After last week’s post about January’s experiments, my plan was to just explore the questions I was asking myself and then carry on with the same activities throughout February.
But then, on Sunday morning, I woke up with the idea that I wanted to add two things to my plans for February.*
Sure, this 2 is a little wonky but it’s grand that way. Same could be said for many of us, hey? 😉 image description: the number two drawn in red with gold trim against a background of red dots. The card the drawing is on is also trimmed in gold and it is resting on my black computer keyboard. I borrowed this drawing from my Dec 2 post.
My first instinct was to talk myself out of it – I’m already working on several things and I don’t want to overload myself – but then I realized that these two small things fit in quite nicely with the ways I am trying to establish practices and processes overall for myself in 2026.
So, that’s why I am going ahead with adding at least a 1 minute wall-sit and adding 1 more serving of veggies to my lunch this month.
These practices both feel like a good way to work on trying something imperfectly (which was the topic of one of my questions in last week’s post!) and they will be beneficial to me even if I don’t get to them every single day.
Both of these things can be helpful for my bloodpressure (I’m on BP meds already and just keeping an eye on my numbers.)
I really want to eat more veggies anyway so the structure of ‘1 more at lunch’ is a straightforward way to start.
The wall-sits will take very little time, they feel doable and they are good for my glutes and my knees – both of which need some attention.
So, even though these things are ‘extra’ they will help me with my big picture goals., they have lots of potential benefits with minimal effort, and if they don’t work out?
No big deal!
These are experiments – if they don’t work, I can try something else.
But if they do work I will have practiced more practices, strengthened my legs, eaten more veggies, had more satisfying lunches, taken good care of myself, and maybe even done something good for my blood pressure.
Let’s see how it goes!
*Convenient, hey? 2 things for the second month? Sometimes my brain is so TIDY!)
I am so grateful for the opportunity to write to you every day throughout this month.
I love the way that this daily writing practice helps to shape the beginning of my year and I appreciate the time and energy you put into reading my posts.
It’s always hard to figure out what to say in these final posts each January because I want to be profound and encouraging and really sum things up…
And then I realize that in focusing so much on the results that I’m at risk of letting perfection get in the way of actually doing my practice.
So, after reminding myself that done beats perfect I usually just forge ahead and trust (once again) that I can let my routine carry me towards something useful to share. *
Today, my routine brought me to the reminder to keep going.
That doesn’t mean to just keep barreling down the path the initially set – unless that feels right to us.
It means to keep returning to the project of moving towards the life we want, no matter how much the details of our practices or our projects have changed since we first set them.
We don’t have to be in a hurry.
In fact, as long as we manage our expectations, we can go at any pace that works for us.
Note: Yes, I have included A LOT of links rights but I didn’t link all 31 posts from this month so if you want to see them all you can find them under the tag Go Team 2026 (or look under Go Team for all of the Go Team posts from previous years.)
So, Team, today I invite you to celebrate your efforts so far and to consider how you want to keep making things better/easier/kinder for future you.
Your efforts matter.
You matter.
Keep being kind to yourself, pretty please.
May you have ease, may you have fun, and may you find satisfaction in your practices.
Go Team Us!
PS – I will be writing more Go Team 2026 posts this year, usually around once per month.
*Yes, my posts are just as much notes-to-self as they are messages for you. 🙂
Warning: I am in full pep talk mode today. You may want to sit down.
In every post, I remind you that your efforts matter.
All of your efforts count toward the practice you are trying to develop.
Today, I want to underline that point, highlight it, put it in bold, and draw your attention to it.
Your Efforts count!
ALL of the work you do – the thinking, the planning, the deciding, the actions, the resting, that is all adding up and moving you toward the life you want.
Even if it takes you a long time.
Even if you’re only moving a millimetre at a time.
You’re still moving in the direction that you want to go.
Even your mistakes, the things you changed your mind about, and your backtracking all count because they are part of the process.
You can’t get where you want to go without figuring out at least some of the places that you DON’T want to go.
You will grow and change between making the decision to do something, figuring out how to do it, doing that thing, and then seeing how it turns out.
The person you are becoming throughout that process may have different ideas, goals, and priorities than the person you were when you started – even if the process is short.
And that’s ok.
It’s GOOD even.
Learning as you go and making changes in your plan based on new information makes far more sense than sticking to a plan for the sake of the plan.
I mean, who does that help?
The plan doesn’t care if you do it.
This is all about YOU not about some plan.
Do what makes sense for you right now and feel free to change in the future.
Take time to notice how far you have come, not just how much is left to go.
And celebrate every single thing you have done to support yourself in the practice you are developing.
So Team, as always, here are your tiny, shiny stars for today.
Each one represents a small effort you made to move toward the life you want.
They represent momentum, choices, actions, rest, decisions, repetition, self-kindness, finding support, choosing done over perfect, focusing energy, and all of the other things you have done – some so small you didn’t even notice them – to incorporate your new practices into your life.
Those efforts all add up.
They all count.
They all matter.
And so do you.
Be kind to yourself out there, pretty please.
Go Team Us!
OK, I’ll admit this looks a little bit like a bowl of breakfast cereal but it’s totally a bowl of stars I swear. Image description: a green bowl of tiny stars sitting on a blue surface. The blue surface has light gold lines in it and the background behind the bowl for the top 2/3 of the paper consists of thin, horizontal black lines.
First things first – If you’re wondering if I chose the word station in the title because it rhymed with inspiration, I totally did.
Second things second:
It can take a long time for new practices to feel comfortable, for you to build the skills that will let you enjoy them, for you to get used to including them in your life, and for you to feel the positive changes you are seeking.
That’s why I keep asking you to focus on your efforts.
By paying attention to your efforts and by collecting gold stars, you can feel momentum and find motivation all throughout the process of change instead of trying to wait until this particular practice is well-established.*
But I also think it is good to develop other motivational practices, to find things that inspire you to keep going, to regularly revisit your reasons for adding these practices to your life.
This is where the inspiration station comes in!
It doesn’t have to be a literal station (but it can be!) and it doesn’t have to be elaborate (but it can be!) and it doesn’t have to be obvious to anyone else (but it can be!), but it can be fun and helpful to create a place, a ritual, or a routine that reminds you why you are trying to accomplish these new things.
And, of course, you can create your literal or metaphorical inspiration station any way that you like as long as it brings you joy, determination, and a bit of oomph.
You can create a collage (paper or digital) of images, quotes, and ideas that help you charge up.
You can keep a list of quotes (digital or handwritten or printed) that bring you a sense of power and energy.
You can save memes or photos on your phone or desktop and revisit them whenever you want a boost.
You can keep a reflective well-being journal that lets you see how far you have come and reminds you of how good your practices make you feel.
You can create a sign with ideas, images, quotes, and reminders of past successes and post it wherever you do your practices.
You can set a motivational reminder on your phone so it pops up regularly. (On an iPhone you can label your alarms so you could change the text to read, “Focus and Determination! You can do this!” or something else that feels good to you and set it to go off at a useful time each day.)
You can make a ‘Becoming Board’ that draws you toward your future self. It’s like a vision board but with some key practices that can make a big difference.
You can create a ritual of saying or doing certain encouraging and motivational things before each practice or before you start a new week or a new stage in your practices.
If you are neurodivergent and you find that affirmations or inspirational quotes send you into a loop of questions and fact-checking, try using questions instead of a statement, “*What if* I am strong enough to do this?” “What would it look like if I returned to my journal daily?” and see if that approach helps. I can’t find where I found this suggestion but, judging by my google search, it’s a pretty common one. I just wanted you to know that I didn’t invent it.
You can come up with something fun and helpful and encouraging that I have no idea about because you are the boss of you and I don’t live in your head. (That’s probably for the best for both of us. It would just be too weird!)
Of course, all of these things will only work if you look at them so you may want to make a daily or weekly or monthly reminder to look at your inspiration station and get…you guessed it…inspired!
So, Team, whether you are making an inspiration station, running in the opposite direction from an inspiration station, or doing any sort of practice, plan, or procedure that helps you move in the direction of the life you want to be living, I wish you self-kindness, determination, and the perfect kind of inspiration.
And, of course, I offer you these gold stars in celebration of your efforts.
Go Team Us!
Lots of stars for all kinds of inspiration! Image description: A painting of around 20 shiny gold stars that are trimmed in a thick black line and a very thin white line. The stars are all overlapping and layered. The background is painted blue and is decorated with very thin horizontal white lines looking a little like a sheet of loose leaf paper with the colours reversed. The painting is trimmed in black with a thin white line on the inner edge.
*I know, I know. There is no end to change in our lives but let’s just carry on, hey?
For me, this idea came from reading one of Julie Morgenstern‘s organizing books. I read this a long time ago so I don’t remember which book it was and the details may be fuzzy but the spirit is there, so let’s roll with it.
From what I recall, one of her clients was struggling to keep her shoes organized. She was always kicking them off next to her bed and then she would get annoyed with the pile of shoes that would accumulate there.
The complicated solution would be to train herself to put her shoes elsewhere or maybe to create a habit of returning her shoes to the front closet each morning. Both of those solutions are valid but they will take time and effort and probably a lot of experimenting.
Julie Morgenstern, however, had a much more direct solution.
She suggested putting a shoe rack next to the bed so her client’s shoes could be easily tidied and organized.
Now, there could be lots of reasons why either of the first two solutions might be better overall but you can’t beat the shoe rack when it comes to an easy and efficient solution to the shoe pile, can you?
It may not be a perfect solution, it may not be a forever solution, but it does address the immediate problem (messy shoe pile) without requiring a lot of effort and it lets the client choose where she wants to put her energy right now – creating a tidy corner or making changes to her behaviour.
Ultimately, she may want to change her behaviour but the shoe rack won’t prevent that. In fact, if she’s not being mean to herself about the messy shoe pile, she will probably have more energy to apply to behaviour change.*
When it comes to adding new practices to our lives or adjusting current practices, we tend to default to a behaviour change type of solution when often a shoe rack type of solution would do.
I think it’s worth trying some simple, direct solutions to our challenges first, even if it’s just to free up some energy for other changes and solutions we know we’ll want to try later.
So, if you are always forgetting to bring your water bottle to the basement when you do your workout – put a safe container of water and some clean glasses in your workout space.
If you have trouble making yourself do your stretches each evening, arrange a call with a friend and stretch while you chat. Your stretches might not be as deep but they’ll be done.
If, like me, you find that having your equipment in the basement prevents you from using it, consider moving it to a space in your house that feels easier for you.
If you keep your journal on your desk but you find it hard to sit there and write at the end of the day can you move your journal to your bedside table? Or keep a separate notebook there? Or use the voice notes on your phone? Or make jot notes whenever you can and do more detailed journaling at a time that feels easier? Can you change the time that you journal?
There is nothing wrong with choosing a direct solution if one is available.
Our practices are about our well-being, our fitness, our peace of mind, they aren’t about checking off boxes on an imaginary list of perfact behaviours.
There are lots of ways for us to move towards the lives we want, and it’s ok for at least some of those ways to be really straightforward.
So, Team, I’d like to invite you to consider what sorts of simple solutions might be available to help you address your challenges.
Or to put it another way, if you are faint a challenge, consider asking yourself if a shoe rack will help.
As always, here’s your gold star for your efforts today. As you can tell, today’s star is absolutely delighted with you and with your hard work.
And whether you are working on small solutions, big solutions, or anything in between, please remember that your efforts matter and so do you.
Please be kind to yourself out there.
Go Team Us!
I thought it was time for another happy star. 🙂 image description: a drawing of a cartoonish gold star with bright eyes and a big smile. The star is standing on a purple swing with two points of the star folding around the ropes of the swing like hands. The background of the image is coloured bright blue.
* If you pick a small solution for now with the idea that you will take on the behaviour change over time, please consider picking a time (or several times!) in the next few months to check in with yourself. It’s not exactly the same thing but I often choose a stopgap solution or workaround when I am pressed for time and then realize months later that I never stopped to develop an actual solution. Choosing a check-in time will reduce the chances of you being stuck with a temporary solution for longer than you mean to be.
I have been experimenting with when and how to write different things, I have experimented with different ways to approach my volunteer work, I have given a lot of thought to how ELSE my Go Team ideas might apply in my life, and I have experimented with my well-being practices.
Here are some of the things that have come up for me so far and some questions I am pondering at the moment.
As soon as I mention pondering, I gotta break out a Pinky and the Brain GIF. Image description: a GIF from the cartoon Pinky and the Brain in which The Brain (a short white mouse with an oversized head) is asking Pinky (a tall skinny mouse who looks kind of goofy) ‘Are you pondering what I’m pondering?’ The mice are in a homey setting within a green cage in a laboratory. This question always came up in episodes of this show when The Brain, who was supposed to be a genius, had hatched a plan to take over the world and Pinky, who was rather silly, would respond with nonsense.
My medal from the Salem Witch Trials walking challenge. The medal is a black rectangle is kind of like a wrought iron gate along the top and sides with four points along the bottom line. The medal is decorated with a crescent moon, a sun, a crow on a branch and a bat hanging from a different branch. Then there is text that reads ‘The Salem Witch Trial Virtual Challenge’ The words ‘Salem Witch’ are in green and the lettering is ornate and kind of spooky. It is attached to a green ribbon with decorated with stereotypical ‘witchy’ items like beetles, moths, crystals, a dousing rod, and a fly agaric mushroom and a purple banner that reads ‘Make Every Mile Count.’
It’s really fun to have a tangible, obvious, and related reward for my efforts.
While I am very used to activities in which the effort is its own reward or ones in which I decide on my own ‘prize’ that often has nothing to do with the activities itself but this is different.
While I set my timeframe, the distance and the reward were both set by someone else and I enjoy the feeling of meeting some sort of standard (even a loose one) and getting a medal as a result.
Now, let me be clear – I am in no way treating this like a medal that I won. I know I wasn’t actually racing. I didn’t have any competitors except myself and my time was snail-paced but the medal does remind me that I made a choice to do a program and I completed it.
The fact that I really like how the medal looks is also a bonus.
My feelings about this medal – and the related challenge – are really interesting to me and I am definitely going to explore more tangible and related rewards for my other fitness experiments this year.
And this is where the January experimenting comes in:
I decided to experiment with a longer challenge so I signed up for a 2026 challenge with the same company and, like with the shorter challenge, the fact that I can see each day adding up is giving me a little extra push to move more daily.
BUT it will take all year to earn my medal so I’m going to need to invent some more immediate (and related) awards for myself to earn on a regular basis.
Question: What kinds of rewards will feel more directly related to my fitness practices?
Imperfect Practices
Several of my Go Team 2026 posts have been a bit of a thought experiment for me as I figure out whether I am regularly applying these ideas to my life/practices and how ELSE I might want to apply them.
My Sunday post this week is an excellent example of that experimentation.
That post Done Beats Perfect is about getting so caught up in doing things right that I end up not doing them at all has really helped me tune into something about myself.
I have ‘discovered’ this fact many times in many different contexts but each time I rediscover it, I find a new layer.
I spend too much time trying to figure things out before doing them.
For example:
My ADHD brain is convinced that there is value in waiting to start work on my core because I wouldn’t want to waste time on some practice or program that doesn’t work.
So, it kind of shelves the project of improving my core while awaiting more information BUT it keeps the thought in rotation so it FEELS like I am working on it all the time even though I am not actually doing any work.
But since it has been on my mind for ages, I do get the bonus (annoying) feeling that I am not getting any results for my hard work.
So, a lot of time passes, I don’t end up finding the right system for strengthening my core AND I don’t actually work on a less than perfect system AND nothing changes AND I feel frustrated with myself.
This is all kind of subconscious and I see the illogical nature of this process when I consciously consider it.
But until it occurs to me to bring the thought forward I just have this annoying contradictory situation in which something is sort of on my mind, time is passing, there’s a feeling of effort but no results, but I also know that I am not actually working on that yet.
It’s a bit like when I sit down to write but I can’t make the words string together at the moment so I sit at my desk and putter around at all kinds of distractions. I feel like I am working on it and getting nowhere but there is actually no work taking place.
In that situation, I need to become aware that I am doing that (again!) and remind myself that the only thing that gets my writing done is putting words on the page and then moving them around. I have to coax myself to stick with it past the initial pain of dealing with an ambiguous situation and trust that if I go through the tried-and-true procedure, the work will get done.
Since I know that completing an imperfect workout or an imperfect practice will be automatically superior to a perfect one that never actually gets done, I need to identify a tried-and-true procedure that I can trust to get my workouts/practices done.
I am going to work on the following questions and develop an experiment based on my answers:
Questions: What procedures can I use to make it easier to do an imperfect workout instead of waiting for a perfect one to arrive?How can I make myself conscious of being stuck in the ‘waiting for more info’ loop?
My plan to connect my drawing to my evening yoga has resulted in me avoiding my yoga because I couldn’t wrap my mind around drawing at that point.
I know that the main reason I didn’t draw was because I didn’t have a clear idea of what I wanted to draw each evening. Frustratingly, in my post about this experiment I actually said that I needed to pick something to draw or I probably wouldn’t do it.
Alas, I forgot all about that aspect of things then just tried to wing it and ended up (temporarily) sinking my yoga practice along with my plan to draw.
So, for now, I am going back to committing to evening yoga and, if I have the energy, I will do a drawing on an index card but the drawing is a bonus not a dealbreaker.
And I am going to consider the following questions and have an answer to experiment with by Wednesday evening:
Questions: What kinds of drawing would be fun and relaxing for me to do each evening? How can I make the process of drawing easier to start?
Row Row Row… my living room?
This experiment is less than two days old but after hearing me wonder aloud if moving my rowing machine from the basement to the living room would make it more likely that I would use it, my husband volunteered to move it for me.
As soon as it was in the living room, rowing felt more like a thing I *could* do instead of a thing ‘I need to get back to’ and now that the living room experiment was underway, I decided to try for 5 minutes of rowing each day for the next week.
I know that’s a small amount but I wanted it to feel easy and I can definitely fit in 5 minutes a day for a week and then review.
So, on Monday morning, I planned to row for 5 minutes but ended up rowing for 15 minutes while watching a video about setting up an artist’s notebook. and it really felt great.
That doesn’t mean that I am changing my experiment though. I am going to stick to the 5 minute plan with the option of doing more but with zero pressure to do so.
Now I am just playing around with the when:
Question: Is it easier to have a set time to row or to just do it when it makes sense on a given day?
Overall, I’m enjoying the experiment approach and I am planning to continue into February.
Have you been doing any experiments with your practices and habits in January? How are things going?
I decided to draw my own calendars this year. This one is above my desk and will have a different robot for each month. Image description: a happy square-headed, rectangular-bodied robot drawn in blue ink. She is holding a sign that says ‘Real Snow Please!’ in one hand and she is holding a star in the other. She is standing on a curved line that is supposed to represent snow on the ground and there are dots in the background to represent snow falling. Text beneath her reads ‘January’ and there are two snowflakes and two horizontal arrows pointing to the word.
Because of the combination of extreme cold and ice build-up at a major power plant over the weekend, people in NL were asked to minimize our power usage to avoid blackouts.
And that led to me asking myself things like, ‘Is it better to type this on my phone or use my desktop computer?’* and ‘Does it take more power to run the slow cooker or to heat the oven?’, you know, questions about how to allocate our household energy in a responsible way. It really made me pay attention to all of the electrical power-related decisions I unconsciously make in a given day.
And THAT led me to think about how I allocate my personal energy at any given time and wonder about the unconscious choices I am making about how to spend my energy on a regular basis.
Because even though Taekwondo has taught me to ‘Look where you’re striking’ because your power (energy) is directed towards what you are focusing on, I often forget that the lesson extends beyond TKD class.*
Yes, I have these kinds of strings of somewhat-related thoughts on the regular. Is it ADHD? Is it Being Christine? Who knows? It keeps things interesting though.
I get that we don’t always get to choose where to put our energy and/or that we have competing priorities but it’s worthwhile to think about any energy choices we happen to have at the moment.
So, Team, I invite you to consider the following questions:
What kinds of energy do you have available for your current practices?
When is that energy available?
Are there things you can do in advance so when practice time comes you can spend energy on your practices instead of on preparing for your practices?
Are you wasting energy (or sapping your energy) by being mean to yourself when you could spend that energy on self-kindness (which builds energy!) or on being relatively neutral while you putter through your practices?
I know these are relative easy questions to ask but even the most complicated process has to start somewhere.
Having a look at where your energy goes and how you can make small shifts to save/generate good energy is a great way to help yourself move toward the life you want.
And, as always, here is your gold star for your efforts today.
Whether you are asking yourself energy questions, figuring out where you energy goes/has gone, or doing helpful things utterly unrelated to examining your energy, I wish you ease.
Be kind to yourselves out there, please.
PS – If you are spending a lot of time worrying about the situation in Minnesota but can’t figure out how to put that particular energy to positive use then visiting Stand With Minnesota is a good place to start.
A small painting of a shiny gold star that takes up about two thirds of the page. I started the drawing a bit too close to the bottom of the page so the left bottom point is just off the page. After drawing the star, I drew several star outlines outside the original star, each one larger than the next. Each outline extends beyond the page so the result is angled stripes between the star and the edge of the paper. The stripes are mostly in a pattern – black, white, gold, black, white, gold, etc. the painting is outlined with black lines at the edges.
*An hour or so after posting I realized that I hadn’t finished this thought. My quandary was whether it took more energy to use my computer for a short time or to recharge my phone sooner than normal because I was using it more. I do actually realize that using my unplugged iPhone is not using household power in the moment – ha!
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.
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.
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.
