Category: advice

Go Team 2025: Take Care of Today’s You
ADHD · advice · fitness · habits · health · mindfulness · motivation · self care

Go Team 2025: Take Care of Today’s You

Christine Hennebury1 Comment

Hey Team,

While trying to strike a balance between overplanning and just kind of winging-it, my ADHD-brain often forgets that there are many options in between those two extremes.

I can have a tentative plan. I can have a list (or jar) of ideas to pick from. I can have a flowchart of if-thens. I can follow a plan and then adjust the pieces that aren’t working for me.

I can…probably think of eight million different ways of approaching the things I want to do.

However, all of the options between those extremes really come down to one thing: It’s always a good idea to be responsive to (and take care of) Today’s Me.

The me who makes plans often imagines perfect conditions for today’s me.

She forgets that I might be busy or sick or uncomfortable or upset or helping someone else or just plain unable to do the things she set out for me to do.

Changing my plans in response to Today’s Me’s needs is not slacking off, it’s not giving up, it’s not getting sidetracked.

Actually, since all of my fitness/well-being goals are really about taking good care of myself long-term, changing my plans in response to Today’s Me’s needs is actually getting me closer to those goals instead of further away.*

Giving myself room to change, adapt, or adjust Past Me’s plans is a vital part of learning to take good care of all versions of myself – past, present, and future.

And the same goes for you, Team.

The steps that lead you toward your goals will not look the same every day. Sometimes you will have the capacity to take bigger steps, sometimes your steps will be smaller, and sometimes you will need to rest. And, of course, the information you gather over time will occasionally lead to you taking a whole different path or choosing a whole different goal.

It only makes sense for you to respond to Today’s You’s needs so you can continue to support all of the versions of you going forward.

Being kind to yourself like this is really a life-long practice, hey? (Yeah, I know. I had kind of hoped I could just learn it once and then keep going, too.)

Here is your gold star for your efforts today whether you are able to respond to Today’s You or whether you are still figuring out what that might look like.

I wish you ease either way.

A small painting of a smiley-faced gold star with black pinstripes in the background.
Image description: A small painting of a smiley-faced gold star with black pinstripes in the background is propped against a green background on my white desk.

*As someone with ADHD, I need to take a close look at whatever Today’s Me wants because I know that the me-of-this-moment may not be great at prioritizing or at thinking long-term. So responding constructively to Today’s Me’s needs might look a little different for me but it’s still important to do it. (I know just how stubborn Tomorrow’s Me will be if I am unkind to Today’s Me!)

advice · fitness · self care

Go Team 2025: Make Small Adjustments

Christine Hennebury

Hey Team,

Have I written about this before? Almost certainly.

Am I going to write about it anyway? Definitely.

Will I write about it again in the future? Extremely likely.

Sometimes I worry about repeating myself in these posts but then I remember that I always appreciate a gentle reminder to be kind to myself – even if I have heard it before – AND I am probably adding some new ideas (or at least some nuance) with each iteration.

ANYWAY!

On to today’s topic…

Please, please, please don’t fall into the trap of thinking that you always need to do huge things to make a difference in your life, your fitness, or your well-being.

(I find myself in this trap a lot. I do not recommend it. It is no fun.)

In fact, very tiny changes can make a huge difference.

Things like adjusting the height of your chair or wearing gloves while you use an exercise band, or leaving one water bottle in the kitchen and one in your office, or stretching for two minutes, or putting a cold cloth on your eyes for a little while, or writing three sentences in a journal, or fixing the cuff of your favourite sweatshirt, or turning the lights lower while you do yoga, or wearing a shawl while you meditate.

All of those things can make the difference between doing the thing and not doing the thing.

Sure, dramatic changes and huge effort both have their place but small adjustments and incremental efforts are just as important.

And those little tweaks, those tiny changes can have a great impact on how you think about your plans, your activities, and yourself.

Those small, deliberate actions are a wonderful message to send to your future self, a great reminder that you care about your own needs and your own comfort and that you are willing to take care of yourself.

In case I have been too subtle here (HA!)…

SMALL ADJUSTMENTS = GOOD IDEA

So, Team, today and everyday, I invite you to take good care of yourself in little ways, one thing at a time.

In fact, I DARE you to choose a time to make a small change this week.

It will be totally worth it.

And, as always, here’s your gold star for your efforts:

a drawing of a gold star with a happy expression on its face
image description: a drawing of a smiley-faced gold star on white paper with small black circles drawn in the background.
Go Team 2025: Review, Revisit, Reassess…
ADHD · advice · fitness · goals · habits · self care

Go Team 2025: Review, Revisit, Reassess…

Christine Hennebury2 Comments

Okay, Team, here we are at the end of February and I, for one, have not made a lot of headway with my goals.

There are lots of good reasons for that but I have been feeling a bit frustrated and down about the whole thing.

But I don’t want my frustrations to get in my way though and I don’t want to waste time feeling bad about something that I can keep adjusting until I get more momentum.

So, I am digging into some RE words.

Return to my ideas.

Review what I want.

Revisit what I have tried.

Reassess my systems.

Rework my schedule.

Revise my plans.

Reinvigorate my practices.

Restart as needed!

You see the pattern here, right?

I am starting over but this time I have a bit more experience.

I’m checking what new information I have gathered since I started last time.

I’m figuring out what worked and what didn’t work.

I’m exploring how to adjust what needs adjusting.

I am going VERY easy on myself about the whole thing.

And I’m inviting you to do the same thing.

So, Team, if you have also been feeling a bit frustrated about your progress, can you take a look at your habits, your plans, your ideas, and your practices and choose some RE words to help you find your next steps?

And whether your practices have been puttering a long just fine or whether you have been kind of going in circles (and not in a fun way), or whether you are into the RE words like me, I offer you this gold star for your efforts.

Your hard work counts, no matter what!

Go Team Us!

Please be kind to yourself out there.

A painting of a gold star against a spiraled background
Image description: a small painting of a gold star with a background that’s a large green spiral with black stripes in between the spiral’s layers.
a mixed media piece is gold, black, green and blues with stickers, paper, markers, and paint Christine’s Jumbled Brain Seeks Calm
ADHD · advice · meditation · mindfulness · self care

Christine’s Jumbled Brain Seeks Calm

Christine Hennebury

My brain has been VERY jumbled for the past few days.

On top of all of the things going on in the world as a whole, several friends are going through some heavy things so I am trying to be there for them, and, of course, I have some very ordinary (but still quite present) brain-jumbling stresses:

There was a mix-up with my prescription for my ADHD meds and I had to do without them for three days, I had a migraine, my back and my knee were both giving me trouble, I had a lot of finicky-detail work to do, we’ve had a lot of the kind of wind that puts my nerves on edge, and, through no fault of my own, all kinds of small things have gone awry in ways that required me to do a lot of back-and-forth to get them fixed.

By today (Monday), my brain had just noped out.

It would only do what absolutely HAD to be done and even some of that was kind of a hard sell.

Luckily, while puttering this morning, I came across a note-to-self from a while back that said, “If you can’t do your work, give yourself permission to play. No point in just being annoyed, might as well make something fun.”

My brain felt kind of thick and stubbornly refused to suggest anything to make but then I found a YouTube video by Amy Tangerine called “1000+ pages in journals done with one simple trick” in which she invites the viewer to gather their supplies and make something while she talks.

So I made this. It’s not finished – it needs something horizontal and somewhat rectangular to go over the spot where the dark blue meets the light blue there in middle near the bottom. I haven’t found the right thing yet, but I will.

a piece of multi-media art with torn paper, stickers, markers and paint that kind of looks like a landscape in blue, green, gold, and black
Can you spot where I got smears of paint on my desk from trying to clean off the spots of paint that landed beyond the paper when I flicked by brush to make the dots? I am a true artiste! image description: a mixed-media image that is sort of a landscape in black, green, gold, and two shades of blue. On the upper left is a black moon with tiny torn pieces of green paper overlaid like clouds. On the upper right is a cloud cut out of scrapbook paper that kind of looks like an old letter. The bottom right is a larger piece of torn green paper that forms a kind of a slope with two flower stickers and a butterfly sticker on it. The bottom left is painted light blue and a there’s a darker blue mass and in combination it kind of looks like a blue iceberg floating on water. There are thin gold and black lines extending from the left of the paper to the dark blue. Everything is outlined in gold and there are blue flecks of paint all over the white background.

Focusing on that small creative project helped a lot but it occurred to me that I have been feeling extra jumbled quite often lately and I have saved quite a few things that seemed helpful.

So, I thought I would share them with you in case you have been feeling extra jumbled lately, too.

Remember that the goal of all of this isn’t to push away our feelings or to pretend that everything is fine all the time. This is all about trying to create space for us to deal with stress, with our emotions (and with all of the damn things that are cluttering up our brains) in a way that is more effective and less overwhelming.

Now, speaking of overwhelming, please don’t make the mistake that I tend to and attempt to try everything here all at once or all in one day.

Just pick one thing that has some appeal and see how it feels.

Give it a real chance though, at least a few minutes. Sometimes when I feel jumbled, I expect instant results and then I kind of hop from attempted solution to attempted solution without really getting into any of them.

Guess what? That makes me even MORE jumbled and then I get annoyed, which is not a good combination.

Anyway, here are some of the things I am keeping on hand for my own jumbled brain. I hope they help and/or they inspire you to create your own resource list.

I wish you ease, my friends.

*****

Here’s a video from Yoga with Adriene that I find quite soothing:

And this guided meditation for stress relief is helpful:

And you know I am a fan of this breathing exercise to calm anxiety – I’m sure I have posted it a dozen times!

These tips from Anna the Anxiety Coach on Instagram have a lot to recommend them:

The Shabby Creek Cottage posted some excellent advice in this series called ‘How to Calm Your Ass Down’:

This journaling video has some good ideas as well.

And, finally, I’ve heard that ‘heavy work’ exercises can be helpful. A young friend of mine was told that taking action when anxiety strikes can help ground you in your body. They were advised to do squats, to push hard on the wall, or to carry something heavy up and down the stairs and it really seemed to help them in the moment. Here’s more advice on that topic.

Feel free to add your own suggestions in the comments.

Go Team 2025: Reconsidering Consistency
advice · fitness · goals · habits · self care

Go Team 2025: Reconsidering Consistency

Christine Hennebury

Hey Team,

What does consistency look like for you?

I know that in discussions about habit-building and life-enhancement there’s a lot of pressure to do your practices every day (and at the same time of day, for the same amount of time, and so on.)

There is value in that – it can be a lot easier to build momentum and to see your progress if you can do something every single day.

BUT

It’s also not feasible for a lot of people.

A lot of us don’t have the capacity to do our practices the same way every single day. We might have busy lives, we may have irregular schedules, we may have a caretaker role, we may have disabilities or chronic illnesses, or we may have some other variable that makes it impossible for us to predict our energy level/availability/schedule on any given day.

Our varying capacity doesn’t mean that we have to automatically abandon any plans to enhance or expand our lives.

(Although, that is a totally valid option if it’s what you need in this season of your life. You are the only one who can tell what will serve you best right now.)

Instead, we can benefit from reconsidering consistency and figuring out what regularly returning to our life-expanding practices could look like for us right now.

Identical daily practice is only one form of consistency.

Perhaps your form of consistency is doing something every day but your practice varies widely in time/schedule/location/activities/content.

Maybe your consistency looks like a weekly or monthly practice.

Or perhaps it looks like a different scale/scope of practice on different days of the week.

Maybe you have different practices for different types of energy.

Consistency can be any pattern of returning to a practice, even if the pattern is not easily spotted because it is stretched out over weeks, months, and years.

And while you may have multiple factors that affect your capacity, you are the best one to understand those factors, to understand your capacity, and to declare what consistency will look like for you right now.

So, Team, as you look back at your January efforts, I invite you to ask yourself, kindly, “In what ways was I consistent with my practices (or my planning!) this month?”

And then I hope you will seek out the patterns, identify the ways you kept returning to your practice (or plans), and note the efforts that you made for yourself.

You are not a robot with singular programming who can do the exact same thing at the exact same time in the exact same way every single day.

You are a human, operating in your own ecosystem, who has all kinds of factors affecting your approach to each day.

Rather than judging yourself against a single standard of consistency and being upset if/when you fall short, I hope you will develop your own parameters for consistency, celebrate when they work and change them when they don’t.

Here is your star for today’s efforts no matter what they were and no matter what type of consistency was involved. Your hard work matters and it all counts.

Go Team Us!

A small drawing of a gold star. The star is divided into triangular sections that are coloured different shades of gold.
A photo of a small drawing of a gold star against a background of thin, vertical, black stripes. The star itself is divided into triangular sections by black lines and each section is coloured in a different shade of gold marker/pen. The drawing is propped against a dark green surface on a white desk.
advice · goals · habits · motivation

Go Team 2025: Include Rest

Christine Hennebury

Hey Team,

Have you included rest in your plans (or your planning plans) for your life-enhancing activities this year?

Yeah, yeah, I know that you will rest in there somewhere but I’m not talking about rest that arises from time to time.** The rest I am referring to is a deliberate choice, something you include in your plans because you recognize (or try to recognize!) that resting is a vital part of any process of growth or change.

I mean, our bodies and brains need rest no matter what.

We aren’t robots or machines (and even robots and machines have downtime and time for maintenance) and just like anything and everything in the natural world, rest is necessary for us to function.

And no amount of optimizing, scheduling, time management, biohacking, or whatever is going to change our need for rest.***

So, rather than trying to function without rest or rather than waiting until the need for rest overwhelms us, wouldn’t it make more sense to include rest in our plans?

Wouldn’t it be a good idea to pay attention to our own rhythms and routines whenever we can and add rest when it would serve us best?

If we wait until we ‘get a chance’ to rest, it is likely that our rest time will get filled with other tasks and projects.

BUT if we make rest part of the plan, part of our practice, then it feels like a more natural part of our schedule and it is more likely to actually happen.

And, for the record, anything you do to refresh and recharge and give yourself a break counts as a rest, up to and including a full body flop out on your bed to let your mind wander or to take a nap.

So, Team, today I invite you to consider your practices in terms of a cycle or a rhythm and see at what point in that process it would make sense to include more rest.

Since rest is vital for growth and for change, it definitely counts as part of your practice and you get to decide what that looks like for you.

And here, as always is your gold star for your efforts today. Whether today is a rest day, a small practice day, or an all-out exuberance of effort, it all counts!

A painting of a cartoonish gold star
Yes, today’s star is a bit wonky. I suspect she forgot to include rest in her schedule. Or possibly I was messing around with paints and things didn’t turn out as planned. It’s one or the other. Image description: A small cartoonish painting of a gold star with a happy expression against a black background with green polka dots and green trim. The painting is resting on a worn wooden surface.

*I will be writing other Go Team posts throughout the year but not on a regular schedule.

**Nor am I talking about the kind of rest that our bodies or brains seem to suddenly demand ‘out of nowhere’ – you know, the kind that usually means we didn’t hear the earlier requests for one reason or another. It’s ridiculous how hard it has become to hear and acknowledge those earlier nudges, isn’t it?

***In fact, the effort to do all those things would actually wear me out and I would need even more rest.

Go Team 2025: Adjust as Needed
ADHD · advice · fitness · goals · habits · motivation · self care

Go Team 2025: Adjust as Needed

Christine Hennebury

Hey Team,

Today, I would l like to remind us all that it is ok to adjust plans our plans as we go along.

When you first create a plan to enhance or expand some part of your life, you are working with limited information.

Perhaps you know exactly where you want to go and kind of how to get there but the details are fuzzy.

Or maybe you aren’t sure where you want to end up but you have some practices you want to incorporate into your day to day.

You may have a plan for a destination and a set of practices but maybe you aren’t sure whether you will like them or how you will fit them into your schedule.

Either way, we generally start with some things that are very clear and others that are a bit blurry.

And that’s totally fine, that’s the nature of planning things for the future.

The challenges arise when we forget that as we gain more experience, as we learn more about the process, as we actually try out some of our ideas, we are actually gathering useful information about our practices AND that it is a good idea to use that information to adjust our practices to serve us well.

We are not always stuck with the decisions that we made at the beginning of this process.*

It’s ok to change things to simplify or streamline your process.

It’s ok to change the order of your activities.

It’s ok to decide to drop something you hate and find another way to accomplish the same thing. (Or to just drop it and not replace it.)

It’s ok to do a shorter version of your activities on busy days (or on that day of the week when the traffic is always worse for some reason.)

It’s ok to change how you organize your activities.

It’s ok to change your plan entirely and seek out a completely different life-expanding activity.

(Sidenote: this principle applies far beyond fitness and wellness activities.)

If you are working towards something and some aspect of it is not serving you well, you are free to adjust any and all parts of the process to make it work for you.

After all, your practices are not about the practices or about the results, they are about you and the things you want in your life.

The practices and the results are the external representations of the way you want to feel, the things you want to experience, and you can find other ways to feel or experience those specific things.

So, Team, today I am inviting you to adjust any part of your practice that is getting on your nerves, causing you distress, or just not working the way you wanted it to.

And here are some gold stars for your efforts, no matter what those efforts are and no matter how you decide to adjust them, and no matter if they are the same as yesterday or something completely different.

Go Team Us!

A small painting of gold stars against a background of rectangles painted in different colours
A small painting of a bunch of small gold stars against a background of different sized rectangles of different colours (orange and green at the top with smaller rectangles of red, yellow, and pink at the bottom left and blue in the bottom right corner) that are all outlined in black.

A note about today’s stars:

This little painting is a good example of the process I am talking about in this post.

I started with the idea of painting a bunch of rectangles with one big gold star in the middle but after I painted them, I realized that a big gold star would cover up the yellow rectangle entirely and I didn’t want that.

I decided on a bunch of small stars instead but they looked kind of weird on the rectangles. So I trimmed the rectangles in black but then I realized that the edges of the rectangles looked weird because they weren’t close enough to line up but they weren’t far enough away to be offset. So I made the lines thicker in some places to make it more interesting. Then I decided to add outlines to the gold stars to help them stand out but I was a bit messy with the edges and things went a bit awry. So I decided to add some black dots to make the messiness less blatant.

Basically, I had an idea where I was going with this painting and every time something turned out a little different, I made an adjustment and carried on. It’s far from perfect but it works just fine for what we need today and making adjustments as I went along helped me to stay on track with the project.

*Yes, I know that, in some circumstances, we have made commitments to a certain length of time or a certain set of activities but, in general, we do not have to stick with things because they seemed like a good idea at the beginning. And even things we committed to may have some wiggle room in them if we decide to look for it.

advice · fitness · goals · habits · motivation · self care

Go Team 2025: Managing Your Expectations (again?)

Christine Hennebury

Hey Team,

This is one of those topics that I have returned to over and over again in Go Team posts throughout the years but since I often need another reminder, I thought you might need one, too.

So here goes:

Please make sure that you match your expectations to your capacity.

No matter where you are in the process of developing practices to expand and enhance your life, matching your expectations (your results) to your capacity (how much effort you can put into the project) is one of the kindest things you can do for yourself.

As we all know, there are hundreds of ways to get stronger, get fit, decrease stress, learn new things, or develop new practices and different approaches will work for different people.

And those different approaches include different intensities, different time lines, and different activities, and they will all help people move towards the lives they want to live.

BUT the speed at which each person is moving, changing, and learning will be different.

AND each person is living a different life with different pressures, different schedules, and different abilities.

SO it only makes sense for each person to take ALL of those things into account when they are developing their expectations of themselves, their progress, and their results.

To clarify, let’s consider an extreme example:

Let’s imagine that a big movie star gets a role in an action film that requires a lot of extra muscle. She can generally hire a trainer to design a targeted program, she can spend hours in the gym every day with someone else tracking every aspect of her workout and telling her what adjustments to make, she can have her staff shop, prepare, and serve very specific foods and she probably has other staff to take care of her house, her car, her kids, and any other details of life admin that may spring up.

Her JOB for the next while is to prepare physically and mentally for that role. She will have to work hard and she will have to juggle SOME other priorities but she has the capacity to put in the time and the energy for those lengthy and challenging workouts and she will see results very quickly.

In contrast, your job is probably separate from your plans to build extra muscle. You probably have time for a few sessions at the gym each week. You may have a trainer but you probably don’t spend hours a day with them. You probably have to shop for your own groceries and prepare your own meals and clean your own house and you probably don’t have the same support for your life admin,

Your capacity for the task of building muscle is VERY different than the movie star’s capacity.

It would be unfair for you to expect yourself to get the same results that she gets in the same period of time.

The kind thing to do would be to be realistic about the results your efforts can generate in the time you have available.

A person who can run several times a week will see certain results sooner than the person who can only run once per week. That doesn’t mean that either person is ‘better’, they are both doing the best they can with the resources they have. The person who only has one opportunity to run each week needs a different set of expectations for themselves than the person who can run more often.

Being realistic about your capacity and about what you can expect from the efforts you are able to make at this point in your life is much better for your brain than berating yourself for falling short of disconnected expectations.

So, Team, today I invite you to take a look at what you are expecting from yourself right now.

Do you have the capacity to do the work that would be required to meet those expectations?

If not, how can you adjust your expectations to match your efforts?

After all, it makes more sense to celebrate what you *can* do and what you have achieved than to be hard on yourself for things that are beyond your capacity right now.

And, as always, here is your gold star for your efforts today, no matter what size and shape they are.

Be kind to yourself, pretty please.

Go Team Us!

A drawing of a gold star with black lines in the background
A photo of a small drawing of a gold star with a background of black horizontal lines that look a bit like a Venetian blind. The drawing is trimmed in black with black triangles in the corners.
advice · fitness · goals · motivation · self care

Go Team 2025: If all else fails, activate spite.

Christine Hennebury

Hey Team,

I know that we are all trying develop more internal motivation and that we generally want to work toward something positive instead of trying to avoid something negative.

BUT

I also know how stubborn *ahem* determined I am and how a little bit of spite can sometimes give me a little extra boost of perseverance just when I needed it.

Now, perhaps you are more enlightened than I am and you have never been fuelled by the determination to show that you *can* do the thing that someone said you couldn’t. If that’s the case, this post may not resonate with you and that’s totally cool – forge ahead with your own plan.

But if, like me, you can recall a handful of times when spite helped you finish a task, dig up some motivation, or tap into some reserved energy, then let’s carry on.

So, here’s the thing, you are adding these practices to your day so you can benefit, right?

You want to enhance or expand your life, you want to be stronger, you want to be calmer, you want to be more reflective, you want to be able to have more fun.

Those are are great reasons to put in the work to make change and, most of the time, those whys will pull you forward.

But, there are other times when you are feeling a bit sluggish or maybe you have temporarily drained that well of motivation.

That’s when you can turn to spite.

That’s the time when you can bring possible detractors to mind, tell them to shut up, and do your practices just to prove them wrong.

The person who rolled their eyes when you mentioned your plans? Do your practice to spite that jerk.

That Instagram ad that brought up bad feelings? Do your practice to spite those marketers.

That gym teacher in grade 7 who told you would never be strong? Do your reps to spite them.

All of the people who insist that there is only one way to be fit or healthy or calm? Do your practice your way in your own time in sheer defiance of their ridiculousness.

Ok, so the actual people in this list will probably never see your practices or fee your spite but that doesn’t matter a bit.

This energy-building, practice-fuelling spite isn’t really about them (we don’t actually need to care what they think!)

It’s about the space they take up in your head, about the doubts, questions, or frustrations their words or actions generated in our minds and how our determination, our spite, can push back against all of that nonsense and let us get on with the things we want to do.

So, it’s not really about proving them wrong, it’s about using spite to turn their negativity into fuel for something that will actually serve us well – our practices.

When all else, activate spite is not about ‘I’ll show them!’ it’s about reclaiming that mental space and filling it with determination to keeping moving toward (and in) the life we want to live.

So, Team, today, I invite you to add spite to your determination toolbox so you have yet another route to keep returning to the practices that you know will lead you where you want to go.

And here are some gold stars for your efforts. Big or small, spite-fuelled or habitual, they all count.

Go Team Us!

A small drawing of 5 gold stars
A photo of a small drawing of 5 slightly wonky gold stars against a background of small black dots. The edge of the drawing is framed in black.
advice · fitness · goals · motivation · self care

Go Team 2025: Swearing The Whole Time

Christine Hennebury

Hey Team,

A little over a week ago, I was reminding us that we don’t need constant enthusiasm in order to take action on our life-enhancement plans and almost two weeks ago, I was reminding us that we can just give today’s plans a try even if we feel kind of meh about them in the moment.

Today, I am taking both of those things up a notch and reminding us that we can go ahead with our plans even if the idea of doing them is irritating as all hell.

Sure, if our plans are as irritating as all hell every single time then we may want to consider reshaping them but if we have a day or a week of irritation about the actions required for a goal or plan that is important to us?

That might be a good time to borrow this expression:

A photo of a card that reads ‘I won’t quit but I will swear the whole time.’
A photo of a small white card with green text highlighted in gold that reads ‘I won’t quit but I will swear the whole time.’ There are green dots and gold/green diamond(ish) shapes between and around the text. The card is propped against a dark green surface on a white desk.

I use this approach on the regular when I know what I need to do and the end result is very important to me but I just do not want to do the thing.

Knowing that I only have to summon the energy for the actions but that I don’t have to pretend that I want to do them, to pretend they are a good idea, or to even pretend that I like them right now is incredibly freeing.

And, just like that meme about talking a stupid walk for our stupid mental health, going ahead with my plan and swearing the whole time usually results in me feeling much better about the whole thing than if I had told myself I was just too cranky today.

Sidenote: I don’t magically cure my ADHD with this approach. My brain is still very much a factor but since I have given myself permission to be cranky about having to proceed, it’s is often a lot easier to get the thing done.

So, Team, today I invite you to consider adding the ‘swearing the whole time’ option to your toolbox of approaches when you need help to persevere towards the life you want. If you don’t swear, feel free to insert the word ‘grumble’ instead.

This option isn’t intended to override our other options, like finding the fun part or leaning on your routine or any of the other approaches I have suggested.

Swearing the whole time is actually another way to be kind to yourself about the process of change.

You don’t have to pretend that everything is great, you don’t have to be delighted about your workout, your journaling, or your next glass of water, you have the option to be downright cranky about it and it can still get done. It will still move you in the direction you want to go.

And it will move you there without you having to dredge up any extra energy about the whole thing.

It usually works for me and I hope it will be helpful for you, too.

And here’s your gold star for your efforts today, no matter what kind of mood your are in and no matter how big or small your actions are.

Go Team Us!

A small painting of a shiny metallic gold star against a light blue background.
A photo of a small painting of a shiny, metallic gold star on a light blue background with darker blue trim around the edge of the star and the edge of the paper. The painting is propped against a dark green surface and there’s a white desk beneath.