My Journey to Me-Dom

Organization…  What is it about getting organized that makes it a never ending process?  I mean, doesn’t the idea of being organized inherently mean that you have some type of routine in place?  So why is it that as soon as a routine is set something comes along to change it?  Is it having too many interests?  Is it part of adapting to life’s failures?  Are we overly scheduled and stimulated to the point that we can’t settle into any sort of normalcy?  Are we too lazy to maintain the routines we set for ourselves?  Are the routines too extensive to begin with?  Are routines too boring for some of us to have as a way of life?  It is something I have been thinking about lately.

I have read more than a few times in the past that people that maintain a daily routine tend to live the longest.  Apparently being married helps as well, but the idea is that psychologically speaking, always having something you need to do even if it just checking the mail drives a person to continue living (just as having someone to live for does.)  It’s why many times you hear of someone retiring from years of work and not knowing what to do with themselves and then passing away soon after.  It is the process of always needing to move onto the next task and being focused on the future that supposedly keeps them kicking long after the body would have normally given up.  It is also why many psychologists will tell you not to live a sedentary lifestyle and to always challenge the mind with puzzles even if you can’t get around much.

I once knew a man who had been married at a young age to his wife and they were married for over 70 years.  (After their 69^th wedding anniversary I lost count.)  He lived what I imagined to be a very VERY boring life, but he lived it for a very Very VERY long time.  If you drove past his house at a specific time every morning he would be out walking his property picking up small pieces of trash from the grass.  I imagined he did that after eating the same breakfast he ate every day before and reading the paper with coffee and would be done in time to eat the same lunch he ate every day before.  His wife prior to that 69^th wedding anniversary had suffered from some severe health problems and required his care and personal maintenance which I’m sure at one point was a change to his routine, but I imagined helping her with the normal care we all take for granted like bathing just worked itself into his routine and changing her clothes was no different than changing his own on the list of tasks that he moved through every day.  Eventually though her health required more extensive care and she had to be moved into a nursing home.  That was a big adjustment for him I’m sure.  The person you have spent 70+ years with no longer being right in the midst of your normal routine has to be as strange as finding your way through a maze blindfolded, but he adjusted as well as anyone could and went on with his normal routine alone for quite some time.  Eventually though a fall from a ladder caused an injury that had to be cared for and the healing process required that he give up his independence and that was the start of what would eventually lead to his death.  This was a man who needed his routine.  He needed to have something to be responsible for.  It was part of his pride and what to him defined him as a man.  Once he was laid up in a bed with nothing that required his supervision it was as if he couldn’t come up with a reason why he was living and with no reason to live he just stopped doing it.  He could survive the loneliness, he could survive the fall, but the loss of the pride driving his daily routine proved to be too much.  He needed to have something that had to be done to drive him to keep breathing.

So I wonder… in a world where chaotic schedules and exhaustion are in a head to head competition with lethargy and electronics how do we find that routine that keeps us kicking well into our 90s and beyond?  How do we unlearn multitasking and relearn a long and focused attention span?  How do we make the mundane important and satisfying in our world?  I don’t have the answers, but for now I’m taking a lesson from one of the oldest people I’ve ever known and am trying to find a routine.  I may fail at it over and overagain, but trying is a part of my journey.  This is my journey to me-dom.

My Journey to Me-Dom

The holidays are over and it is that time… time for cold weather, time for dull days without holiday cheer, time for that long stretch before bright spring colors can be moved to the front of the closet.  It is time for the winter blues.  This time of year I always get a little SAD.  By sad I mean Seasonal Affective Disorder.  It actually sets in at the end of summer when the weather starts to turn and eventually the days get so short that if you work a day job you might not get to see daylight for a few weeks, but the holidays keep me distracted until this very time when I often just can’t ignore it anymore.  I’m not the only one.

The holidays can be a difficult time for many.  The death tolls always rise during this time.  Suicides go up as people realize they can’t provide the gifts to their children that they know will be on their letters to the North Pole or as their loneliness rears its ugly head.  Grief during this time of year also tends to take a few lives as older widows and widowers come upon their first Christmas without their life mate.  After the holidays are over you have those folks that pass from heart attacks while shoveling their driveway and the accidental slips and falls on the ice and let’s not forget the dreaded flu that gets the best of some of our at risk population.  Then there is the realization that winter is just getting started and there are long months ahead of us filled with cold dreary days even though the days are getting longer again.

The holidays are my saving grace.  I’m a warm weather girl at heart, but I can ignore the cold while I have the holiday spirit carrying me along.  You see, I love Christmas.  I love it more than any other day of the year.  I love it more than any other celebrations in life.  I plan for it all year long and start getting REALLY excited for it usually around July when it becomes closer rather than farther away.  The problem is that as an adult there just isn’t enough time in a day to really get my fill of the season.  As a kid I can remember what seemed like weeks on end of holiday decorations and you would have sworn that practicing for the Christmas performance in school must have started in September because by the time Christmas Day arrived you were so ready for it and immersed in the holiday spirit that you would have sworn it was never going to get here.  As an adult time goes by so fast that it seems like it is all over before it even really gets started.  I look forward to this one day each year so much that sometimes it seems like it never even happened at all it goes by so quickly.  I am the poster child for the joy of giving and even though some years you can feel the crotchety procrastinators’ annoyance and the crime rates go up I still feel like most people are nicer during this time of year than during any other time of the year.  I always wish I could feel the Christmas Spirit all throughout the year.  And then on December 26^th it all comes to a screeching halt.  The Christmas radio station that has been playing since before Thanksgiving goes back to its normal easy listening playlist.  They don’t even consider weaning us off the holiday music in a polite and reasonable fashion.  At midnight it’s just done.  The claymation and animation holiday specials disappear and overnight television programming turns into bad made for TV movies and reruns of shows that nobody even watched the first time.  It isn’t even reruns of the good shows that are all on winter hiatus!  People yank down their holiday decorations that took them weeks to get up before lunch is even served, and stores suddenly are stocked with Valentine’s Day candy and St. Patrick’s Day beaded necklaces as if Christmas never even really happened at all.  It is on December 26^th that I suddenly feel like the wind has just been kicked out of me.  I’d rather go cold turkey off of opiates. 

This year though I feel more thankful than past years.  The past few years have been riddled with holiday time deaths in my family.  This year though was different and through my cold weather blues I still feel thankful and grateful that this year we made it.  I feel blessed and seem to be acutely aware of the difference between this year and the last few years.  Is it partly due to the grief I felt for those families that were facing Christmas this year with the shock and grief over the murder of their small children just a few short days before?  Maybe, but the past few years I have known what it feels like once you reach that age when deaths and funerals start to become a regular event, so I think this year I can just feel the difference when you have made it through the peak risk period without any and I’m grateful.  This year I’m blessed and I know it.  So while you face the blues and blahs and cold know your blessings.  Your blessings might look different than mine, but the fact remains that you too are blessed and if just for a moment right now in this breath revel in it.  

My Journey To Me-dom

There is so much to talk about and yet I still don’t know quite where to start.  I haven’t made my regular Tuesday post in weeks and life has changed so much in that time that I don’t know how to catch up other than to start at the beginning.

A few weeks ago I sat down to begin writing what was supposed to be the post that we shall now refer to as the “first post gone missing” and it began something like this, “I have been sitting here thinking and thinking and thinking about what to write...” and it never really went any farther than that.  I just could not come up with a challenge for myself or inspiration or even a single idea to get my creative juices flowing whether it would have even ultimately been the idea that I went with or not.  I’ve always been a much better writer when it is off the cuff and when the inspiration just hits.  I was never one who could easily come up with a story when forced even dating back to those stories you used to have to write in elementary school for reading and spelling lessons.  It isn’t that I’m not creative because I am, and it isn’t that I couldn’t pull it off because I always did.  It is simply that writing for me has always been a chore unless the inspiration was just already there.  That is where I found myself a few weeks ago.  I was up against that uninspired, unnatural wall that a writer like myself hits sometimes where I just had to decide “do I just write something because I feel like I have to or is it ok if I only write when I feel inspired and it comes naturally?”    Unfortunately, there is no simple answer to that question.  Technically there is no one paying me to write a weekly column that I owe anything to and since my Tuesday posts are about my real life it would be easy to say that they are about me, for me, and that unless someone has hired me to write them I really should only do them when I feel inspired to do them.  On the other hand, I do have a few subscribers that have given me the courtesy of subscribing to my blog, (and I do not take that lightly.  I appreciate each and every one of them even though the number is a very small one.) and there is something to be said for pushing yourself to be consistent.  The question that leaves me with is if I feel responsible for posting whether I feel inspired to or not can I live with myself knowing that there ultimately would have to be times when I feel like I haven’t given you my best work just in the simple fact that I posted because I had to rather than because I felt inspired to.

The following week I still didn’t post.  Leading up to what we shall now call the “second post gone missing” I knew my topic was going to be about reliability.  I already knew the topic and had words flowing through my head and still didn’t post.  It was a combination of life becoming hectic (the holidays are upon us and I had just learned I was a finalist in a national competition and had work to do regarding it that would turn out to be time consuming and at times a bit overwhelming) and of me knowing that once I challenged myself with the task of reliability I then would have committed myself to the responsibility of posting whether I felt good about it or not, whether I felt it was writing worth making public or not.  I found myself hung up on the question of am I a good enough writer to pull that off?  Is my journey something other people can even relate to?  If I publish challenges because I feel like I should versus feeling inspired to would that make me even less relatable?  Before I knew it Tuesday was over and another week had passed with no post.

I have obviously spent many hours thinking about this and pondering “should I finish the sentence I started a few weeks ago and begin with the concept of me thinking and thinking and thinking about what to write? Or should I just start fresh?”  I wasn’t sure what I was going to do for this week and then something happened.  On Friday December 14, 2012 20 children (and a few undeserving adults) were slaughtered by a young man with hatred in his heart and our lives were changed yet again for the worse.   It was then that I knew what I needed to share.  This week I need to talk about empathy.

For years I have been asking myself “What in the heck is wrong with the world today?  Where are all of these crazy people coming from?  How has everything in life gotten so complicated?  Why in the world can no one be trusted these days?”  On Friday December 14, 2012 I was finally able to answer my own questions.  The reason the world is on a downward spiral is the basic lack of empathy in generations today, mine included.  We spend our time trying to act the toughest, the smartest, the richest, the baddest, the prettiest, the most successful.  We have taught all the lessons about how to get ahead and stay ahead, how to win, how to desensitize, how to get the most chicks, how to keep a small core of quality people around you and forget about everyone else, how to be disposable human beings, how to take advantage, focus on money, get the biggest things, to not trust or be trustworthy because being vulnerable makes you weak, and that boys still don’t cry.  When did we teach empathy?  When did we teach to feel each other’s pain?  When did we teach how to understand what the walk in another person’s shoes is like?  When did we teach how to identify yourself in another human being?

The difference between a “crazy” person and a “normal” person is empathy, and how much empathy you have directly determines where you fall on the “normal scale” and just being normal does not make you sane.  I have often said that if you can watch a movie in a room with a group of people and the majority of them cry at some point, but you are one of the few that doesn’t then you need to re-evaluate if you are the type of person you would want your children to become because for some reason you are not relating to or empathizing with the characters on the screen like everyone else in the room is.  Now, I understand that movies aren’t real and that is the first argument that someone might make against this example, but the point is that some part of you has been shut down, turned off, and it is the part that allows you to feel what it would be like if you were in the position of the person on the screen and to empathize with their pain or the situation they are in.  Feeling someone else’s pain and being able to identify with them does not make you weak.  In fact, many would argue that it makes you stronger, smarter, friendlier, more likable, and even more capable of functioning successfully in this world.    Had that young man had a heart filled with empathy, compassion, understanding, sympathy, or relatability he would never be able to look a small child in the eyes and shoot them in some cases as many as 10 or 11 times.  Now, I understand that the world is a complicated place and that some people will argue there were mental disabilities and other life occurrences involved that turned him into the savage that he died as, but I will argue that if empathy and I mean true honest empathy is learned strongly and at its core at a very young age it will overcome the hardships life brings us.  The lesson of empathy is the basis of the lessons of love, compassion, forgiveness, happiness, positivity, and most of all the lesson of the value of human life. 

So what does all of this mean?  It means that for this week and every week moving forward you teach your children what the word empathy means and you practice feeling and showing empathy towards others with them and even without them for your own sake.  It means you share the lesson with the adults you know and the 20-somethings who have missed it.  It means you make choices based on how your decision will affect others rather than on how it might benefit you.  It means you teach your sons to cry at movies when something sad or upsetting happens.  It means you have less to prove and more to love and you pass that lesson on to everyone around you.  It means you lead by example.  It means you value life.  Most importantly it means when you meet that person who is on the brink, and we all know at least one of those people who has always been “just a little bit off”, you begin the lesson with them and reach out to fill the gap in their hearts and you be the angel that intervened just in time to keep a tragedy like December 14, 2012 from ever happening again.  Sometimes the only way to know that you have made a difference is in the mere fact that you never had to live through a day like December 14, 2012.  Sometimes you change the world by ultimately making it a quiet and uneventful place to be.  This is the journey we all take together.

My Journey to Me-Dom

If you are reading this, then chances are you know that in two days for everyone living in the United States it will be Thanksgiving.  Of course this has me thinking about thankfulness, gratefulness, and the blessings we have in life.  During the days leading up to Thanksgiving you often find people on Facebook posting daily status updates about the things they are grateful for and this gets me thinking about the irony in that.  Once December 1^st comes around we will no longer see their daily thankfulness and we didn’t see it on October 31^st to begin with.  While I understand that it is meant to be a nice gesture and to inspire others into thinking about the things they are grateful for, the devil’s advocate in me thinks, “Why does it take a Holiday to get people to realize they are thankful?  Why do they not post a daily status update professing their appreciation every day in March?  Why after the holiday has passed do the posts dwindle away?”  I even realize the irony in the fact that I am writing this blog post today rather than on a random Tuesday in June.  There is always hypocrisy in hypocrisy isn’t there?  It is the epitome of catch 22s. 

Now anyone who knows me knows that there is no way my thought process would end here.  It is my nature to always press deeper into everything that perplexes me and take it to the next level.  This gets me thinking while the “give thanks in November Facebook status updaters” don’t post their thanks on February 6^th it doesn’t mean in their hearts they aren’t still thankful.  This makes me wonder though how much on February 6^th do the people around them know they are thankful to have them in their lives?  Do the people around them still know they are considered a blessing?  Do they really REALLY know?    So what I would like to focus on this week is making sure the people around us KNOW they are our blessings in life.  Of course I don’t want them to only know it this week because that would be too ironic and much less impactful.  Of course I don’t want them to feel your thankfulness now just to have it wear off in a week or two.  In fact, I don’t really even necessarily want them to notice any kind of difference this week at all and maybe not even next week either.  What I want to happen is for us to take stock of how we approach our loved ones and take small subtle steps consistently over time so that it becomes habit for us, second nature to express how grateful we are at all times.  Our family doesn’t need to know we are changing our behavior with a purpose.  All they need to know is that one day they look back on their life so far and can feel your love for them through and through.  So, first we must think about how we approach them now.

If you have children then you have a laundry list of responsibilities related to having those children.  You have to feed them and dress them and educate them and teach them manners.  My question to you is how do you approach them?  When you child walks into the room what is the first thing they see on your face?  Is it instinctual for you to first look them over to make sure their zipper is up and their shoes are on the right feet and they put on two socks that actually match and their teeth are brushed?  Do you come towards them with your thumb freshly licked saying they have dirt on their cheek while the other hand smooths down their hair?  On Your face do they see criticisms and the checklist of all the things that are wrong with them?  OR Do they see your eyes light up and the biggest smile you have that is reserved only for them and your arms wide open ready for the biggest hug they will ever have also reserved only for them?  Now logically we all know that a mother would never rub her child’s chin with her spit soaked thumb if she didn’t love them, but a three year old doesn’t have a grownup’s logic and understanding.  Do they see your critical face or your “you are my greatest blessing face”?  Are they learning that there is always something wrong with them or that nothing makes you happier than to see them come around the corner?  Slowly over time try to start opening your arms wide open first and letting the other critical details work themselves out over time.  You will find that people will find joy in your child’s inside out mismatched sock and it is a thrill for them to see your child’s attempts and learning process in action.  The hug is better for everyone in comparison to the socks being fixed, so if you have to choose then choose the hug.

If you are in a relationship this process becomes even more complicated.  There are arguments involved, and finances, and intimacy, and annoying habits, and hot buttons to push.  It can be even more difficult to balance all of these situations with a significant other and find a place of thanks than it is with children.  Unfortunately it is also more difficult to give good solid advice about a relationship in a general way because they are all so different and complicated in their own specific ways.  Not being involved in a reader’s specific relationship makes it hard to tell them exactly what will work for them or where to start.  What I CAN tell you though is that if you are paying attention to your mate they are probably already expressing to you what it is that they need from you to feel more loved and appreciated.  In your heart you probably already know a laundry list of things you could do for them that would make them feel like you realize they are a blessing in your life.  Now all you have to do is start making those little things a habit.  (Opening your arms to them in the same way you will start doing for your children when they walk in the door rather than yelling at them for forgetting to stop and pick up some milk or keeping your back turned and just saying hello because you are too busy doing the dishes or folding laundry doesn’t hurt either.)  If it makes them crazy that you squeeze the toothpaste tube in the middle rather than at the end then start squeezing from the end.  When they realize you have been doing it for a while and ask why you changed and you tell them you did it for them they will know you are grateful to have them.  If you always go to bed an hour or two before they do and sleep only on your half of the bed try staying up with them once or twice a week and snuggling up close while you sleep sometimes.  Over time they will know.  If their favorite meal is your homemade lasagna, but you only make it on holidays or special occasions then try making it here and there just because they like it.  There are so many little things that can easily be done differently that we don’t even think about while we move through our habitual day in day out routines.  The one thing that is for sure is that we can only control ourselves in life, but you will find that what you put out into the universe often will come back to you tenfold.  Chances are as the people around you begin to feel your appreciation they will begin to reciprocate it in return.  It isn’t that you didn’t appreciate them before.   It is that now you are actively and consciously appreciating them every moment rather than just the moments you are reminded to focus on it and not too busy.  Don’t feel guilt over being the thumb licking mother in the past or over going to bed angry over your mates socks scattered over the floor.  Feel proud that you are actively doing something to change it.  The old version of you wasn’t wrong, but the new version of you will be even better.  It doesn’t have to stop at your front door either.  Gratitude can be expressed to your co-workers or employees, to people who make your life easier like the mailman or your doctor, your neighbors, even to animals.

These are the ways I try to challenge myself to be the best person I can be.  I have a journey through this life to become the most authentic version of myself that I can.  It is through this journey that I will find my own sense of freedom.  I call this my journey to Me-Dom.  Enjoy your journey!  We only get one.

My Journey to Me-Dom

Pressure.  Life is so full of pressures.  Pressure to be a great wife, a great mother, the perfect employee, a self-made chef, an athlete, an intellectual, attractive, homemaker, life coach.  The list goes on and on and on.  The pressure comes from everywhere and no matter how good you are at each thing it is never good enough.  If you want to be a great employee then you can’t leave at 3:00 to pick your child up from school, but if you want to be a great mother you have to put your work second, but to be a great wife you have to put your relationship first and have plenty of energy to focus on your spouse.  The house must be clean and decorated like a pro.  Meals must be homemade and healthy and balanced.  You should have spent two hours working out and have every hair in place and an impeccable wardrobe.  You have to have read every book ever included on a classroom reading list along with every new book before the movie is made and every pop culture rag to be on top of current events.  After all of this you still have to have time left over to give your best advice to the people around you that need it mentoring others into the same greatness you are expected to maintain. 

Are you tired just reading about it all because I am tired just writing about it?  The question is how much of the pressure we experience each day is self-imposed?  How much responsibility do we have in the expectations that are set upon us?  How much do we decide we have to be perfect when others around us really don’t even really care about which parts we are failing at because they are too busy putting their own set of pressures on themselves to even notice what we are or aren’t doing?

In my journey through life towards my most authentic experience which I refer to as “Me-Dom” (the combination of the authentic version of me and freedom) how much unnecessary pressure am I sentencing myself to?  What can I stop doing to myself in order to meet my own personal needs?  How many of these self-imposed pressures don’t even matter? 

I am lucky to have the opportunity to make my own schedule and most people if given the same opportunity would work an hour or two tops during the week and spend the rest of the time with friends, at the mall, watching soap operas, or at the pool.  Not me.  I work six days per week minimum whether I need to or not (and let’s be clear that I do not need to), and will create work for myself and will research my industry non-stop if there is nothing else to do just because.  I know for sure that I put more time and energy into it than anyone else on the planet doing the same things even though I’m not really sure why.  Is it because I want to be taken seriously?  Is it because I’ve always put way too much time into every career I’ve ever had whether I wanted to or not and don’t know any different?  Do I have something to prove?  What drives me to put unnecessary pressure on myself when my time would be better used elsewhere in some cases?  I’ve never been one to give a rat’s batootie about what other people think about me, so what drives me to push myself in ways that I really don’t need to?

Another great question is what should I be doing instead?  What should I be doing instead of burning the candle at both ends eating, sleeping, and breathing my work?  What should I turn my attention to in order to improve my quality of life?  There are probably so many things but a great one would be allowing myself the time and a schedule that optimizes my awake time and allows me as much sleep time as my body really needs to rest and heal itself.  I have always been a night owl having the most energy late at night and have talked about my poor sleeping habits in the past.  I can’t remember the last time I slept more than 2 hours total in a night, but back when I lived more innocently and with fewer societal pressures I can remember that a good night’s sleep was always 9 and a half hours like clockwork.  I can remember wishing I didn’t need that much sleep and that I was a morning person rather than a night person and that I could feel refreshed and energized after 5 or 6 hours rising in the early morning and feeling great.  That may have been the start of the self-pressure trying to conform to societal standards of getting up early for school and hating it.  So why do I still do it?  Why do I still force myself to get up before the sun even though I will work past the normal 8 hour day and well into the night anyhow?  Why do I feel a sense of guilt even just at the thought that I could just stay up as late as I want and then sleep as late as I should when I would still do as much if not more work than anyone else I know during my waking hours?  Why has extreme exhaustion become my normal when I could just tell anyone that might ask or scoff if they heard that I sleep in a bit later and don’t start work until noon to suck it because I will still be working well past midnight anyhow?  I don’t care what they think, so that doesn’t motivate me to choose the wrong way for me, but maybe I care too much about what I might think?  This is where the irony kicks in because anyone else who might ask me for advice about this situation would hear me say “who cares if you set a different schedule than everyone else?  Just do it.  It is right for you.”  Now why wouldn’t I take my own advice?  So I am going to take my own advice and not worry about things that don’t matter.  I will still get up on days that I have an early commitment (which is 6 days per week regardless), but on days that I don’t it doesn’t matter when I get up or even what I do with my time.  This is just one little example of course.  We are complex creatures and there are many examples I could come up with that express the same thing, so my question to you is what can you let go of that doesn’t really matter?  How are you pressuring yourself when no one around you really even cares?  Do you cook even though your spouse is better at it and enjoys it while you hate it just because you think you should?  Are you getting up early on Saturday morning to put on a full face of makeup just in case when you could actually sleep in for once instead?  Do you hate golf but play it anyway just because everyone else in the office does?  What can you let go of on your journey to Me-Dom?

My Journey to Me-Dom

Sometimes when we try to commit to new habits our old habits fall by the wayside.  Often these old habits weren't the best for us anyway.  An example of this would be focusing your energy on eating more fruits and vegetables and less fat and logging the foods you eat in a food journal each day.  Sometimes though we commit so much of our energy and focus towards making sure we follow through with our new commitments that we lose sight of old habits that were important to our lives and our success.  Sometimes once we have conquered the new tasks we set for ourselves we have to go back and recommit to the old tasks we have slighted in order to turn the new tasks into a routine.  This next week is about recommitting our time, energy, and focus to the things that we were once better at that matter to our lives and are too important to be forgotten.

This week I will be recommitting.  For the last few weeks I have been focused.  I have been focused on weekly challenges.  I have been focused on sharing my journey.  I have been focused on touching base with you all every Tuesday and starting new challenges and new habits weekly that I feel are important to living my best life.  In order to make the entire process a habit I had to sacrifice my energies elsewhere and direct them fully into this new process.  Now that I have become relatively consistent about my Tuesday life challenges I have to recommit to the other 6 days of the week.  I have to refocus and commit energy into blogging the way I used to while still continuing to move forward with these weekly posts that make up our journey together.  Now that I know for sure I can handle the weekly challenges I have to get back to some of my old fashioned ways of blogging during the rest of the week.  I have to continue to challenge myself each Tuesday but still bring you the beauty and fashion related posts that were used to here and there throughout the week.  I have to recommit to my old style while continuing my commitment to the new style.  So, this week I will be focused on bringing even more content to my blog.  Some of you might need to recommit to your work as well.  Some might need to recommit to your spouses.   Some might need to recommit time to your kids, or your parents, or charity work, volunteering, exercise, the possibilities are endless.  What will you be recommitting to this week?  Life is full of commitments and it all boils down to finding balance.  This is all a part of the journey.  This is my journey to Me-Dom.

My Journey to Me-Dom

I have to start the challenge for this week by telling you a little story about an experience I had this past week.  After a typical work day I stopped at the gas station in my town for a quick fill up.  It was about 7:15pm so it was dark outside but still well within the early evening hours.  It also was a typical crisp fall evening, but not so cold that I even needed a jacket.  As I climbed out of my car and glanced around noticing the hustle and bustle of a typically busy gas station I also noticed something that I found very disturbing.  As my eyes scanned the crowd a sense of horror came over me and I quickly assessed the situation so I could get a real grasp of what was happening.  At first glance I quickly counted 8 people including myself that I could easily see with a single sweep of my eyes and of the 8 people I could see within a split second, 5 of them, count them... FIVE... one two three four FIVE, were wearing some version of PAJAMA PANTS.  It was only 7:15 and more than half of the crowd that I could immediately see and count were out in public in their ratty worn out pajama bottoms.  I have to admit a million thoughts rushed through my brain and none of them were nice.  I thought  1. I can't believe how lazy people have gotten!  2. No wonder I have only found three different gentleman attractive in the last 10 years!  3. How in the world am I going to maintain a successful business trying to sell real clothes to people in a town where they don't wear anything but pajamas no matter where they are going?  4. I need to change my business and start selling second hand pajama bottoms and sweat pants only.  5. I need to pack up my entire family and closest friends and move them somewhere else immediately.  6. This is what starts to happen to people when drugs and alcohol are starting to permeate neighborhoods.  7. It makes me so sad to see a city outlying another major city that you grew up in and had such pride in going downhill so fast that it makes you want to move away.  8.  What ever happened to the idea of taking pride in your appearance?  9. Pride... that's the problem... there is a complete lack of pride in oneself happening and it is taking over like a plague.

So this weeks challenge has to do with having a sense of pride in oneself.  Now, I admit that my thoughts were a bit nasty and full of venom, but they were honest and real and held a tinge of truth and really expressed my gut reaction to what I was seeing.  The days of taking real pride in oneself and the care and presentation of oneself are gone.  Now, there are still the attempts at getting people's attention by doing things like shortening the skirt and heightening the heel and buying bigger cleavage, and masking flaws with extensions and fake coloring and applied nails but none of those things are driven by pride... true pride.  We seem to be driven by insecurity, jealousy, the need for attention, showing off, gluttony, lust, but it seems we have lost the simplest of ideas in which presenting ourselves in a way that we can feel proud of is the most rewarding motivator of all.  What happened to wanting to feel and express ourselves at our ultimate best?  What about the idea that we are leaving an impression on others about who we are every time we walk out the door and wanting to be the best we can be?  What about the confidence that comes with being pulled together?  This weeks challenge is about finding your sense of self-pride.  The pride that makes you take care of yourself and groom and bathe and dress in a way that presents the nicest sense of style you can manage and that leads you through your day with confidence and that inspires people to want to work harder to try and emulate you in the best of ways.  It is about knowing there is a time and place for everything and that the best thing you can do for yourself and your success is to always enter every situation having prepared ahead of time with the idea of pride without arrogance in mind.

While I was having that stream of consciousness of disgusted thoughts I ultimately landed on the idea that if people had more pride in themselves they would never do things like drugs or theft or any of the other things that make the world a terrible place to live in the first place.  They would never want those things to become their reputation, their place in this world, how people know of them.  A true sense of pride naturally brings about humbleness, and courtesy, and sympathy, and compassion, and a drive to do the right thing.  It is about having complete self-awareness and realizing the impact that a day dressed in pajamas in public brings to your life as far as your own quality of life and the impression you are making on others.  You may have heard before that a person makes their first and most important judgment of you within the first 3 seconds of seeing you for the first time.  What judgments are being made about you as you move through this world?  Of course the idea here is not to always be worried about what other people think about you, but to take responsibility for how you would like to be seen.  Do you want to be taken seriously?  If you do then you have to lead with a sense of pride and self-awareness.  You have to be aware of the impact and the imprint you leave in this world.

Now, what does this mean for me?  It simply means on the days when I haven't slept all night I still need to get up with enough time to fully get ready in the morning rather than sacrificing doing my makeup or my hair for 10 more minutes of lying around still not sleeping.  It means I make sure to stay on top of my laundry so I never have that mismatched laundry day outfit on because I ran out of clean clothes that actually go together. It means even though I work from home and often won't see a single person all day that I still need to take the time to put myself together even if it is just in case of emergency.  It means that I wait till a little later at night before I finally give in and put on something more comfortable so that I don't put off things like taking out the trash or other such tasks that I would never do in my pajamas because I won't go out in public in my pajamas.  It means that I just make choices that ultimately I can feel more proud of.  It is so easy to get lazy, to give ourselves that excuse to not do something simple.  For me this is about making sure I don't let myself fall into the habit of being lazy.  It is about more than just wearing pajama pants out in public.  It is about my journey to living my best and most authentic life.  It is about the sense of freedom that pride and self-awareness can bring.  It is about my journey to Me-Dom.  What changes will you make this week to find your true and honorable sense of pride in yourself?  We all are on our own journeys through life.  Make it the best journey you can.

My Journey to Me-Dom

Well, last week was a flop... not because I didn't eat green leafy vegetables with hot sauce, but because I got off track on just about all of my routines.  I had an extremely busy week that threw off my normal daily routine in general.  We had one extremely windy night, the kind of loud howling wind that is impossible to sleep through, that set off a disastrous domino effect that ruined 5 nights of sleep in a row.  I suffered a few reactions to different things that made me sick here and there and also threw off parts of my schedule and my energy levels in general.  All in all it was a jumbled up, unfocused, off schedule, unpredictable week and my focus on life improvements flew straight out the window.  The good news is that it is completely ok.  I am on my way to getting back on track and one week is not the end of the world.  We often let little failures paralyze us when it comes to things we should do better for ourselves.  We get down on ourselves.  We beat ourselves up over it.  We sort ourselves into the failure category and leave ourselves there.  We decide we can't do it, that success is out of our reach.  Then we stop trying all together and sentence ourselves to a life that we don't feel proud of.  Well, I'm not about to do that.  One week of chaos is not the end of the world.  It is a chance to start over, refocus, and renew my energy towards my goals.  If you have been following along and stumbling don't sweat it.  Get up, brush off, and push ahead.  If you have been reading along but not doing, then now is the perfect time to start doing.  If you have been plugging along on your own journey successfully this whole time then give yourself a little pat on the back and relish in your success.  This week there isn't a new challenge.  This week is a buy week which means I'm giving myself this week to regroup and get back on the habit train.  Take this week to refocus if you need it, to challenge yourself for the first time if you need to, or to enjoy your success without any additional pressure or challenges and just reinforce the good habits you are establishing.  After all, life is about the big picture, the journey, and this is my journey.  We all have our own journeys.  This is my journey to Me-Dom.

My Journey to Me-Dom

Where have I been???  Vacation!  :)  Now back to business!

Last week I decided to focus on my poor sleeping habits.  We know that sleep is important for virtually every single function our bodies complete in a lifetime.  In fact, just last week I was privileged to hear the results from a research study recently completed that shows the importance regulated sleep has even when it comes to cancer, specifically breast cancer and the recurrence of it, and in balancing our cortisol levels at night.  (If you are interested in listening to the results of the study click here.)  My problem is not falling asleep really as much as staying asleep.  I decided to focus on relaxation techniques specifically by instituting a ritual at night designed to calm and relax me and to also hopefully instill a bit of the old "Pavlov's Dogs" type of response by training my brain to understand that this ritual is a sign that it is time to go to sleep and stay asleep.  (To read about my new nightly ritual click here.)  Now, I can't say that I'm not waking up at all at night these days because of course I still am here and there.  My ritual cannot control for noisy neighbors, howling winds, pets climbing on you, or uncomfortable temperature changes in the room.  That being said, the power of suggestion can be an extremely competent tool in conquering the stubborn brain and I have been sleeping for longer periods of time than is typical for me and more deeply than usual and have even found myself feeling sleepy earlier in the evening than I'm used to.  Is the last part due to the seasons changing?   Possibly, but Pavlov knew what he was doing to those dogs when he rang that bell, and I know what I'm doing when I start slathering a product onto the soles of my feet and that specific scent wafts into my nostrils.  Is it the scent that starts me towards a night of restful sleep or is it the process of slowing down, completing a relaxing regimen, and thinking about being asleep that does the trick?  I'd say it is probably a bit of both.  Massaging the bottoms of your feet certainly doesn't hurt either.

So, I consider my last little self-experiment a success and a step in the right direction when it comes to living my most authentic life which leads me to this weeks challenge.  At some point in my 38 years I read somewhere that a good way to get yourself to eat foods that you might not normally enjoy eating is to add hot sauce to them to mask and enhance the natural flavor.  Hot sauce is also known for speeding the metabolism, assisting in the digestive process, and as a bonus is a condiment with fewer calories than many other options available.  Now you know that I have made other changes to my diet recently with the addition of eggs and cottage cheese (to read about my egg and cottage cheese challenge click here) and are aware that I have the worst eating habits ever.  While the edition of eggs and cottage cheese to my diet is a step in the right direction it also throws my protein/fruits & vegetables/carbs balance way out of whack.  It is important that I start to introduce more vegetables back into my diet, specifically green leafy vegetables.  Now I happen to enjoy green leafy vegetables like spinach and kale now and then and don't really need to add hot sauce to them to convince myself to choke them down.  However, anyone that knows me knows that I LOVE HOT SAUCE!!!!!!!!!  That's right!  I admit it!  I'm a spicy food junky!  Where other people have a sweets weakness I have a buffalo sauce, jalapenos, chilies weakness.  The idea of adding hot sauce to foods I already enjoy just to remind me to eat them more often to me is like "YES PLEASE!"  I'm totally there!  Now if the idea of hot things makes you cringe you have to understand that it is an acquired taste.  You have to start small and work your way up.  You also have to understand that people who enjoy spicy foods love them because there is a flavor associated with them that you can't find anywhere else.  It isn't about having something to prove and ordering the butt blastin' sauce just because your buddies are watching and might think you are a wimp for ordering an enjoyable medium or hot sauce like a normal person.  It's about the perfect blend of heat and vinegar and yumminess that tickles your tastebuds in just the right way.  So if you stay away from hot things try them again and start slow.  As you acquire the taste for them you will work your way up to the perfect heat level for you and that is where you should stop.  If you are the kind of person who is just too stubborn and couldn't be paid to try a hot sauce then that's fine.  It's more about the idea of adding foods into your diet that are good for you and jazzing them up in a way that makes them more palatable without adding calories to ensure that you will continue to eat them regularly.  It's the additional calories you really have to watch out for so just find a flavor that works for you even if it comes in the form of dry spices and then eat up.  For me specifically, by adding a green leafy vegetable into my diet daily it puts me up to 4 small "meals" per day (the word meal is a stretch.  The word serving would be more appropriate.) which is another step in the right direction on my journey to living my best life.  As always I invite you to join me by following along, participating, or even tweaking my challenges to meet your specific needs as you travel along your own journey to living your best life.  This is my journey to Me-Dom.

My Journey to Me-dom!

Last week I challenged myself to a diet addition consisting of two medium sized hard boiled eggs and a single serving of cottage cheese, each to be eaten alone with the idea that 6 to 7 small meals per day is the healthiest way of eating and with the understanding that I was regularly skipping 5 to 6 of those meals per day regardless of size or content.  I can say that I was successful in my endeavors along with continuing to walk 6 days per week.  (See my previous weekly posts for the full back story and details.)  I did skip the foods on Sunday since I was away from home the entire day, but I’m fine with one day of indiscretion.  Eating more than once per day 6 days out of the week is a HUGE improvement over what I was doing previously and many diets allow for a cheat day anyhow.  After all, this isn’t about punishing myself or feeling like I’m not good enough to begin with or even about dieting.  It is simply about making small tweaks to my everyday routines in order to be my best and most authentic self.  I know I can complete these tasks easily and I set myself up for success from the start, so there really is no reason for the words guilt or failure or unsuccessful to even measure into the concept.  I know I can complete the goals I set for myself just like I know you can complete the goals you set for yourself.

This week I decided to focus on my sleep patterns.  I have a confession to make.  I’m a terrible sleeper.  I’m not just bad at it.  I’m TERRIBLE at it.  First of all biology is against me.  I am a night owl at heart since the dawn of time and waking up to an alarm clock ranks very high on my list of most uncomfortable things we put ourselves through in life.  Second, behind not always being able to fall asleep at a society deemed appropriate time is the problem of not being able to stay asleep once I finally do doze off.  I am a light sleeper with nocturnal pets that tend to toss and turn just as much as I do and my quality of sleep just isn’t that great.  Thirdly is the pressure I put on myself to get up at the same time everyone else does and work an expected 8 to 5 just like everyone else does.  I don’t need to do this since I’m self-employed and can make my schedule whatever I want it to be, but somewhere in my brain is this thought that I might not be taken seriously in my attempts to succeed if people got wind that I might be sleeping in a bit later than most people.  It is unnecessary pressure that I put on myself because I could easily tell anyone who might judge me to “suck it” and lay out for them the number of hours I spend each day physically working, planning future work, and preparing for the following day’s work which is more hours than anyone else I now know or have ever known in the past.  For some strange reason I have always slept best between 7am and 9:30am in the morning.  I can try to sleep for hours on end during the night and not dream once, but let me stay up and only sleep between 7am and 9am and I will dream multiple times in a row and wake up feeling more refreshed after those two hours than I would sleeping 8 or 9 hours every night for a week.  I don’t know why this is.  I have a background in psychology and studied sleep just like everyone else and I know this goes against everything we have ever been taught.  It is what it is.  I guess I always have been one to like to do my own thing.  This apparently is not any different.

I’ve decided that my next focus should be on my quality of sleep.  Part of my lack of sleep has to do with having a busy brain.  It never shuts off.  If I have an ounce of energy left in me my brain will continue to check off all the things I need to do and all the things I want to do incessantly hour after hour after hour.  This week I’ve decided to work on this by focusing on relaxing.  I’ve made some decently significant changes over the past 2 weeks and so in order to not burn myself out before I even get started or overwhelm myself for no good reason that this week would consist of working to improve something in my life in a way that could easily feel like a treat and doesn’t take up much time or energy.  Since I have enough buzzing through my head at night this process needs to be simple and something I can do without a checklist of additional physical activity since those things would defeat the purpose of relaxing and settling down for sleep.

I’ve heard that the scent of sesame oil is supposed to be relaxing and calming in light doses, so I’ve decided that just before I try to lie down to sleep I’m going to use sesame body oil in a way that will hopefully help to relax me, take my mind off of life, and trigger my brain to know that it is time to turn off and do the deep sleep thing.  I googled sesame body oils and immediately found a well-known brand that was being sold at a location near me and decided it was as good a place as any to start my new nightly ritual.  If you are following along and participating with me then feel free to use whatever is convenient for you during this process, but I will be using Neutrogena’s light sesame formula body oil.  Once I got the bottle home and pulled the protective leak barrier off and smelled the oil I immediately realized that to me this brand smells nothing like sesame and everything like calla lilies.  I do enjoy the scent of calla lilies and even have a perfume in this scent on my favorites list, but I’m more inclined to describe the smell as energizing than relaxing and prefer using it with a light hand, so we will have to see how this goes. There is additional fragrance in the ingredients list of this product so the unscented version might have been a better choice, but regardless, I have the right intentions and this is only the starting point and can be tweaked at any time.  Since this product does have what I perceive to be an unexpected floral scent I have decided to use it sparingly.  After my shower I will massage it into the soles of my feet which not only will keep the scent at a manageable distance from my nose so as to keep it mild and calm rather than invigorating but will also have the added benefit of softening my skin, and if I think I can handle it I may rub the tiniest remaining amount into my temples with the tips of my fingers the way a massage therapist might do to relax and calm me.  If I find the scent to be too close to my senses then I will just skip the last step, but I will undoubtedly will need to either thoroughly wash any remaining oil from my hands or use a soft cloth to apply it to begin with or else I will catch myself doing what I have been doing since I opened the bottle which is smelling my hand again and again unconsciously since it really is a nice fragrance.  I can’t be doing that if I’m supposed to be sleeping obviously.  Hopefully this becomes a routine that helps train my brain into being able to just nod off and sleep well when I’m ready, but if not it is still a nice routine that I deserve at the end of the day.  Finding ways to treat yourself here and there and relax are important even when they only take a minute or less and if this little routine turns out to only be a treat then so be it.  I will undoubtedly come up with other ways to try and improve my sleep habits time and time again and there is never any harm in trying.  So this is what I will doing over the next week along with continuing to keep up with my previous weeks’ additions.  I welcome everyone to not only come along on my journey but to try it with me if you can relate and it makes sense for your life.  As always, feel free to tweak my ideas to better meet your needs or just use them as inspiration to come up with your own challenges in life.  Remember it isn’t about feeling like you aren’t good enough as you are because YOU ARE.  It is about doing things that make you happy and pushing yourself to lead your best and most enjoyable life possible.  Keep me posted on your progress below or by direct message.  We can do this together.

My Journey To Me-Dom!

First let me apologize that this did not go up yesterday.  The memories of 9/11 always hit me harder than I expect them to, and I just couldn’t bring myself to focus on much else yesterday.

Last week I committed myself to walking 6 days per week with a day off after every 3 days in a row that I walk.  I have a confession to make.  My confession is that I have been doing this for a few weeks already.  The idea of this blog started when I was in the midst of deciding what my next life change would be, but wanted to think through my approach before putting pen to paper so to speak.  I didn’t want to wait till the idea was on paper to make the life change, however, so if you are following along I do have a head start on you, but don’t let that deter you from participating in any way.  If anything, let it inspire you to do more if you did join me in the journey or to start now if you haven’t already.

This week I decided I want to make a diet change.  I have the worst eating habits ever.  I am terrible about only eating once a day.  It has nothing to do with dieting or trying to lose weight in any way.  It started when I was very young.  I stopped eating breakfast because it actually made me feel sick to my stomach.  I just can’t eat until I have been up for a few hours and actually feel hungry and it takes a little time to get my system revved and ready.  I always ate lunch because I had a lunch period, but I often skipped dinner since my evenings were filled with one practice after another.  The time factor remained an issue over the years for one reason or another by letting myself be too busy to eat when I should have, and now it has just evolved into habit.  I no longer feel hungry more than once a day because I have 25 or so years of experience eating this way.  Unfortunately doing this makes you fat.  Even though I often eat well below 1000 calories a day my body stores each and every one of them as fat in order to get me through until I finally remember to eat sometime the next day again.  It has done me no favors, but is a really hard habit to remember to break.  I read somewhere about a recommendation to add a serving of cottage cheese to eggs in order to add additional protein to the meal and it got me thinking.  What if I just make the effort to try and remember to eat some eggs at some point and a serving of cottage cheese at another point just to get myself eating more often?  If you have high cholesterol then this will not work for you, but the idea can be easily adapted to suit your dietary needs, and we all should stop eating meals and start just eating about 100 calories per waking hour (divide food into 200-ish calorie portions, since that’s all the body can handle at one time anyway,  and eat about every two hours to make it more manageable) and we can all shrink down to a more appropriate size together.  So here is what I’ve decided to do.  Rather than eat the cottage cheese with the eggs I am going to boil 2 eggs (medium sized eggs.  We don’t need to cram extra large, jumbo, or anything else that refers to some version of supersizing our food down our throats)everyday and eat them at one sitting and then eat a serving of cottage cheese about 2 hours later.  This means I will have eaten at least two times during the day just by the nature of the idea which for me is a step in the right direction.  I realize that this is a lot of protein and is not equally balanced with fruits and vegetables in the immediate plan, and I will likely adjust the menu over time in order to morph it into something that is more balanced.  The idea for right now is that I need to make a conscious effort to eat more often in general and wake my metabolism back up and give it something to do. 

I would encourage you to try your own version of this idea over the next week with me by either dividing your regular meals up into 6 or 7 smaller portions rather than having them in just 3 meals or substitute something you know is terrible for you like 2 of the sodas you are having every day with the 2 eggs and the lunch sized bag of chips with the cottage cheese.  The eggs can be cooked however you want.  I am just choosing to boil them because it is easy and also portable.  Just remember that you have to take into consideration the extra calories required to cook them other ways from the additional ingredients like butter, oil, or bacon grease, etc.

So this is the habit I am adding this week along with the walking.  Let me know how your progress from last week went and what you will be doing this week for yourself.  Most importantly, don’t beat yourself up or quit if you had some failures along the way last week.  This is a new week and a fresh start and if last week didn’t go well you have a new opportunity to try again this week.  It is never too late and you are the only person sentencing yourself to the life you currently have.  If that boy that called you fat on the playground in 4^th grade is still ringing in your head then kick his ass to the curb.  You do not have to fulfill his sentence just because he dished it out on a day that he probably doesn’t even remember.  Today the only person that is designing your life and your future and the way you fit into it is you.  In fact, if you were called something other than fat like dumb, or ugly, or gay, or anything else kids say when they are too young to know better, then forget all of it.  The truth is that you were probably called a bevy of different things but that it’s only the ones you already felt slightly insecure about that stuck in your head.   The truth is that kids could have called me dumb or ugly or gay till the cows came home and I wouldn’t have remembered any of it the next day because I knew I was smart, I knew I wasn’t ugly, and I don’t think there is anything wrong with being gay even if I had been questioning it at the time.  The only reason fat hurt was because I was a dancer and was already too short to dance professionally in a lot of settings and you just can’t ever be thin enough as a dancer no matter what you do.  Because I already felt shorter and more busty than all the other girls, to have someone say the word fat anywhere near me no matter the context would make my ears perk up to see if they were talking about me because there is no such thing as not needing to lose 5 more pounds in the dance world especially back then.  Luckily I have always had a lot of confidence and felt comfortable in my own skin and have seen where the mouthy kids in school have ended up over the years.  None of them have the blessings I have and I’m thankful I was smart enough to not let them stick in my brain even when I was young.  The long and the short of it is that you have the control to change whatever you want to in life.  You just have to change it.  It really is that simple.  So, for me it is adding 2 boiled eggs and a half cup of cottage cheese a few hours later to my day to create ground breaking change in my life.  What is the simple solution for you this week?

My Journey to Me-Dom

Life is a never ending journey.  Just when you think you’ve got it down a curveball gets thrown at you.  The monkey wrench shows up to glitch your groove.  Getting too comfortable with a smooth ride is like an open invitation for something to happen that makes it go all wrong.  This is why I just never bother trying to feel settled.  In fact, when things get too easy I usually look for a way to add a challenge back into the mix.  I always want to improve myself.  I’m always trying to find the best version of myself, and I know for sure that I’m not the only person who tackles their “weaknesses” head on.   I also know for sure that it is always a struggle, rarely without what can sometimes be "painful truths", and usually made up of what can be some of the hardest times in a person’s life, but it’s not all bad and is an important part of finding your most authentic self.  I like to refer to this path of trials and tribulations as "my journey to Me-dom".  It is my story made up of the challenges I present to myself in order to be the best I can be and genuine down to the bare bones.  It is my way of being true to myself, striving to be better, and clearing a path through the trials and tribulations to the simplest, cleanest, happiest version of myself I can create.  It’s my path to mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual freedom.  A journey to find myself in the purest form, untainted by life.  It’s my way of taking the bull by the horns and refusing to look in the mirror and no longer recognize the person looking back at me.  Many of you are own your own similar journeys to "You-dom" and can relate to the challenges I present to myself and my way of thinking.  It is because many of us are stronger together that I decided to share my journey here with you.  I’m inviting the world to share and partake in my challenges with me.  Many of you just need that extra encouragement and just knowing you aren’t facing challenges alone makes all the difference.  Many of you just need an idea of where to start or what to try next.  You are welcome to just read along, cheer me on, use my challenges to brainstorm for challenges that suit your needs, or to participate and share right along with me.  While we each have our own “stuff” to face and conquer, we also often have more in common than we realize, so if you find yourself inspired to travel this journey with me then please do and be sure to tell me all about it in the comment section below.  I plan to come back each Tuesday and update you on my progress from the week before and lay out my plan for the next challenge at the same time.  If you are participating then be sure to tell me how you did each week.  If you just want to cheer me on then by all means do.  If you come up with your own challenges that suit your needs better then please share what they are.  I may decide your idea is one I need to tackle as well, and undoubtedly someone who reads this will even if I don’t.  We can all encourage each other as a group and as individuals.

Time and time again I have read that too much sitting is bad for your health.  (DUH!)  The problem is that many of us are forced to sit for hours on end in order to earn a paycheck.  Every vlogger/blogger can relate to my situation sitting for hours with a computer in your lap and quite frankly every job I’ve had prior to this in my adult life was no different.  One suggestion that you often see to help overcome that “secretary spread” is to get a dog, the idea being that if you have a dog you have to walk it at least 3 times per week.  If only that were the case.  While I’d love to get a dog just for the excuse to walk, unfortunately it just isn’t the best way to tackle a widening behind for me right now.  Yes, I could borrow one or take on a side job as a dog walker, but honestly the idea of having to go to someone’s home to borrow their pet just for the sake of a walk sounds like a hassle to me and would likely end up as good of an excuse as any to NOT get out of the chair for a while.  I decided to take the advice and adjust it to make sense in MY life and do it in a way that I will hold myself accountable to.  I decided to just get up at the break of dawn and walk a path at a local park that is about a mile and a half long.  Since the dog walkers are supposed to walk at least three times per week I decided that for myself it needs to be three days in a row.  I know that if I spread the days out it is too easy to skip and I really need it to become a routine and an actual lifestyle change to make it a habit.  So, not only will I do it 3 days in a row, I am also going to only give myself one day off before doing it three more days in a row.  This is my challenge to myself.  I often use little mind tricks on myself in this way to ensure I’m doing more than the average bear.  I will actually be walking 6 days per week this way, but it will feel like I’m getting two days off per week instead of only one.  It also means that my days off will continually change which means I can’t give myself excuses to not go like “Well, I can’t walk on Sundays because I have church on Sunday morning.”  I CAN and WILL walk before church because I know that now and then I will get Sunday off anyway so just do it.  I picked the first light of morning because I know there isn’t anything else I would be doing at that time besides maybe sleeping anyway and that I’m currently doing the same amount of “nothing” at that time every single day so I can be consistent.  For some of you the hour might be in the evening or around lunch or right after the kids leave for school.  You just have to pick a time that is the same every day where the only challenge is just to stand up and go do it.  All I have to do is force myself to wake up to go and the battle is won.  It only takes 20 minutes to do the rest from start to finish, so the waking up is the hardest part for me.  So, this is what I will be doing for the next week and I encourage you to either take the dog walking challenge in its original form, or join me in my version of the challenge, or change the challenge to meet your own needs and tell me all about your plan below, but whatever you do DO NOT give yourself excuses and be your own worst enemy NO MATTER WHAT.  Make a plan that fits your schedule and lifestyle and then force yourself to STICK WITH IT.  Believe me!  Many of those days when the alarm goes off I will be cursing and crying and trying to think of ANY reason to not make myself get up and do it, but I WILL NOT give in to my own weaknesses.  After all, that’s the whole point right?  To push myself to be the very best version of myself that I can be.  THIS is my journey to Me-dom.