End Of Year Ramblings And One Resolution

(photo credit - blog.medi-share.org)

There haven't been very many posts on this blog in the last year, and I'm hoping to remedy that in 2015. My main goal for 2015 is to stop procrastinating. Not really procrastinating, More like I need to stop giving myself a time limit on when things get done by. Example, I like to get the Mileage Monday posts up early Monday mornings, like before 9 AM. But who says they can't be uploaded until Monday 11:59 PM? It's still Monday right?

Just because I have a set time in my head doesn't mean it has to be done by then. If it's late, who really cares? As long as it gets done, that's what matters. I'm holding myself back...again...with the "all or nothing" mentality. I used to do that with losing weight long long ago. I'd lose a few pounds, then would get stuck for several weeks, so I'd give up. That's pretty much what I'm doing now with "deadlines".

Yes, deadlines are good to have, but to have them be so strict is pointless. I need to be more relaxed (in more ways than one) with when I post things. I have a long long long list of posts to write, but nothing gets done because of my "deadline" issue. So no more deadlines. Just do it and don't worry about how long it takes.

I have a major backlog of pictures from the virtual walk site, but that doesn't mean I've been exercising regularly. Again, my whole "deadline" problem. The deadline I give myself with workouts is I need to start by a certain time. When that start time comes and goes, I start the procrastination process. I need to retrain my brain by telling myself that as long as my workouts get done that's the important thing. I don't have to do it by a certain time (although I love getting my workout done by 8 or 8:30 AM). That's sometimes not realistic.

I'm not making excuses anymore (not that I did here on the blog) for why I'm not getting things done. I'm tired mainly of my "things get in the way/people are coming over" excuse. If people are coming over, so be it. I'm not letting that be an excuse to take the day off from exercise. If people are here when I need to get in the shower, so what? Other people are not the problem, I am the problem. I shouldn't let anything or anyone get in my way of doing what I need to or want to get done. I'm too worried about what other people are doing or thinking. I'm too worried about what the dog is doing for Pete's sake.

So that's pretty much my ramble for the day. I haven't made up any New Year's resolutions. I don't usually wait until the new year to start before I start working on a goal. But this year I am making a resolution to stop worrying about "start and end" deadlines. And to stop procrastinating when those deadlines come and go.

I need to really start implementing the "What You Can When You Can" attitude. I've already written about the WYCWYC strategy, I just need to put it into practice.

Hope everyone has a great new year and a fantastic 2015!

My New Year’s Goals (Resolutions)

Happy New Year blog world! I hope everything went for you all in 2012, and I hope you have an even better 2013. I mentioned in my previous blog that I don’t normally do resolutions. If I think of a goal I want to accomplish I don’t wait for the new year to start. Do it now! I only have two things (at the moment) that I want to accomplish this year. I’m sure I’ll think of other things along the way. I’ve already mentioned some of the things I want to work on.

1. Continue progressing on my elliptical. I made a goal back in March 2012 that I wanted to do a full mile with no breaks. Ha! What was I thinking. Then again, that was before my back had four giant knots. I also said I wanted to do 2 miles in one session. That’s still do-able I think, but it would wear me out. My legs don’t seem to have the endurance they once had.

So, my goal is to finish 1/2 mile with no breaks by summer, and then we’ll go from there.

2. I want to consistently use my walker. I’ve said this before, but I think I’ll be able to do it this time. My back has an absolutely mess for years, but since I’ve been going to the chiropractor, I’ve regained some of my abilities. I still need to work of anxiety issues and my fear of falling, but I am determined this time.

3. Continue with my stretching routine in the mornings and in the evenings. This has really helped my flexibility, even more now that my hips are actually straight.

And that’s about it. The hardest one for me is going to be the walker. I have started on this goal, and it's been going OK. My fear of falling is making my legs tense up, so my legs are sore today. But I’ll take it a minute at a time. I just have to remind myself that no one is watching me or paying attention to what I’m doing, they’re concentrating on what they’re doing. And I have to remind myself I won’t die if I fall.

If you’ve got goals, go ahead and post them in the reply section. You can do it!

New Year’s Eve Mileage Monday

Stay tuned for my New Year’s resolution post. I’m not a big New Year’s resolutions type of person. If I think of a goal I want to accomplish, I don’t wait for New Years. I have already started one of my goals, and it’s been up and down so far. I’ll get into that tomorrow though. Here are some more pictures from the virtual walk site.

Mile 500 (Elliptical for .5 mile)                                      Mile 501 (Elliptical for 1 mile)

                      

Mile 502 (Elliptical for 1 mile)                                       Mile 502.8 Elliptical for .8 mile)

                      

Mile 503.2 (Elliptical for .5 mile)                                    Mile 503.4 (Elliptical for .2 mile)

                      

 

(photo credit - Copyright 2006 Lawrence Berkeley Lab)

Have a great new year! Keep moving!

Goals For 2010

Before writing this entry, I decided to have a quick lunch. I made my favorite meal of plain noodles and a side of veggies. I decided to make up the last of the green beans. Sprinkling a little bit of parmesan cheese on the noodles makes the meal tasty.

















OK on to the resolutions...or should I say goals. I'm trying not to make any of the goals too large or too broad, and if they are too broad I will try to scale them down into smaller goals.

Goals for 2009:

1. Be patient and understanding with myself. If I need to take a break from exercise I will not beat myself up about it. If I feel any discomfort at all I will stop what I'm doing and take the necessary break. I will not gripe or whine about being off my exercise routine. I will find alternate ways of getting exercise in. When I need a break from the elliptical I will do a couple of workout videos from the SparkPeople site.
2. Stretch twice a day. This helps me tremendously. It is a fact that everybody needs to stretch, but for someone like me who has cerebral palsy, it is an absolute must. Stretching my legs not only makes them looser but also improves my balance slightly. When my legs are tight it causes me to have more issues when I walk. My legs don't straighten all the way if I don't stretch.
3. Keep up with various writing goals. I would like to keep this blog active and write frequently. Other than this blog I also want to write more personal journal entries located at another site that I keep locked. Venting to my private journal allows me to get my frustrations out and not blow a gasket. Hee hee. Another writing venue I wish to still continue with is a few freelance writing sites. In the last year I've made some side money so I can buy some fun things that I would not normally buy for myself. And the final writing goal I want to partake in is to write more creative works. Participating in 2009s NaNoWriMo was a good start for me to take up creative writing again.
4. Continue with positive thinking and positive self talk. When I catch myself thinking negatively I will make a point to stop mid thought and change it to something positive. If I catch myself calling myself nasty names or telling myself that I'm stupid, I will stop and take a deep breath and keep moving.
5. Work on balance and walking. I'm not setting an end date for this goal, this is something that I will be working on forever. I will start out slow by standing up while watching TV and balancing on one foot as long as I can and then switching legs. I did this for a while last year and I think it helped a bit. I will also use my walker to get around this room. Having three cats will be a challenge for this goal, but I will do my best. The floors out in the kitchen and hallway areas are a bit uneven making my walker seem like I'm pushing a shopping cart with one bad wheel. So I will not practice out there quite yet. I will get there in time though.

I'm sure there are more goals that I can set, but these will do for now. Through the next year I will add to my goals and maybe modify my current ones as I need to.

Have a happy new year and I wish you all the best for 2010.

Goals For 2010

Before writing this entry, I decided to have a quick lunch. I made my favorite meal of plain noodles and a side of veggies. I decided to make up the last of the green beans. Sprinkling a little bit of parmesan cheese on the noodles makes the meal tasty.

















OK on to the resolutions...or should I say goals. I'm trying not to make any of the goals too large or too broad, and if they are too broad I will try to scale them down into smaller goals.

Goals for 2009:

1. Be patient and understanding with myself. If I need to take a break from exercise I will not beat myself up about it. If I feel any discomfort at all I will stop what I'm doing and take the necessary break. I will not gripe or whine about being off my exercise routine. I will find alternate ways of getting exercise in. When I need a break from the elliptical I will do a couple of workout videos from the SparkPeople site.
2. Stretch twice a day. This helps me tremendously. It is a fact that everybody needs to stretch, but for someone like me who has cerebral palsy, it is an absolute must. Stretching my legs not only makes them looser but also improves my balance slightly. When my legs are tight it causes me to have more issues when I walk. My legs don't straighten all the way if I don't stretch.
3. Keep up with various writing goals. I would like to keep this blog active and write frequently. Other than this blog I also want to write more personal journal entries located at another site that I keep locked. Venting to my private journal allows me to get my frustrations out and not blow a gasket. Hee hee. Another writing venue I wish to still continue with is a few freelance writing sites. In the last year I've made some side money so I can buy some fun things that I would not normally buy for myself. And the final writing goal I want to partake in is to write more creative works. Participating in 2009s NaNoWriMo was a good start for me to take up creative writing again.
4. Continue with positive thinking and positive self talk. When I catch myself thinking negatively I will make a point to stop mid thought and change it to something positive. If I catch myself calling myself nasty names or telling myself that I'm stupid, I will stop and take a deep breath and keep moving.
5. Work on balance and walking. I'm not setting an end date for this goal, this is something that I will be working on forever. I will start out slow by standing up while watching TV and balancing on one foot as long as I can and then switching legs. I did this for a while last year and I think it helped a bit. I will also use my walker to get around this room. Having three cats will be a challenge for this goal, but I will do my best. The floors out in the kitchen and hallway areas are a bit uneven making my walker seem like I'm pushing a shopping cart with one bad wheel. So I will not practice out there quite yet. I will get there in time though.

I'm sure there are more goals that I can set, but these will do for now. Through the next year I will add to my goals and maybe modify my current ones as I need to.

Have a happy new year and I wish you all the best for 2010.

Recap Of 2009 Goals

Friday begins the start of a new year. Normally at this time of year people make resolutions. I used to "try" to do this, always making the same resolutions. Such as lose weight. Do such and such so many times a day every day. And other things to that effect. I started out every year OK, but I always lost steam about two or three weeks after the new year. If I had one bad day or did not accomplish what I set out to I would give up. And that would be the end of my resolution.

Last year I set some long-term goals for myself to accomplish in 2009. Actually, as I look back at it, it looks like I only had one long-term goal and the rest were short term goals or a continuation of what I had already been doing. I am copying and pasting my goals from last year into this entry.

1. Maintain my weight. Pretty sure this is a done deal.
2. Strength train 3 times a week.
3. At least 5 days of cardio. Even better would be a full 7 days even if it's only 10 minutes. I don't HAVE to do a full mile each and every time I get on the elliptical.
4. Positive thinking, positive self talk and meditation. These three things have always helped in the past, so I need to really make them habits. I tend to start these and over time they fade away. May I need a calendar reminder, lol.
5. To check in monthly with myself to see how I'm doing on my goals and how my body feels in general. See where I'm slacking and needing improvement.
6. Stretch, stretch and stretch some more. I really need to take my time and not rush through this. Twice a day, morning and evening.
7. Continue to work on my walking alone. I DO INTEND to be walking unassisted at the end of 2009. This is my MAJOR goal.

For number one I'm sorry to say that I was not able to accomplish. I ended up with quite a few injuries in my lower legs and feet and had to take several months off from my cardio. I am about 10 pounds heavier than I was last year. This is technically OK as I am still in the healthy weight range for my height. My pants still fit and that's what I go by for the most part. The scale can go up and down, and I understand that is normal. I will not be concerned too much about the number on the scale unless my pants become too tight.

For number two, I was able to stick with it. I had days off certainly, and this is normal. It's not realistic to think that I will do strength training three days a week every week for the entire year. Life gets in the way, or should I say life happens. Illnesses, vacations, and unexpected houseguests are part of life.

Number three I've come to believe was a bit more of a challenge than I should have set for myself. At the end of 2008 I believe I was doing five days a week of cardio, so I thought that I would be able to continue that. I'm not sure if trying to complete five days a week was a contribution to my injuries, but it might have been. I was stubborn and figured that I'd be able to push myself to do the same intense cardio routine every week.

Number four I did pretty well with. For the most part I did not talk to myself in a negative way. I tried my best to think on the bright side of things. I can't say that I did much in the way of meditation, but that's OK. The main thing I accomplished was positive thinking and positive self talk.

For number five I started out fine, but I slacked off after about three months. I had it in my mind to write an update on the first of every month. That obviously did not happen one month and I kept delaying getting it done until I just skipped it entirely. And of course once I skipped one month, I skipped a second month, and then I skipped a third month, and so on.

For number six again I did OK. I did go weeks and months at one point without stretching at all. But essentially I came back around to it and got it done. Stretching twice a day is good for me. I tried doing it three times a day that that was a bit much. And once a day was not enough. Doing it twice a day makes it so my legs don't completely tighten up so it feels like I'm starting from scratch the following day.

And finally number seven. My big, huge, main goal. I did the mistake of setting myself an end date, saying I wanted to walk on my own buy the end of 2009. I think this put a lot of pressure on myself and I felt like I had two get it done in record speed. The first week of January 2009 I did fairly well, but I did not take the time to do it the right way. I wanted to walk on my own so badly that I skipped certain steps. What I should have done was to set a certain time each day to practice walking with my walker. If I had done that I could have worked my way up to not needing my walker at all. My main obstacles were balance of course, but I think even more than that... I know that even more than that it was an issue of confidence and fear. Not so much confidence I don't think, although it does play a part. I still find myself concerned with what people think of me when they see me walking. For some reason it's still hard for me to get it through my head that people do not care about what I am doing or how I am doing it. They're just worried about what they're doing and how they're doing it. But the absolute main obstacle was fear. I have a fear, a deathly fear, of falling. I need to work through the fear and once I do that the rest will come easily I think.

This entry is getting a bit long, so I will post my new year's goals tomorrow. My question to you all is do you set resolutions on New Year's Eve or a week before new year's? Do you set an end date for your resolutions or do you leave them open ended? Do you have large resolutions, that you might be able to break down into smaller goals to reach your main objective?

Recap Of 2009 Goals

Friday begins the start of a new year. Normally at this time of year people make resolutions. I used to "try" to do this, always making the same resolutions. Such as lose weight. Do such and such so many times a day every day. And other things to that effect. I started out every year OK, but I always lost steam about two or three weeks after the new year. If I had one bad day or did not accomplish what I set out to I would give up. And that would be the end of my resolution.

Last year I set some long-term goals for myself to accomplish in 2009. Actually, as I look back at it, it looks like I only had one long-term goal and the rest were short term goals or a continuation of what I had already been doing. I am copying and pasting my goals from last year into this entry.

1. Maintain my weight. Pretty sure this is a done deal.
2. Strength train 3 times a week.
3. At least 5 days of cardio. Even better would be a full 7 days even if it's only 10 minutes. I don't HAVE to do a full mile each and every time I get on the elliptical.
4. Positive thinking, positive self talk and meditation. These three things have always helped in the past, so I need to really make them habits. I tend to start these and over time they fade away. May I need a calendar reminder, lol.
5. To check in monthly with myself to see how I'm doing on my goals and how my body feels in general. See where I'm slacking and needing improvement.
6. Stretch, stretch and stretch some more. I really need to take my time and not rush through this. Twice a day, morning and evening.
7. Continue to work on my walking alone. I DO INTEND to be walking unassisted at the end of 2009. This is my MAJOR goal.

For number one I'm sorry to say that I was not able to accomplish. I ended up with quite a few injuries in my lower legs and feet and had to take several months off from my cardio. I am about 10 pounds heavier than I was last year. This is technically OK as I am still in the healthy weight range for my height. My pants still fit and that's what I go by for the most part. The scale can go up and down, and I understand that is normal. I will not be concerned too much about the number on the scale unless my pants become too tight.

For number two, I was able to stick with it. I had days off certainly, and this is normal. It's not realistic to think that I will do strength training three days a week every week for the entire year. Life gets in the way, or should I say life happens. Illnesses, vacations, and unexpected houseguests are part of life.

Number three I've come to believe was a bit more of a challenge than I should have set for myself. At the end of 2008 I believe I was doing five days a week of cardio, so I thought that I would be able to continue that. I'm not sure if trying to complete five days a week was a contribution to my injuries, but it might have been. I was stubborn and figured that I'd be able to push myself to do the same intense cardio routine every week.

Number four I did pretty well with. For the most part I did not talk to myself in a negative way. I tried my best to think on the bright side of things. I can't say that I did much in the way of meditation, but that's OK. The main thing I accomplished was positive thinking and positive self talk.

For number five I started out fine, but I slacked off after about three months. I had it in my mind to write an update on the first of every month. That obviously did not happen one month and I kept delaying getting it done until I just skipped it entirely. And of course once I skipped one month, I skipped a second month, and then I skipped a third month, and so on.

For number six again I did OK. I did go weeks and months at one point without stretching at all. But essentially I came back around to it and got it done. Stretching twice a day is good for me. I tried doing it three times a day that that was a bit much. And once a day was not enough. Doing it twice a day makes it so my legs don't completely tighten up so it feels like I'm starting from scratch the following day.

And finally number seven. My big, huge, main goal. I did the mistake of setting myself an end date, saying I wanted to walk on my own buy the end of 2009. I think this put a lot of pressure on myself and I felt like I had two get it done in record speed. The first week of January 2009 I did fairly well, but I did not take the time to do it the right way. I wanted to walk on my own so badly that I skipped certain steps. What I should have done was to set a certain time each day to practice walking with my walker. If I had done that I could have worked my way up to not needing my walker at all. My main obstacles were balance of course, but I think even more than that... I know that even more than that it was an issue of confidence and fear. Not so much confidence I don't think, although it does play a part. I still find myself concerned with what people think of me when they see me walking. For some reason it's still hard for me to get it through my head that people do not care about what I am doing or how I am doing it. They're just worried about what they're doing and how they're doing it. But the absolute main obstacle was fear. I have a fear, a deathly fear, of falling. I need to work through the fear and once I do that the rest will come easily I think.

This entry is getting a bit long, so I will post my new year's goals tomorrow. My question to you all is do you set resolutions on New Year's Eve or a week before new year's? Do you set an end date for your resolutions or do you leave them open ended? Do you have large resolutions, that you might be able to break down into smaller goals to reach your main objective?