How often do you celebrate?
Official holidays and family events only? Or do you also celebrate your small victories
and achievements on the mountain that you are personally climbing?
Some of us aren’t aspiring to anything. I know lots of people like this. They have achieved what they have always
wanted – a certain income, grandparent status, a comfortable job – and they are
satisfied. They will read and learn and
grow intellectually, or not, but they don’t have any aspirations burning a hole
in their souls. They have no mountains
that they are attempting to summit.
Now please note: a mountain that you feel compelled to
summit need not be something tangible.
It doesn’t need be healthy weight, a strong, muscled body, graduating
from college or the Displaced Homemaker program or completing a marathon. It could be getting through an entire week
without snarling at anyone, feeling completely free and happy in one’s sexual
expression, meditating for 10 minutes a day for a month or graduating from the
eternal Yes Woman at your church (and being OK with everyone being mad at you,
up to and including needing to find another church). I particularly love the clients who come to
me for that 2nd type of mountain!
Some of these mountains are public – you tell everyone that
you are changing your eating pattern forever, or becoming tobacco-free, so they
will help and encourage you if you are tempted to return to your life-killing
choices – and some are completely or primarily private. My personal fitness goals have been in the
latter category.
I have had a couple of injuries, which have kept flaring up,
and other complications that have kept me from completing the six hours/week
that the Surgeon General says we all need for optimal health. I couldn’t even complete the three hours
needed for minimal conditioning. Most
weeks I could complete 1.5 hours. Some days, I did 10 minutes of yoga or hand weights at home and it was all I could do.
The end result: poor physical condition.
But I’m celebrating
today! For the third day in a row, I
was able to complete a 30 minute interval program on the treadmill, speeding up
my walk to nearly running for at least half of those minutes. I warmed up for 10, and then started a “5
minutes fast, 2 minutes moderate” progression.
I felt great every day, no
relapses. I can see muscles starting to
form all over my torso, arms and legs. They
have been silently building for months, clearly, even as I’ve struggled and
thought I was failing.
This is not the mountain summited, no. It’s not the beginning of the end of my
conditioning mountain. But it is clearly
the end of the beginning*.
Along every mountain trek, there are interim resting spots
at the ends of the switchbacks. If you
are a project manager, or have ever painted your house, these are the checkpoints
along the project road, the places where you stop and assess your
progress. If you are literally climbing
a mountain, you look out and down and realize, in awe and appreciation, how
beautiful the view is and how much you have accomplished.
It’s so important to take these progress assessments! Not in the way we do assessments in the
corporate world, where their exact translation is “let’s see what you HAVEN’T
accomplished so I have a stick to beat you up with the next time you want a
concession on time, flexibility, whatever,” but in a Wow, I’ve Taken Some Steps, Haven’t I spirit.
This is also what I talk about in my programs when I say
that all behavior change goals have to have rewards for every effort toward a
goal, as well as rewards for interim steps.
This is my day to celebrate with a non-food reward, and I
intend to – extravagantly! An entire
hour of crochet tonight, finishing up a meter-tall stuffed animal, a fuzzy,
funny wolf for a wolf-obsessed colleague.
It is not great art or great technical execution but it is fun, and
another milestone in its way. After all,
how many people do you know who have ever created a 3 foot tall plush toy wolf
that sorta-kinda looks like one?
When you reward yourself, when you don’t allow your inner
damage to slough it off and push you to spend your Reward time/energy/money on
some other chore or goal, you are sending a powerful message to your
subconscious mind that these actions DO matter, that small actions taken every
day, consistently, rain or shine, tired and busy as you are, WILL get
results. It sends the message that these
mountains that you are climbing are formidable, but you are more
formidable. It sends the message that
you believe in your mountain-summiting ability, your ability to get to the very
top and survey the entire world from the highest height. It sends the message that you matter – to you,
which is all that really matters.
Tomorrow, I go back to the gym and return to the climb. For now, I am celebrating!
*[Extra points if you know who I plagiarized.]
www.soaringdragon.biz
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https://zparkl.com/course/about/transform-your-relationship-with-exercise/
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