Five Things

Hey there!  How are you doing?  As your running progresses, I hope you find yourself settling into your groove out there on the road.  My new runner friends and I always joke about that first 7 to 10 minutes.  Some days it just hurts and is hard to push through, but you push through it and suddenly it is almost effortless.  If you’ve experienced that already, woohoo!  If you haven’t yet, be diligent, that moment is waiting for you to discover it.

As I worked my way back from being overfat, unhealthy and unfit, I used Bill Phillips, Body For Life book for inspiration and his journal to keep myself in the groove.  I benefitted tremendously from completing that journal every single day.  I especially found a great deal of support and encouragement in the practice he teaches of listing Five Things every single day that will make tomorrow a day you can count as a successful day in your walk to the healthiest, fittest you.

I find that our society, our culture has trained us to look for the train wrecks, the explosions, the negative things that occur around us and has moved us away from looking for the positive, good and beneficial we are surrounded by.

Here’s an example of what I’m referring to with regards to changing your lifestyle practices.  You decide you’re going to change.  You line out your game plan, your eating and exercise, and your goal date.  You’re on track taking baby steps, hesitantly, quietly making different choices and doing well, until it’s someone’s birthday at the office and you give in to the birthday cake.  Then you feel so guilty you beat yourself up about it so badly, you completely defeat yourself before lunch is even over.  “I can’t do this”  “I don’t have any self control”, and then my favorite, “Oh well, I’ve blown it already today, might as well make this a cheat day and eat whatever I want.”  By the time you get home, your “diet” is over as you’ve brow beaten yourself into submission and you give up.

Does any of that sound familiar to you?  I’ve done it myself!  The way that I found to help turn that around is with the Five Things.  Here’s what to do.  Every evening write down Five things that if accomplished tomorrow, you will have had a day that has brought you that much closer to accomplishing your goals.  It will be a day that can be counted as a success.   Then, at the end of the day tomorrow, look at those Five Things and see how you did.  Did you accomplish them?

In reviewing your day, find three things that you did really well and one to improve upon for tomorrow.  If you focus on doing this every day, you will begin to shine floodlights on the Good Stuff you are doing, the positive changes you are making and you’ll peel that flood light away from the place where you may have stumbled.

I personally found that my Five Things always lived within the following areas:

1.    Eat Cleaner
2.    Drink Water
3.    Work Out Harder
4.    Plan Ahead
5.    Believe in my bodies ability to change

I will choose a different element about each item to focus on each day.  For example, within my Work Out Harder focus one day may be to really hit my intervals hard, the next day it may be to focus on my strength more.  Does that make sense where I’m in the same realm, but tweaking my focus?

In camp, it’s pretty common to have a new camper sheepishly hand their daily log book to me kind of digging their toe on the ground ashamed that they ate something the day before that wasn’t their “best” choice.  After reviewing their book, I’ll find that they planned ahead, paired at all five meals good carbs and proteins, they worked out hard, drank water and stay focused.  That’s amazing progress!  We celebrate that instead of beating on the bite of cake or pizza or whatever it may have been.  By shifting the focus and helping them see where they’ve made tremendous progress, made terrific and positive changes, they keep their head in the game.  They discover that they are stronger and more capable of controlling themselves when faced with potentially detrimental choices when they arise in the future.

If we begin to embrace that great things can be accomplished in spite of speed bumps, know that it’s not going to go perfectly, we can grant ourselves room to be human and still get the job done.  Injuries will happen.  Birthday cake will happen.  You can still accomplish your goals even with those things being part of the story.  I don’t know of anyone who has accomplished any great feat that had everything go perfectly as planned.  Learn to focus on what you’re doing that’s great and you too will be great!

I have to tell you, embracing the Five Things was about the most powerful new practice I committed to when turning my life around.  Please give it a shot.  I’d love to hear how it works for you!

In Fitness and In Health,

Melanie