Tag: Go Team 2025

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

Go Team 2025: Reconsidering Consistency

Christine Hennebury

Hey Team,

What does consistency look like for you?

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

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

BUT

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

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

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

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

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

Identical daily practice is only one form of consistency.

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

Maybe your consistency looks like a weekly or monthly practice.

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

Maybe you have different practices for different types of energy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Go Team Us!

A small drawing of a gold star. The star is divided into triangular sections that are coloured different shades of gold.
A photo of a small drawing of a gold star against a background of thin, vertical, black stripes. The star itself is divided into triangular sections by black lines and each section is coloured in a different shade of gold marker/pen. The drawing is propped against a dark green surface on a white desk.
Go Team 2025: Your Personal ‘Ecosystem’
ADHD · fitness · goals · habits · motivation · self care

Go Team 2025: Your Personal ‘Ecosystem’

Christine Hennebury

Hey Team,

When it comes to making changes or to adding new things into their lives, my coaching clients often forget to consider how it will affect their personal ecosystem – and while I catch it when they do it, I sometimes don’t notice when I do the same thing.

Now, I don’t mean a literal, scientifically-defined, ecosystem, of course – in this case, an ‘ecosystem’ is kind of a metaphor for all the interlocking parts of our lives.

Because while we know intellectually that home life, family life, personal needs, plans, hobbies, and all the other parts of life are connected and that they all affect one another, in practice, we forget.

We forget that trying to change one aspect of our lives will affect and be affected by everything else we have going on.

And we forget how that complicates things.

We can’t pull time and energy out of the air, it has to come from somewhere.

When we take extra time/energy for a new or expanded practice, something else is going to have to shift to accommodate that.

And, conversely, when our family life or work life or our health takes more time or energy, it is going to affect the time/energy we have available for our practices.

A change anywhere in the ecosystem is going to affect a lot (if not all!) of the other pieces.

There’s nothing wrong with you if a change in one area of your life has repercussions in another. You have a lot of interrelated things to deal with and you have finite energy, finite time, and finite resources.

And acknowledging that and being kind to ourselves about that fact is the only way to deal with the whole thing.

It’s ok to have to shift, alter, reduce, or drop other things in order to add something new to your life.

And, of course, it’s ok to seek support and help in any area of your life so you can add something life-enhancing in another one.

I’m not suggesting this is an easy, one-off process. It make take several tries (and some firm requests) to find a new equilibrium, to reshape your ecosystem to support you in adding new things, but it will be worth the effort.

And you may find that the nature of your current ecosystem will require a very, very slow process for adding anything new and that’s totally ok, too. (Understanding the time and energy you have available is part of managing your expectations.)

Basically, I’m hoping you can be very, very kind to yourself about all aspects of your ecosystem, your current life realities, and give yourself the time and the breathing room to add new things or make changes at a sustainable pace.

So, Team, today I am inviting you to consider your efforts in the context of your ecosystem.

What pressures are you facing that are working for or against your new practices?

What options do you have to adjusting or dealing with those pressures?

What parts of your ecosystem have some flexibility in them that might give you room to grow in another area?

How can you practice self-kindness within your ecosystem and how can you practice it when/if the system is in flux?

Above all, please remember that you are just one human trying to keep this whole system working. Sometimes (often!) things will go wrong, things will be complicated, there will be challenging times. That is not indicative of failure on your part, it’s a sign that something needs to shift or change and the kinder you can be to yourself in the process, the better the results will be.

And here, of course, is a cheerful gold star for your efforts today, whether you are considering your ecosystem or working up the energy to brush your hair, your efforts matter and your hard work counts.

Go Team Us!

A drawing of a gold star with rounded corners.
A photo of a small drawing of a gold star with rounded corners against a background of thin horizontal black stripes. The drawing is propped against a dark green surface.

Go Team 2025: You’re the only person in this division
fitness · goals · habits · self care

Go Team 2025: You’re the only person in this division

Christine Hennebury

Hey Team,

As we get closer to the end of the month, we’re going to see all kinds of posts about how much everyone else accomplished.

If you find that inspiring, then go ahead and read or watch as many of those as you like.

But if you find them disheartening, then please consider this your official permission/encouragement to ignore every last one of those posts.

Why?

Because even aside from the fact all of that content is curated so people can show themselves in the very best light, their successes are irrelevant to you.

Why?

Because you are not competing with them for ‘best life.’

When it comes to your life-expanding, life-enhancing projects, there is no competition at all.

You are the only person in your division, your category, your bracket.

You aren’t even competing with your past self, you are just doing what you can with your current resources.

There is literally no one else with your specific combination of experience, plans, and life circumstances at this very moment so there is no real way to compare.

There is no way to judge yourself against someone else because there are too many different factors involved.

So while someone else may be able to run faster or do more pushups or stay calmer than you, they aren’t ’doing better’ because they aren’t doing those things while living *your* life.

I’m not suggesting that we can instantly and magically stop comparing ourselves to others but I am suggesting that it is worth noticing when we get into comparison mode.

And, once we notice, we can remind ourselves that we are the only person in our division and we are doing the best we can with the resources we have.

There is no point in feeling bad because we don’t ’measure up’ or because we *should* (blech! Hate that word!) be further ahead.

We are in our own division and other people’s practices and progresses are interesting information that may be useful in some way but don’t directly apply to us.

So, Team, today I invite you to consider the fact that you are the only person in your division and that your practice can’t be measured against other people’s activities.

And I invite you to celebrate how well you are doing – the practices you have done, the information you have gathered, any successes you have measured, and/or the plans you have made, the plans you have decided to implement, and the ones you rejected because they were not right for you.

And I offer these gold stars for your efforts, no matter what those efforts look like today.

Please be kind to yourself out there.

Go Team Us!

A drawing of three gold stars hanging on strings
A drawing of three gold stars on strings that are hanging from the black frame at the top of the sketch. Each gold star has a small bow as if it was tied to the string. The background is composed of diagonal light black lines.
advice · goals · habits · motivation

Go Team 2025: Include Rest

Christine Hennebury

Hey Team,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Go Team 2025: Adjust as Needed

Christine Hennebury

Hey Team,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Go Team Us!

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

A note about today’s stars:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Go Team 2025: Managing Your Expectations (again?)

Christine Hennebury

Hey Team,

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

So here goes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To clarify, let’s consider an extreme example:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Be kind to yourself, pretty please.

Go Team Us!

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

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

Christine Hennebury

Hey Team,

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

BUT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That’s when you can turn to spite.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Go Team Us!

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

Go Team 2025: Swearing The Whole Time

Christine Hennebury

Hey Team,

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

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

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

That might be a good time to borrow this expression:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Go Team Us!

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

Go Team 2025: Let’s Finetune Things
advice · fitness · goals · habits · motivation · self care

Go Team 2025: Let’s Finetune Things

Christine Hennebury

Hey Team,

Today, I’m inviting you to do another type of check-in.

Let’s see how we can make your life expansion and enhancement practices just a teeny bit more fun, more interesting, or more you-friendly.

In short, let’s do a little bit of self-kindness finetuning.

Start by spending a few minutes thinking about your practices, whether they are already underway or under development. You can make some notes, keep the info in your head, or say them aloud to a friend or into a voice memo.

Then, dig a little into what is going well so far.

Here are a few questions I came up with but please feel free to develop your own:

What have you enjoyed about your practices so far? Or what ideas have you enjoyed considering so far?

What do you look forward to?

What feels good about the processes you are following or working towards? Or what feels good about your plans?

Now, consider how you can make your practices easier to start or to complete, how you could add more fun, or what could help you make the practice even more your own.

These changes can be very subtle and don’t have to involve a lot of rigamarole.

Maybe you can make things easier to start by using a practice-specific alarm or by arranging your gear in an obvious place. And it might be easier to complete something if you use specific music or work with a friend or if you have a reward at the end.

Making things more fun might involve gamifying your practices, adding points of interest to a walk or listening to a podcast while training.

As for making your practice more your own, here’s a personal example: When a practice of mine involves repetitions I have three techniques to make the process more Christine-friendly. I either use a timer instead of counting or I use letters instead of numbers or I count down instead of up (because up feels like I might have to do the repetitions forever.) Making these changes doesn’t affect the practice itself but it affects how I feel about it and that makes a big difference.

Then, do a quick review of things that are getting on your nerves.

Ok, so we all understand and acknowledge that change, new practices, and building new habit building can be difficult, tricky, and frustrating. Accepting that those kinds of feelings arise for everyone can play an important role in helping you persevere.

BUT

Just because new practices can cause those feelings doesn’t mean that you can’t examine your processes for ways to reduce your annoyance or frustration.

For me, this kind of finetuning often involves checking to see what conditions I have accidentally put on my practice. For example, I was once finding a yoga challenge really frustrating and resisted getting started each day.

When I stopped at looked at my process, I realized that I had inadvertently connected my yoga practice with a specific space in my house. There wasn’t actually enough room to do many of the sequences in the challenge so I was constantly having to shift myself over or adjust the movements which was annoying and took me out of the lovely mental space that yoga practices can create.

So, while getting started/continuing the practice involved some frustration, I could finetune my approach by practicing in a difference space and, hence, remove a whole set of unnecessary annoyances.

You may have fixable annoyances going on in your practice as well.

Maybe your chosen meditation space is chilly and you need a blanket or maybe there’s a distracting noise that you could cover with white noise – or maybe you could choose a different location.

Perhaps your socks aren’t quite warm enough for your walks so you dread lacing up your boots each day. Perhaps you could wear two pairs of socks or get some warm inserts or wear different footwear. (I once had an opposite kind of problem. The socks I wear at home in the winter are too bulky to be comfortable in my boots. I started keeping less bulky socks in the drawer with my mitts and that made a huge difference.)

Maybe the pen you have been keeping with your paper journal makes a scratchy sound when you write or maybe the ink is blotchy. Trying a different pen might make a world of difference.

Being kind to yourself can involve tangible changes, too.

Most of the time, my advice about self-kindness has to do with how you view yourself or how you think about your efforts, any kind of mental reframing of the situation.

However, being kind to yourself can be very tangible as well.

You can move the table you bump into instead of just being annoyed at yourself for bumping into it.

You can wear gloves when you write so your hands stay warm instead of telling yourself that your chilly hands are no big deal.

You can have two separate water bottles for different areas of your house instead of being frustrated that you keep forgetting to bring your water bottle with you when you go upstairs.

Sure, these small changes may not make a dramatic difference in the effectiveness of your practice but finetuning your self-kindness in both tangible and intangible ways will make it much easier for you to keep moving yourself in the direction you want to go.

So, Team, I hope you will consider how you can finetune your practice and processes and reduce unnecessary frustrations.

And, I’m offering you this gold star in honour of your efforts, no matter what they are.

Go Team Us!

A drawing of a gold star that looks like it is on a TV.
A photo of a drawing of a small gold star that appears to be on a TV screen. The star is within a black ‘frame’ like a screen in an older style television set. The ‘screen’ is surrounded by rectangles on all four sides that look like speakers and there are circles surrounded by dots that make the circles look like dials.
advice · fitness · goals · habits · motivation · self care

Go Team 2025: Scale Your Challenges

Christine Hennebury

Hey Team,

Since many (most?) people find the processes of goal-setting and habit-building a bit overwhelming, and because there is always so much ‘bigger is better’ pressure when it comes to making changes, I tend to write posts that focus on the fact that is ok to take small steps and inch forward.

And while I have mentioned that we should all work at a scale that makes sense for ourselves, our lives, and our capacity, I thought it was time for a post that specifically states that it is ok to work at a HUGE scale if that’s fun, interesting, and exciting for you.

Sure, picking huge goals will probably increase the challenges that you face but for some people (including me sometimes) that’s an energizing idea not an overwhelming one.

And, for those people, the fact that there’s a bigger risk of failure is part of the fun (and for people energized by that kind of risk, failure tends to be part of the process instead of bringing the process to an abrupt halt.

While I’m on the topic, it’s also ok to mix and match the scale and scope of your goals and plans. If a huge plan feels exciting in one area of your life and intimidating in another there is no reason why you can’t pick a goal or plan that matches your needs in that area.

And, please remember to not compare the scope, scale, and size of your goals and your efforts with someone else. We are all facing our challenges with different abilities, different capacities, and different experiences and what is hard for one person is easy for another.

Please, please, please be kind to yourself about your plans, your goals, and the actions you have the capacity to take towards them.

You are doing the best you can with the resources you have.

So, Team, no matter what size or shape your goals might be, I’m inviting you to work on them at the pace and scale that you need and want to.

And, as always, I am offering this goal star for your efforts to enhance and expand your life on your own terms.

Go Team Us!

A drawing of a gold star that is surrounded by wavy black lines.
A drawing of a gold star that is surrounded by wavy black lines that radiate outwards from the star, creating a series of wavy star shapes. The lines are reminiscent of lines on a topographic map. The drawing is resting on a dark green surface.

PS – As I was writing this, I had a sudden fear that I had already written about this topic this month but I hadn’t really. Instead, I had written a post about working with the energy you have on a given day but, interestingly (at least to me!) I drew a very similar star for that post as I have today. I guess this type of star belongs with this type of post.