Healthy Habits for Working Out

Do you have a healthy relationship with exercise? All in or totally avoidant, there's a balance to be aimed for and achieved.

According to the Huffington Post, 9 habits might set you apart:

  1. Know the difference between a good burn and true pain
  2. Take rest days
  3. Don’t exercise to eat, instead, eat to exercise
  4. Go with the flow
  5. Know what you like and do that
  6. But still mix things up
  7. Do it when and where you like
  8. Seek support
  9. Do it for the mental benefits.

----

How does your workout routine measure up?

Inspiration for the Indifferent

Maybe you haven't been traveling through Patagonia like the couple in the video, but the path YOU'VE been been on? Like theirs, it comes to an end, fades, transitions. Maybe it already has. And YOUR FUTURE, quietly waiting, asks you:

1. Is it possible to be happy with THIS life?
2. Did you enjoy your story?

If you can't answer yes ... I urge you to start looking for a different answer. Do whatever it takes to know that you know that you know that joy is still possible. Start today. Go. Try. Be. Change.

Go travel. Make eye contact. Say "hello." Run a new route. Change your diet. Get foolish and engage a grand gesture. Stop living half-assed and quit making excuses (Revelation 3:15-17, The Message). Fear owns you. You're no good for anyone (including yourself) all stifled and hunched inward. Tradition, authority, rules and norms? Analyze them, shake them, change them.

One life. One chance at influence and time and transformation. Don't blow this.

Just live a better story, k? Need a little help or hope to get you started? I'm game. That's what therapy is all about. Give me a call.

how NOT to give up on your new years resolutions

Remember those resolutions you came up with, coming down off the high of a delightful Christmas season and looking bright-eyed toward an emerging Spring?

Now, as a long, hot Summer plods toward a close, how are your early goals shaping up? If you’re like the majority of us, you’ve lost sight of, well, the majority of those goals. But you don’t have to beat yourself up about it.

Instead, join the mid-year resolutions club, give each other a high-five and get set to make change before the end of the year. Here’s how:

  1. Break Up Big Goals. Want learn to fish? Awesome. That’s a big goal, accomplished through a set of smaller, short-term, foundation-building goals, like getting a fishing pole, finding a watering hole, learning about bait, etc. It’s great to have an overarching goal, but success happens through checking off one related short-term goal at a time.
  2. Specify Short-Term Goals. Each goal along the way needs to be specific, measurable and time limited. Want to learn to fish? This week, research fishing poles — use, cost, etc., and plan to purchase one over the weekend. Before you know it, you’ve got significant momentum in the small things toward your big goal. That’s what we call progress.
  3. Remove Barriers. Think hard about what you’ve used as excuses in the first half of the year to avoid making progress toward your goals. Strategize how to eliminate those opportunities for avoidance. Wanting to get in shape and keep finding yourself saying your gym is too far away from you house? Change gyms. Want to drink more water? Buy a water bottle you actually like and can carry around with you. Too busy with carting the kids around to read that devotional? Ask your husband to cover the morning routine so you get 15 minutes to yourself. Make it easy to move toward your goals!
  4. Think and Act One Day at a Time. Trying to lose weight? It happens one eating choice and one exercise movement at time. Not only does this present-focus help us avoid despair, it also reminds us that healthy change is a gradual, habit-redefining process. This focus creates investment — in what we’re doing and who we are. Remember, you're worth each and every baby step in the right direction.

So, what do you want to change, develop, or create by the end of the year? Write it down. Start today. Let’s go.

And if you need a little extra help, MAKE AN APPOINTMENT — that’s what we’re here for!

On Why You Should Get Uncomfortable

“In our society, we have come to believe that discomfort always means something is wrong. We are conditioned to believe that feelings of distress, pain, deprivation, yearning and longing mean something is wrong with the way we are living our lives.

Conversely, we are convinced that a rightly lived life must give us serenity, completion and fulfillment. Comfort means “right” and distress means “wrong.” The influence of such convictions is stifling to the human spirit. Individually and collectively, we must somehow recover the truth. The truth is, we were never meant to be completely satisfied.”
— Gerald May (as quoted by Jan Meyers in "The Allure of Hope")

what it means to let go

“[God gives you] more than enough power to manage your own life, but not nearly enough power for you to manage everybody else’s.”
— Dr. Joel C. Hunter

I heard an entire sermon on CODEPENDENCY this morning. I kid you not. Without actually using the term, one of my pastors spent 30+ minutes normalizing the pull to judge and manage others' lives, illustrating the destructive consequences of giving into that temptation, and then reorienting the congregation around the hope we have in letting go and, essentially, letting God handle that which (and who) we can't (which, let's face it, is most everything!) ... It was a great message.

Illustrating the point about letting go, Dr. Hunter read through a piece by an unknown author. It sounded familiar, so I spent a few minutes diving into my addictions and recovery library ... and there it was: featured in Stepping Stones to Recovery from Codependency, a helpful little guide to Letting Go.

Of course, I made it into a handout. Enjoy!

“Incredible change happens in your life when you decide to take control of what you do have power over instead of craving control over what you don’t”
— Steve Maraboli

---

Could you use a little help learning to let go? Tracy Weiss specializes in treating individuals struggling with codependency, perfectionism and self-doubt. Don't hesitate, MAKE AN APPOINTMENT.