It’s also worth noting that January is a busy month on a fitness blog, even if we’re not a “new year, new you” sort of blog. We love you just the way you are. Welcome new readers!
I am so grateful for the opportunity to write to you every day throughout this month.
I love the way that this daily writing practice helps to shape the beginning of my year and I appreciate the time and energy you put into reading my posts.
It’s always hard to figure out what to say in these final posts each January because I want to be profound and encouraging and really sum things up…
And then I realize that in focusing so much on the results that I’m at risk of letting perfection get in the way of actually doing my practice.
So, after reminding myself that done beats perfect I usually just forge ahead and trust (once again) that I can let my routine carry me towards something useful to share. *
Today, my routine brought me to the reminder to keep going.
That doesn’t mean to just keep barreling down the path the initially set – unless that feels right to us.
It means to keep returning to the project of moving towards the life we want, no matter how much the details of our practices or our projects have changed since we first set them.
We don’t have to be in a hurry.
In fact, as long as we manage our expectations, we can go at any pace that works for us.
Note: Yes, I have included A LOT of links rights but I didn’t link all 31 posts from this month so if you want to see them all you can find them under the tag Go Team 2026 (or look under Go Team for all of the Go Team posts from previous years.)
So, Team, today I invite you to celebrate your efforts so far and to consider how you want to keep making things better/easier/kinder for future you.
Your efforts matter.
You matter.
Keep being kind to yourself, pretty please.
May you have ease, may you have fun, and may you find satisfaction in your practices.
Go Team Us!
PS – I will be writing more Go Team 2026 posts this year, usually around once per month.
*Yes, my posts are just as much notes-to-self as they are messages for you. 🙂
My lower back is often tighter than I realize. My massage therapist kindly reminds me to keep walking, lifting and stretching. It usually keeps things decent.
My last physiotherapy appointment I asked Emily if we could assess my right hip. It was very painful after swimming last week.
Emily asked me a bunch of questions then set about assessing my hip and back. I stood on one leg, then the other. I did side bends. She then had my lay on my back and put my leg in various positions asking me to press or pull.
“Ok. Now I want you on your stomach and just go into a baby cobra as relaxed as possible.”
The pain went away. Yet another moment of “what I go in for is not the issue”. Translated pain is the name of my game.
So I’m on a tummy time routine with hourly baby cobra. It’s definitely working.
No more hip pain but WOW is my lower back screaming day and night.
It’s frustrating as I continue to chase one petty injury after another.
Looking back there have been many things to irritate my lower back.
My fall in December , walking in snowy conditions, less strength and cycling and, oh yes, shoveling a shit tonne of snow the past month.
It’s the injury of desk jockeys, those of us with extremely sedentary jobs.
“But Natalie!” you exclaim, “you are a very active person!”
Not farmer active. Not contractor active. I’m active around an 8 hour day of sitting. So I’m using the standing option as much as possible. I change up where I’m meeting. I use stretch brakes. Walking commutes.
While I am frustrated at always being in physiotherapy for something I’m grateful I can access expert care.
It’s tempting, laying here writing to just stop doing everything. But I know it will only make the pain and my quality of life much worse. So. Baby cobra and being kind to my back it is.
For my last Go Team 2025 post, I reminded you that I was (am!) incredibly proud of you for everything you did for yourself throughout the year and I thought now would be a good time for me to remind that I am incredibly proud of you and of your efforts so far this year.
The short version of this would be the title of this post:
GO YOU!
But the longer version goes like this:
I am so very proud of you and of all your hard work.
You have made decisions to try something new, to add things to your life, to step away from things that no longer serve you, to try to make your life easier, to try and challenge yourself, to make things calmer in your life, to make yourself stronger in body/mind/spirit.
Isn’t that incredible?
You made a conscious choice to seek out a different version of your life AND you committed to the effort that will require.
You have recognized that there will be challenges and setbacks but you have decided to acknowledge them as part of the process.
You know that there is work involved but that the work will be worth it.
What a wonderful gift you have given yourself.
What a great commitment to self-care and to future you.
I am so PROUD of you!
You have realized that taking care of yourself is not selfish and that you deserve care just as much as the next person does.
AND that taking care of yourself in this way not only benefits you, but it benefits people who look up to you, people who depend on you, and it ensures that you have the capacity to work with others to create the changes we need in the world.
After all, the version of you that is worn out or burnt out wouldn’t be able to help anyone until you recover.
The version of you that takes care of themselves can decide when and how to respond to the needs of those around them.
Are you starting to get why I am so proud of you for undertaking this work, for putting in this effort?
Can you declare your own pride in your efforts or at least consider the possibility that your pride may develop over time?
You don’t need to be finished or to have results to be proud of yourself, you can choose to take pride in your efforts.
Today, I invite you to enjoy the fact that I am so very proud of you and to explore the idea of being proud of your own efforts.
And I invite you to collect your gold stars in recognition of your work.
Your efforts matter.
You matter.
Go Team Us
And
GO YOU!
I had a lot of fun making this one. I started with some wavy lines for the background and they didn’t feel right so I got a few watercolour pencils and played around with them until the background made me happy. Image description: A small painting of a bunch of gold stars ranging in size from quite small to about the size of a thumbprint. The background has a series of wavy lines running horizontally. I drew the lines with marker, and then I went over them with blue, black, and purple, watercolour pencils until I got the right kind of look – a bit like the night sky reflected in water. Then I drew a bunch of stars and small dots and outlined them with black.
I recently needed to do the recertification exam for my lifeguard qualifications. It’s mandatory every two years and not really a big deal since I practice the skills regularly at work.
As usual, I was much older than almost everyone else there. Again, no big deal. I’m used to being – by far – the oldest lifeguard wherever I work. But apparently that is weird to some of the other lifeguards.
Following the fitness portion of our exam, one of the youngsters asked how old I was. When I told him, his response was “you’re in really good shape!”. I could almost see the thought bubble over his head “compared to my grandma.”
Kiddo, I have to do the exact same tests as you to hold the exact same job. I’m not unusually fit. I’m merely someone who has chosen to be visibly active in a way that you happened to notice.
The incident amused me because there were no real consequences. When I was trying to get hired, it was more of an issue. Same when I’m dealing with medical questions. I’m going to try and ignore them for the moment and enjoy my little giggle about the thought bubble. And remember that women far fitter than me have been called “grandmother” without acknowledging their remarkable achievements. Amy Apelhans Gubser I’m looking at you!
And for good measure, here’s a picture of me (a grandmother) with a group of my grandmother friends.
Five women in colourful bathing caps and suits, taking a selfie in the lake. Three of us are grandmothers.
Warning: I am in full pep talk mode today. You may want to sit down.
In every post, I remind you that your efforts matter.
All of your efforts count toward the practice you are trying to develop.
Today, I want to underline that point, highlight it, put it in bold, and draw your attention to it.
Your Efforts count!
ALL of the work you do – the thinking, the planning, the deciding, the actions, the resting, that is all adding up and moving you toward the life you want.
Even if it takes you a long time.
Even if you’re only moving a millimetre at a time.
You’re still moving in the direction that you want to go.
Even your mistakes, the things you changed your mind about, and your backtracking all count because they are part of the process.
You can’t get where you want to go without figuring out at least some of the places that you DON’T want to go.
You will grow and change between making the decision to do something, figuring out how to do it, doing that thing, and then seeing how it turns out.
The person you are becoming throughout that process may have different ideas, goals, and priorities than the person you were when you started – even if the process is short.
And that’s ok.
It’s GOOD even.
Learning as you go and making changes in your plan based on new information makes far more sense than sticking to a plan for the sake of the plan.
I mean, who does that help?
The plan doesn’t care if you do it.
This is all about YOU not about some plan.
Do what makes sense for you right now and feel free to change in the future.
Take time to notice how far you have come, not just how much is left to go.
And celebrate every single thing you have done to support yourself in the practice you are developing.
So Team, as always, here are your tiny, shiny stars for today.
Each one represents a small effort you made to move toward the life you want.
They represent momentum, choices, actions, rest, decisions, repetition, self-kindness, finding support, choosing done over perfect, focusing energy, and all of the other things you have done – some so small you didn’t even notice them – to incorporate your new practices into your life.
Those efforts all add up.
They all count.
They all matter.
And so do you.
Be kind to yourself out there, pretty please.
Go Team Us!
OK, I’ll admit this looks a little bit like a bowl of breakfast cereal but it’s totally a bowl of stars I swear. Image description: a green bowl of tiny stars sitting on a blue surface. The blue surface has light gold lines in it and the background behind the bowl for the top 2/3 of the paper consists of thin, horizontal black lines.
This is my final installment of Thirsty Thursday where I write about how I’m leaving alcohol behind.
Growing up in rural New Brunswick the epitome of hospitality was offering guests an alcoholic drink when they arrived.
Birthdays, graduations and most events had alcohol at the center. We got together to have drinks at home or in bars. Drinking was the activity and the socializing came second.
Inadvertently we excluded anyone who didn’t or couldn’t drink.
Many years later I’ve learned that socializing doesn’t have to be centered around drinking alcohol.
That’s not to mean I’m asking people to not drink but rather have other things as the reason we are getting together.
My friend Jess and I regularly get together over crafting events, like making clay ornaments.
A star, heart and tree shaped white clay ornaments with red ribbon loops.
Michel and I have dates swimming, walking and working out.
Friends are coming over for a pre-concert hang next weekend. The plan is making pizzas and playing board games.
I invite my eldest over to help me on projects around the house.
I get together with friends to read each other’s writing.
Alcohol can be involved in these things but they are not what is bringing us together.
When I move alcohol to the periphery I center time with friends, creativity and wellbeing.
First things first – If you’re wondering if I chose the word station in the title because it rhymed with inspiration, I totally did.
Second things second:
It can take a long time for new practices to feel comfortable, for you to build the skills that will let you enjoy them, for you to get used to including them in your life, and for you to feel the positive changes you are seeking.
That’s why I keep asking you to focus on your efforts.
By paying attention to your efforts and by collecting gold stars, you can feel momentum and find motivation all throughout the process of change instead of trying to wait until this particular practice is well-established.*
But I also think it is good to develop other motivational practices, to find things that inspire you to keep going, to regularly revisit your reasons for adding these practices to your life.
This is where the inspiration station comes in!
It doesn’t have to be a literal station (but it can be!) and it doesn’t have to be elaborate (but it can be!) and it doesn’t have to be obvious to anyone else (but it can be!), but it can be fun and helpful to create a place, a ritual, or a routine that reminds you why you are trying to accomplish these new things.
And, of course, you can create your literal or metaphorical inspiration station any way that you like as long as it brings you joy, determination, and a bit of oomph.
You can create a collage (paper or digital) of images, quotes, and ideas that help you charge up.
You can keep a list of quotes (digital or handwritten or printed) that bring you a sense of power and energy.
You can save memes or photos on your phone or desktop and revisit them whenever you want a boost.
You can keep a reflective well-being journal that lets you see how far you have come and reminds you of how good your practices make you feel.
You can create a sign with ideas, images, quotes, and reminders of past successes and post it wherever you do your practices.
You can set a motivational reminder on your phone so it pops up regularly. (On an iPhone you can label your alarms so you could change the text to read, “Focus and Determination! You can do this!” or something else that feels good to you and set it to go off at a useful time each day.)
You can make a ‘Becoming Board’ that draws you toward your future self. It’s like a vision board but with some key practices that can make a big difference.
You can create a ritual of saying or doing certain encouraging and motivational things before each practice or before you start a new week or a new stage in your practices.
If you are neurodivergent and you find that affirmations or inspirational quotes send you into a loop of questions and fact-checking, try using questions instead of a statement, “*What if* I am strong enough to do this?” “What would it look like if I returned to my journal daily?” and see if that approach helps. I can’t find where I found this suggestion but, judging by my google search, it’s a pretty common one. I just wanted you to know that I didn’t invent it.
You can come up with something fun and helpful and encouraging that I have no idea about because you are the boss of you and I don’t live in your head. (That’s probably for the best for both of us. It would just be too weird!)
Of course, all of these things will only work if you look at them so you may want to make a daily or weekly or monthly reminder to look at your inspiration station and get…you guessed it…inspired!
So, Team, whether you are making an inspiration station, running in the opposite direction from an inspiration station, or doing any sort of practice, plan, or procedure that helps you move in the direction of the life you want to be living, I wish you self-kindness, determination, and the perfect kind of inspiration.
And, of course, I offer you these gold stars in celebration of your efforts.
Go Team Us!
Lots of stars for all kinds of inspiration! Image description: A painting of around 20 shiny gold stars that are trimmed in a thick black line and a very thin white line. The stars are all overlapping and layered. The background is painted blue and is decorated with very thin horizontal white lines looking a little like a sheet of loose leaf paper with the colours reversed. The painting is trimmed in black with a thin white line on the inner edge.
*I know, I know. There is no end to change in our lives but let’s just carry on, hey?
I have a belly and weak core. I blame my first-year university singing teacher. Why? Because he gave a piece of advice that made probably sense to singers** but left me with 40+ years of bad posture and flabby tummy because I failed to engage my abs.
One student had transferred in from another university and the quirks of scheduling had her in our introductory voice class despite being in the voice performance program. It was good because we got to watch her sing, and that’s where the advice kicked in.
It was the early 1980s and we were all teenagers, so body conscious while wearing form-fitting clothing. I’m pretty sure every one of us spent a lot of energy trying to hold our tummies taut and flat; I know I did.
Singers need to move their diaphragms and so we were advised to relax and let them move – just like that skilled singer whose every breath we could see all the way down into her belly.
Did my teenaged brain understand that you needed muscles to push that diaphragm back up? No it did not. And did it ever think to get clarification or a second opinion from another teacher, or even that brilliant student? Also no.
A cartoon image of a woman with dark hair and an orange shirt signs with one hand on her belly and the other on her chest. The image was found on a Facebook post in a group called “Voice Training and Music Lessons”.
With considerable age came wisdom (and sports coaches who encouraged me to seek out different instructors because everyone teaches the same things using different words).
Sometimes the words bounce off you. Sometimes they make sense and you are able to improve your form. Sometimes, those words provide a flash of insight that changes your workouts in fundamental ways. I have written before about one insight that worked really well for me here.
All that to say – my unsolicited advice for today is to explore and experiment. Seek out new teachers (even if it’s just someone offering yoga classes on YouTube). Listen to your body and your teachers. Question everything you don’t understand or that doesn’t feel right.
That all sounds obvious, but trust me, it is not. At least for me and my still semi-adolescent brain.
*The advice wasn’t really bad. It wasn’t even intended as a fitness thing. That’s on me.
**I am not a singer. It was a required class so that every music student would get at least an introduction to two other instruments and I happened to end up with voice and violin.
For me, this idea came from reading one of Julie Morgenstern‘s organizing books. I read this a long time ago so I don’t remember which book it was and the details may be fuzzy but the spirit is there, so let’s roll with it.
From what I recall, one of her clients was struggling to keep her shoes organized. She was always kicking them off next to her bed and then she would get annoyed with the pile of shoes that would accumulate there.
The complicated solution would be to train herself to put her shoes elsewhere or maybe to create a habit of returning her shoes to the front closet each morning. Both of those solutions are valid but they will take time and effort and probably a lot of experimenting.
Julie Morgenstern, however, had a much more direct solution.
She suggested putting a shoe rack next to the bed so her client’s shoes could be easily tidied and organized.
Now, there could be lots of reasons why either of the first two solutions might be better overall but you can’t beat the shoe rack when it comes to an easy and efficient solution to the shoe pile, can you?
It may not be a perfect solution, it may not be a forever solution, but it does address the immediate problem (messy shoe pile) without requiring a lot of effort and it lets the client choose where she wants to put her energy right now – creating a tidy corner or making changes to her behaviour.
Ultimately, she may want to change her behaviour but the shoe rack won’t prevent that. In fact, if she’s not being mean to herself about the messy shoe pile, she will probably have more energy to apply to behaviour change.*
When it comes to adding new practices to our lives or adjusting current practices, we tend to default to a behaviour change type of solution when often a shoe rack type of solution would do.
I think it’s worth trying some simple, direct solutions to our challenges first, even if it’s just to free up some energy for other changes and solutions we know we’ll want to try later.
So, if you are always forgetting to bring your water bottle to the basement when you do your workout – put a safe container of water and some clean glasses in your workout space.
If you have trouble making yourself do your stretches each evening, arrange a call with a friend and stretch while you chat. Your stretches might not be as deep but they’ll be done.
If, like me, you find that having your equipment in the basement prevents you from using it, consider moving it to a space in your house that feels easier for you.
If you keep your journal on your desk but you find it hard to sit there and write at the end of the day can you move your journal to your bedside table? Or keep a separate notebook there? Or use the voice notes on your phone? Or make jot notes whenever you can and do more detailed journaling at a time that feels easier? Can you change the time that you journal?
There is nothing wrong with choosing a direct solution if one is available.
Our practices are about our well-being, our fitness, our peace of mind, they aren’t about checking off boxes on an imaginary list of perfact behaviours.
There are lots of ways for us to move towards the lives we want, and it’s ok for at least some of those ways to be really straightforward.
So, Team, I’d like to invite you to consider what sorts of simple solutions might be available to help you address your challenges.
Or to put it another way, if you are faint a challenge, consider asking yourself if a shoe rack will help.
As always, here’s your gold star for your efforts today. As you can tell, today’s star is absolutely delighted with you and with your hard work.
And whether you are working on small solutions, big solutions, or anything in between, please remember that your efforts matter and so do you.
Please be kind to yourself out there.
Go Team Us!
I thought it was time for another happy star. 🙂 image description: a drawing of a cartoonish gold star with bright eyes and a big smile. The star is standing on a purple swing with two points of the star folding around the ropes of the swing like hands. The background of the image is coloured bright blue.
* If you pick a small solution for now with the idea that you will take on the behaviour change over time, please consider picking a time (or several times!) in the next few months to check in with yourself. It’s not exactly the same thing but I often choose a stopgap solution or workaround when I am pressed for time and then realize months later that I never stopped to develop an actual solution. Choosing a check-in time will reduce the chances of you being stuck with a temporary solution for longer than you mean to be.
