Here’s What Happened

My running schedule has been hit and miss the last few weeks.

Can you relate?

My intention has been to run 3–4 days a week. The last 2 weeks I’ve only gotten in 2 days a week.

I’ve been exercising. Just doing other things like tennis, long walks in the autumn woods with my husband, yoga, jump rope, a little bit of strength training.

None of these other things are really helping my running fitness.

So, I thought, just get out there, Laura. You don’t need to do 8 miles. Just run 3. Just run. Get back into it. …

Here’s what happened

I’ve gained, lost, and gained 10 pounds since the pandemic started.

Say, what?!

Pretty crazy, huh?

The first 10 pounds were from doing too much baking when we were first sheltering in place.

You know, comfort food.

Oops.

I dieted, fasted, increased my exercise. That helped some. Like many of us who have dieted, I am successful….until I’m not. They work. Then, they become unsustainable.

So, yeah.

I am a life coach. So, I put on my life coaching hat and started applying my life coaching tools to my problem.

I did two 30-day wellness challenges. That helped some.

I…

My running training plan had me doing hill work today.

But I woke up this morning with sore legs. Sore legs from taking a fun, uplifting, long walk on the beach yesterday.

Hmm.

What to do?

Do I do the prescribed hill work? Or, do I adjust? Did I make a mistake going for a long walk on the beach yesterday?

I am a life coach. I dug into my toolbox and came up with The Big Picture tool.

I love this tool. It allowed me to shift my perspective, my mindset, my attitude. It allowed me to step back…

There is a correlation between how seriously we take life and how many problems it gives us. -Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Here’s what happened

I came to the first mile marker on my first run back after a long running break. I slowed to walk a few paces. I clapped and did a little happy dance.

Woohoo! You’ve got this, girl!

I looked up as I rounded the corner of the trail and saw 2 women smiling at me.

I said, Oops. Did you catch that?

They were laughing! Uh, Yes. Yes, we did! Hahahaha.

I said, I’ve just started running again after a break…

The back story

I tried a simple meditation to soothe, calm and relax my mind and body.

Eight words.

In, out. Deep, slow. Calm, ease. Smile, release.

I like doing my meditations while I walk or run or hold a yoga pose.

But… I couldn’t remember some of the words!

This was stressful and funny at the same time. How could I not remember 8 words?

At first, I tried harder. Laura, you’ve got this! You can remember this!

Uh. No. No, I still couldn’t remember all the words.

So. Hmmm. I decided to change the words to fit me.

Duh!

Here’s what happened

A few…

The back story

I’ve recently read a few inspirational articles on Medium where someone has added 100 pushups a day to their pandemic-cannot-go-to-the-gym, do-at-home fitness routine.

Wow. So cool. I’d love to do 100 pushups every day!

And, of course, they give advice on breaking that up in to sets of 10, then progressing to sets of 20, and so on.

Hmm.

I started that. But I wasn’t getting all my sets in (ahem, or my modified pushup sets in). Hmm. I needed to start smaller. I was so, so humbled by how hard this was!

Then, I had an ah-ha that I…

My happy dance

A few weeks ago I completed what I thought was the last speech in my Toastmaster Pathway.

There are about 20 projects/speeches in a Pathway. Pathways are one of the tools Toastmaster uses for people to grow their speaking and leadership skills.

I gave my speech and participated in the rest of the meeting. When our Zoom meeting ended, I jumped out of my chair and did a happy dance around the room.

Literally.

Woohoo! You, Go Girl! Yeah!

I felt joy and delight in my accomplishment.

I sat back down and logged into the Toastmaster online system, closed out…

When we are born, we are born into a story.

We are born into the story of our family and the culture in which our family resides. We take in that story and learn the part we are to play. An identity emerges.

Who we are is, in many ways, determined by where and when we are dropped into the story. Of course, we know nothing else and have no reason not to believe it. We learn what can be done and what cannot be done. We are given a lens through which to see the world and ourselves.

We can choose a different one

Until…