I know this sounds like a Christmas post but that’s by coincidence not by design.
Thanks to an off-hand reference on a TV show on the weekend, my family ended up talking about what we would ask for if we were granted one wish.
After we did the usual rounds of wishing for peace, wishing for wealth, and wishing for super powers (one of us would like to fly, another would like to be able to turn invisible, and I’d like to have to power to calm an anxious crowd – big shock there, hey?), we got into a certain type of more specific wish and I surprised myself with my answer.
It was one of those situations where I don’t remember ever thinking this before* but I was intrigued once I said it.
My wish was to be already 6 weeks into a fitness routine – a well-established practice, the challenges of fitting it into my schedule already behind me, starting to feel some results, the aches and pains of new movements already done.
The thought of being able to step into that point without the specific challenges of the early part of the process is incredibly appealing.
It’s not that I don’t want to work hard, I am totally willing to do that, but since all of my efforts to establish habits involve the extra loops and challenges that my ADHD throws at me, I find that there are more mental layers for me during those first few weeks than I hear about from other people.
My friends will report a reluctance to get started or some resistance to the activity itself or muscle soreness or whatever and I get all of that plus a lot of second-guessing, a lot of task initiation problems, a lot of overthinking about every part of the task, and a lot of internal pressure not to be wasting time if my efforts don’t pay off quickly.
Now that I have had that wish pop up, though, I am thinking about this whole thing differently.
I know that I can’t actually wish myself into that 6 week point but what can I do to help myself have some of that 6 week feeling sooner rather than later?
Is there something I can be doing now to help smooth the path to that feeling?
What can I do to give myself some relief from the endless loops that my brain goes through during that first part of a new program?
I don’t have the answers to all of those questions, of course, but I am going to figure them out.
And I will happily read any suggestions you put in the comments – as long as they don’t include ‘you just need to buckle down and do it’. I know that one and it doesn’t help. If perseverance was the answer, I would be the fittest person in the world by this point
ALSO, I would love to hear your fitness wishes!
What would you like to be able to do?
What would you like to make easier for yourself?
What would you magic into existence fitness-wise?
*Note: Given my ADHD and the way that brains work in general, I am not claiming that I have NEVER thought this before. I just don’t remember thinking it.
