A few challenge updates/reminders:
- Get your points logged by 7p EST for the day before. For example: Saturday’s points would be logged on Sunday by 7P. A few people were late in submitting. Since it was Day One – I will those people a pass!
- MEASURE YOUR WAIST: I forgot to have you measure your waist (silly me!), so if you can do that and email me the stat. You will measure at the navel (belly button) and around.
- The Facebook group is there to share this journey together. So please let us know what you are eating, what you are a feeling. If you have a question, need someone to talk you through a rough day – that’s what the group is there for!
Now Let’s Talk About Who Is in Control…
Remember, the required workouts are about intention, not intensity. Continue to do your Highbar workouts, but on the days you would normally consider rest , put 20 minutes towards your fitness with something light, but that keeps you focused on health and fitness as a daily habit. A short jog, some sit ups, yoga class, a relaxed bike ride, a pick-up basketball game — anything that has you moving daily. I want you to think about the choices you make each and every day —
Are you constantly complaining about your job? Your body? Your significant other? Your friends? Your life? I’m guessing that many of you are highly motivated people who “get it” about making choices in life. And I recognize that not every person’s life is black and white. You are responsible for your own life. How do you measure your happiness and success in your life? I measure mine in the percentage of time that I have dedicated each day to doing things that I feel 100% are my choice.
I’d say that around 80-90% of the time these days, I’m doing things that feed my soul and make me happy. That doesn’t mean they’re not work, but I enjoy doing them and recognize that I’ve chosen to do them.
- On an everyday basis, would you consider yourself happy?
- Do you live for the weekends?
- Are there some days you dread waking up?
These questions get to the heart of the choices you make every day to live a life that you choose. This isn’t to say that there might not be a few things here or there in a day that you need to accomplish that aren’t your favorite tasks (maybe it’s a tough conversation with your boss or some chores at home), but in general, do you feel you are in control of your days? Brian Tracy, a motivational speaker, states in his Psychology of Achievement series that “we feel good about ourselves to the exact degree to which we feel we are in control of our own lives.”
Does this resonate with you? Do you feel that your life is directed or driven by outside forces that you don’t control? Psychologists refer to this as your locus of control. Is yours internal or external? Do you feel you’re driving your life or that your life and everyone or everything in it is driving YOU?
Clearly this post has more questions than answers. I want to challenge people to really think about what it is that they choose to do every single day and whether or not those actions contribute to their happiness or to their feeling of stress, anger or disappointment in life.
We only get one life to live and are life is short, so what’s keeping you from making some different choices to have a life that you feel you’re in control of every single day? It may even be as simple as asking if you NEED that dessert every day—
Robb Wolf puts it well when he writes in “The Paleo Solution”:
“stress is an inescapable and significant factor in people’s lives, and a stunning amount of their stress is self-induced. People might benefit from considering how they want to spend their time and resources… If you are attached to a bunch of crap that requires you to work ungodly hours to pay for it, you are missing something… If you have weight or health issues, work yourself to death, have a closet full of clothes you never wear, and a house full of crap you never use, then maybe you need to do some thinking about how you approach your life.”
Robb was talking about our attachment to “stuff” there, but I would venture to guess that much of the stress we put on ourselves to “achieve” more, or “succeed” more is largely because of a desire to get more stuff. What’s the stuff really worth anyway? Most of the time, it tends to control us rather than us controlling it. It’s the reason why we are bound to jobs we hate or relationships from which we don’t remove ourselves. Unbind yourself from the stuff and start driving your own life rather than it driving you.(excerpts from Balanced Bites.)
Remember: You weren’t put on this Earth to go at someone else’s pace, to be less than you can be. So don’t be less. Don’t cheat your own strength.
