Tag: self care

Go Team 2026: Pick A Time
ADHD · Go Team · habits · motivation · self care

Go Team 2026: Pick A Time

Christine HenneburyLeave a comment

Hey Team,

Following up on being kind to yourself and starting small, one of the kindest things I have ever done for myself is learn to pick a time for certain tasks that can actually be done at any point.

(For me ‘do it whenever’ might as well be called ‘never get around to this.’)

Imagine that I have a phone call to make. I’m not particularly anxious about making phone calls but a call is the kind of task that tends to loom in the back of my mind and get on my nerves until it is done.

Before I learned to schedule tasks like this, my brain would go in endless loops trying to decide on a ‘right’ time for the call. When would be best for my schedule? When would be best for theirs? Would it be better to do some writing first? Maybe I should wait until Wednesday because I will have more information by then?* Should I call now? How about now?

At some point though, I hit on the technique of choosing a (often arbitrary!) time to do the task “I’ll make that call at 2pm on Tuesday.”

This is hardly ever because it is important to do the task at that time.

The value in choosing a time is the fact that if I am ‘supposed to’ make the call at 2pm on Tuesday then I am NOT supposed to do it at any other time.

Scheduling that task lets my brain rest.

It gives me a place to put that task and keeps me from spending any energy on guilt or procrastination or avoidance.

And if something comes up and I can’t make that call on Tuesday at 2?

I don’t go back into the endless ‘when’ loop, I just reschedule it and carry on.

This is, of course, easier when you have a one-off task or you are doing something once or twice per week, but it also works for daily practices – as long as you are kind to yourself about days that go completely off the rails.**

So, Team, today I invite you to consider picking a specific time for your new habits or practices so you don’t waste any energy wondering if you should do them now, or now, or now, and so you don’t end up feeling bad if ‘whenever’ becomes ‘never.’

And here is your gold star to celebrate your efforts whether you are scheduling, planning, doing, or resting.

Your efforts matter and so do you!

Go Team Us!

*If I was actually going to need/have more info by Wednesday, this might be useful. Generally, however, I was looking for more (often unnecessary) information for no reason other than the fact that my ADHD brain didn’t want to do this slightly hassle-y task at the moment. And, of course, I was often seeking certainty in a situation that didn’t really require it. File all of this under things that used to plague me more than they do now.

**In fact, my post from this morning is about experimenting with picking times for my daily practices because I am trying to give my days a better rhythm and I would rather have a specific time set out for my practices than spend all day wondering about the right time to do them.

A photo of a back deck with snow and multicoloured lights at twilight Oh, Hey There, January!
ADHD · challenge · dogs · fitness · habits · health · motivation

Oh, Hey There, January!

Christine HenneburyLeave a comment

I’m really tempted to say that I’m going to do one thing for the first month, but we all know that’s not true.

Except that it kind of is.

My themes for the year are practice and process and I’ve picked ONE particular aspect to focus on in January.

My focus is going to be on experimenting*.

In particular, I’m experimenting with scheduling my fitness and well-being practices.

So even though I’ll be trying lots of things, they’re really all in-service of that one thing – finding a comfortable schedule that lets me include all of the things I want to do on a regular basis.

It’s a practice that fits in nicely with my usual Planuary approach.**

As I mentioned in a previous post, things went well in December.

I set out to feel more relaxed by Christmas than I did at the beginning of December and it worked out.

And I did my three relaxation practices, 12 times each, just as I had hoped I would.

I have found that evening is a good time for me to do yoga and morning is a good time for meditation, but I haven’t found the best time for journalling yet.

So that’s part of the January experiment.

I’ll keep you updated!

Speaking of updates:

Back in October, I started a walking challenge and I completed that on December 20. (My medal is in the mail!)

Last week, I signed up for a year-long challenge with the same company.

For these challenges, many people add their daily step count from their fitness tracker or that kind of thing***but I wanted to encourage myself to add more activity to my life on a regular basis so including my routine steps would be counterproductive.

Instead, I decided that I would only include extra activity that I deliberately chose to do- walks, dance videos, strength training – any activity that I did for the sake of moving. (FYI – the app converts many activities to an equivalent distance.)

And I enjoyed how my commitment to the challenge gave me extra motivation to seek out some exercise on a regular basis.

I’m following the same pattern with the current challenge – only adding deliberately chosen activities so I know that every kilometre was ‘travelled’ on purpose.

I’ll keep you in the loop on this, too.

A photo of a light-haired dog on a snowy street
Khalee approves of my walking challenge but she was very confused as to why I stopped to take her picture today instead of just continuing to walk. Image Description: My dog, Khalee, who is medium-sized and has short light-brown hair is standing on a snowy road that has one lane plowed. (It’s a suburban side street, we weren’t in danger!) she is standing looking to the left so we can see her entire left side, and her head is turned slightly towards us. She is wearing a light blue harness and a darker blue leash. The leash extends from her towards the lower part of the image on the right, where I am holding the leash in my right hand, but you can’t see that.

*Inspired in part by Tiny Experiments by Anne-Laure Le Cunff

**As I said in one of my December posts, I actually managed to do a little January planning in December this time. Will wonders never cease?

I mean, I still have other things I want to plan but I feel good about having the capacity to think about January while so was still in December. Christine 1: ADHD 0 (in that situation, at least!)

***Zero criticism intended here. That’s a totally valid way to approach these challenges, it just wouldn’t serve my purposes.

Small drawing of a gold star Go Team 2026: Start VERY Small
ADHD · fitness · Go Team · goals · motivation · self care

Go Team 2026: Start VERY Small

Christine Hennebury1 Comment

Hey Team!

While I have long been an advocate of starting small when in comes to new things, I often find it tricky to implement.

I mean, I understand the importance of having a low bar for success.

Intellectually, I know that I am placeholding the new habit while it grows.

In practice, though, I have had a lot of trouble with it.

I thought that it was because, left unsupervised, my brain defaulted to labelling the small task was ‘too small to count’ and hence not worth remembering.*

BUT!

I think that might only be part of the problem.

I think I might have been misjudging the size of the fitness tasks I have been taking on.

You see, I am pretty good at judging a small writing task or a small creative task to do on a regular basis and I suspect I was using similar criteria for choosing fitness tasks.

I mean, that doesn’t sound like a terrible approach but I didn’t look at the big picture. I was forgetting that I have a harder time starting a fitness task, that fitness tasks feel more like ‘interruptions’, that they are different from the rest of my day-to-day so I require more energy to switch from other tasks and start moving, and, speaking of energy, the energy cost to actually do them is going to be higher than the energy cost for writing or drawing tasks.

And that doesn’t include the fact that when I misjudge a “small” fitness task, I could end up needing more time to recover and not necessarily be able to keep to the plan I had hoped to follow.

Now, I’m not saying that all of that came to bear on every single small fitness task I have chosen in the past but all of those factors made regular occurrences. They happened often enough that my brain was getting more and more wary of ‘small’ tasks.

I started to figure all of this out in November when I tried a strength training program that I really liked. I wanted to be able to check ‘tried program’ off of my list so I told myself that I could reduce any one exercise to just a single rep and it would count.

I did all the first set of reps for my upper body exercises and all of the first set of reps for most of the lower body ones but then I came to lunges. I HATE lunges. I know they are important and helpful and whatnot but I still hate them. I was supposed to do a set of 12 but I did a set of 3. And I did the same for my second set.

It was suddenly quite clear that I could keep that part of the workout small until I was ready to expand it. I wouldn’t have to dread the whole workout because of that one part. I wasn’t going to require extra recovery time because that part of the workout was so hard for me. I could do what was right for me and not have to feel like I was doing the workout incorrectly.

(Yes, I know how ridiculous that sounds. There is such a difference between knowing something and KNOWING something, isn’t there? Brains are so weird!)

And since then, it has become clear to me that lots of my fitness-related “small” tasks weren’t actually all that small. In fact, they were way too big – either in duration, scope, energy-requirements, or in the mental space they were taking up – no matter what size they seemed on paper.

So, Team, today I would like to invite you to use my realization to save yourself some time and energy.

Please minimize your stress, downsize your frustration, and make it easier to move towards the life you want by making your tasks VERY small.

No. Smaller than that.

Smaller.

Ok, about that size.

In fact, when you are starting out, when you are just creating room in your life for the possibility of doing this thing, go for something incredibly small.

Something that would be ridiculously easy for you to include on your most difficult day.

You won’t stay at this stage forever but it is a great place to start.

And here is today’s gold star for your efforts.

Whether you are already working on your goals, refining your plans, just trying to get your mind around them, or you are figuring out how to make your small step even smaller, your efforts matter and I celebrate you and your hard work.

Go Team us!

PS – I have been following Ruthanne Reid‘s excellent advice on writing for a while now and while I give my coaching clients similar advice, I really love the way she phrases things and I admire the fact that she has been showing up daily for AGES with encouragement and reassurance. In fact, I wish I could team up with her to do more cool encouragement-related things. 🙂 In the link above she is talking about creating a ‘low bar’ for daily habits – you may want to check it out.

Small drawing of a gold star
A drawing of a metallic gold star that I filled with irregularly-sized rectangle shapes trimmed in black so it looks a bit like the star is made of gold bricks that are on a diagonal rising from left to right. The star is trimmed in black as well. The background of the drawing has small gold circles trimmed in black plus tiny black dots. The drawing is framed with black lines and black-trimmed gold circles in each corner. I have slightly smeared the black paint on two corners of the star because I was impatient and didn’t wait for it to dry.

*It’s only when I investigate why I couldn’t do the thing and that thought to the forefront that I realize what happened. Sigh. ADHD requires me to do an exhausting amount of thought-monitoring.

A drawn of a gold star Go Team 2026: Be Kind To Yourself (Again) (Always)
ADHD · fitness · Go Team · goals · habits · motivation · self care

Go Team 2026: Be Kind To Yourself (Again) (Always)

Christine HenneburyLeave a comment

Hey Team!

Since I need constant reminders to be kind to myself, I feel safe in assuming that other people need those reminders, too.

Here, I’ll say it big so we all get the message.

Please Be Kind To Yourself!

There’s a lot going on it the world. There’s a lot going on in your life. You probably have lots of stuff to do. You’re probably trying to adjust to normal life after the flurry of December, no matter what you celebrated (or didn’t celebrate) last month.

That’s a lot of stuff to be carrying and working on all at once.

And, if you are also trying to build a new habit, change an old habit, or trying to expand your life in any way, then that’s even more work for your poor brain.

The only way to proceed, the only way to make any change, the only way to adapt to new circumstances, is by being kind to yourself.

As you forge ahead towards the life you want, you are going to have easy days and challenging days.

Some tasks will be really hard.

Some things will feel impossible.

Sometimes things will be so easy you will wonder if you did them wrong.

All of that is part of the process of change.

In fact, it’s all part of the process of being a human.

If you are mean to yourself when things are hard (or if you dismiss your efforts when things go well), you won’t be making them any easier, you’ll just be making yourself feel worse about them.

However, if you remind yourself that these ups and downs are a normal part of being human, a normal part of change, if you decide to treat yourself with compassion, then you will actually be making the hard parts a bit easier.

If you celebrate your efforts – even if things felt easy, you still DID them – then you will be reminding yourself that even easy tasks matter.

And that self-compassion, that self-kindness, will help you see yourself as a person who keeps moving towards the life you want, tiny step by tiny step, instead of getting trapped in judging yourself for imperfection.

So, again, always, as a favour to me, please, please, please:

Be kind to yourself in your thinking, in your planning, and in your doing.

When you choose self-kindness, you aren’t ‘letting yourself off the hook’, you aren’t ‘lacking discipline’, you are creating the circumstances for your own ease, happiness, and success.

Being kind to yourself can be hard work sometimes* but it is totally worth it.

With that said, here’s your gold star for today!

No matter where you are in your thinking, planning, or doing, I hope you’ll accept this gold star in recognition of your efforts.

The scope and volume of our efforts will vary from task to task, day to day, and person to person, but they all count.

Even the effort to assess your capacity and then decide how to proceed is gold-star-worthy.

It takes work not to just react to the ambient pressure around you and that counts, just as all of your other efforts do.

Go you!

And…

Go Team Us!

A drawing of a gold star
A drawing of a gold star with rounded corners. The star is sprinkled with dots of darker gold and is trimmed with green. The background of the drawing is a somewhat irregular green grid with a gold dot in each square and the drawing is framed in green.

*Isn’t it kind of weird how *easy* it is to default to being mean to ourselves and how hard it can be to choose self-kindness? Yet, being mean to ourselves in the moment makes it harder for us to get where we want to go and being kind to ourselves will make things easier in the long term. Odd, right?

Go Team 2026: How do you want to feel?
ADHD · advice · fitness · Go Team · goals · habits · motivation · new year's resolutions · self care

Go Team 2026: How do you want to feel?

Christine HenneburyLeave a comment

Hey Team!

One of the things I love about Yoga With Adriene is how often she returns to the idea of ‘Find What Feels Good’ when it comes to a yoga practice.*

I think it is a great guideline for many practices but particularly for movement practices because so many fitness instructors and influences are all about what looks good or about burning calories or about crushing one thing or another.

I feel decidedly meh about all of those things but I feel GREAT about leaning into ways to feel good about the practices I am bringing into my life.

And I am hoping that as you work towards expanding your life in whichever ways you choose, your feelings will be a key factor in your decision-making process.

It is worth figuring out how to make your practices feel good to you.

In fact, “How do I want to feel?” can be one of the most important starting points in any project** because it gives you some criteria for choosing activities, timelines, conspirators, and actions.

Once you know how you want to feel, you can identify what actions to take, how and when to take them, and who to take them with.

And considering how you want to feel gives you a bit of extra motivation, an extra sense of why you are choosing to do what you are doing.

When it comes to fitness and wellness, your feelings aren’t just about feeling good, bad, excited, or whatever, they can also get specific to the practices you are considering.

You can ask yourself “How do I want my legs to feel?” or “What does strong feel like?” or “How does ‘feeling energetic’ show up in my body?” And then you can decide how to work towards those feelings/how to track them/how to motivate yourself in the search for them.

And, of course, my ADHD brain won’t let me get away without considering this possible hitch:

Sometimes, the thing that will feel good in the long term doesn’t feel good now.

For example, the feeling of having strong abs will be great in many ways but doing plank right now may not feel good at all.

In fact, the effort required may feel downright discouraging.

And I am not going to suggest that you put a lot of energy into convincing yourself that something you don’t enjoy feels good (but if that works for you, have at it!)

Instead, I am going to suggest that you find something that feels good about it – maybe you can focus on how good it feels to check that exercise off of your list, or how good it feels to see the number on your timer creep up, or, even, how good it feels to stop!

And you might spend a bit of time digging deep into your imagination to generate a sense of how it will feel to have strong abs, the things that will be easier for you to do, the way your body will respond to future challenges as a result. Perhaps knowing you are giving a gift to your future self will help your sacrifice feel good in the moment.

I have a lot more to say this topic but I don’t have a lot of time to say today so I am going to pause the discussion here and get to the gold star portion of our post:

Here are your three small gold stars for your efforts today. You can award them to yourself for three separate things or you can pile them all in for one thing.

I know you are working on things, whether you are at the thinking stage, the planning stage or the action stage.

And I know your capacity will vary from day to day.

Please celebrate whatever the you of today is able to do, no matter how small, because your effort counts and your work matters.

Be kind to yourself out there!

Go Team Us!

A drawing of three small gold stars
A drawing of three small gold stars hanging from strings at the top of the notebook. In the bottom right corner and the top left corner there are a series of curved black lines that alternate between being filled with a gold stripe and featuring a line of black dots. The background of the whole image features a bunch of small black dots.

*In fact, Find What Feels Good is the name of her app.

**In many other contexts – relationships, presentations, web design, displays, “How do I want them to feel?” can also be an important question but it is less relevant for your fitness and wellness, of course!

Nat’s fitness secrets to success in 2026
advice · Happy New Year! · new year's resolutions · Sat with Nat

Nat’s fitness secrets to success in 2026

natalieh (she/her)1 Comment

A new year often brings a sense of renewal. I’m not one to make resolutions in January. It is a good time to check in on goals and make adjustments. Steady as she goes!

I’m stacking the deck in my favour for a good 2026 by ensuring each day has movement in it. Daily dog walks, cycling commutes, strength and flexibility. I’m set up for success and have fully ditched “all or nothing” thinking.

Resilience

I’m bracing for bad stuff too. Experience has taught me along with all the great things comes a healthy dose of hard stuff, horrors even.

It’s the complicated gift of middle age, being pulled in many directions without falling apart.

Going through tough stuff has taught me I’m a good hugger. Olympic level hug giver right here. Happy to demonstrate at any moment.

I hold hands at hospital bedsides very well. I stay careful and kind now, even when I’m really upset.

I’m more resilient thanks to my fitness adventures.

So my wisdom to share on this year’s fitness goals is here for you if you need it.

It all counts

Watch didn’t record? Garmin dump your ride? It’s ok if it didn’t end up on Strava. Your body knows you did it. Data is only one measure. You were there. You did it. Go you!

Say it again, it all counts

Barely got to the workout? Had to wrap up early? Needed to lighten the resistance? Take a lighter weight?

AMAZING! You showed up for yourself and invested in your wellbeing. Well done!

You don’t have to like it

There will be days it sucks and you don’t enjoy the workout. You will always feel a sense of accomplishment regardless of how it went.

If a given activity is really chapping your ass switch it up. Ditch the weights and do a cardio dance class. Yoga pissing you off? Take up a martial art. You don’t always have to like it. Way to go!

Confidence comes from trusting yourself

You know when you are sick and need to rest.

You know when you need down time.

You know when you need help staying motivated.

You know who to go to for help.

You know a lot!

Trust yourself!

Plans rarely survive encounters with reality

The beautiful plan will fall apart. That’s ok because you knew it would happen and made flexibility part of the plan. Please, please, please break up with perfection.

My MVP (minimum viable plan) is 60 minutes of movement. Walking, cycling, stretching, dancing in my underwear. It’s adaptable.

Weather is sweet? I’m on my bike.

Back getting tight? Add another walk and do some yoga.

Bike out of commission? Grab some dumbbells.

You get the idea.

Messy is good

Challenge yourself to be a bit of a wreck. Not all moments are instagram moments.

Exploring the edges of your capacity is exciting and helps you grow. It’s not necessary every day but totally required to keep monotony at bay.

Team up to survive

It’s a fitness wasteland out here. Team up in person or virtually with workout partners. You will get more workouts in more often. Harness the power of positive peer pressure.

HAVE FUN

I’m serious. Play disc golf, beach volleyball, snorkel with manatees, whatever makes this year different than last year. Be silly and do stuff. That’s part of fitness too.

That’s it

Thank you for reading this far. I hope you gleaned some gems that you can keep for 2026.

Spoiler, this is the advice I need so I wrote it down. Hopefully I don’t forget!

LETS GO 2026!

Nat is cozy in winter clothes. Michel, forever photographed just behind her and off to the side is looking lovely. They are in front of a brick house with lots of snow on the ground.
A small drawing of a cartoonish gold star with a smiling face Go Team 2026: You Can Pick Something Fun
ADHD · Go Team · goals · habits · motivation · self care

Go Team 2026: You Can Pick Something Fun

Christine HenneburyLeave a comment

Hey Team!

Here we are in day two of 2026, and I have a reminder for you when it comes to new habits, resolutions, and activities:

YOU CAN PICK SOMETHING FUN.

I know, I know! We get so many messages this time of year about crushing our goals, and about dedication and determination, and about how hard we must work to be better, better, better.

And to that, I say, “Meh.”

If that kind of approach inspires you, then please forge ahead.

BUT

If that kind of talk makes you feel kind of tired and worn out before you even start, then please remember that your new year doesn’t have to be filled with that stuff.

You can choose a fun path that will lead you where you want to go.*

That might mean picking fun or whimsical activities or it might mean being fun and whimsical while doing a more straightforward activity.

If you wanted a fun or whimsical fitness goal, you could try a new dance video every week or you could challenge yourself to find specific items on your walks (kind of like a scavenger hunt.)

If you want to get stronger instead of lifting weights, you could pick items around your house that you’re going to practice lifting.

If you want/have to do ordinary activities and you can’t find a fun version, you can choose fun outfits or accessories, specific music or podcasts, or ask someone fun to keep you company while you get things done.

The main message here is that trying new things, taking on new habits, adding to your fitness or your wellness levels, does not have to be a slog.

I just want you to be kind to yourself, to be good to yourself, and to be able to expand your life in ways that will be satisfying for you, without feeling like the whole thing is a punishment.

Expanding your life may take effort, it may take focus, but it doesn’t have to be awful.

The days of “no pain, no gain” are long behind us.

When it comes to any fitness or wellness goal you might have this year, there is probably a fun way for you to achieve it, or, at the very least a way, to have more fun in the process.**

REMEMBER: Just because something is fun doesn’t mean it’s not working.

So, Team, please be kind to yourselves out there and try to make things a little more fun when you can.

Go Team Us!

Here’s a happy gold star for your efforts today:

A small drawing of a cartoonish gold star with a smiling face

PS – I have been seeing a lot of people using punch cards and bingo cards to keep track of their plans and resolutions this year and that seems like a pretty easy way to add some fun to the process. If drawing isn’t your thing, you could type your plans into blocks in a table/spreadsheet or you could use a site like this one.

*For example, a few years ago, one friend of mine decided to spend the year trying different types of tea and another friend resolved to add more colour to her wardrobe. Now, those aren’t fitness goals, but I could argue that they are wellness goals. And pursuing those goals definitely added more fun to my friends’ lives.

**I get that not every part of every thing can be fun, some tasks and activities just have to be endured, but we don’t have to use that as an organizing principle for every goal.

A drawing of a metallic gold star Go Team 2026: Three Things
ADHD · advice · Go Team · habits · motivation · self care

Go Team 2026: Three Things

Christine Hennebury2 Comments

Hey Team,

Welcome to 2026! Look at you, rocking this new year already!

As you probably know, every January I post daily encouragement posts to help all of us (including me!) find our footing in the new year.

These posts aren’t just cheering you on (but I do a fair bit of that!), they are intended as gentle reminders that it is ok to find things challenging and that doing things in your own time and your own speed is a great way to approach new ideas.

And to get us started, here are three important ideas that will be woven through this month of posts:

1) You’re good. Just as you are. You don’t need to be fixed.

I get really squicked out by the whole ‘New Year. New You!’ and ‘Improve Yourself!’ and ‘Become A New Person’ vibe that permeates this time of year.

I know that most people probably don’t take it as literally as I do (Neurodivergent? Me? Whatever do you mean?) but, to me, it feels like those messages are telling people that they aren’t enough, that there is something wrong with them, that they need to be ‘better.’

I don’t love that for us.

So, instead, I would like you to know that you are GREAT as you are.

Sure, there are things in your life, in your approach, or in your day-to-day that are frustrating, tiring, or unsatisfying, and you may want to shift those things to make your life smoother, more fun, or more interesting but those things aren’t YOU.

There is NOTHING wrong with YOU.

You can expand your life and your routines and your capacity in any way you choose.

If those expansions help you feel good or help you feel more satisfied, forge ahead.

But please, please, please, don’t feel that you NEED to do these things to be good enough.

You are already good enough. You are, in fact, great and anything else you do is just adding to your magnificence.*

2) The daily gold stars are for everyone. You have nothing to prove.

You can approach the new year in whatever way works for you and I will award you gold stars for your efforts.

(Yes, I know that many people only expect gold stars for results but my ADHD and I do not approve of that. We have little or no control over our results, and results take a long time. Our efforts though? We have control over those and they are happening right now. So I like to award gold stars for our efforts – big and small – so we can feel encouraged to keep moving towards the things we want for ourselves.)

If you find the ‘clean slate’ feeling encouraging and helpful, then go right ahead with your goals and plans and activities. Gold stars for you!

If you find all of that a bit overwhelming and you want to move slowly into the new year, the meander along at your own pace. Gold stars for you!

If you are just carrying on with what already works? Gold stars for you!

If you are waiting to figure things out? Gold stars for you!

Gold stars are for effort of any size or shape.

Even the teeniest effort counts AND your effort doesn’t have to look like anyone else’s.

3) You don’t have to have everything figured out to get started.

I know, some people have their plans for the year all set out and they are ready to dive right in on their schedule right away.

Others have just a vague idea of some things they might want to do this year but the details are sketchy at best. **

And many of us fall somewhere in between those two.

But here’s the thing, you can move towards the future you want either way.

If you have a plan, do the next step in your plan.

If you are just working from a vague idea, then you can do anything and it will help you wrap your mind around your goal.

For example, if you want to get stronger but you don’t know exactly what that means for you yet, then do one leg lift or one arm circle. Sure, it won’t make you instantly stronger but it is a step in that direction and it gives you a little bit of momentum.

Or if you want to have a meditation practice, you can take one long, slow, breath and focus carefully while you do. It won’t give you instant inner peace but it’s not going to do you any harm and it will probably feel pretty good. And, again, you’ll have done SOMETHING that moves you closer to where you want to go.

And really, even the most detailed plan is just doing the same thing – it’s ok to figure things out day by day.

So, Team, there are three key elements to get you started and here is your first gold star.

Please remember that you get a gold star for your efforts no matter what those efforts look like today.

You may have jumped out of bed for a workout, you may have decided to spend a little extra time breathing slowly over your tea this morning, or you may do anything in between or beyond – any of those efforts are about taking good care of yourself and they earn you this gold star.

Go Team Us!

Please be kind to yourself out there.

A drawing of a metallic gold star

*For any readers (like me) who have to immediately react to comments like this with a “You don’t know who is reading this! They may not be great!” or with a bunch of thoughts about why this doesn’t apply to them, consider these two things

1) Great doesn’t mean perfect. When I say that my readers are great, I mean that they have lots of great things about them and that they are fundamentally good people doing the best they can with the resources they have. I firmly believe that most people are pretty damn great but they just don’t realize it.

2)If you think that my comment about *YOU* being great doesn’t really apply then maybe you can consider the possibility that it *might* apply instead of trying to tell yourself that it is a fact. Maybe approach it like this: “What if Christine was right and I am doing better than I realize? How would I do things differently if that was the case?”

** This is where my ‘Planuary’ approach to the year can come in handy.

a drawing of the number 31 Making Space 2025: Day 31
fitness · holiday fitness · mindfulness · self care

Making Space 2025: Day 31

Christine HenneburyLeave a comment

Hey Everyone,

Thanks for hanging out with me for the Making Space 2025 posts.

Over the last few years, writing these posts has helped my December days to feel more spacious. The process of planning and writing not only gives me a fixed point to work around but it also gives me a feeling of having gotten something tangible done day after day, no matter how hectic the rest of the day might feel.

And, of course, I love the idea that my posts might be helping someone else – even if it is just that seeing the title serves as a reminder to give yourself a little kindness and grace on a given day.

I chose December for these daily posts because the ambient stress of holidays and the end of the year tends to make our time feel tight and crowded but those feelings can show up at any time of year.

On this last day of Making Space 2025, I’m inviting you to make a short list of things that have helped (or could help!) you to create some space so you can refer to it when you are feeling jammed into the corners of your own life.

You could keep the list on your phone, in a notebook, on your computer, or stuck to the fridge – the key is to keep it handy when you need it.

You might even make a recurring event on your calendar each month so you can check in with yourself from time to time to make sure you are making space for yourself on the regular.

But whether you make that list, whether you try my suggested activities for today, or whether you do something else entirely, I wish you ease, fun, rest, and joy as we move into 2026.

See you tomorrow for the first Go Team post for 2026.

Here’s our final movement practice suggestion for 2025. I decided to go with a video that mixed a lot of things together – you can do as little or as much of it as you wish.

In the still image for this Get Moving! All-In-One Workout from Yes2Next, the left side of the image is purple with white text overlaid. The text reads “20 Minutes Balance, Cardio, Strength” with the last three words in bullet points and then says “All-In-One Workout.” On the right side of the image we see two women, one middle aged and one senior, in exercise clothes. They are both lifting their right arm in the air and balancing on their right leg while lifting their left foot off of the floor.

Also, I found this video of Simple Movements to Calm Your Nervous System from Heart and Bones Yoga yesterday and I thought I’d share it in case it can help you to create some space for yourself.

In the still image for this video, the instructor, a light-skinned woman with shoulder length wavy blonde hair, who is wearing leggings and a sweatshirt, is standing on a blue yoga mat on a wooden floor. She has one hand on her belly and the the other on her upper chest, and she looks like she is breathing in, calmly. There is a purple stripe across the screen that has white text overlaid on it and the text reads “Your nervous system likes this.” On either side of the mat are various plants in pots and in wicker baskets and there is a multi-coloured bolster cushion propped up against the wall behind her on her left.

And here is our final mindfulness practice suggestion for 2025:

The still image for this ‘A Sense of Spaciousness Guided Contemplation/Meditation’ video from Stream Yoga Meditation shows us a view of the sky from the perspective of someone looking up from below, perhaps through sunglasses. The sky is a deep blue, there are ragged clouds on the bottom left, and a bright splash of sun with long rays extending in each direction is near the middle of the image.

Making Space 2025: Day 30
fitness · holiday fitness · mindfulness · self care

Making Space 2025: Day 30

Christine HenneburyLeave a comment

Hey Everyone,

Today, I met one friend for tea in the morning and as this post goes live, I’ll be meeting another friend for a writing hangout in the afternoon and somehow my day feels marvelously spacious.

That doesn’t quite add up, does it?

On paper, adding two separate events to my schedule at two different locations, with enough time between them that I’ll be going home and heading out again, seems like it should make time feel tight, it should make me feel busier.

But, of course, because both of those events are FUN and because time spent with each of those friends is relaxing and restorative.

So even though I am adding things to my day, it doesn’t feel like more to do.

Instead, it feels like I am creating two pockets of time where I can step out of my schedule and my to-do list and spend time doing something easy and fun.

And I’m wondering if you can choose to do something similar today or tomorrow (or sometime soon.)

It doesn’t have to involve meeting friends (although I highly recommend that if your schedule and commitments will allow), it could be drawing or dancing or reading or taking a walk or cooking something new, or literally anything that lets you choose yourself and your own interests instead of just staying focused on checking off more tasks.*

Taking that time for yourself and your own interests may mean that that you will have to choose not to do some of the tasks on your big list but that could be for the best, really.

You deserve to take up space in your own life and it is unlikely that someone is going to come along and point out the best time for you to take that space – I think you are going to have to decide to just take it.

Choosing to spend time doing something you enjoy – even if it takes a bit of energy to orchestrate – will be totally worth it.

Whether you find a way to step out of your schedule, you try one of the practices below, or you find some other shenanigans to get up to, I wish you ease and I wish you space.

Be kind to yourself, pretty please!

Here’s our movement practice for today:

In the still image for this ‘5 Minute Morning Stretch: Wake Up Your Body’ video fromYoga with Joelle, the instructor, a woman with light skin and long dark hair in leggings and a tank top, is standing in the center of the image facing to the left so we can only see her right side. She has her upper arms raised to shoulder height and her forearms at a 90 degree angle so her hands are towards to the ceiling. She is leaning back a little and her arms are slightly behind her. The floors are wooden and the wall at the back is aqua. Text on the left reads ‘Wake Up Your Body’ and text on the bottom right reads ‘5 Minute Stretch.’

And here’s our mindfulness practice for the day:

In the left side of the still image for Guided Meditation: 7 Minutes of Stillness in Yellowstone, with Dora from Headspace, the instructor, a person with long dark hair and brown skin wearing a winter hat, jacket, and scarf, is leaning against a tree. On the right side is white text that reads “Riverside Meditation at Yellowstone” with a background of trees that have been slightly blurred.

*There’s a time and a place for checking off tasks, of course, but if that’s your whole approach to life it is gonna get old real fast.