If you have a Fitbit
Being active is something I’ve pretty much always struggled with. Walking is really the only exercise I truly enjoy. I’ve never had any interest in sports or group activities. I’m always been a bit of a loner. I like to walk on a treadmill because it is a solitary activity, and I can do it inside where I’m safe and able to lose myself in the music or my thoughts. I like to walk outside too, but I’m not really comfortable doing it in this neighbourhood alone or while I’m lost in music and not paying attention to the people around me. The Catch 22 is that while walking outside I don’t like to walk with other people either, because I don’t want to make conversation and I don’t want to struggle to keep up and I don’t want to be embarrassed when I’m passing out and having heatstroke and they are waving back at me from the top of the hill. I know, it’s silly.
Since I don’t actually have a treadmill, when I’m trying to up my activity I do a bunch of different things. I go out shopping and get extra steps by parking far away from the doors and making extra loops around the aisles. I live on the third floor so instead of making one trip down to get the mail, take out the trash and recyclables, I will break these tasks up so I do the stairs a few times. I will randomly do a few laps around my apartment through the different rooms. But best of all is that I have a Wii game called Walk it Out which I absolutely love playing, so I will jog on the spot and work up a sweat that way. It’s fun and I always love doing it. But I’m also uncomfortable playing this game when my neighbour downstairs is home because I used to live on the second floor myself and I know how annoying and loud it is when people are moving around a lot above you, let alone jogging for an hour in one spot.
Despite all these little obstacles and phobias, if I am focused I have no problem knocking out 10,000 steps and 10 flights of stairs in the run of a day, which are the goals I have set for myself. However, when I’m busy, or lazy, or just unfocused, I can easily go to bed having gotten just 1500 steps, which is so unhealthy. And lately I’ve been really busy, super lazy and terribly unfocused, so it’s time to shake things up and get back in the drivers seat of my life! This week I’m challenging my sister to the Fitbit Workweek Hustle and I mean business! If she wants to continue her winning streak, she’s going to have to really work for it!
And I’m not stopping with just stepping …
I have done so many challenges, diets, detoxes and cleanses in my life that I know I can do absolutely ANYTHING for five days. Like everyone else I have a particular vision for my life, I see myself living a productive, organised, healthy, active, uncluttered, happy, full life every day. That’s my goal! And I’ve been doing pretty well at achieving parts of this like eating whole food plant based and exercising consistently while falling way behind on work and watching the dust bunnies jump around on the pile of dirty dishes. Or like eating whole food plant based while getting super organised and on top of my workload and averaging 2000 steps and 5 hours sleep per day. It’s like I grab on and have success in one area only to have another area suffer. Is my goal unreasonable? Is it impossible to achieve? I don’t think so.
I think one issue is improper planning. I have this really big and fancy day planner that I used to use religiously and it helped keep me on track with work. When I adopted my whole food plant based diet I was so focused on doing it right that I kind of got out of using my planner and I fell really behind at work dropping into complete chaos. Recently when I dug myself out of that hole I did it without using the day planner. And I found that worked okay, I don’t need the book to stay on top of my work and keep everything running smoothly. It’s actually just another step that adds more work to the already pretty large load I have to accomplish. In the past months I’ve mentioned that I’ve returned to FLY Lady and started incorporating some of her routines into my household. One of her tools is a Control Journal. I haven’t done this step and last week I didn’t actually follow any of her routines either. So today I am turning my big day planner into my Control Journal for the next five days. But I’m not just going to map out daily plans for housekeeping and decluttering … this week I’m going ALL the way with my workweek challenge!
I’ve been listening to a lot of Abraham Hicks lately (the inspiration for my Friday rampage) and one of the ideas that is consistently put out there is that thought is reality. If you want to have abundance you need to stop thinking about your lack of it and start living like you have it now. If my end goal is to have a productive, organised, healthy, active, uncluttered, happy, full life every day then I need to stop thinking about how unorganised I am, about how hard it is to get steps and exercise, about how dirty and cluttered my apartment is, about how I don’t have enough time to do all the stuff I need to do, about needing to do things that I don’t enjoy … I need to wipe all these things from my consciousness and simply just start living my productive, organised, healthy, active, uncluttered, happy, full life every day. So that’s what this workweek challenge is about for me!
Today is Sunday, a day of rest, a day to plan your week and set your path. That’s what I’m doing. I’m mapping out the days and I’m prepping not just food but everything that I need to have the best five days ever! I’m going to drink water! I’m going to get steps! I’m going to have a clean home! I’m going to declutter! I’m going to be productive at work! I’m going to blog! I’m going to eat healthy good food! I’m going to get enough sleep! I’m going to spend time with the people I love! This week, for five days, I’m going to have it all! And I’m so excited about that! Woo hoo! I got this! I know I do! Because I can do absolutely ANYTHING for five days!
A work in progress 
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