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.
One of my challenges with adding practices to my life is the fact that I keep reminding myself of any previous times that I have tried this or something like it and it didn’t work out.
That feeling of habit deja vu can make me feel like I am fulfilling that quote about doing the same thing but expecting different results.
Luckily, I have a fair bit of practice in unpacking these sorts of thoughts.
See, even though this situation feels familiar, I am not actually doing the same thing and expecting different results.
Sure, I may be trying something I have tried before but this time I have more experience and more information.
And, of course, I have the possibility of adjusting my approach.
The fact that things didn’t work out before isn’t predictive, it’s informative.
My previous attempts show me which approach (or approaches) won’t work, how I can figure out what obstacles I need to avoid or overcome, and then I can choose different responses to the challenges that arise.
And the same is true for you.
If your brain is churning up the tired, old “You tried this before, why bother?” routine, please don’t fall for it.
Your brain is just trying to save energy (brains tend to default to that kind of safety.) It kind of forgets that your efforts to move toward the life you want can start generating a whole different type of every once you get started.
Trying again isn’t a waste of time, it’s a sign of the determination that will help you find success.
So, Team, whether you are trying something new, trying again after a break, or still trying to get started, the renewed effort is worth it.
Just make sure to keep gathering information and adjusting your approach as you go.
You can totally do this.
Go Team Us!
To celebrate your determination and your efforts, here is today’s gold star.
You can find a way to get the thing done, even if you have to keep making adjustments. Especially if you have to keep making adjustments
Be kind to yourself out there!
This gold star is made of bits and pieces to represent the ways we keep trying and it keeps adding up. Image description: a shiny, metallic gold star that is divided internally into rectangles and triangles that are trimmed in black. I’m hoping this gives the impression of a star constructed from irregular gold bricks. The star is trimmed in black. The background is broken up into various sized rectangles made of thin black lines with a small black circle where each line meets another.
Here we are at Day 10 of 2026 and I think this is a perfect time for a celebration!
I know, I know, you are probably thinking that you haven’t done much so far, or maybe that you haven’t started, or maybe you haven’t even made a plan yet.
Good news:
THAT ALL COUNTS!
No matter where you are in the process of moving towards the life you want to be living, it’s time to celebrate the fact that you have figured some stuff out!
If you have made 10 days of steady progress – that’s great! You have figured out a system that works for you right now. Go you!
If you have some vague ideas but you haven’t actually gotten started – that’s great! You have figured out that you need a bit more time to get things going. Go you!
If you have tried a few things but they haven’t worked OR if you have a plan but you have only been able to follow it here and there – that’s great! You have either figured out some things that don’t work or you have figured out part of your plan. Go you!
If you don’t have a plan and you don’t even want to think about it – that’s great! You have figured out that now is not the right time for you to make plans. Go you!
If you have decided that you are perfectly happy with your systems and you don’t want to change anything – that’s great! You have figured out that you are pretty content and you aren’t going to be pressured into feeling otherwise. Go you!
When it comes to your plans, your ideas, your practices, and your day-to-day life, please don’t wait for HUGE things to celebrate.
Instead, please choose to celebrate every time you figure something out, every time you make a decision that gives you peace of mind, every time you put in some effort -big or small- that will help you move towards the live you want.
You can always choose a small celebration – a gold star, a relaxing cup of hot chocolate, an extra episode of a favourite show, some time with a good friend- for the small stuff and then scale upwards for your bigger milestones.
The most important thing is that you notice the effort you are putting on a regular basis so you don’t take your work for granted.
Your efforts matter and so do you.
Please celebrate accordingly.
Today, I am celebrating your efforts with this collection of 10 gold stars and 29 gold circles (one of them is kind of off the edge of the page in the photo – oops!)
I am so proud of you!
Keep being kind to yourself out there!
And, of course…
GO TEAM US!
Today’s topic seemed like it needed a lot of gold stars to celebrate it so here’s 10 of them. Image description: 10 gold stars of various sizes interspersed with gold polkadots. Both the dots and the stars are outlined in black as is the edge of the drawing. There are thin black lines in the background behind all the stars and dots.
During each series of Go Team posts, I have a few days when I don’t really feel like writing.
Either I feel meh about the task or meh about my topic and it just feels like it will take forever and not be very interesting to the writer or the reader.*
In case you haven’t pieced it together, today is one of those days.
But because I’ve had these days before I know what to do.
I let my writing routine carry me.
I draw my star – which is always fun for me.
Then I give the post a title and add the categories and the tags
And then I start writing stuff.
Now, I say “stuff” instead of “start writing the post” because the first 10 sentences are just going to be stuff.
The whole point of those first 10 sentences or so is to help me get started, to get me into writing mode.
Occasionally, there’s something salvageable in there, but mostly I just delete them after I figure out what I want to say.
I have learned, with practice, that I can trust my routine for writing these posts. And, in fact, I use a similar routine for any writing that I find challenging to start.
So what does this have to do with your fitness or well-being routines?
If you feel meh about your practice on any given day, you can go through the motions, you can trust your routine, and those actions will carry you through.
Now to be clear I’m not talking about when you have a more complicated obstacle between you and your practice. So this doesn’t apply if you are sick, injured, having a lot of trouble, or having a recurring issue with your planned routine. Those challenges require different solutions and a lot of self kindness.
My suggestion today is for when you just feel meh about your activities.
So if you feel meh about meditating, maybe you drag out a cushion and a blanket and put on some restful music and see if it becomes a little easier to meditate.
If you feel meh about your exercise routine, maybe you can put on your gear and just start moving slowly with no specific plan.
If you feel meh about yoga, maybe you can lie on your mat for a while.
If you feel meh about journaling, maybe you could take out your notebook and pen and put them on the table.
Now, maybe it will turn out that you still can’t get yourself to do the thing. That might tell you that you need to look at your systems, that you need more rest or maybe that your plan for today was a little too ambitious.
I’ll bet, though, that if you let your routine carry you then most of the time you’ll just go ahead and do the thing anyway. Some days, you just need a longer on-ramp.
You will notice that the routines I’ve described here are not elaborate. They are just the few steps that come before you do the thing.
If you like routines, you may also want to spend some time figuring out more elaborate ones for future practices (as long as that will help you instead of making you feel like you have to do a bunch of things before you start your practice.)
But it’s also OK to keep things really simple and just have a few necessary, preliminary tasks that will lead you into your practice.
So, Team, my routine has carried me almost to the end of this post, and I hope your routines will work just as well for you today or whenever the next meh feeling pops up.
You don’t have to be totally enthusiastic and all-in every single time you go to do your practice.
It’s OK to keep strolling towards it until it feels possible to do.
And here’s our gold star to celebrate our efforts today.
Whether you are approaching your practices with enthusiasm or utter meh-ness, whether you are working on a small or large scale, and no matter what your tasks are, your efforts matter.
And so do you.
Be kind to yourself out there!.
💚
Go Team Us!
* If this seems familiar, well I have definitely written about this in previous years. Maybe I’ve even written about it every year. And I feel a bit self-conscious about that, like I’m being too repetitive, but, as always, then I tell myself that if I need the reminder, maybe you do too..
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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?
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 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!
