars for today’s efforts:
Image description: a small painting of three gold stars against a purple background with thin black lines through it. I painted the edges of the painting brown with black wavy lines so it looks a bit like a wooden frame.
I was enjoying catching up over coffee with a former colleague the other day. She was excited to tell me that she recently started a sort of “Couch to 5K” running program. “That’s great”, I exclaimed. She was smiling widely and talking about enjoying it and then she started minimizing it and judging herself. “Not very far yet.” “I should probably be progressing faster.” “I don’t think my pace is very good.” I started with my usual comments about not thinking it’s a good idea to worry about stuff like that. I explained that she was clearly enjoying it and anything she is doing is more than she was doing before and just focus on the program and to focus on that happy feeling. She agreed and said “Oh yes, the Happy Factor!” We agreed it was best to focus on the Happy Factor.
Some of the shares, even on this blog recently, have titles such as “How Fast Should I Run as a Beginner“, “These 2-Minute Bursts May Be Better Than Your Regular Workout“, “How Exercise Preserves Physical Fitness During Aging (to which my mind responds, “Duh”)”. This type of advice all seems to be missing the point of exercise to me. If the point is to maintain a consistent exercise plan that lasts over the years, none of these things will help you develop such a plan, in my opinion, I have long believed and still do that the number one factor that has kept me coming back and keeping my regular fitness schedule over many years, is the Happy Factor. The factor is the way I feel during parts of my workout/run (not all of the workout, to be sure) and after the workout/run is done. That happiness factor, that clearing of the mind, and elevating of the mood, even if momentary, is the key factor to making my workout routine stick.
Some people are motivated by stats, competition and other variables. But, I am willing to bet that those people are also motivated by the Happy Factor and the importance of keeping that factor in mind cannot be minimized. I think we all do ourselves a disservice when we succumb to the over-analysis of our fitness programs. I think we do ourselves a disservice when we are enjoying something, such as a Couch to 5K program and, instead of focussing on the pleasure and the achievement from just doing it, we start scrutinizing our pace or how quickly we are accelerating through the process.
So here’s my wish for you. If you find a fitness routine that you enjoy, big or small, that you revel in the Happy Factor and focus on that rather than your inner critic or competitor.
Nicole P. with a happy glow after her New Year’s Day run.
This week I went to the American Philosophical Association Eastern meeting in Montreal to give a talk and to see friends and colleagues. Sam and Sarah and I breakfasted and chatted, and I saw and talked with many other friendly feminist philosophers. The Eastern APA meetings are traditionally one of the big conferences in my field, and used to be the site for most of our academic job interviews. So you would see scads of young, anxious besuited graduate students standing around in groups or rushing to the candidates’ area to look in their folders for messages about upcoming interviews. There would also be throngs of tweed-jacketed men of various levels of prestige, all in search of the perfect conversational clutch: a combination of the famous, the fashionable, and the eager hangers-on. At least it seemed that way to me.
But not anymore. Those days are gone.
In addition to being a much smaller conference (thanks, Covid), the Eastern APA is now a scene of mostly casually-dressed people who look relatively happy to be there… Gone are the crowds of anxious job candidates and interviewers; most universities have shifted to Zoom interviews (and then campus visits for finalists). The dress code has relaxed considerably, too. I saw people wearing sensible clothing, interesting clothing, warm clothing (it was Montreal in January, after all). Most of all, I saw my outfit (jeans, shirt, pretty sweater, some jewelry and sensible winter shoes) as all part of the conference clothing mosaic. This is such a good thing.
Then I remembered this post from 2016 about Visiting the Body Positive Zone. I was at a conference of friendly feminist philosophers, and I felt this level of comfort with what I was wearing, how I was presenting that felt different and good. It also felt unusual.
Six years later, I don’t feel so much like I visit body positive zones. Rather, I contribute to body positive atmospheres in the world by bringing my own positive sense of self and get validated and supported by seeing others acting similarly. This isn’t limited to professional conferences. We can and do bring our own little positive zones to the beach, the park, the classroom, the office, you name it.
Take a look at my post from 2016, and see what you think. Has your view of body positive zones shifted in the past six years? Are you still looking for such zones in your life? I’d love to hear from you.
Before I get into my encouragement post for today, I want to draw your attention to two of my favourite recent posts here on Fit is a Feminist Issue. I enjoy everyone’s work here at the blog, of course, but these two posts really get into the same territory I like to cover so they were especially resonant today. If you want a great overview on how to set yourself up for success with new habits, check out Martha’s post – New year, new you, who dis? If you, like me, have trouble convincing yourself to start small, check out Tracy’s post – The two minute rule: start really really small.
Okay, so today I’m inviting you to think about why it can be so tricky to start new habits (Martha’s post also covers this quite nicely but I am adding some different layers.)
Most of my posts so far have been about taking things slowly, building step by step, making adjustments, and about being kind to yourself, and all of those things are important and useful when building habits.
However, if you find yourself needing to make adjustments to your plans EVERY day or if you have to work hard to talk yourself into your habit-related planning or tasks EVERY time, you may have to approach things differently.
I still want you to be kind to yourself, of course, but the nature of that kindness might go a bit beyond ‘letting yourself off the hook’ from time to time.
You *may* have to be kind to yourself by changing your systems or your goals to match your capacity.
We all get things done through systems – they may not be effective systems, they might even be chaotic systems, bur we have systems for everything. And when we decide to change or add a habit, we are introducing something new into those systems – something that that system was not designed to handle.
That’s going to create a challenge for us.
And, we might have even gone so far as to create a new system for this new habit that works on paper but that is hard to integrate into our lives and difficult to connect to our existing systems.
So, in these sorts of situations, we will keep running into the same frustrations over and over.
We’ll be attempting to add a new task, a new habit, or a new plan and, over and over, we will find that we don’t have the time or we don’t have the energy to work on it.
THIS IS NOT A FAILURE ON OUR PART.
This lack of time and energy is not a lack of willpower, it’s not a lack of discipline, it is definitely not about us ‘not wanting it enough’, and it is NOT about not working hard.
It’s about our capacity and about our systems.
As annoying as it is to accept, we all have limited capacity. That capacity changes from day to day (sometimes from hour to hour) and it changes in relation to our life circumstances and the external pressures we face.
We can’t beat ourselves out and beat ourselves up trying to follow a system for its own sake.
Instead, we need to look at the plans/goals/habits we are trying to integrate into our lives and we need to look closely at our systems and see where the friction is, see what is getting in our way.
The problem is not YOU.
The problem is that your current systems don’t match your current capacity.
To address the problem, you may need to identify and adjust your systems, you may need to change your plans/goals/habits, you may need to work on recognizing and accepting your capacity, and you’ll need to make changes in your expectations of yourself.
AND
You will DEFINITELY need to be kind to yourself during the whole process.
So, if you are struggling with these habit-related tasks, day after day, and your struggle goes beyond feelings of resistance and reluctance, please don’t blame yourself.
Instead, I invite you to consider this as a systems/capacity issue and start the problem-solving process there.
Once you have removed ‘I’m the problem’ from the equation, what other solutions start to present themselves?
If you recognize the limits of your capacity, how does that change the scale of the habits and the tasks that you want to try to include in your life?
And with that information in hand, how can you apply the information from Tracy’s and Martha’s posts to help reshape your plans for your next steps?
Please remember that changing your plans or making different choices based on new information is NOT failure, even if part of your brain tries to tell you that it is.
Changing plans based on new information is actually the only logical way to proceed.
After all, why would you stick with a plan that isn’t going to get you where you want to go? That would be like trying to stick with the route that your GPS has set out even though you can see that the bridge it is telling you to cross is washed out. You wouldn’t stubbornly plunge your car into the river just because the bridge *should* be there, you’d back up, turn around and then get the GPS (aka – the system) to recalibrate.
Note: Speaking of the value of systems, have a look at this post from James Clear (author of Atomic Habits) – Forget About Setting Goals. Focus On This Instead. He’s talking about systems you deliberately create to work on something that is important to you, and I have been talking about noticing your existing systems in relation to your capacity, but the two are connected, of course.
ANYWAY!
Here are your gold stars for your efforts today – there are a lot of bits and pieces in this post and in the work related to it so I thought it would be good to have lots of gold stars on hand to reward your efforts.
Go Team!
Image description: Another drawing of stars by yours truly – this one features a leafless branch with 9 small gold stars in a line tied to the branch with string. Each corner of the drawing is framed with a black line that extends to meet the line from the next corner at a dot roughly in the middle of each side of the square paper. The background is white but it is sprinkled with small purple dots.
Image description: digital timer set to 02:00, framed by a circle with options “cancel” and “resume” underneath.
Early January is crammed with all sorts of advice about how to make those January 1st changes stick. I have often dissed the idea of resolutions as a sort of set-up for failure. But this year I’m actually in a change-is-good mindset, and I have high hopes for the blank page that a new year seems to offer. Having said that, like so many other people, I have been here before. And those high hopes for change often feel dashed by the end of the month. So how to make things stick?
One way that’s getting some attention (or at least Sam brought it to my attention) is “the two-minute rule.” According to the article, “How the two-minute rule can help you beat procrastination and start new habits,” consistently spending two minutes on something can lead to transformative change. The rule says: starting a new habit should never take more than two minutes. It is a take on author and productivity consultant David Allen’s rule that “if it takes less than two minutes, then do it now.”
I am a big advocate of starting small and “doing less.” That’s why Sam tagged me when she posted about the two-minute rule. But even for me, two minutes seems so negligible as to be almost pointless. It’s not, though. I recognize that line of thinking — the “what’s the point of two minutes” line — as a mind-game to talk myself out of something. We have been conditioned to think that if something isn’t really hard or challenging, then it’s pointless. But really, if the alternative is NOTHING at all, then what’s the harm of doing just a little something towards your goal.
I’ve recently signed up for some writing coaching again with Daphne Gray-Grant, the Publication Coach. In the application form for her program, she asks how much time you’re planning to commit to your project each day. The first option is 5 minutes. The options go up from there: 15 minutes, 20-30 minutes, and if you want to choose 60 minutes or more there is a note that says you will need Daphne’s permission. Why? Because as a rule, people aim too high and then they lose steam and give up. Instead, making progress in small increments gives you a manageable habit that you can realistically maintain.
Knowing all of this, I still felt a voice in my head telling me I’m an under-achiever when I ticked the 5 minutes/day box. But I ticked that box because I can realistically expect not to feel overwhelmed by spending five minutes a day, five days a week on my book. It seems like ridiculously little time, but if the other option is spending no time at all on it, then I’m sure I will get further with five minutes a day than with zero minutes a day.
Having set that low expectation in the past and worked with it, I can also be confident that at least some days I will work beyond the five-minute timer. And I think where workouts are concerned, this is even more likely. I remember my yoga instructor once saying that if you want to start a home yoga practice, start by just putting down the mat. Next time you might put down the mat and do child’s pose. After that, you might put down the mat, do child’s pose, and follow it with downward dog. It actually works. Similarly, if you pack your gym bag, go to the gym, and commit to spending two or five minutes doing something there, that’s a start. It’s a small start, but doing it three days a week is the start of a habit. And in the end, that’s the goal: to establish a habit.
This year, besides my writing habit, my other “start small” thing is to spend time in the workout room in my building. We’ve got brand new treadmills and spin bikes, and enough free weights and weight machines to get a decent workout in. My goal is to get myself down there for at least five minutes, four days a week. Even as I type that, I can feel that voice saying “five lousy minutes — gimme a break.” But is five minutes better than nothing? Yes. And it gets me over the initial hump of not even putting on my workout gear or getting to the room, which is arguably the bigger challenge than making best use of it once I’m there.
I encourage everyone who is excited about the fresh pages of 2023 to experiment with starting small, especially anyone with a history of jumping in with both feet and then hitting a wall before the month is out. The goal is to establish a new habit, not to transform overnight into a completely different person. We are a week in and it’s not too late to moderate expectations, even for those of us who went out of the gate a little more ambitiously than is sustainable. Small habits grow. And even if kept small, they yield fruit. The voice in the head that says “this isn’t enough” needs to be challenged, perhaps with a stronger voice that says, “Oh really? Just watch!”
Is there anything you’ve been wanting to start that you can give two minutes a day to, a few times a week? Go for it!
Yesterday, I planned for today’s post to be about systems and capacity.
Today, however, some family admin tasks took over my morning (as these things do) and I don’t have time to actually write the post I had planned.
Sometimes you can follow your plan, sometimes you have to plan in the moment based on the resources you have at hand.
Right now I have 10 minutes, a photo, and an idea, so I’m going to do the best I can with these resources and then do a more thorough job on that intended post tomorrow.
And that’s ok.
If YOU are realizing that your plans or tasks for habit building are going awry today, you don’t have to abandon them entirely.*
It’s ok to change your plans or your tasks to match the time or resources or energy that you have available.
Changing your plans or tasks is not ‘failing’ – changing your plans or tasks is being responsive to the situation at hand while keeping the big picture in mind.
I’ve responded to the changes in my day by writing a different post than I had intended. I’m still working toward my big picture goal – providing encouragement for anyone reading this – I’m just going about it in a slightly different way for today.
By the same principle, any work you do today, whether it is the work you intended or something else, can still help you move toward your goal.
And no matter what you are working on today, no matter how you are going about it, I wish you ease.
And here’s a gold star for your efforts.
Image description: A drawing of a gold star against a purple background with a gold line framing it at the edges. The drawing has thin black lines decorating the inside of the star and the star itself is resting one point on a black line beneath it so it kind of looks like it is on a tightrope.
*By the way, it is also ok to decide NOT to work on your plans for today. Sometimes something’s got to give and you’ll have to decide to be kind to yourself about it. Days like that happen to us all from time to time. 💚
Every December as the end of the old year approaches and the new year is about to begin, there’s a huge focus on resolutions.
They range from the simple – I will be a kinder person and volunteer more – to the complex – I will change a negative behaviour like quitting smoking/drinking or take on a positive behaviour like eating better or exercising more.
The reality is that by the end of January, many of those good intentions fall by the wayside. Sometimes it is from your own doing: maybe you didn’t plan, maybe your resolution was too big, or perhaps you lost your momentum.
Sometimes it comes from others: they aren’t supportive or they don’t believe in you. I’m looking at you long-time gym members who make snide comments about the January newbies.
However, my main problem is that resolutions often feel rooted in believing there is something wrong with you. I recently came across a New Yorker cartoon with a fluffy cat admiring itself in a mirror saying to its reflection: “New Year’s resolution – stay this good-looking.”
I like that approach of assuming you are already a good human and you want to find ways of maintaining your goodness. And really, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to improve – the Japanese have a great approach called kaizen that focuses on improvement by making good things better, applying efficiency, removing waste, and implementing standardization.
Sometimes it feels like changing stuff at work is easier than changing ourselves. However we can change our mindset about how we want to approach making changes in our lives when it comes to activity. Some of us will schedule the time in our calendar and protecting that time so other priorities don’t take it over. In fact, I wrote about using that approach to make fitness a priority in my schedule here back in December 2019.
That worked well for me, but I wanted to do more. How to make physical activity stick and incorporate it as a daily thing and not just a workout in the gym thing? Well, a year later I took on BJ Fogg’s Tiny Habits approach to attach activity to an already established habit. I wrote about Fogg’s key principles here.
For example, I need to strengthen my leg muscles to manage my grumpy knee. How to remember to do that every morning? I “attached” a specific exercise to my morning toothbrushing. I always brush my teeth and by associating the step exercise with that habit, I remember to do it.
Practice makes perfect my teachers said. I remember a pottery teacher telling us we had to make a 100 of anything before we could master a form. It’s true that my tenth plate was better than my first, and my 100th was stellar compared to the tenth, fiftieth or even ninetieth.
The same with fitness. The Running Room’s learn to run program, for example, works on the increasing running time and decreasing walking time. When I first started powerlifting, I didn’t rush to the rack and start flinging weights around.
In fact, I didn’t even start with weights but practiced a series of exercises with repetitions that built strength before I even looked at plates. As it was, my first squats and deadlifts weren’t great, but over time, I increased the amount of weight I could squat or lift and my form steadily improved.
I wrote about the impact of small changes contributing to gains here. Looking back on all these posts, I can see that in the last four years, I have not just maintained a fitness practice, I have started thinking strategically about what I do, how I do it, when I do it, and why. The practice of fitness is not just about acquiring skill and competence (something that is critical to injury prevention) it’s about cultivating the habit of discipline.
If you are embarking on a fitness journey as part of making changes in this new year, tbink about building in and valuing the small steps you make to be an even nicer version of yourself.
Here are some of the things I have learned in the ten years since I first decided I needed to make changes in my life.
Be realistic about the goals you want to achieve. Not sure what’s feasible? Talk to a trainer or expert in the activity you want to take on. I like yoga, but I know there are some moves I need to do differently and consistently before I can try others. Not being realistic about how bendy I am would have let me at risk for injury.
Become a creature of habit when it comes to making space for fitness every day. Pick a spot for your gear (really, do this) so you can find and get ready without fuss or panic.
Keep an eye on your attitude. Avoid procrastinating. Like the ad says, just do it. If you don’t want to go for your hour long walk, then go for 30 minutes. Go even just for five minutes.
Be positive. A friend tells herself the following every time she goes for a run: I am. I can. I will. I do. Erase negative self talk and replace it with something that fosters confidence in yourself. And if you can’t do that, remember there’s a little potato that believes in you.
Celebrate your successes, even the tiny ones. Stuff happens. Don’t beat yourself up about it. Give yourself a high five for making it through. Only got five workouts instead of the seven – yay you! That’s five more than doing none for the week. Reach an important target? Reward yourself. Because you are freaking awesome!
Happy New year everyone!
— MarthaFitat55 is embracing all the challenges and exploring all the ideas.
