New Year, Same Me. 🤣. And you know what, that’s okay.  I’m not one to do a large number of resolutions when the New Year comes around.  I find that New Years resolutions set me up for failure and also set me up to procrastinate towards feeling better for the rest of the year.  And when you’ve had cancer as many times as I have, you tend to want to make the best of right now as much as possible, because tomorrow is not promised.  So I’m more a new moment, new opportunity, doesn’t-matter-what-you-did-last-moment-cause-here-you-are-right-now-with-a-new-one kind of gal.  

But I’m also a hard case.  After 40 years of lacking self-love and true self-care, getting up on that horse as my life was completely falling apart was just too easy to talk myself out of.   And that horse I was getting onto at that point in time?  It was an asshole.  A bucking bronco who’s goal it was to buck me off again.  So I had to come up with ways to trick myself into getting on that horse.  And this has been the key to my success and I continue to use these tactics now.  And as I look at how far I’ve come from then to now (turns out that bucking bronco was just a really grumpy Shetland pony who is feeling much friendlier now that I’m caring for myself and walking alongside it 🤣) I thought I’d share how I got, and still get, myself motivated when the struggle is real.

This process started with coming to terms with a very basic, but very important realization that changed my life; 

You aren’t going to go from the deepest chasm to the highest peak in one go.  

You can’t get from depressed to happy in one go. 

You can’t get from heavy debt to winning financially in one go. 

You can’t get from unhealthy to fit in one go.  

You would think that would have made me unmotivated to even try.  But in fact it was the opposite.  The goal didn’t become to be happy, be rich, have the perfect body.  The goal became to feel a little bit better right now.  And so the question in each moment then, and now, always is: “What can I do to feel better, right now?”

Instead of how can I be rich right now, I would take a minute to find a small thing I could do in that moment that would help me feel better about my financial situation.  Sometimes it was a small as organizing my wallet.  But often I’d start there and then would feel a bit better and find motivation to clean out my purse. And once I did that, I’d find bills that I’d stuffed in there and I’d take time to make all of my monthly payments ahead of time.  And once that was done, I’d feel inspired to go through my budget to try and find new ways to consolidate and save. 

Instead of how can I have the body I want right now, it’s, how can I set myself up to feel like working out, right now?  That’s a big one.  When you’re pretty severely depressed, the thought of even getting out of bed is a hard one, so to go from depressed to working out can be too big of a leap.  

So here’s how I get past that kind of problem (still today!).  My resolution is to put on stretchy pants; workout clothes.  Not to do the most intense workout I can, not to commit to at least 30 minutes of cardio every day for a month.  It’s to get dressed and put my stretchy pants on right now.

That’s it.

But the crazy thing that happens is once you move in that direction, you create momentum and opportunity.  When you’re dressed for a workout, you feel more like moving.  And when the moment of inspiration hits, you’re prepared.  Maybe you can even make a commitment to put on your stretchy pants and drive to the gym; one step closer.  Maybe you won’t go in.  Social anxiety in those places in real.  But if you just commit to get dressed for working out.  And then commit to drive to the gym.  You’ll find your odds of getting past all of the excuses you make for yourself along the way are already sorted and then the excuse that’s presenting in that moment feels more manageable. 

And if the social anxiety is too much, give yourself permission to not go to the gym, but instead take the time you would have worked out to find workouts on YouTube that you can do at home.   Save them somewhere super easy to find.  That way, tomorrow, when you talk yourself out of driving to the gym because you’re not going to go in anyways, you can also say “but I can do that workout I found on YouTube at home… and look at that… it was easy to find and I’m already dressed.”

As I go through what I managed to get done last year, which didn’t look like a lot on the outside, but has been so immensely important for my heart and the well-being of my kids, I’m also looking at setting goals for this coming year.  

I’m reminding myself to set my goals super high: 
- Aim for the moon and you’ll land amongst the stars, right?

But make my steps to get there super easy and bite-sized.
- Shop for stretchy-pantsed space suit on Amazon.

May every moment of every day of this coming year find you feeling better, right now.