Learning to Say “No”… to Myself…

You may have noticed that after my “Whoops” post on Tuesday that I didn’t even post anything on Thursday… There goes my streak of consistent posting…

But, here’s the thing.  I decided not to post on Thursday.  Yes, I could have stayed up late on Wednesday evening in my hotel room, writing up something about my monthly focus or monthly challenge for February, but I told myself that it wasn’t worth it.  It’s not that I don’t love this blog, and that I don’t appreciate those of you that stop by regularly to read, but I was finding that I was putting too much pressure on myself to do too much; to be too productive and successful.

Yes, I did create this blog to hold myself accountable to be a better person, but am I really a better person if I am stressing about a self-imposed deadline or task?  I don’t think stress make anyone a better person.  So, I gave myself permission to not post anything on Thursday, and to not worry about it.

But what about my focus and monthly challenge for February?  I’m glad you asked…

February Focus

My original focus for February was going to be meal-planning and healthy eating.  And, while I do think that is a great thing to focus on, I spent most of the first full week of February out of town for work, which means that I was eating out… And left my husband to fend for himself.  Last fall (2015), I did some pre-planning to do some freezer cooking to help my husband with meal planning while I was away.  This time I didn’t have time before going because of our very busy weekend (snowy trips to Vancouver and hosting Superbowl Sunday).  And so, I was already considering that a bit of a failure for my focus… But really it isn’t, is it?  And I’m not going to stress about it.  I don’t need to be perfect.  And I’ll never really be “perfect” so I should stop forcing myself to try.  If we need to eat the occasional convenience meal of take-out or pub food, so that we don’t have to stress about what we are going to make when we are tired from a long day, that’s okay.  Instead, I’m going to focus on removing stress and allowing myself to say “no” to myself.  To that end, I have decided to change up my planned focus for February…

New February Focus: Realistic Expectations

I have to learn to let go of my extremely unrealistic expectations for myself.  Allow myself down time.  I need to be able to say “no” to myself, and not let it stress me out.  A perfect example is just last night… I had set out a large list of “to-do” items in my bullet journal for the day, and as the day was coming to an end, I realized I hadn’t done quite a few of them.  Seeing as it was nearing bedtime, I had a choice… Stay up extra late and get everything done, or pick the highest priority items and do them, leaving the rest for another day… I decided to just do a few key things that would make my day today easier… And let the rest slide… Including writing this post… So here I am on my lunch break, writing this post, instead of last night… But you know what?  It doesn’t matter.  The world is still spinning, and I am still here… It’s not a big deal, and not worth stressing about…

February Monthly Challenge

Similarly, I have decided to change up my chosen challenge mid-month, in order to be more in line with my focus and my desire to reduce my stress.  I had originally decided that my February challenge would be to do a 7-minute workout every day.  I don’t know if you’ve heard of this 7-minute workout thing, but it’s this workout that is designed to be the “most effective workout” based on some studies… I’m not totally sold on it being the “best” but it seemed easy.  Only 7 minutes a day?  I can totally handle that… Or so I thought… I downloaded an app to my phone, and got to work… And then the weekend happened… And then I went away for work… And then we were 10 days in to February and I had only done 4 workouts…

But I had zero motivation to spare even the 7 minutes required for the workout.  And it was making me feel guilty… But that’s not the point of the challenge, so I have decided to switch it up…

New February Challenge: Relax & Read Every Day

My new monthly challenge for February is to relax and read.  Yup, complete opposite to the 7-minute workout… From now until the end of the month, I want to make sure that each day I spend a few minutes just relaxing and not worrying about the “to-do” list.  Pick up one of the many books that I have sitting on my bedside table, and do a little reading.  Even if it is only a couple pages… Yes, I still want to work on my fitness, but my heart wasn’t in the 7-minute workout.  If I’m going to struggle with motivation on my fitness, I want it to be something bigger… Like going for a run in the morning (which I did this morning… yay me!) and training for the 10k race that I’ve signed up for in April…

Have you ever had to change up your goals mid-way?  Do you ever struggle with putting too much pressure on yourself?

 

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