Man it feels like hump day–like this 30-day experiment has been going on for a long time!  The lesson here is that even health professionals get tired of wellness at times.  Sometimes we just wish that life was easier.  Better.  And that we could eat anything we want.  And eat as much as we want.  And lay on the couch and watch movies.  We think about this fantasy life where we don’t need to cut the grass, pay bills, and make dinner after a long day of work.

But then the next day comes and we feel invigorated again and ready to get back to the program.  At least that’s what we do if we don’t sink into guilt and self-abuse over being tired and moody occasionally.  The longer we stay in a place of guilt and negative self-talk, the harder it is to get back to a healthy, happy lifestyle.  I know because I’ve experimented with that too :)  So don’t let yourself slip too far down the pity path.  Give yourself a mini vacation from your goals and responsibilities, and get back at your healthy living plan as soon as you possibly can–hopefully the very next day.

If we accept our moodiness as a part of life–the ebbs and flows–then it’s no big deal when a day feels a little hard.  Because we know that the ebb will be finished soon and the flow is on its way. 

As for myself, I’ve done my little to-do list of tasks today and now am going to spend the rest of the evening reading my new book:  The Mars & Venus Diet & Exercise Solution:  Create the Brain Chemistry of Health, Happiness, and Lasting Romance.  (I’d buy it used!)

What do you do to get past hump day?

Mom is chipper - we think it’s because she’s not seeing the seriousness of hers and dad’s situation.  But as my sister and I discussed today, we really should be grateful.  What’s wrong with being cheerful and not seeing how bad (or potentially bad) everything is?  Is it really denial or is it refusal to give in to what appears to be true.  I’m sure you’ve learned as I have that things that appear to be true often aren’t true.  That’s a valuable lesson.

So today I’m grateful that my parents are positive about their lives.  I shudder to imagine if they were perpetually grousing about their aches and pains, fears about the unknown, and dread of facing another day.  In fact, now that I think about their perspective on life, I’m down right chipper! 

Is there anything you wish were different about your parents?  Imagine what they get that’s positive about being who they are.  Share your comments at the comment link below. 

Some people are really good at self-care and some people are not.  I’m about a A-/B+.  It’s my life’s work.

If you’re not familiar with the term, self-care is about how well you take care of yourself (and your family). 

Here are several elements of self-care:

• Getting enough sleep.
• Eating health enhancing foods.
• Getting enough exercise.
• Doing preventative self-checks.
• Getting age-appropriate preventive screening tests.
• Visiting a health care professional when you can’t solve a health problem on your own–when it’s too serious for self-care.
• Having positive self-talk.
• Minimizing or eliminating smoking and excessive drinking or other drug use.
• Taking care of your body and relaxing with a massage, pedicure, hot bath, etc.
• Taking time out just for you, just because.
• Balancing time alone and time with others.
• Balancing work and play.
• Having a positive self-image (or working towards it).
• Telling the truth (to yourself and to others).
• Acknowledging your innate gifts and talents.
• Being grateful for all that you are, all that you give, and all that you receive.
• Feeding your spirit.

How would you rate your self-care?  Tell us at the comment link below.

Heading into the weekend I had a long list of to-dos many of which had been on my list awhile.  For me that’s a recipe to drag my feet.  Have you noticed that the longer things are on a list, the longer they stay on the list–unless you call upon your inner grit.

The best way for me to tackle a list of things I don’t want to do is to call a friend and do a “work day.” 

How a Work Day Works

Two or more people call at a specified time and say what they’ll work on during the next hour (or two if that’s the agreed time).  Knowing they’ll be calling their buddy in two hours gets the “get ‘er done” juices flowing.  You scramble around getting the things done that you said you were going to get done (or you do a completely different set of things!) and call your friend at the specified time to report on your progress. 

Sometimes I’m totally kickin’ it and sometimes I’m draggin’ it.  This weekend I was draggin’ it–partly because it’s hot in Kansas and that can be a de-motivator for me.

When I called my friend, she was all giddy with success.  She had buzzed through her long list of tasks and was continuing to work while we talked.   I wanted some of that pep!  Before the feeling passed, I quick hung up and got to work. 

I started buzzing too–that’s what happens when you decide to do what needs to be done.  It’s never as bad as it seems like it will be. Turns out I had a pretty successful work day, but I wasn’t satisfied because I hadn’t done any of the hot, icky, outside work and it needed to be done.

When I went to bed that evening I made a quick list of things to do on Sunday and went to sleep.  Making that list inspired me because when I got up I started right in on it hoping to beat the heat.  The high today was 103. 

Normally on Sunday morning I sleep in, get up and drink a couple of cups of coffee and slowly ease into the day.  But not today.  I had a list and a desire.  And some discipline.

A few things on the list didn’t get done because in the afternoon I took a hankering to visit the Lawrence Humane Society and look for a dog.  Then I drove to the Topeka Humane Society to continue the search.  I haven’t found one yet but I know I will.  Patience and timing.

Discipline and play work well together.

I love Brian Tracy.  I began listening to his audio tapes a couple of weeks ago while driving and I find myself backing up the CD repeatedly to catch again one of his many inspiring suggestions.  The series I’m listening to now is The Psychology of Achievement.  Even though it was published in 1984, it’s packed with wisdom. He is one of the best self-help authors I’ve read.  

Tonight I did a search of all things Brian Tracy and was not surprised to hit a gold mine of results.  Thought you might enjoy the fruits of my search:

Brian Tracy’s Web site

Brian Tracy–Article about Discipline

Brian Tracy videos on Youtube.com (tons to choose from)

Brian Tracy’s books at Amazon.com (new and used)

What I like about Brian Tracy’s stuff:

• he starts with the foundation
• he builds from the foundation
• he provides interesting examples
• he’s clear and he makes sense
• he gives homework
• he inspires action
• he gives you hope
• he speaks great wisdom about how to love people–especially your children

Anybody out there familiar with him? 

Yay Cheryl!  Don’t you agree it’s time for me to congratulate myself for being disciplined and writing in my blog for 17 days straight!  Yay me.

An important part of reaching any goal is to acknowledge your successes.  Success breeds success.  You may not have to announce your successes publicly like this in a blog, but acknowledge them to yourself and take time to congratulate yourself.  Yay you!

And then do something fun as a reward.  My favorite fun thing after a long day or week of successes is to watch a movie.  And Ben Stiller is calling my name! 

Resistance - who doesn’t experience it now and then.  Some people are chronic resisters. 

How do we deal with resistance to achieving something we really want?  I do it by being nonjudgmental with myself about it (when possible).  I also work with my goal to make it feel more compelling than my resistance.  I believe that we keep doing what we’ve been doing until something more compelling comes along. 

How can you make your goal more compelling?

• You can look underneath your goal to see what it is that you truly want.  When I say I want to do strength training, what’s underneath that…..why do I want that?  I want to be strong.  Why do I want that?  So that I can easily lift my groceries and do daily activities.  Why do I want that?  I want to be able to live independently and take care of myself.  I can keep going with this line of questioning until I go “bingo” that’s what I want!
• You can discuss your goal with supportive people like I have in this 30-day series and get their inspiration and input.
• You can visualize your life 1 year from now having achieved the goal and then imagine not having achieved the goal.  Eeew.
• You can continue to work with the goal, tweaking and refining it every day.  It very well may morph into a greater, more inspiring goal.  My strength training goal might morph into strength building for my body, mind, and spirit. 

If you have an illusive goal and would like support achieving it, I may know someone who can help you.  Susan Johnstone, a colleague of mine, specializes in helping people work through their resistance to achieving something they really want.  She’s got a coaching special going on now through the end of July–15 minutes of laser coaching for $15.  It might be worth that much to find out what’s been stopping you!  If you’re interested, you can contact Susan for more information.

I’m discovering that setting and tracking goals is really helpful.  And I’m loving using Joe’s Goals (topic of my post yesterday).

As you may know I’ve been struggling with the goal of going to the gym.  I confessed my challenges with it on Day 8.  Several of you have given me interesting things to try. 

What I don’t like about going to the gym is a longer list than what I do like about going to the gym (the results I will get).  The only reason I “want” to go is  that I think it will be an environment for me to lift weights–something I do not enjoy but know will be fabulous for me.  So it’s still a “should” in my mind today.  How to work past this is my experiment right now.  I like experimenting–way more fun that “shoulding” on myself. 

Someone commented/noticed that I hadn’t made any checks on going to the gym in my Joe’s Goals chart posted yesterday so I thought, hey I know I’m making progress on that goal, why not change my goal from “going to the gym” to “making progress on going to the gym.”  That way I can continue to support my progress and feel good about it.  I don’t think goals motivate us if they don’t feel good.  When I changed the wording of my goal to focus on the progress, I felt really good about that goal.  Now I’m eager to track my progress on that new progress-oriented goal, and I’m eager to make a check mark tomorrow on the next stage of my progress (marking my workout days in my calendar).

Progress so far:  I went online and printed the schedule of classes and gym hours.  I read the bios of the personal trainers to see which one I might like to work with and I put the printout in my planner. 

Next steps:   schedule weekly gym visits in my planner, call and schedule a session with a personal trainer, check whether the gym bag I have in my car is still loaded with the things I need to be in it.

I made one more mind shift today about weight training, but I’ll tell you about that tomorrow. 

Success is amped and ramped up when we set goals.  Yesterday several of us had the courage to set some public goals.  Today I want to share a very cool tool with you that will help you track your success with achieving your goal.  A subscriber shared this site with me the other day.

It’s called www.joesgoals.com.  It’s an amazing little program that doesn’t require a software download…so you don’t need to get permission from IT to use it at work.  You can set yourself up in a matter of seconds.  You can use this tool to set personal or professionals goals.  And it’s FREE - one of our favorite words!

Here’s a description of Joe’s Goals from the web site.

What is Joe’s Goals?
Joe’s Goals is a simple yet powerful tool to make tracking your goals the easiest part of accomplishing them. Use the simple single page interface to setup daily goals and track them with just a click. Watch your daily score to gage your success and use negative goals (or vices) to confront and overcome bad habits that finally need to get the boot. Share your success with your friends and family or post your personal score badge to your blog or MySpace page. Add as many Goals as you want and update them all from a single interface.

Here’s a screen shot of my goals page:

You can add journal entries for each day too–see the bottom line?  I called my journal “Healthy, Happy Living.”  Neato!  Try it. 

Tracking our goals takes our commitment (and discipline) to the next level.  Ready to do that? 

Click on the blue box below to see my goals.  You can root around and see how this tool works!  How’s THAT for public goals! 

OK now it’s time to get serious.  I’ve been enjoying playing with my idea of discipline, now I’m ready to choose several things to be disciplined about and track my progress on for the remainder of this 30-day experiment.  Here’s my “for sure” list:

• Go to the gym - at least 2 times a week
• Clean house before the weekend - so I can be free to do other things
• Complete tax project by the end of the month
• File papers by the end of the month
• Continue with my “no complaints” challenge–BTW I’m doing well with this!  Yay Cheryl.

I think that’s enough

What’s your short list?