Category: motivation

a drawing of a gold star that is growing out of a stem like a flower Go Team 2026: Make it Easier
ADHD · advice · fitness · Go Team · goals · motivation · self care

Go Team 2026: Make it Easier

Christine HenneburyLeave a comment

Hey Team,

Yesterday, I talked about how making decisions in advance can reduce your frustration around starting your practices.

Today, I’d like to invite you to consider some other, smaller ways you can ‘smooth the path’ https://orghacking.com/advise-the-rider-steer-the-elephant-and-shape-the-path-heath-153b12003436 and make it easier to do the things you have decided to do.*

Note: I know that I have definitely written about this before but since I need to keep reminding myself, I’m assuming you may need the reminder too.  

Those small ways may include things that will make the task more straightforward, things that will make your body or brain be more comfortable with the task, or things that feel like good rewards for the effort of switching from whatever you are doing at starting the task. 

For example, as I’m experimenting with journalling more often, I have decided to keep a notebook on the main floor of my house and up in my room, both of which count as my journal.

Sure, the idea of having one big journal with everything in it is great but I also know myself. If I just have one notebook, there will be times when the fact that my journal is upstairs or downstairs will be enough friction to prevent me from journalling in that moment.

And maybe it’s a bit silly to have two notebooks on the go, particularly when it’s only one flight of stairs between them.  But by giving myself the freedom to have two notebooks for journaling,  I’ve doubled my chances of actually journalling. Now, any time it occurs to me to write, I’ll have a notebook nearby.

But perhaps journalling isn’t your thing for this year, maybe you are exercising or doing yoga or meditating, instead.  

No matter what you are trying to add to your life, it’s worth thinking about the friction that you experience in the process. 

What will make your practice more straightforward, more comfortable, more accessible, or more you- friendly?

For example, if you have a nice cushion for meditating in your living room but you find yourself reluctant to meditate because you find it chilly sitting there for a long period of time. Can you put a comfortable blanket or a fluffy sweater next to your meditation cushion?

If you are trying to drink more water, can you fill up multiple glasses of water at the beginning of the day and keep them in the fridge or have several water bottles at different spots in the house?

If you find it unpleasant being barefoot for yoga, do you have a pair of shoes that let you move enough to do the asanas? You can always develop a habit for barefoot yoga over time. 

Sure, yoga with shoes on is not quite the same and it’s not perfect, but it’s getting where you want to go.

Do you need to find a specific spot for your exercise clothes?

Do you need to move your weights to a different room?

Do you need a specific playlist to get yourself going in the morning?

It is totally OK to give yourself the things you need to establish and continue your practice even if those things feel a bit foolish or if you feel like you are being a bit ‘lazy’ about it. (Ugh. See my note** about the word lazy below.)

So, if you need to buy a package of gold star stickers to put one on the calendar every time you exercise, then buy a package of gold star stickers and start getting them on that calendar.

If you need to have three towels nearby so you can keep sweat at a manageable level, keep three towels nearby.

If you need to wear a woolen hat to feel comfy while you meditate, wear a hat. 

If you want to put bells on your shoelaces so you jingle while you walk, then break out the bells. 

Basically, anything you can afford*** to do to encourage yourself, to reduce friction, or to smooth the path is totally worth doing.  

Making change is hard enough without imposing extra limits on ourselves. 

If something will help you get where you want to go and it doesn’t hurt anyone else then there’s no reason not to do it.

And if people get all judgey about it, that’s their problem. 

So Team, whether you are shaping your environment to make your well-being practices more straightforward, or you have everything worked out and you’re forging ahead, or you’re still making your way through your day in baby steps, I celebrate those efforts.

No matter how big, how small, or how intense they are, your efforts matter and so do you.

Go Team Us!

Here’s your gold star for the day. Please be kind to yourself out there.

a drawing of a gold star that is growing out of a stem like a flower
Today’s gold star is growing like a flower. Image description: a drawing of a metallic gold star on a stem that is growing out of the ground and that has a leaf on each side of it. The star is outlined in black and the stem and leaves are filled in with tiny circles outlined in black. The ground is represented by a wavy black line that is about 1/5 of the way up the page and that bottom fifth of the page is decorated with short black lines that alternate horizontally and vertically to form a woven effect.

*The way I am using ‘smooth the path’ here is not exactly the way the Heath brothers use it in their book but the basic principles are close enough. I think so, at least!

 **I think the word lazy is as much of a jerk as the word should. People wield those words like weapons and there is absolutely no call for it. Increasing your chances for success by smoothing the path to your practice is just a smart way to proceed.  People can keep their petty judgements to themselves while you forge ahead to the life you want.  

***I don’t just mean financially. You also have to decide how much time and energy you can spend on reducing friction and smoothing the path. And if your exact solution is out of range, perhaps there is a different approach that will create the same effect.

A bowl of small gold stars with more stars spilled out in the left. Go Team 2026: Make Some Decisions
ADHD · habits · motivation · self care

Go Team 2026: Make Some Decisions

Christine HenneburyLeave a comment

Hey Team,

Today, I’m asking you to take good care of your future self.

I’d like you to consider what decisions you can make today (or, soon, no pressure!) that will make it easier for future you to do the practices you want to do.

Let me give you a non-fitness example…

For a while now, a friend and I have been meeting almost every week to spend a bit of time writing together. My initial plan was to spend these hang-outs doing revision on my novel but I haven’t actually managed to do that very often.

Instead, I have often gone with a section of my novel in hand then couldn’t make my way into it and ended up working on something else instead.

The scope of the project is part of the problem (my ADHD hates a huge project that will need multiple iterations) but after doing some project-focused morning pages earlier this week, I realized that there was a whole other factor involved.

I hadn’t actually prepared myself to work on my novel in those sessions.

I was expecting my jumpy brain to easily switch from whatever else I had been doing/planning/thinking about that day and just start working on a project that is largely undefined and will require me to work in a different way than I usually do.

That would be like trying to make a quilt by sitting at your machine with a bunch of uncut fabric in one hand and a pattern in the other and expecting to start sewing right away.

Or like trying to grocery shop with a list like this: 1) protein 2) carbohydrates 3) liquids 4) vegetables.

All of those things are possible but approaching them that way makes them far more difficult than they need be.

There are a lot of decisions to make between ‘I want to do this thing’ and the actual doing of the thing and if we don’t take the time to make those decisions, we are going to struggle unnecessarily.

Look, I know there are people out there who can say, “I’m going to start journaling!” and pick up their notebook and just start writing. And there are people who are able to say, “I need to exercise!” and just start moving.

That’s really terrific for them (gold star!) but for most of the people I know, things feel more complicated than that and if they try to start their practices without any prep, they are going to stall out pretty quickly.

So, Team, have a look at your practices you are trying to start (or planning to start) and/or at the existing practices that you sometimes struggle with and see if there are any decisions that you need make about them.

Do you need to choose a series of videos to work out with?

Do you need to pick which strength training exercises you’ll do in your next session?

Do you need to choose some prompts to journal from? Or a series of questions to ask yourself each day?

Do you need to decide in advance what kind of meditation to do?

Do you need to pick your clothes or your notebook or your reward* in advance?

If you have trouble figuring out what is in your way, you could try the ‘morning pages’ practice I have linked above (you can do it any time, really) or you can be REALLY kind to yourself the next time you feel stuck when starting your practice and instead of being annoyed or switching to something different to relieve the pressure of not being able to the thing, you can explore why it feels hard, what you need in that moment, and what you wish you knew right then.

As for me, I’ll be heading to my next writing session with a very specific plan – I have a list of things that have to be included in the next section of my novel and I will be able to get started on them right away.

(I also need to do this for some fitness practices but my novel is a much clearer example for our purposes today.)

Here are your gold stars for your efforts today!

No matter how big or small, no matter how hard or easy those efforts were, please, please, please take credit for them and collect these gold stars.

Our capacities and our abilities change from day to day and I really want you to recognize the work you are doing today even if it is far less than yesterday.

If this morning found you struggling to get out of bed but you did it anyway? Gold star!

If this morning found you struggling to get out of bed and you decided that the right thing to do was to rest? Gold star!

If you just did a really hard workout? Gold star!

If you just decided that you only had 1 minute of exercise in you today? Gold star!

Exercise and wellness practices aren’t about doing those practices, they are about helping us to take care of ourselves in the best ways we can.

And those ways will vary from person to person and from day to day and ALL OF THOSE EFFORTS COUNT. Every day. Every person.

So please be kind to yourself out there, Team.

Go Team Us!

A bowl of small gold stars with more stars spilled out in the left.
A drawing of a bowl of about 30 small gold stars with about a dozen stars spilled out in the left side. The bowl is purple and it is resting on a black line about 1/3 of the way from the bottom of the page. Below the line are angled lines that lean to the left and there horizontal lines that break up the leaning lines and make a grid pattern of rectangles that are longer on the right and left sides than on the top and bottom. Above the horizontal line the background is filled with small dots.

*As you may have guessed, I am a strong proponent of regular rewards for practices someone is developing.

Go Team 2026: Pick A Time
ADHD · Go Team · habits · motivation · self care

Go Team 2026: Pick A Time

Christine HenneburyLeave a comment

Hey Team,

Following up on being kind to yourself and starting small, one of the kindest things I have ever done for myself is learn to pick a time for certain tasks that can actually be done at any point.

(For me ‘do it whenever’ might as well be called ‘never get around to this.’)

Imagine that I have a phone call to make. I’m not particularly anxious about making phone calls but a call is the kind of task that tends to loom in the back of my mind and get on my nerves until it is done.

Before I learned to schedule tasks like this, my brain would go in endless loops trying to decide on a ‘right’ time for the call. When would be best for my schedule? When would be best for theirs? Would it be better to do some writing first? Maybe I should wait until Wednesday because I will have more information by then?* Should I call now? How about now?

At some point though, I hit on the technique of choosing a (often arbitrary!) time to do the task “I’ll make that call at 2pm on Tuesday.”

This is hardly ever because it is important to do the task at that time.

The value in choosing a time is the fact that if I am ‘supposed to’ make the call at 2pm on Tuesday then I am NOT supposed to do it at any other time.

Scheduling that task lets my brain rest.

It gives me a place to put that task and keeps me from spending any energy on guilt or procrastination or avoidance.

And if something comes up and I can’t make that call on Tuesday at 2?

I don’t go back into the endless ‘when’ loop, I just reschedule it and carry on.

This is, of course, easier when you have a one-off task or you are doing something once or twice per week, but it also works for daily practices – as long as you are kind to yourself about days that go completely off the rails.**

So, Team, today I invite you to consider picking a specific time for your new habits or practices so you don’t waste any energy wondering if you should do them now, or now, or now, and so you don’t end up feeling bad if ‘whenever’ becomes ‘never.’

And here is your gold star to celebrate your efforts whether you are scheduling, planning, doing, or resting.

Your efforts matter and so do you!

Go Team Us!

*If I was actually going to need/have more info by Wednesday, this might be useful. Generally, however, I was looking for more (often unnecessary) information for no reason other than the fact that my ADHD brain didn’t want to do this slightly hassle-y task at the moment. And, of course, I was often seeking certainty in a situation that didn’t really require it. File all of this under things that used to plague me more than they do now.

**In fact, my post from this morning is about experimenting with picking times for my daily practices because I am trying to give my days a better rhythm and I would rather have a specific time set out for my practices than spend all day wondering about the right time to do them.

A photo of a back deck with snow and multicoloured lights at twilight Oh, Hey There, January!
ADHD · challenge · dogs · fitness · habits · health · motivation

Oh, Hey There, January!

Christine HenneburyLeave a comment

I’m really tempted to say that I’m going to do one thing for the first month, but we all know that’s not true.

Except that it kind of is.

My themes for the year are practice and process and I’ve picked ONE particular aspect to focus on in January.

My focus is going to be on experimenting*.

In particular, I’m experimenting with scheduling my fitness and well-being practices.

So even though I’ll be trying lots of things, they’re really all in-service of that one thing – finding a comfortable schedule that lets me include all of the things I want to do on a regular basis.

It’s a practice that fits in nicely with my usual Planuary approach.**

As I mentioned in a previous post, things went well in December.

I set out to feel more relaxed by Christmas than I did at the beginning of December and it worked out.

And I did my three relaxation practices, 12 times each, just as I had hoped I would.

I have found that evening is a good time for me to do yoga and morning is a good time for meditation, but I haven’t found the best time for journalling yet.

So that’s part of the January experiment.

I’ll keep you updated!

Speaking of updates:

Back in October, I started a walking challenge and I completed that on December 20. (My medal is in the mail!)

Last week, I signed up for a year-long challenge with the same company.

For these challenges, many people add their daily step count from their fitness tracker or that kind of thing***but I wanted to encourage myself to add more activity to my life on a regular basis so including my routine steps would be counterproductive.

Instead, I decided that I would only include extra activity that I deliberately chose to do- walks, dance videos, strength training – any activity that I did for the sake of moving. (FYI – the app converts many activities to an equivalent distance.)

And I enjoyed how my commitment to the challenge gave me extra motivation to seek out some exercise on a regular basis.

I’m following the same pattern with the current challenge – only adding deliberately chosen activities so I know that every kilometre was ‘travelled’ on purpose.

I’ll keep you in the loop on this, too.

A photo of a light-haired dog on a snowy street
Khalee approves of my walking challenge but she was very confused as to why I stopped to take her picture today instead of just continuing to walk. Image Description: My dog, Khalee, who is medium-sized and has short light-brown hair is standing on a snowy road that has one lane plowed. (It’s a suburban side street, we weren’t in danger!) she is standing looking to the left so we can see her entire left side, and her head is turned slightly towards us. She is wearing a light blue harness and a darker blue leash. The leash extends from her towards the lower part of the image on the right, where I am holding the leash in my right hand, but you can’t see that.

*Inspired in part by Tiny Experiments by Anne-Laure Le Cunff

**As I said in one of my December posts, I actually managed to do a little January planning in December this time. Will wonders never cease?

I mean, I still have other things I want to plan but I feel good about having the capacity to think about January while so was still in December. Christine 1: ADHD 0 (in that situation, at least!)

***Zero criticism intended here. That’s a totally valid way to approach these challenges, it just wouldn’t serve my purposes.

Small drawing of a gold star Go Team 2026: Start VERY Small
ADHD · fitness · Go Team · goals · motivation · self care

Go Team 2026: Start VERY Small

Christine Hennebury1 Comment

Hey Team!

While I have long been an advocate of starting small when in comes to new things, I often find it tricky to implement.

I mean, I understand the importance of having a low bar for success.

Intellectually, I know that I am placeholding the new habit while it grows.

In practice, though, I have had a lot of trouble with it.

I thought that it was because, left unsupervised, my brain defaulted to labelling the small task was ‘too small to count’ and hence not worth remembering.*

BUT!

I think that might only be part of the problem.

I think I might have been misjudging the size of the fitness tasks I have been taking on.

You see, I am pretty good at judging a small writing task or a small creative task to do on a regular basis and I suspect I was using similar criteria for choosing fitness tasks.

I mean, that doesn’t sound like a terrible approach but I didn’t look at the big picture. I was forgetting that I have a harder time starting a fitness task, that fitness tasks feel more like ‘interruptions’, that they are different from the rest of my day-to-day so I require more energy to switch from other tasks and start moving, and, speaking of energy, the energy cost to actually do them is going to be higher than the energy cost for writing or drawing tasks.

And that doesn’t include the fact that when I misjudge a “small” fitness task, I could end up needing more time to recover and not necessarily be able to keep to the plan I had hoped to follow.

Now, I’m not saying that all of that came to bear on every single small fitness task I have chosen in the past but all of those factors made regular occurrences. They happened often enough that my brain was getting more and more wary of ‘small’ tasks.

I started to figure all of this out in November when I tried a strength training program that I really liked. I wanted to be able to check ‘tried program’ off of my list so I told myself that I could reduce any one exercise to just a single rep and it would count.

I did all the first set of reps for my upper body exercises and all of the first set of reps for most of the lower body ones but then I came to lunges. I HATE lunges. I know they are important and helpful and whatnot but I still hate them. I was supposed to do a set of 12 but I did a set of 3. And I did the same for my second set.

It was suddenly quite clear that I could keep that part of the workout small until I was ready to expand it. I wouldn’t have to dread the whole workout because of that one part. I wasn’t going to require extra recovery time because that part of the workout was so hard for me. I could do what was right for me and not have to feel like I was doing the workout incorrectly.

(Yes, I know how ridiculous that sounds. There is such a difference between knowing something and KNOWING something, isn’t there? Brains are so weird!)

And since then, it has become clear to me that lots of my fitness-related “small” tasks weren’t actually all that small. In fact, they were way too big – either in duration, scope, energy-requirements, or in the mental space they were taking up – no matter what size they seemed on paper.

So, Team, today I would like to invite you to use my realization to save yourself some time and energy.

Please minimize your stress, downsize your frustration, and make it easier to move towards the life you want by making your tasks VERY small.

No. Smaller than that.

Smaller.

Ok, about that size.

In fact, when you are starting out, when you are just creating room in your life for the possibility of doing this thing, go for something incredibly small.

Something that would be ridiculously easy for you to include on your most difficult day.

You won’t stay at this stage forever but it is a great place to start.

And here is today’s gold star for your efforts.

Whether you are already working on your goals, refining your plans, just trying to get your mind around them, or you are figuring out how to make your small step even smaller, your efforts matter and I celebrate you and your hard work.

Go Team us!

PS – I have been following Ruthanne Reid‘s excellent advice on writing for a while now and while I give my coaching clients similar advice, I really love the way she phrases things and I admire the fact that she has been showing up daily for AGES with encouragement and reassurance. In fact, I wish I could team up with her to do more cool encouragement-related things. 🙂 In the link above she is talking about creating a ‘low bar’ for daily habits – you may want to check it out.

Small drawing of a gold star
A drawing of a metallic gold star that I filled with irregularly-sized rectangle shapes trimmed in black so it looks a bit like the star is made of gold bricks that are on a diagonal rising from left to right. The star is trimmed in black as well. The background of the drawing has small gold circles trimmed in black plus tiny black dots. The drawing is framed with black lines and black-trimmed gold circles in each corner. I have slightly smeared the black paint on two corners of the star because I was impatient and didn’t wait for it to dry.

*It’s only when I investigate why I couldn’t do the thing and that thought to the forefront that I realize what happened. Sigh. ADHD requires me to do an exhausting amount of thought-monitoring.

A drawn of a gold star Go Team 2026: Be Kind To Yourself (Again) (Always)
ADHD · fitness · Go Team · goals · habits · motivation · self care

Go Team 2026: Be Kind To Yourself (Again) (Always)

Christine HenneburyLeave a comment

Hey Team!

Since I need constant reminders to be kind to myself, I feel safe in assuming that other people need those reminders, too.

Here, I’ll say it big so we all get the message.

Please Be Kind To Yourself!

There’s a lot going on it the world. There’s a lot going on in your life. You probably have lots of stuff to do. You’re probably trying to adjust to normal life after the flurry of December, no matter what you celebrated (or didn’t celebrate) last month.

That’s a lot of stuff to be carrying and working on all at once.

And, if you are also trying to build a new habit, change an old habit, or trying to expand your life in any way, then that’s even more work for your poor brain.

The only way to proceed, the only way to make any change, the only way to adapt to new circumstances, is by being kind to yourself.

As you forge ahead towards the life you want, you are going to have easy days and challenging days.

Some tasks will be really hard.

Some things will feel impossible.

Sometimes things will be so easy you will wonder if you did them wrong.

All of that is part of the process of change.

In fact, it’s all part of the process of being a human.

If you are mean to yourself when things are hard (or if you dismiss your efforts when things go well), you won’t be making them any easier, you’ll just be making yourself feel worse about them.

However, if you remind yourself that these ups and downs are a normal part of being human, a normal part of change, if you decide to treat yourself with compassion, then you will actually be making the hard parts a bit easier.

If you celebrate your efforts – even if things felt easy, you still DID them – then you will be reminding yourself that even easy tasks matter.

And that self-compassion, that self-kindness, will help you see yourself as a person who keeps moving towards the life you want, tiny step by tiny step, instead of getting trapped in judging yourself for imperfection.

So, again, always, as a favour to me, please, please, please:

Be kind to yourself in your thinking, in your planning, and in your doing.

When you choose self-kindness, you aren’t ‘letting yourself off the hook’, you aren’t ‘lacking discipline’, you are creating the circumstances for your own ease, happiness, and success.

Being kind to yourself can be hard work sometimes* but it is totally worth it.

With that said, here’s your gold star for today!

No matter where you are in your thinking, planning, or doing, I hope you’ll accept this gold star in recognition of your efforts.

The scope and volume of our efforts will vary from task to task, day to day, and person to person, but they all count.

Even the effort to assess your capacity and then decide how to proceed is gold-star-worthy.

It takes work not to just react to the ambient pressure around you and that counts, just as all of your other efforts do.

Go you!

And…

Go Team Us!

A drawing of a gold star
A drawing of a gold star with rounded corners. The star is sprinkled with dots of darker gold and is trimmed with green. The background of the drawing is a somewhat irregular green grid with a gold dot in each square and the drawing is framed in green.

*Isn’t it kind of weird how *easy* it is to default to being mean to ourselves and how hard it can be to choose self-kindness? Yet, being mean to ourselves in the moment makes it harder for us to get where we want to go and being kind to ourselves will make things easier in the long term. Odd, right?

Go Team 2026: How do you want to feel?
ADHD · advice · fitness · Go Team · goals · habits · motivation · new year's resolutions · self care

Go Team 2026: How do you want to feel?

Christine HenneburyLeave a comment

Hey Team!

One of the things I love about Yoga With Adriene is how often she returns to the idea of ‘Find What Feels Good’ when it comes to a yoga practice.*

I think it is a great guideline for many practices but particularly for movement practices because so many fitness instructors and influences are all about what looks good or about burning calories or about crushing one thing or another.

I feel decidedly meh about all of those things but I feel GREAT about leaning into ways to feel good about the practices I am bringing into my life.

And I am hoping that as you work towards expanding your life in whichever ways you choose, your feelings will be a key factor in your decision-making process.

It is worth figuring out how to make your practices feel good to you.

In fact, “How do I want to feel?” can be one of the most important starting points in any project** because it gives you some criteria for choosing activities, timelines, conspirators, and actions.

Once you know how you want to feel, you can identify what actions to take, how and when to take them, and who to take them with.

And considering how you want to feel gives you a bit of extra motivation, an extra sense of why you are choosing to do what you are doing.

When it comes to fitness and wellness, your feelings aren’t just about feeling good, bad, excited, or whatever, they can also get specific to the practices you are considering.

You can ask yourself “How do I want my legs to feel?” or “What does strong feel like?” or “How does ‘feeling energetic’ show up in my body?” And then you can decide how to work towards those feelings/how to track them/how to motivate yourself in the search for them.

And, of course, my ADHD brain won’t let me get away without considering this possible hitch:

Sometimes, the thing that will feel good in the long term doesn’t feel good now.

For example, the feeling of having strong abs will be great in many ways but doing plank right now may not feel good at all.

In fact, the effort required may feel downright discouraging.

And I am not going to suggest that you put a lot of energy into convincing yourself that something you don’t enjoy feels good (but if that works for you, have at it!)

Instead, I am going to suggest that you find something that feels good about it – maybe you can focus on how good it feels to check that exercise off of your list, or how good it feels to see the number on your timer creep up, or, even, how good it feels to stop!

And you might spend a bit of time digging deep into your imagination to generate a sense of how it will feel to have strong abs, the things that will be easier for you to do, the way your body will respond to future challenges as a result. Perhaps knowing you are giving a gift to your future self will help your sacrifice feel good in the moment.

I have a lot more to say this topic but I don’t have a lot of time to say today so I am going to pause the discussion here and get to the gold star portion of our post:

Here are your three small gold stars for your efforts today. You can award them to yourself for three separate things or you can pile them all in for one thing.

I know you are working on things, whether you are at the thinking stage, the planning stage or the action stage.

And I know your capacity will vary from day to day.

Please celebrate whatever the you of today is able to do, no matter how small, because your effort counts and your work matters.

Be kind to yourself out there!

Go Team Us!

A drawing of three small gold stars
A drawing of three small gold stars hanging from strings at the top of the notebook. In the bottom right corner and the top left corner there are a series of curved black lines that alternate between being filled with a gold stripe and featuring a line of black dots. The background of the whole image features a bunch of small black dots.

*In fact, Find What Feels Good is the name of her app.

**In many other contexts – relationships, presentations, web design, displays, “How do I want them to feel?” can also be an important question but it is less relevant for your fitness and wellness, of course!

A small drawing of a cartoonish gold star with a smiling face Go Team 2026: You Can Pick Something Fun
ADHD · Go Team · goals · habits · motivation · self care

Go Team 2026: You Can Pick Something Fun

Christine HenneburyLeave a comment

Hey Team!

Here we are in day two of 2026, and I have a reminder for you when it comes to new habits, resolutions, and activities:

YOU CAN PICK SOMETHING FUN.

I know, I know! We get so many messages this time of year about crushing our goals, and about dedication and determination, and about how hard we must work to be better, better, better.

And to that, I say, “Meh.”

If that kind of approach inspires you, then please forge ahead.

BUT

If that kind of talk makes you feel kind of tired and worn out before you even start, then please remember that your new year doesn’t have to be filled with that stuff.

You can choose a fun path that will lead you where you want to go.*

That might mean picking fun or whimsical activities or it might mean being fun and whimsical while doing a more straightforward activity.

If you wanted a fun or whimsical fitness goal, you could try a new dance video every week or you could challenge yourself to find specific items on your walks (kind of like a scavenger hunt.)

If you want to get stronger instead of lifting weights, you could pick items around your house that you’re going to practice lifting.

If you want/have to do ordinary activities and you can’t find a fun version, you can choose fun outfits or accessories, specific music or podcasts, or ask someone fun to keep you company while you get things done.

The main message here is that trying new things, taking on new habits, adding to your fitness or your wellness levels, does not have to be a slog.

I just want you to be kind to yourself, to be good to yourself, and to be able to expand your life in ways that will be satisfying for you, without feeling like the whole thing is a punishment.

Expanding your life may take effort, it may take focus, but it doesn’t have to be awful.

The days of “no pain, no gain” are long behind us.

When it comes to any fitness or wellness goal you might have this year, there is probably a fun way for you to achieve it, or, at the very least a way, to have more fun in the process.**

REMEMBER: Just because something is fun doesn’t mean it’s not working.

So, Team, please be kind to yourselves out there and try to make things a little more fun when you can.

Go Team Us!

Here’s a happy gold star for your efforts today:

A small drawing of a cartoonish gold star with a smiling face

PS – I have been seeing a lot of people using punch cards and bingo cards to keep track of their plans and resolutions this year and that seems like a pretty easy way to add some fun to the process. If drawing isn’t your thing, you could type your plans into blocks in a table/spreadsheet or you could use a site like this one.

*For example, a few years ago, one friend of mine decided to spend the year trying different types of tea and another friend resolved to add more colour to her wardrobe. Now, those aren’t fitness goals, but I could argue that they are wellness goals. And pursuing those goals definitely added more fun to my friends’ lives.

**I get that not every part of every thing can be fun, some tasks and activities just have to be endured, but we don’t have to use that as an organizing principle for every goal.

A drawing of a metallic gold star Go Team 2026: Three Things
ADHD · advice · Go Team · habits · motivation · self care

Go Team 2026: Three Things

Christine Hennebury2 Comments

Hey Team,

Welcome to 2026! Look at you, rocking this new year already!

As you probably know, every January I post daily encouragement posts to help all of us (including me!) find our footing in the new year.

These posts aren’t just cheering you on (but I do a fair bit of that!), they are intended as gentle reminders that it is ok to find things challenging and that doing things in your own time and your own speed is a great way to approach new ideas.

And to get us started, here are three important ideas that will be woven through this month of posts:

1) You’re good. Just as you are. You don’t need to be fixed.

I get really squicked out by the whole ‘New Year. New You!’ and ‘Improve Yourself!’ and ‘Become A New Person’ vibe that permeates this time of year.

I know that most people probably don’t take it as literally as I do (Neurodivergent? Me? Whatever do you mean?) but, to me, it feels like those messages are telling people that they aren’t enough, that there is something wrong with them, that they need to be ‘better.’

I don’t love that for us.

So, instead, I would like you to know that you are GREAT as you are.

Sure, there are things in your life, in your approach, or in your day-to-day that are frustrating, tiring, or unsatisfying, and you may want to shift those things to make your life smoother, more fun, or more interesting but those things aren’t YOU.

There is NOTHING wrong with YOU.

You can expand your life and your routines and your capacity in any way you choose.

If those expansions help you feel good or help you feel more satisfied, forge ahead.

But please, please, please, don’t feel that you NEED to do these things to be good enough.

You are already good enough. You are, in fact, great and anything else you do is just adding to your magnificence.*

2) The daily gold stars are for everyone. You have nothing to prove.

You can approach the new year in whatever way works for you and I will award you gold stars for your efforts.

(Yes, I know that many people only expect gold stars for results but my ADHD and I do not approve of that. We have little or no control over our results, and results take a long time. Our efforts though? We have control over those and they are happening right now. So I like to award gold stars for our efforts – big and small – so we can feel encouraged to keep moving towards the things we want for ourselves.)

If you find the ‘clean slate’ feeling encouraging and helpful, then go right ahead with your goals and plans and activities. Gold stars for you!

If you find all of that a bit overwhelming and you want to move slowly into the new year, the meander along at your own pace. Gold stars for you!

If you are just carrying on with what already works? Gold stars for you!

If you are waiting to figure things out? Gold stars for you!

Gold stars are for effort of any size or shape.

Even the teeniest effort counts AND your effort doesn’t have to look like anyone else’s.

3) You don’t have to have everything figured out to get started.

I know, some people have their plans for the year all set out and they are ready to dive right in on their schedule right away.

Others have just a vague idea of some things they might want to do this year but the details are sketchy at best. **

And many of us fall somewhere in between those two.

But here’s the thing, you can move towards the future you want either way.

If you have a plan, do the next step in your plan.

If you are just working from a vague idea, then you can do anything and it will help you wrap your mind around your goal.

For example, if you want to get stronger but you don’t know exactly what that means for you yet, then do one leg lift or one arm circle. Sure, it won’t make you instantly stronger but it is a step in that direction and it gives you a little bit of momentum.

Or if you want to have a meditation practice, you can take one long, slow, breath and focus carefully while you do. It won’t give you instant inner peace but it’s not going to do you any harm and it will probably feel pretty good. And, again, you’ll have done SOMETHING that moves you closer to where you want to go.

And really, even the most detailed plan is just doing the same thing – it’s ok to figure things out day by day.

So, Team, there are three key elements to get you started and here is your first gold star.

Please remember that you get a gold star for your efforts no matter what those efforts look like today.

You may have jumped out of bed for a workout, you may have decided to spend a little extra time breathing slowly over your tea this morning, or you may do anything in between or beyond – any of those efforts are about taking good care of yourself and they earn you this gold star.

Go Team Us!

Please be kind to yourself out there.

A drawing of a metallic gold star

*For any readers (like me) who have to immediately react to comments like this with a “You don’t know who is reading this! They may not be great!” or with a bunch of thoughts about why this doesn’t apply to them, consider these two things

1) Great doesn’t mean perfect. When I say that my readers are great, I mean that they have lots of great things about them and that they are fundamentally good people doing the best they can with the resources they have. I firmly believe that most people are pretty damn great but they just don’t realize it.

2)If you think that my comment about *YOU* being great doesn’t really apply then maybe you can consider the possibility that it *might* apply instead of trying to tell yourself that it is a fact. Maybe approach it like this: “What if Christine was right and I am doing better than I realize? How would I do things differently if that was the case?”

** This is where my ‘Planuary’ approach to the year can come in handy.

Lost and crying (in a good way) in cycling class
cycling · fitness · fitness classes · health · holiday fitness · motivation

Lost and crying (in a good way) in cycling class

elan.paulsonLeave a comment

One of my favourite fit feminist humans recently suggested I try the two-week trial membership for Lost Cycle, a Toronto-based woman-owned fitness company that expanded to my city in 2019. She thought I would like it because, as she said, it was “cycling in the dark to really loud rap music.”

I am already a fan of doing stuff to music in the dark, as I did with (Remote) Dark Dancing during the COVID pandemic. Also, the timing seemed good to counter any winter break inactivity. So, in spite of reduced holiday hours and some poor weather outside, I made it to four classes, two at each location.

My black car parked in the empty Lost Cycle lot on a cold, wet, sleet-filled morning.
My black car parked in the empty Lost Cycle lot on a cold, wet, sleet-filled winter break morning.

The Lost Cycle studio ambiance is what might be described as “boutique warehouse,” with minimal windows and the company logo spraypainted on walls but also gratis cold towels and individual shower rooms with complimentary products. The fitness areas have quality equipment: ON the bike classes include clip-in shoes and earplugs, while OFF the bike rooms have infrared heat panels and Lululemon yoga mats. The class leaders were all chatty and friendly on their mics, many showing plenty of body tattoos.

The spin class leader‘s station on an elevated platform, close to a podium to adjust sound and light.
The spin class leader‘s station on an elevated platform, close to a podium to adjust sound and light during class.

And, as mentioned, the classes are held in the dark, with just enough artificial and real candle light to see the mirrors and other people.

Dark spin class, with bikes lined up and towels on them. The photos don’t capture the ambiance created by the range of electronic dance music, pop with heavy beats, and occasional throwbacks.
Dark spin class, with bikes lined up and towels on them. The photo doesn’t capture the ambiance created by the range of electronic dance music and occasional throwbacks.

In class I tried my best to keep up, but made modifications when my knees ached a little. The low lighting and loud music worked to lessen my self-consciousness (being new and only an occasional group fitnesser), though I needed to place myself close to the front to be able to follow instructions. On the mic, leaders were genuinely supportive, reflecting the vibe of the post-it notes on the studio walls: you are enough, you showed up today, you can do this. Other people I have discussed spin with describe being called out during classes. Here, there was none of that.

Dark group fitness with mats, towels, bands, and handweights placed closely together in a heated room. OFF the bike was a blend of HIIT calisthenics, strength training, and yoga stretches.
Dark group fitness with mats, towels, bands, and handweights placed closely together in a heated room. OFF the bike was a blend of HIIT calisthenics, strength training, and yoga stretches.

Near the end of both ON and OFF the bike classes, there is time to really get “lost”: the lights go off and the music goes up and you just have about 3 to 4 minutes to yourself.

And, during the “lost” times while cycling away or lying on my mat, I found myself in tears or near tears. Now, I am in a particularly vulnerable place right now, due to my recent job loss. While I didn’t check if other participants had felt the same thing, in every class I experienced in the dark a kind of emotional release I didn’t know I needed.

Lost Cycle has tapped into different elements of cycle studio / gym ambiance that makes it feel like fun, luxury, and intensity, all the ingredients for something slightly cultish. Though I was on my way to becoming an initiate, I’m not in a $$ position to keep the membership. At least I am taking the lesson home from Lost Cycle: turn off the lights, pump my mid-life music, and make time for both strength and vulnerability.

Lost Cycle London est 2019 sweater
Lost Cycle London est 2019 sweater