Hey Team,
During each series of Go Team posts, I have a few days when I don’t really feel like writing.
Either I feel meh about the task or meh about my topic and it just feels like it will take forever and not be very interesting to the writer or the reader.*
In case you haven’t pieced it together, today is one of those days.
But because I’ve had these days before I know what to do.
I let my writing routine carry me.
I draw my star – which is always fun for me.
Then I give the post a title and add the categories and the tags
And then I start writing stuff.
Now, I say “stuff” instead of “start writing the post” because the first 10 sentences are just going to be stuff.
The whole point of those first 10 sentences or so is to help me get started, to get me into writing mode.
Occasionally, there’s something salvageable in there, but mostly I just delete them after I figure out what I want to say.
I have learned, with practice, that I can trust my routine for writing these posts. And, in fact, I use a similar routine for any writing that I find challenging to start.
So what does this have to do with your fitness or well-being routines?
If you feel meh about your practice on any given day, you can go through the motions, you can trust your routine, and those actions will carry you through.
Now to be clear I’m not talking about when you have a more complicated obstacle between you and your practice. So this doesn’t apply if you are sick, injured, having a lot of trouble, or having a recurring issue with your planned routine. Those challenges require different solutions and a lot of self kindness.
My suggestion today is for when you just feel meh about your activities.
So if you feel meh about meditating, maybe you drag out a cushion and a blanket and put on some restful music and see if it becomes a little easier to meditate.
If you feel meh about your exercise routine, maybe you can put on your gear and just start moving slowly with no specific plan.
If you feel meh about yoga, maybe you can lie on your mat for a while.
If you feel meh about journaling, maybe you could take out your notebook and pen and put them on the table.
Now, maybe it will turn out that you still can’t get yourself to do the thing. That might tell you that you need to look at your systems, that you need more rest or maybe that your plan for today was a little too ambitious.
I’ll bet, though, that if you let your routine carry you then most of the time you’ll just go ahead and do the thing anyway. Some days, you just need a longer on-ramp.
You will notice that the routines I’ve described here are not elaborate. They are just the few steps that come before you do the thing.
If you like routines, you may also want to spend some time figuring out more elaborate ones for future practices (as long as that will help you instead of making you feel like you have to do a bunch of things before you start your practice.)
But it’s also OK to keep things really simple and just have a few necessary, preliminary tasks that will lead you into your practice.
So, Team, my routine has carried me almost to the end of this post, and I hope your routines will work just as well for you today or whenever the next meh feeling pops up.
You don’t have to be totally enthusiastic and all-in every single time you go to do your practice.
It’s OK to keep strolling towards it until it feels possible to do.
And here’s our gold star to celebrate our efforts today.
Whether you are approaching your practices with enthusiasm or utter meh-ness, whether you are working on a small or large scale, and no matter what your tasks are, your efforts matter.
And so do you.
Be kind to yourself out there!.
💚
Go Team Us!
* If this seems familiar, well I have definitely written about this in previous years. Maybe I’ve even written about it every year. And I feel a bit self-conscious about that, like I’m being too repetitive, but, as always, then I tell myself that if I need the reminder, maybe you do too..
