Christine and The Updates sounds like a very annoying cover band.

I can only presume they would pop up when you were in the middle of something and tell you that you had to listen to them. You could listen right now or you could schedule a time to listen to them later but you were going to hear their songs whether you wanted to or not.

And, of course, if you were about to do something very important and time sensitive, they would start a long, uninterruptible set. 😉

ANYWAY, enough of my extended and funny-to-me-at-least analogy.

One of the things that I fear when writing for this blog is that I am going to promise to follow up on something and then forget all about it. For example, that I might create a challenge for myself or say that I am going to do something for the next month and then either forget all about doing it or forget that I said I would follow up.

Have I done this already on the blog?

More than likely.

Have I done it recently?

Maybe.

And that’s what this post is about!

Here are some updates on a few things I have mentioned in the past few months:

Fitness Journaling

When I last talked about reflective fitness journaling, I was finding it very useful. It was giving me a ‘container’ for thinking about the how and the why of my various exercises, providing me with a way to celebrate my successes, and allowing me to consider how to adjust things without judging myself for them.

I’m happy to report that I am still finding all of those positives in my fitness journaling practice.

I have moved to a digital journal instead of a paper one because it is easier for me to be consistent that way. I set a reminder for every Monday and when it goes off, I open my exercise journal document and dictate my thoughts on my exercise habits over the past week.

Once I have written this week’s entry, I reread last week’s and if anything has changed or if I want to add anything to the current entry or change any of my plans for the week ahead.

My 6 Week Fitness Plus Workout Plan

I started out strong with this plan and had a helpful epiphany about sore muscles but then I ran into a bit of a snag timewise and painwise and while I was able to reframe that snag into a reminder that I am trying to tell myself a story of consistent exercise not the story of a 6 week plan, I was finding it more and more difficult to get myself to do those exercises.

I actually had to coach myself out of this one.

Lots of my clients object when I try to get them to work on their projects little by little (something I struggle with myself) because it feels like there is ‘no point’ in doing 2 or 5 or 10 minutes work on a project that will take ages to complete.

That’s when I gently remind them (and me!) of two things 1) When you are struggling with a project, you start by creating the habit of working on it. The tasks related to the project itself get done as a side effect of creating that habit. 2) Doing any amount of work on a regular basis is way better than holding out for a perfect work session that you can never get around to.

I really enjoyed the 20 minute sessions I did but they were wreaking havoc with my schedule and with the side of my knee. I found myself avoiding them, putting them off to late in the day, or planning to do them ‘tomorrow’ – not an actual tomorrow, a mysterious, non-existent tomorrow.

So, I have gone back to doing 10 minute sessions for the foreseeable future and I’ve left the 6 Week Plan behind for now.

Meditation

Two weeks ago, I started another meditation experiment and I reported on some results last week but here’s another short update:

All is well.

Just kidding, I have more to say than that!

The latest news on the meditation front is that I seem to have shifted my thinking from meditation as something I *have* to do into considering meditation as something I *get* to do.

I have found myself looking forward to those few minutes of stillness and breathing.

That’s definitely a good sign.

Real Months vs Fictional Ones

Earlier this year, I decided to reduce the scope of my goal-setting and fitness planning. As a result, I determined that February was real but March might be fictional and then it turned out that March was real as well.

Somehow, I never made a decision about whether April was real but it does seem to have existed and now we’re into May.

Clearly May is real, or at least the first two days are, but I haven’t made a lot of plans for this month yet.

Sooooooo, be prepared for an encore from Christine and the Updates next week!

*The crowd goes wild*

Ok, the crowd rolls its eyes and Christine laughs maniacally because, like a computer update, she’s going to do her thing, no matter what.

She will also talk about herself in the third person which is kind of weird but she’s rolling with it.