Your new habits and practices will be stronger if they are built on reality rather than on an attempt at perfection.
Some days are going to be challenging, some days are going to go sideways, some days you’ll be sick, or you’ll have an injury, sometimes you’ll sleep so poorly that it will feel like your ADHD meds aren’t working at all and you’ll feel like you are dragging yourself through mud just to get your basic tasks done.*
When those things happen, please give yourself a break.
That may mean doing your practice without your usual enthusiasm, it may mean modifying your practice or doing the bare minimum, it may mean opting out of your practice entirely and it definitely means being kind to yourself about the whole thing.
If today is too complicated, too hard, or too unmedicated-feeling, practicing self-compassion is the only sensible way forward.
In case the specificity of that last example didn’t give me away, I didn’t sleep well last night and I feel unmedicated and I have been dragging myself through metaphorical mud to do necessary tasks.
At first, I was trying to write the post I had planned but when I couldn’t get my ideas to weave together I decided to take the advice I would give to someone else:
Give Yourself A Break
And I did.
So, as so often happens, this post is not just advice for you – it’s also advice for me.
I hope I’m being a good example of how to dial things back on more challenging days.
As always, here is your gold star for your efforts today. Those efforts may be working towards your new practice or they may be directed towards giving yourself a break and practising self-kindness.
Either way, you get a gold star for your hard work.
Go Team Us!
A drawing of a large shiny gold star with black trim. The background of the image has been divided into 8 triangular sections that meet in a point behind the star. The sections are coloured in purple, blue, orange, and green – one section of a lighter shade and one of a darker one for each colour. Each section is decorated with gold dots outlined in black. Each section is divided by a black line.
I hate the word should and I am not friends with the word shouldn’t.
Ok, maybe it’s not about the words themselves, it might be about the ways that those words are often used.
Should/shouldn’t seem to be the go-to words for judging/shaming people and/or judging/shaming ourselves and I don’t think that they actually do much good.
Instead, I think that those words often end up not only making us feel bad but also limiting our options and keeping us stuck.
You know how these things usually play out…
“I should be more disciplined about this.”
“I should be able to get up earlier.”
“You should just try harder.”
“I shouldn’t need a reminder to do my workout.”
“You shouldn’t need a break yet.”
Each of those statements – yes, the ones that I wrote – made me cringe and feel badly for the person on the receiving end.
Yes, I feel bad for imaginary people hearing the sentences that I made up as examples and I want to rush to help them. Can you even imagine what I am like when I hear a should/shouldn’t statement in real life?
The weight of judgement and recrimination in those statements is painful, weighty, and pointless.
I would love to be able to banish that type of judgement from our brains (and our statements) entirely but seeing as that’s not possible, let’s do a work-around and see if we can prevent ourselves from getting stuck.
What about if, instead of letting the words should or shouldn’t lead us into judgement and blame, we decided that they are cues for asking ourselves some questions?
Let’s practice with the statements I listed above:
“I should be more disciplined about this.” Why is it hard for me to be disciplined about this? How can I make it easier for me to get to this task? Is there something I can change about the task or my environment to make it less challenging to start?
“I should be able to get up earlier.” What is making it difficult for me to get up earlier? Do I need to go to bed earlier? Do I need to change the time I planned to do my practice? Do I need a better alarm clock? Do I need to plan something to look forward to first thing in the morning?
“You should just try harder.” Is someone judging me unfairly for not having the same results as someone else? How can I distance myself from their opinion? If you are actually struggling with the task, then ask what is making this task so difficult for me? Do I have obstacles that I need to address? (Please note that an obstacle is an obstacle whether or not it “should” be a problem for you. It’s better to deal with the obstacle, to find a solution, than to try to convince yourself that it’s not there.) It’s possible that you may need to put in more effort but it is more likely that you need a different system/approach to the issue. My ADHD brain has a lot of resentment built up about being told to try harder when I was already working ridiculously hard in systems that were never going to work for me.
“I shouldn’t need a reminder to do my workout.” What’s wrong with needing a reminder for a workout? Is this ‘should’ connected to other events or other needs that I have been judged or I have judged myself for? Is there a way to help myself accept that if a reminder makes it easier to workout then it is a valuable tool, not a problem.
“You shouldn’t need a break yet.” If you need a break, you need a break no matter how someone shoulds you but you can ask yourself things like – Is there a reason I can’t take a break now? If this isn’t the usual time people take breaks then are they suffering or has something gone awry for me? What is leading to me needing a break right now? Is it a big deal if I just take it? Is there something I need to do differently to make it easier to wait for a break?
Once you have asked yourself some questions and identified different ways of thinking about things or different ways of doing things, then you can figure out how to proceed.
It will take practice to get out of the should/shouldn’t habit but you really don’t have to get stuck in the should/blame/shame cycle.
Instead, when a ‘should’ moment arrives, you can take it as a sign that it is time to look deeper and figure out what is going on for you in this situation.
And I hope it will look a little something like this:
“Journaling should be easy by now!” “Oh, a should just came up. I wonder what my brain is up to now?” “Oh, trying to journal in the morning is frustrating for me because I can feel my to do list hovering. Maybe I should try journaling at a different time of day.”
Instead of this:
“Journaling should be easy by now.” “I should try harder.” “Why can’t I ever just stick to things?” “Why don’t I have more discipline?” (I’ll stop there, you know how this lousy routine goes.)
Anyway, Team, today I am inviting you to notice if you are employing ‘should’ or ‘shouldn’t’ as a way to shame yourself into getting stuff done. And if you are, then I invite you to turn those should statements into questions so you can help yourself forge ahead.
And, as always, here is your gold star for your efforts – your efforts to work on your practices, your efforts to figure out your next steps, your efforts to ask questions instead of accepting ‘shoulds’, and your efforts to to take good care of yourself.
I wish you ease and self-kindness.
Go Team Us!
I feel like this background is decorated in 80s/90s tracksuit colours 🙂 image description: a drawing of a gold star against a patterned background. The gold star is sort of in the centre of the drawing, but also to the lower right because I am not always great at lining things up on the page and it’s not a very even star two of the points are longer and larger than the others would not have been a fancy design way in a oh look I didn’t quite get that right way. The star is coloured with a golden yellow marker and trimmed in black. The background is a diagonal grid with large blocks. The blocks are coloured either pink purple light, blue or green and there’s no particular pattern to the order of the colours in each line. Each colour has a different pattern drawn in black on it. Pink blocks have large black polkadots. Purple blocks have a grid with each second block within the grid having a black polkadot. Green blocks have vertical black pinstripes. And light blue blocks are decorated with lines that have a break in them and in the middle of the break is a black dot.
Rest is one of the most important and most overlooked components of any efforts we are making to move towards the life we want.
Your rest doesn’t have to wait until all the work is done or until everything is figured out. It’s not extra or a ‘nice-to-have-if-you-have-time’ – it’s actually part of the process of doing things and figuring things out.
No matter what practice you are currently developing, the underlying goal is going to be similar – everyone’s goals in this area are about feeling good and inhabiting all of the corners of their lives.
The connection between your actions and the practice you are developing is generally pretty clear but the connection between rest and success may be a bit more murky.
Basically, in your quest to improve your well-being rest is vital.
Resting is not ‘taking a break’ from your practice, it is PART of your practice, part of your routine, part of your process.
Not only is rest valuable in itself but with all of the effort you are putting in, you need to rest your body, your mind, and your spirit or you will struggle to do the other things you want to do.
You need periods of action and periods of rest in order for your practice to work.
If you constantly try to push yourself forward without rest, you may be able to keep up your practice but your tasks (and your enjoyment of them) will suffer because of your lack of rest.
Now, I know that not everyone has the same amount of time to rest in a given day, a given week, or a given month.
I’m not suggesting that everybody can just drop everything and rest on a whim.
BUT
Given that rest is so important to your practice and to your well-being in general, it’s worth reconsidering what rest *can* look like for you.
Maybe you can’t take long periods of rest but maybe you can take short periods of rest here and there.
Maybe you can batch your tasks so you can create time to breathe before switching to a new set of activities.
Maybe you can choose not to do certain activities on certain days so you have a little room to rest. (Your practices won’t be ruined if you structure them to include downtime.)
You can reduce the nature, scope, or details of some of your activities and practices to free up some time and energy.
Like so many other areas of our lives, rest is not an all or nothing situation.
You don’t have to choose between perfect rest and not resting at all.
Just like you can benefit from short bursts of activities, you can benefit from even small amounts of rest. (Here are some ideas from PHE Canada)
So, Team, today I invite you to remember the value of rest in developing your practices (and in enjoying your life more!) AND I invite you to consider how to add at least some small rest periods to your schedule.
And here are your gold stars for your efforts today whether you are trying to rest or in an active phase of moving toward the life you want.
Be kind to yourself out there.
And, always…
Go Team Us!
Lots of stars of all different sizes to reward all kinds of rest or all kinds of effort. Image description: a drawing of over 60 stars in various sizes (but most are small), each outlined in black. The background is filled with thin, diagonal black lines that extend downwards towards the right. The lines sort of give the impression of connecting some of the stars. The edges of the drawing are trimmed in black.
Today, I would like to remind you that you have already succeeded at lots of things in your life and that you can borrow from those successes to fuel your current efforts.
Please note: There are a LOT of different ways to succeed. You can follow your initial plans, you can follow a modified plan, you can change your mind and pick a different goal (and a different plan), and you can choose your own definition of success along the way. The goal here is for you to move closer to the life you want to live and your understanding of how to get there is going to change and expand as you proceed.
Ok, with that note in mind, let’s carry on…
So, you have succeed at all kinds of things throughout your life.
Some of those things were HUGE and some were small but they all took effort on your part.
Your success depended on you making plans, figuring things out, adapting to new circumstances, adjusting your plans, taking a break, starting again, getting help, dealing with various levels of motivation, dealing with interruptions, and, basically, developing a wide range of new skills.
Even if your previous successes were in a whole different area of your life, you can apply the skills you learned to your current practices.
Imagine, for example, that you once learned how to bake cookies and now you are pretty good at whipping out a delicious batch of shortbread at a moment’s notice.
On the surface, your shortbread success may seem like it has nothing to do with your current attempts at building a yoga practice but when you look at baking in terms of skills, there are all kinds of parallels.
Before you made that first batch of shortbread, you did some research and picked out which recipe seemed most doable…kind of like how you could do some research on different types (and teaching styles) of yoga and figure out which one resonates with you.
And when you shopped for ingredients, you probably sought other people’s advice at first and then developed your own preferences over time…just like you could do with yoga.
And you probably took things very slowly and paid very close attention at first but, over time, as you learned how the ingredients came together, you could relax and enjoy the process more. Doesn’t that sound a bit like how you first struggle to follow yoga instructors and then learn to trust your body and move in the way you need to move?
Your first batch of shortbread might have turned out pretty good but I’ll bet that your most recent batch is way better. I’ll bet you still celebrated and enjoyed those early batches though. You didn’t wait until you had your baking perfected before having a cookie and sharing them with others. You can also enjoy your early yoga practices now and enjoy future sessions even more.
I’ll also bet that all of your batches didn’t turn out perfectly. And I’m sure that you have had to substitute ingredients, you’ve had to make a batch in advance and freeze them, you’ve had to keep a roll of cookie dough in the fridge because you didn’t have time to do the baking part in the moment, and you have probably cut them into different shapes, added different decorations, tried some new things, all without being hard on yourself about your skills as a baker.
Just as all of those things can be part of being a shortbread baker with competing priorities in their life, making changes, adapting your movements, trying new things, and working in short bursts of time can all be part of developing your yoga practice.
Your skills as a baker have actually taught you a lot about how to add yoga into your life and if you consciously apply those skills, your baking success can help support you as you learn to practice yoga regularly.
And, of course, that was just one example.
You have been successful at hundreds of things during your lifetime and you can bring the skills from any or all of those victories to help you succeed in your current goals.
So, Team, today I invite you to consider some of your successes – yes, even the smallest ones count – and think about how to apply them to your current project.
What skills did you learn?
What qualities did you need to build or strengthen?
What did you learn about what helps you persevere?
What did you figure out about how to deal with setbacks?
How does your previous success support your current efforts?
Now that you are considering previous successes, can you reframe any of the challenges you are facing in your current practice?*
Whether you are considering past successes, planning future successes, or you are doing whatever else you need to in order to move towards the life you want, I wish you ease and self-kindness today.
And, of course, I offer you this gold star for your efforts. (Notice all the shiny green successes in the background that are supporting that star!)
*Take the baking example above – During a busy time, making the dough one day and baking the cookies on another would just be good planning but somehow breaking down your yoga practice to do some poses today and different ones tomorrow can lead to feeling like you ‘aren’t doing yoga right.’ Reframing your thoughts on yoga in light of your well-planned cookies might make a big difference.
Today, I’m wondering what meaningful things you are measuring as you move towards the life you want.
Whenever we start something new we have always have layers of reasons for choosing that practice.
And some of those reasons provide obvious things to measure while the measurements for other layers may take more thought.
But I think the layers that require more thought may just be more meaningful for us overall. They can help us dig into our most important motivations and inspire us to continue even when things get challenging.
Let me illustrate this with an example: imagine that you have decided to journal one page each day.
You may start because you like the idea of journaling, of documenting your life, or of working out some of your feelings on paper.
Your first layer reason for taking on this practice might just be ‘I want to try this.’ and the obvious measurement is whether or not you do the thing. You can check that off on your tracker or on a list or even just in your mind – ‘Yes, I wrote one page today.’
But any practice we take on for our own well-being is not just about the practice itself.
It’s always about how the practice is going to improve our lives and make us feel better .
So, when it comes to journaling, you’re not just trying to fill pages. You’re also seeking something else.
Perhaps you’re also hoping for some peace of mind, to have fewer unfinished thoughts bumping around in your head, or to notice your thought patterns.
Since those changes would be meaningful and would improve your well-being, it would be worthwhile to figure out how to measure whether your practice is leading you towards those things.
Perhaps you could do that by taking a moment every now and then to notice if you feel more peaceful or if your brain feels more at ease and make a note of any differences your find. You could do this whenever it occurs you or you could create regular check-in points.
Measuring these changes over time might look like colour-coding a circle on a chart each day, checking in with yourself one morning a week, or anything else that makes you feel good about paying attention to this element of your life.
Then, on yet another layer, you may be hoping that your journalling gives you some space to react differently in certain situations.
If you always find the drive to work quite stressful but you have been working out your feelings around that in your journal then you may want to measure if your stress level changes overtime. That may involve taking specific time for a different type of reflection or it may just involve asking yourself to occasionally rate your stress levels while driving.
When it comes to your own practices for well-being, it’s worth considering the different layers of change that you are hoping this practice will bring to your life.
(Note: Not every practice will have deep layers but they will all have at least one layer below ‘I’m going to try this.’)
And once you have figured some of those other layers out, it’s definitely worth finding a way to measure them.
That doesn’t mean you have to keep a checklist or add a lot of other tasks to your life, it can be a simple mental check-in at whatever interval makes sense for you and for your new practice.
And remember that when it comes to your well-being qualitative measurements matter as much, if not more, as quantitative ones.
You don’t need to mathematically prove that your practice made you feel better, all you need is to know that it did.* And any measurement that allows you to notice that change is a valid one.
So, Team, whether today finds you measuring something, figuring out how to measure something, exploring what else you are trying to get out of your practice, or doing anything else that helps you move towards the life you want to have, I wish you ease.
And, of course, I offer you this gold star for your efforts.
Go Team Us!
Be kind to yourself out there, pretty please!
I’m not sure if the yellow parts are leading you towards the door or if it’s light emanating from behind the door but either way this gold star is in celebration of your efforts today. Image description: a gold star on a door with a curved top. The door is surrounded by curved. Lines are King away from the door in all directions. The large gold star is in the middle of the top part of the door. The door itself is decorated with alternating lines in four different shades of green. I’m just noticing that I didn’t draw a door knob so it’s clearly a magic door. The curved lines curved down from the door on either side and up and away from the door at the top. Each section created by those black curved lines is coloured with one of four alternating shades of yellow and each section has different sized small black dots.
* Alternatively, it may help you notice that you’re not feeling much of a difference. And if that’s the case, then you can look at your system, your approach, and see if something needs to be adjusted.
My ADHD has been especially tricky about time lately.
I mean, I always have trouble judging how much time I have, how much time I need, how long things will take, and how my tasks will best fit into the time available, but all of these challenges have been amplified lately.
And, as a result, my time feels tight and compressed and so does my brain.
And, as a result of that, I don’t feel like I have the time to do the kind of planning and thinking I like to do before getting started on anything.
And, as a result of that, I feel like I need to set aside hours and hours to get things in order before I actually do anything and my brain compiles a long list of ‘work before I can work’ that it insists must be done before anything else.
And, as a result of THAT, when I do clear a couple of hours to get things in order, I end up sitting there with a ton of ideas and must-do items in my head.
And, as a result of THAT, I end up in a situation where my brain decides that because I can’t do EVERYTHING then it will do nothing.*
Yes, this process is just as much fun as it sounds.
At this point, you may be thinking, “Well, that sucks, Christine, but what does it have to do with encouraging me to keep up my practices?”
Good news! I am indeed heading towards some advice and encouragement for you, I am just taking the long way.
You see, as much as my current process loop sucks, I also know that there is a way out of it.
I have to move my attention from all of the things that feel overwhelming and impossible and direct it towards the things that I CAN do right now.
I CAN make a list of the stuff that is bouncing around in my head.
I CAN put stuff on my calendar.
I CAN choose to work on one thing for a short period of time.** Some people might like to choose one task to do but I frame this way because it lets my brain know that the task can only go on for so long right now. That makes it easier to start.
And moving through those things I CAN do helps me start moving out of the loop and back towards my normal level of time-weirdness.
Of course, this all hinges on me becoming conscious of the fact that I am in the loop in the first place.
And HERE’S where my time issues can dovetail with your practices.
If you are finding it hard to get started on your practice (today or in general), to keep your actions going, to keep working towards the life you want, your attention may accidentally be focused on all of the things you can’t do.
You know the kind of thing I mean…
You don’t have time for a workout.
You don’t have time for a shower after your workout.
You can’t think of anything to journal about.
You are in the middle of decluttering and you don’t have room to roll out your yoga mat.
It’s loud at your house and you can’t focus on your meditation.
All of those things are totally valid and they may be a good reason to give yourself a break today.
BUT, if you don’t really want or need a break, you brain might be so focused on what you CAN’T do that it won’t let you see what you CAN do.
Perhaps you can do a shorter version of your workout or you can add in a walk or dance a little.
Perhaps you can do a workout that is less sweaty or do a bit of a sponge bath instead of taking a shower.
Perhaps you can write about not having anything to write about – this almost always leads me to finding something interesting to put on paper.
Perhaps you can do a standing yoga session or a yoga practice that can be done in bed.
Perhaps you can wear headphones or do something mindful or do a walking meditation.
By switching your focus to what you CAN do at the moment you can help yourself feel a lot better and you can do at least a placeholder version of your practice.
And that’s got to be good for you, right?
So, Team, today I invite you to consider where you are focusing your attention and how you can shift your thoughts towards what version of your practice is available to you today.
And, of course, here’s your gold star for your efforts.
Whether you are working hard, resting, figuring things out, or trying to figure out how to figure things out, I hope you will take a few minutes to celebrate what you CAN do, what you ARE doing, and, even what you are choosing NOT to do (a valuable practice in itself).
And make sure to give yourself a metaphorical pat on the back (or a literal one if you have the flexibility to do so) for everything you manage to fit into your days.
Go Team Us!
Please be kind to yourself out there.
This is one of my favourite star drawings I have ever made. A painting of a gold star that is trimmed in layers of black, gold, then black again. The background is decorated with thin vertical lines and clusters of circles. The lines are a repeating pattern of a slightly thicker black line, a thin gold line, a thin dark green line and a thin light green line. The circles are groups in some places and further apart in others. Each circle has a black circle with a dark or light green circle inside, and a black circle with a gold dot inside of that. The drawing is ‘framed’ with a thick black line.
*For the record, this is NOT a time to come at me with advice that starts with, “If you just…” because it will not be well-received. If ADHD could be solved by will power, I would have left it behind years ago. Also, I’m not exactly doing ‘nothing’ – that might actually be kind of restful – I am doing nothing that is actually helpful to me. I am experiencing an avalanche of thoughts while doing some tangential task that is not particularly relevant to the overall project and generally building up unpleasant feelings about the whole thing.
**I usually pick 13 minutes because my brain likes that amount of time.
Have you given any thought as to whether your efforts and your capacity match your expectations?
If not, today might be a good time to give it a try.
Sometimes we set a marvellous goal and give ourselves a timeline but we forget that we don’t necessarily have the time and energy to make that happen within that timeframe.
Then, as a result, we can end up being heard on ourselves or being very disappointed in ourselves when we don’t meet our own expectations.
The problem isn’t that we didn’t work hard enough, nor is it that we weren’t committed enough, the problem is that the time and energy we had available didn’t match the time and energy required to complete that goal in that timeline.
This is never about us not being good enough. It’s just a miscalculation.
I imagine that your goal is to write a first draft of your memoir this year. That’s going to take considerable time and energy.
If you only have one hour per week to work on your memoir, it’s a better idea to adjust the timeline of the project than it is to be upset with yourself about not getting it done in 52 hours.
If you can only fit one strength training session in per week, a goal that requires three strength training sessions is going to be a mismatch.
If you want to improve your shoulder flexibility, but you can only do stretches once a week for 10 minutes, that’s probably not going to be a quick process.
All of these goals are going leave you feeling like you are falling short or like there’s something wrong with you.
But you are doing just fine and there’s nothing wrong with you.
It’s OK to work slowly.
It’s OK to work within your capacity.
It’s OK to inch forward.
The key is to frame your goals and expectations in terms that match your current life and your current capacity.
If you are realistic about what you can accomplish on a regular basis, and you frame your goals accordingly, you will be much more satisfied and motivated, and you’ll be far less likely to be hard on yourself as you go along.
So perhaps your goal could be to work on your memoir for 52 hours this year.
Perhaps your strength training goal could be to extend your training session by a few minutes each month. Or perhaps your goal could be to explore ways to include a second training session per week.
For your shoulder flexibility, perhaps your goal could involve preventative actions changing the the chair you sit in or taking small movement breaks throughout your day.
Framing your goals that way puts them back within your reach and removes the mismatch between what you have to give and what you want to get out of it
We all have different capacities and those capacities differ from day-to-day for each individual.
We need goals that let us work within our capacity instead of shaming us for things that are beyond our capacity.
If we set our expectations based on our current capacity and abilities, we have a much better chance of getting where we want to go.
It may take us a while to get to our big picture goals, but we’ll feel a lot better along the way
So Team, whether today finds you scaling your goals, adjusting your activities, or working out just what you want to do next, I wish you ease and clarity.
And I celebrate your efforts, whatever size and shape they are, with these gold stars.
Go Team Us!
A drawing of three gold stars having on strings from a wavy shape that’s decorated with diagonal black pinstripes. The stars are outlined in black and there are gold dots in the background.
Note: I wrote this via voice dictation and published it too quickly. My apologies to those who read the error-riddled version prior to this this one.
Hey Team,
One of the biggest challenges I have with adding something new to my life is the fact that my days aren’t the same.
Maybe you’re someone with lots of routine and schedules in your life, but I’m not -in fact trying to make my days feel even remotely similar is a huge challenge for me.
And when you add the fact that the effects of my ADHD can vary, depending on how much sleep I’ve had, how busy I am, and a bunch of other factors, it complicates things even further.
So I have had to learn to accept that I will have different capacities on different days.
I know this is true for everyone, but I feel like I really get a lot of practice.
And, as a result, I have had to learn to develop several different types of plans for accomplishing any given thing and, when I remember to use them, those varied plans can be really helpful.
I thought they might be helpful to you too, even if you don’t have ADHD.*
So, let’s imagine that you want to add a set of five exercises into your day.
Perhaps you know that, on the average day, you can do these right when you get up. Those days you’re done early, you have that task out of the way, and you have a sense of accomplishment.
But on other days, you may have an appointment to get to, or you may not have slept well, or you have to respond to some family situation, or there may be some other disruption in your schedule.
If that kind of disruption is a rare occurrence, you can probably just skip that day and return to your plan the next day.
But if you’re like me, and you have some days that are fairly routine and many others that are kind of all over the place, you may want to have several versions of your plan
So, plan one would be to do your exercise exercises as soon as you get up.
On days when you didn’t sleep well perhaps your plan could be to do one of each exercise so that minimal routine sort of holds your place.
On days when you have an unusual appointment, perhaps your plan can be to do those exercises right before supper.
On days when you have family commitments, perhaps you can sprinkle your exercises throughout the day.
And while I know that some of us can wake up in the morning, realize that today will be a bit more complex, and then make a new plan on the spot, others of us may have difficulty doing that.
For those of us who find that challenging (i.e. Me!), the benefit of having thought through several scenarios in advance is that we’re not faced with an all or nothing decision in a moment when things are going awry.
If you don’t have a back-up plan and you get up in the morning, you’re running late, and you realize you can’t do your exercises, you may feel upset, frustrated, and be hard on yourself for not sticking to your plan.
When you have varied plans for varied days you have a bit of breathing room. And even if something comes up that you don’t have a plan for, you may be able to adapt one of your existing plans for this new situation.
So, Team, today I’m inviting you to consider how ELSE you may be able to include your practices in your day, even if your schedule ends up looking different than you expected it to.
Developing a few different scenarios like I’ve described above can be a great kindness to your future self so it will be worth any extra effort that’s required in advance.
Whether you are working on one plan, many plans, or still considering what a plan for your future self might look like, I am celebrating your efforts.
And here are a series of gold stars to represent all the bits and pieces of effort involved in moving towards the lives we want.
Go Team Us!
Be kind to yourself out there, pretty please.
Image description: a vase filled with gold stars that are on thin black stems. The vase is black and has a pink ribbon tied around it. The background of the drawing is sprinkled with purple dots.
*Now, I will warn you that this is one of those lines where I try to prepare enough for the possibilities without overwhelming myself with details. If you don’t have ADHD, this may look like overthinking. If you have ADHD, my balance might not work for you but let’s see how it goes.
**You know that I’m always going to advocate being kind to yourself whether or not you stick to the plan, but we all know how hard it can be to choose self kindness in frustrating moments so I love any approach that makes it easier.)
Now, if you are about to get all, “Christine, I’m not sure I am going to have any victories this year, I’m just trying to keep things small and…” then please pause that thought.
You know what I am going to say, right?
TEAM, EVERY EFFORT IS A VICTORY.
And since every effort is a victory, a step towards the life you want to create, it only makes sense to keep a record.
I like to keep a record of my efforts rather than my results because I know I can’t control my results (in fact, I can barely imagine what they might end up being) and tracking my efforts helps me to see the work I am doing on a regular basis.
Not everyone needs to keep this kind of record, of course, some people are able to do what feels right on a given day and trust in the process.
However, if I tried to do that not only would I often forget to do things that are important to me (Hello, ADHD!), but each action would feel isolated and kind of random.
Keeping track helps me to grasp that my daily activities have meaning, that my small efforts are part of a bigger project.
If I track my efforts, my victories, in some way, then they will automatically seem like part of a larger life project – the project of feeling good in my body and in my brain.*
So, I would like to invite you to consider doing something similar, to find ways that help you record your actions, your efforts, your victories, as you move towards the life you want to create.
Now, I’m not saying that you MUST create elaborate tracking charts or fancy spreadsheets but if you enjoy that kind of process, please have at it.
What I am saying is that tracking your habit-related actions can be useful and that you can do that tracking in any way that suits you.
You can track in a detailed way – noting the specifics of each exercise or practice to measure things that have meaning for you. (For example – I’m keeping track of how one of my hips feel.)
You can track simply – just noting whether or not you did the thing (don’t forget to set a low bar for what counts as done.)
Tracking can look like:
Adding stickers or a mark on a calendar (or a piece of paper with your habit written at the top)
Adding marbles or stones to a jar every time you do the thing.
Getting an accountability buddy and texting them whenever you do the thing.
You can choose literally any way of keeping track and you can use that method any way that you like.
The key here is that you find a way that works for you, that feels easy, and that helps you feel and see your accumulated efforts.
Like I said above, keeping track of your victories helps you focus on the things you can take charge of – your actions – rather than waiting on the things you cannot control – any possible results.
And if you have tried tracking your actions before but it didn’t feel great, you may want to work on reframing what the information in your tracker means.
Tracking your victories isn’t about creating guilt or shame, it’s about information.
If your tracker reveals that you are never getting around to certain tasks or activities, it doesn’t mean anything negative about you, it just means that you need to adjust your systems, that you may need to choose different activities for this point in your life, or that your initial idea for a new habit isn’t a good fit.
You don’t need to adjust to fit your plans, your plans need to adjust to suit you.
And the same goes for your tracker.
If your tracker doesn’t help you celebrate your victories, then kick that thing to the metaphorical curb.
Anyway, Team, whether you are tracking your victories, exploring your habit-building on a day-to-day basis, or trying something that I haven’t even thought of, I wish you ease and fun and great success.
And, I offer you these gold stars in celebration of your victories.
Your hard work matters.
You matter.
Go Team Us!
Image description: a drawing of three gold stars on a green shelf. The stars and the shelf are trimmed in black. The background of drawing is covered in green vertical pinstripes.
*Yes, they would be part of that project even if I wasn’t tracking them but I would be less conscious of it and that’s less helpful.
There are people all over the Internet who are trying to tell you the one true way to achieve your fitness or well-being goals.
They may have some valuable information for you, but there is no such thing as the one true way.
Different things work for different people, and there are so many factors involved that it is not even remotely possible that this random person has your well-being all figured out.
You are the one who knows you best.
You are the boss of you.
You get to decide which practices make sense for you and for your life.
And if what you are doing is working for you and moving you in the direction you want to go then stick with it.
It doesn’t matter if it’s the latest trend or if you’re addressing all the micro elements that someone has identified as essential to fitness.
What matters is if it is beneficial for you, you are able to do it, and it is getting you where you want to go.
The practice that you will do is way better than any perfect practice someone else’s outlined.
You know yourself, your schedule, your capacity and abilities, and your inclinations better than any influencer on Instagram or YouTube.
So you don’t need to feel weird about not jumping on a bandwagon, about not following the latest trend, about not pushing yourself in the way that someone who doesn’t even know you is insisting that you should.
A lot of these influencers use heavy duty pressure tactics to convince you that there’s something wrong with you and if you don’t want to follow their program, there will be no way to fix it.
But not wanting to follow someone who makes you feel bad, someone will benefit from you feeling bad, that is not wimping out, it is not a lack of commitment, and it is not an unwillingness to work hard.
Choosing not to follow their guidelines or their program is actually about you trusting yourself. It’s about you trusting your knowledge and it’s about you understanding your own body.
Don’t buy into their hype.
Now, I’m not saying that you can’t seek out advice or that you can’t look for interesting online programs to follow.
I just want to remind you that, as your own boss, you get to decide what will work for you, for your body, and for your well-being.
Please be kind to yourself out there.
And, of course, here is your gold star for today.
Today we are celebrating your efforts to move towards the life that you want
Those efforts may be big, they may be small, they may be visible, or they may involve making the decision to trust yourself and your practises and letting your skills and abilities develop.
No matter what work you put in today or any day, your efforts matter
You matter.
Go Team Us!
This star strongly approves of you doing things your own way. Image description: a large metallic gold star with big eyes and a happy smile against a background of different coloured dots. The dots are lined up diagonally across the page. They start with pink and then they’re a few rows of orange and then yellow and then green. The star is outlined in black and has three black freckles on each cheek.
