I needed this reminder today so I thought you might, too.
Whether you are trying to add new things to your life, to maintain the things you already do, or to level up a little, it is very easy to get overwhelmed.
And when we’re overwhelmed, we forget that we can only do one thing at a time.
When that happens, we often end up either trying to do everything at once or feeling like there’s no point in doing anything.
If this is happening to you, I’d like to invite you to do one little thing that’s related to your goals, habits, or plans.
Take a really deep breath and let it out slowly.
Do one squat.
Listen to one relaxing song.
Do 1 minute of cardio.
Write 1 sentence in your journal.
Put 1 thing away.
Drink 1 glass of water (or 1tsp of water.)
If you are already regularly exercising/drinking water/meditating/journaling, just add 1 little bit to your practice – one more sentence, one more squat, one more minute.
If you are struggling to take good care of yourself in some other way but you can’t get started because it is all too much, pick a tiny, tiny thing and do that – look up the email address, put on a tiny dab of face cream, do one stretch, put on (or take off) warm socks.
It’s natural to fall into the all or nothing trap, to think that only huge changes will help, to feel like only drastic actions will count.
But, the truth is…
It all counts!
All of your efforts matter.
Even giving yourself the tiniest nudge, the tiniest bit of help, the slightest movement, gets you closer to where you want to be.
Doing one little thing gives you a foothold. It tips the balance in the direction you want to go. It reminds you that you are here for yourself.
No matter how small that little thing is.
Doing one little thing is not going to bring instant, sweeping change but it will be an instant, sweeping victory for Team You.
Taking an action, no matter how small, reminds you that you *can* act on your own behalf and that you will.
And it is going to earn you a gold star:
Image description: my drawing of a cartoonish gold star with a happy face. The background is covered in small blue dots and the drawing is ‘framed’ in blue with black trim.
In my geographic area, spring and warm weather have come quickly. It makes me excited but also a bit nervous. For the past few months, it has been easier and warmer to just stay inside, so as the weather changes I find it a bit hard to get back outside into old activity habits, or to start new ones.
In mid-life, thoughts of safety (or, more specifically, avoiding injury) now enter my brain much more than they used to. As I watch soccer players in my rec league get whacked in the face with a ball, or see on social media friends wearing hand braces after a night of adult dodgeball, I am more encouraged to find fitness activities I can do with people instead of against them to minimize the likelihood of getting hurt.
So this year I joined a rec cycling club in my area, the London Cycling Club. With over 100 members last year, it claims community and fun while riding. I have blogged about joining a curling club in the last few years, which helped me with my Self-Confidence, Effort, and Improvement. This year, I am hoping only for motivation to get outside more on my bike.
The LCC started their season with a 2.5-hour in-person welcome meeting that had coffee, snacks, a PPT, and even demonstrations (which was great because it turns out I didn’t know what a “peloton” was). Leadership who presented emphasized things like getting a toolkit, road ID, and high viz clothing for safety. They described how they were responding to membership feedback by offering more variety in the ride calendar. The President spent 10 minutes talking about eating plenty of snacks to avoid this thing they call “The Bonk.”
The LCC has volunteers organize rides, some for beginners and others just for women. It provides access to phone apps with marked trails, ride sign-up, and the ability to meet up with others. It also plans events with other clubs, while maintaining insurance for all of its active members. At this kick-off meeting, long time members said they have found community and friendship in this group.
This is all much more than I had expected from signing up with this group, but I welcome it. I have spent most of my adult life avoiding team sports and fearing athletic enthusiast groups, not knowing how they could help me understand and enjoy the fitness activity more. Now, happily, I have finally joined the club.
Best Bang For Your Buck: A slide presented at the LCC kickoff meeting about ways to use time and money to a safe riding experience during the season. Love me a great PPT slide presentation! 💜
My point here is that I am not moving with any particular speed.
However, since it is still March and will continue to be until we reach April, I guess I *am* technically Marching for now and I will be Aprilling as of Monday.
Yes, I do find myself funny.
An accurate depiction of my inner self when considering my own jokes. Image description: A gif of a seated baby who (safely) tips to one side and falls over while laughing.
So, my point here is that despite labelling this month ‘Move More March’ I realized that I didn’t actually set myself up to do a lot of extra work.
Basically, when I made my plans for Move More March – to exercise for 20 hours – I didn’t actually consider how many hours of exercise I already get in an average month.
Between TKD, walking Khalee, and my mobility exercises, I already automatically get around 18 hours of exercise per month.*
Basically, by setting a 20 hour goal, I was asking myself to do 4 extra minutes of exercise a day.
Not hard exercise. Not specific exercise. Just four minutes of anything at all – stretches, walking, patterns practice, anything.
Image description: a gif of Disney character Chip (or Dale?) a brown chipmunk wearing a purple hat and strolling along in a cheery way. He’s using a cane for casual effect rather than for support.
I mean, I’m all for making small changes but since there was nothing incremental about those extra minutes, no specific level of effort, I hadn’t created much of a challenge for myself.
And that’s fine, really.
I’m not being hard on myself here.
Sometimes, you are really trying to push forward and sometimes it’s enough to just maintain your current position.
I just found it funny when I realized that my challenge wasn’t a challenge at all.
So, with all of that said, I do want to work a bit harder in April.
I haven’t decided what I’ll focus on but I do know that I want to get away from just thinking in terms of time spent.
Instead, I want to choose a focus that relates to increasing my effort.
I’ll update you once we are Aprilling.
*My exercise intensity varies considerably from day to day. I don’t mean to give you the impression that I am putting in 18 gruelling hours every single month.
From a very young age I loved skating, and from that young age I started to skate. I have written about skating before on this blog (Back on the Ice – For a Moment). I longed to be a graceful, whisp-y figure, spinning in circles, skirt flying all ways. I remember learning to glide forward on one skate, other leg behind me, arms wide open and reaching forward, when I was four. I felt like a princess. I was quite surprised to realize that my leg was really not up as high as my teachers, but still loved it.
I think my love of skating was partly because, in my town of 800 people on the Alaska Highway, there really wasn’t much else that kids did for recreation. But it was also it felt so good. So, when we moved to a rural logging town on the West Coast, with no skating rink that my mom would be able to take me to, I was pretty heartbroken. Later, when I moved to Montreal as a young adult, it was a balm to my heartache when I could put on tights and skirt and go skate on the ponds in the urban parks there. Looking back I’m proud of myself – skating on that rough pond ice, poorly maintained, if at all.
So when I heard this week’s World Championship win by Canadians Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps, I knew I had to write about it. The duo won in Pairs Figure Skating – a laudable accomplishment. But what is record-breaking is that at 40, Stellato-Dudek is the oldest female world champion – officially CBC describes that she is “the oldest woman to win a world title in sports history,” and the accomplishment has made international news (see here, here, and here)
I am finding this story to be quite fascinating, as I suppose many others are. Stellato-Dudek was a rising champion teenage figure skater, when chronic hip injuries led to her retirement. She put her skates back on at 36 in response to a team-building conversation exercise: “What would you do in your life if you knew you couldn’t fail at it?”
I’m wondering what messages Stellato-Dudek’s story gifts us with? What potential might we be leaving behind, or leaving on the table? I don’t think I’ll be returning to figure skating lessons, and I’m honestly ok with that. But I do feel like this moment is one worth both celebrating and reflecting on.
When interviewed by the CBC, Stellato-Dudek commented “I hope it encourages people not to stop until they’ve reached their potential.” What is your reaction to Deanna Stellato-Dudek’s accomplishment? Do you think we should even be paying so much attention to her age? Do you find any resonances in your own life? Let me know? I would love to hear.
Truth be told, I’m saying a lot more than that to this upper body tension but this post isn’t about maybe swearing will help, I wrote about that a few weeks ago.
So, the knot in my neck I mentioned in my swearing post has practically gone but this week has been an engraved invitation to muscle tension.
I had lots of things to get done, a lot of task/context switching, a couple of deadlines, some unclear expectations from other people, and I slept poorly.
I had a migraine on Tuesday* and another migraine (the same migraine?) was hunting me Wednesday and Thursday, and everyone I have ever met wanted me to have a ‘quick meeting.’**
Anyway, I was doing what I do under that kind of deluge…
Hiking my shoulders up by my ears and gritting my back teeth as I worked hard to keep my focus.
Does this look like me? Not particularly. Is it evocative of the feeling I was having? Yep. It also makes me look a little like I have Angel wings which is misleading to say the least. Image description: a quick cartoonish sketch in black ink of a person with chin length hair and glasses with their shoulders all bunched up next to their ears and their jaw a little sideways. Their mouth is a single small diagonal line.
Was this helpful?
No, it was not.
Quite the opposite, in fact.
Despite trying to remember to drop my shoulders away from my ears/ relax my jaw, I ended up turning my upper body into a giant ball of tense muscle that even Robaxacet screamed in terror and ran away from.
After several days of doing everything I could think of to find some ease, I dredged up an old technique out of my muscle memory (This is where the title comes it, it wasn’t just nonsense!***)
I started by generating even more muscle tension, breathing in as I balled up my fists and hiked my shoulders up as far as they would go.
Another flattering representation of me. Judging by the vertical lines on my clothes, I have now apparently gone to an odd prison or to an 80s power lunch. image description: another cartoonish drawing of a person with chin-length hair and glasses, cheeks puffed out from holding their breath, hands balled up in fists, shoulders as high up as they will go, wearing a dress (?) with vertical black lines on it.
I held my breath for 10 seconds.
Then I quickly dropped my shoulders, flicked open my hands, and shouted ‘PAH!’
Each drawing more lovely than the last. Image description: a cartoonish drawing of person with chin length hair and glasses with their mouth open wide. A speech balloon next to their head reads ‘PAH!’ In this drawing, their shoulders are at normal height and their neck is actually visible. Their hands are hanging down at their sides and their fingers are spread out a little. They are wearing a vertically-striped shirt (the drawing is only from the waist up.)
Why ‘Pah’? Damned if I know! That was just what I was taught the first time I learned the technique.
I’ve seen this routine in lots of videos and tip guides since I first learned it but I’m not sure where I got it in the first place.
Anyway, no matter where it came from, it helps, especially if you do it a lot.
I’m over here saying ‘Pah! Humbug!’ and you are quite welcome to join me but I can’t help but wonder if you have any other little tension-easing tricks?
*Yes, yes, I do see the connection now. Those fabled, eyeless fish that people found in underwater caves back in the day likely saw that cause and effect before me but yes, I do see it.
**No disrespect intended to anyone who wanted a quick chat/meeting. It was the volume of requests that was the problem, not the requests themselves! How could anyone know what else I was juggling at the moment?
***For the record, I am strongly pro-nonsense and I reserve the right to invoke it at any time.
February is not quite finished so I will save my final Feb 5 update until later but suffice it to say that the knot in my shoulder created some complications and I had to shift my plans a little.
Speaking of shifting, for March I am moving away from the specificity I used for my February plans and trying a really general approach.
Instead of listing specific types of exercise/wellness activities, I am rolling with the fact that I have a busy schedule this month. So, I am just seeking more movement overall instead of specific types and I am aiming for at least 20 hours throughout the month.
By choosing a time-based goal this month, I make it even easier for literally any movement to “count” – 5 minutes of stretching before my meeting, adding 10 minutes to my walk, a dance break while my tea steeps – am free from other constraints of specific times, places, or equipment.
(After all, to do a specific amount of rowing I have to be where my machine is. Stretching or walking or dancing doesn’t have that limitation.)
A small painting I made as a goal reminder. Image description: a painting of the words March and Move More against a blue and yellow background. The word March is large and in pink letters, the words Move More are in green and they are overlapping the bottom quarter of the the most of the word March. The bottom half of the background is yellow with green vertical pinstripes and the top half is blue with small green dots.
Adding up my hours will be pretty easy because my watch will keep track of my daily exercise minutes. I’ll just have to add up the hours every week or so in my exercise journal.
Right now, my body feels a bit cranky and tight on a day-to-day basis but I know from previous experience that more daily movement will change that.
Hmm, now that I look at that sentence I realize that I am claiming that my brain outwitted itself so I guess I really mean that I consciously chose to override an automatic behaviour?
That is definitely not as fun, let’s go with the first sentence instead.
So yeah, I outwitted my brain.*
My best depiction of my brain doing its best to conserve energy and maintain the status quo. You can tell it’s my brain because of the sprinkling of gold stars. Oh, and the chatter, that gives it away too. Image description: a drawing of a human brain surrounded by things the brain is saying. ‘One set will do, right?’ ‘You don’t need to stretch, it’s fine!’ ‘No plan? Ok, but how about making a list?’ And in the bottom corner is my response ‘Nice try, brain! ❤️C’
The knot in my shoulder/neck has almost completely gone away so I had decided that I was going to do some upper body strength training on the weekend.
Saturday was a jumbled sort of day and I never got to my weights so I picked a specific time (8:30PM) on Sunday to get started. (That’s Step 1 in the outwitting. I didn’t leave it for an ambiguous ‘later.’)
For the rest of Sunday, one part of my brain kept reminding me to make a plan for the specific exercises I was going to do. I tried to make a list but then another part of my brain started telling me that there was no point in making a one day list, it had to be part of a long-term plan. I felt complete resistance to that idea so I shelved the whole plan to plan. (Step 2 – I didn’t let my brain get all ‘shouldy’ – you know how I feel about the word should. Ick. Ick. Ick.)
Since I didn’t want to make a plan, I reminded myself that any exercises I do are going to be helpful – any repeated exercises will make my arm muscles stronger. So, while making a plan can be helpful and would let me see my progress over time, actually doing the exercises is far more important than planning or tracking them. (Step 3 – I found the most direct path.)
So, planless and with a specific time to start, I did my best to put aside any other thoughts about my exercises and went on with my day until 8:30.
Then I had another small disagreement with my brain – this time it tried to tell me that I needed specific exercise clothes. Luckily, seeing as I was wearing leggings, a tank top, and a cardigan, I managed to bring it around to the idea that I could probably just take off my cardigan and swing my weights around. (This is a joke, of course. I lifted them in a controlled manner, worry not.) (Step 4 – I recognized yet another form of resistance and sidestepped it.)
So, I went to the living room and picked up my weights (I put them in the corner on Friday so they’d be right there when I needed them – a very preemptive outwitting, that’s Step .5) and did one set of a series of exercises. I almost stopped there because my brain claimed that I had done what I set out to do.
I disagreed.
If I was tired, if my time was limited, or if I just wasn’t feeling it, then one set would be completely acceptable. However, none of those things was a factor, and my shoulder felt ok, so I did another set. (Step 5 – I questioned my automatic thoughts.)
After two sets though, it was definitely time to stop and my brain tossed up the idea that I didn’t need to do any stretching because, and I quote, ‘You didn’t work that hard.’ (brains can be such jerks!) BUT, luckily, in that moment, I remembered a fact that often eludes me – Sunday night me is the same person as Monday morning me.
So, while Sunday-night-me might not feel the need to stretch, Monday-morning-me is going to wish that I had. (Step 6 – Today’s self doesn’t always know best.)
So, I stretched.
And even Sunday-night-me felt good about it.
So, as Monday-morning-me writes this post that will go up on Tuesday morning, I am happy that I outwitted my brain, I’m happy to have done the strength training I had planned, and I am a little bit sore but only ‘I did a workout’ sore, not ‘I can’t move’ sore.
And I have this post to prove to my future self that the effort to outwit my brain is totally worth it.
*I read somewhere that referring to your brain as separate from yourself is a neurodivergent thing. Is it? I certainly wouldn’t know.
Good news! The swearing DID help and the knot in my neck/shoulder is almost completely untied.
Metaphorically, of course.
As of now, I’m trying to ease back into things so I don’t set off another spasm but things feel good overall.
I haven’t made as much progress as I had hoped with my Fitness Feb 5 but I’m not stressed about it.
Here’s how things look right now (hearts that are coloured in = completed sessions) :
My updated chart for tracking my ‘Feb 5’ (which is meant to be a play of Fab 4 but you know, with 5 things and in February.) Image description: a drawing of 5 large hearts (2 red and 3 pink) trimmed in gold and outlined in black set against a background of smaller heart-shapes drawn with thin black marker. The centre of the image has text reading ‘The Fitness Feb 5’ and each heart has a different practice on it and small hearts for tracking when I do them. So far I have done 1 patterns practice, 1 RYC session, 2 journal prompts, and 3 longer meditations but no rowing hours.
Right now my stats are:
Rowing – 0
Journal Prompts – 2
Patterns Practice – 1
RYC (core training) – 1
Longer meditations – 3
I have done other journaling and meditation but I am tracking specific things in February rather than every journaling or meditation practice.
And I have been for walks and, when possible, done some kinds of yoga even though I couldn’t do patterns or row.
And if I can’t get any rowing done this month it will become part of my March Ahead plan instead.
I refuse to be mean to myself about this. Self-compassion all the way!
My plan for today was to make a really fancy gold star out of 31 other gold stars. It was going to be a big celebration of all your hard work this month and it was gonna look fantastic.
My plan did not work.
Instead, I had eleventy-million other things to do yesterday and this morning, and I couldn’t quite get the desired effect in my drawing.
In fact, the background of my original drawing got so messy that I had to cut out the star and put it on a new background.
So, I’m afraid, we are celebrating your month’s work, your month’s efforts, with an imperfect drawing.
Not to say that every other drawing has been perfect, but I really wanted this one to look closer to what was in my head.
But you know what?
My imperfect star actually works far better for the theme of this final post for January 2024.
By the end of today, you will have done everything you could do in January.
You will have used the resources you had to do whatever you could to toward the goal you had in mind.
Maybe you had a great month and things went according to plan.
Maybe you had a terrible month and nothing went right.
And maybe, like most of us, you had something in-between – some things went right, some things went wrong, and you moved yourself forward a bit.
This last day of the month, is a great time to declare January ‘good enough’ and to shine on like the gold star person that you are.
And no matter what kind of month you had, you can look at the things that went right, and celebrate them.
You can look at the things that went wrong and gather information for your next steps.
You can stomp around and curse and be annoyed at the universe for making this month such a challenge…and then you can figure out how you want to move forward from here.
Maybe you’ve discovered that this goal is perfect for you and you want to keep going. You can use the information from January to stay on the same path or to change things up a bit.
Maybe you’ve discovered that this goal isn’t exactly what you want. You can use the information from January to figure out a new goal and a new plan to reach it.
Maybe you’ve discovered that your goal for January had some value for you but some things need to change. Use what you learned in January to make those changes.
The key thing, from my perspective, is that you recognize your efforts. Whether or not your results were tangible, you were working on something, you were trying.
And that effort is valuable to you.
That effort matters.
Even if you spent all month trying to get your new habit started and never quite managed it, those efforts matter, and there’s useful information in there for you.
No matter how far you got with your new habit you were trying to do a hard thing, you were trying to expand your life.
It’s a good idea to find everything you can to celebrate about your efforts.
And it’s an especially good idea to be kind to yourself about the challenges inherent in trying to expand your life.
I know that people like to say that we all have the same 24 hours and it’s our choice about what we do with them but we all know that’s not true.
Yes, we all have 24 hours in our day but each of us are experiencing those 24 hours differently. We are coming into that time with different abilities, different capabilities, different capacities, and different demands on our time and energy.
We need to be kind to ourselves about our efforts, the realities of our lives, and the things we are trying to achieve.
So let me say one more time, you are doing the best you can with the resources you have.
Please be kind to yourself in the process.
As I said above, this isn’t the star I meant to create for you today. But I did what I could with the time, resources, and art supplies I had handy.
When I started to run out of time, I had to recognize my limits and declare this good enough.
Even though it didn’t match my vision.
Even though it didn’t match my plan.
It still a celebratory gold star with gold stars inside it.
It still celebrates your efforts today and throughout the month.
It’s not perfect, but it is definitely good enough.
Good enough, just like our efforts this month.
Good enough, just like we are.
So, Team, let’s all forge ahead and shine on.
Go Team Us!
A drawing of a gold star filled with 31 smaller gold stars. The background of the drawing is dark green with black horizontal lines and each star is outlined in black.
Today’s reminder is that you are already good exactly as you are.
You don’t have anything to prove.
You can choose to expand your life through new habits and practices.
And you can choose to improve your skills.
Those things are about adding to your life, making it more fun, making it easier, making it more enjoyable, making it more straightforward, giving yourself more room in your own brain and body.
Those things are not about trying to fix yourself.
You are not broken.
You are not a project.
You are good, just as you are.
So, go ahead and add practices that enhance your life, that help you show up the way you want to show up in the world.
But please don’t think that you have to fix yourself before you get to have fun or try new things or wear what you want or work towards the things that are important to you.
I’m not going for toxic positivity here.
I’m not saying that we’re all perfect,
I’m not saying we all do everything right all the time.
I’m saying that we are good.
We don’t have to earn our place. We don’t have to earn the right to be here. We don’t have to improve ourselves.
We are good and we can choose ways to expand.
We aren’t fixer-uppers, we are ‘make this home your own.’
Here’s a simple gold star to accompany this simple (but not easy!) message today.
Your efforts matter. What you want matters. What you need matters.
You matter.
Be kind to yourself, pretty please.
A drawing of plain gold star on a white piece of paper.
