This week for the first time in a very long time I have managed to get all the exercise sessions I had planned in done. This has taken effort, planning and some excuse busting self talking but I did it. This is how my week panned out:
Monday – Crossfit
Tuesday – Rest day
Wednesday – Crossfit
Thursday – Intervals
Friday – Crossfit
Saturday – Intervals
Sunday – Own workout, open water swim
To some this might seem a lot but a few years ago, this was my weekly exercise routine, I did it week in, week out without question or excuses and it worked for me and I felt fit and healthy and the idea is get back into this routine each week.
I feel so good for getting one week done and can’t wait to start again tomorrow!
Today has mainly been doing housework!! Over the last few weeks this has slipped somewhat as been busy with work but it does get to me that the house is in a state, the bedroom had become a floor-robe with washing daily being transferred from the bed to the floor each night with the plan of putting it away in the morning and then that plan going out of the window.
The dirty dishes in the kitchen had been piling up to point I’d run out of clean plates and cutlery and space on the worktops to do anything!
I’m not an ultra tidy person but I do like a bit of order, I don’t know about you but for me I do a massive house tidy and clean and then for a few weeks I keep on top of it, doing a little each day, then slowly this daily practice slips and it turns into chaos and then I have days like today when I have to spend all day tidying and cleaning.
Sometimes I do find cleaning and tidying quite cathartic and today was no different, in fact spending time in each of the rooms in my house made me realise that even though the house does need a bit of a refresh and a few DIY jobs doing it’s a lovely house and most of all it’s MY house, my castle, my safety and I’ve worked my butt off to make it what it is.
It made me realise that I’ve fallen into a mindset of seeing the negative of every aspect my life rather than seeing the good stuff, so time to continue building the good stuff!
One area that I want to get sorted out over the coming year is my garden, I’m very lucky that I live in a house that has garden on three sides, I wouldn’t say it’s a big garden but it’s a good size and will look amazing soon.
The challenge I have with it is that it even though it isn’t that big in the scheme of things, I have struggled to maintain it over the last few years as my energy has been focused on bringing in income and simply surviving.
The garden is very overgrown as captured in the pictures below, these were taken at the end of May this year and I have done a few bits like cut down the trees that you can see in these picture, they are weeds and have seeded from other trees outside of my garden.
Front part of garden
Side Garden/shed
Side Garden/Vegetable Patch
Panoramic view of the back part of garden/patio
And over the May bank holiday I did clear some of this but since then it’s grown back even more than you can see here.
Away from the overgrown gardens, there are a couple of things going on here for me, firstly – I don’t really know what I’m doing with the garden so instead of trying things and learning something new I tend to put that thing off & distract myself with other stuff and secondly, I find it really hard to ask for help!!
Today, I pulled on my big brave pants and asked my friends local to me to come along next weekend and help me clear my garden! I’ve offered food and refreshments in return for time & labour as I know that once I get it clear and have some advice from green fingered friends I can make this area into a space I really want to spend time in and also a space where I can grow some food crops (the area in top right photo) has always been the space I allocated to some food beds, I have grown some food crops before and loved it so need to start again with this.
I know this will take a lot of hard work and effort to get it sorted and really pissed off with myself that I’ve allowed it to get this bad but that’s life isn’t it, sometimes we can’t do everything…
I spent 2 and half hours in the car driving to and from a client and to while away the time (while focusing on driving of course) I thought about how I wanted my future to looked, how did I want to feel and what this would then bring…
This all might sound a bit airy fairy as we call it in the UK but there is more and more research suggesting that visualisation really works in many ways for different scenarios. I once watched a programme where someone simply visualised practicing scoring hoops in basketball versus someone physically doing the actions and when they went head to head at the end, the person who visualised matched the score of the other person despite not picking up one ball through the whole practice time period, I was amazed!
The human brain is capable of so much, and although scientist have been studying it for centuries, we are probably only still less than 5% of it’s true capabilities!
One area that fascinates me the most is limiting beliefs and how we can eliminate them through careful study and practice, this is something I’m reading about at the moment and will keep you posted on how I’m getting on smashing through some of the things I think that hold me back in life.
For the first time in a very long time, I’ve switched off the tellybox this evening and spent some quite time contemplating!! This might not seem like much but I am so guilty of sitting in front of the tv and not really watching/engaging in it and passing the time before bed when I could be doing something productive with this time.
Now I’m not saying that sitting in front of the TV is a bad thing (there’s always time to just chill) but I think it’s easy to just let the time pass and then wonder why things in your life don’t happen when you want them to, that’s often how I feel anyway.
I feel like I need to commit to myself that at least 2 evenings a week I don’t watch any TV and do something else be this a hobby or personal develop that moves me towards my goals.
There are so many hobbies/things I enjoy doing but never seem to find the time to do them and then I look back over my week/month and realise how much time I sat on my arse watching mindless programmes.
The same goes for social media & stuff on your phone. For a while now I’ve set it that my phone goes on “Do Not Disturb” from 7.30pm at night until 7.30am in the morning as a way to stop me getting sucked into mindless scrolling, however, recently I’ve been turning this on and off during the evening and I’ve noticed that my night-time routine then slips and the only person that suffers is me! So time to get a little bit more disciplined here. It’s that FOMO feeling that rears it’s head, when in reality I’m not missing out on anything, those messages and notifications will still be there when I turn this function off.
I know a number of friends use this function too, this function turns off all notifications and alerts, apart from phone calls as I felt that this was important that if my family needed to get hold of me then I’d hear the phone ring.
The other thing I also do and have done for years is to not have my phone in the bedroom. I use my watch as an alarm but again recently I’ve broken this routine and feel rubbish for not having those boundaries I set for myself to maintain my own wellbeing. I also try not to have the phone with me when I’m watching TV as I don’t know about you but I can’t properly watch a TV programme and be engaged with a conversation on the phone! In the past it’s taken me over 2 hours to watch a 45 minute programme as I’m either having to pause it when I give my attention to the conversation or having to rewind the programme to re-watch something I’ve missed.
In my drunk haze last night while celebrating my 10 year business owner anniversary I decided to take action in one area of my life – my love life! I’ve been properly single for over 10 years, a bit of a coincidence that it’s the same time as I’ve run a business! I’ve had a few short flings in the intervening year but not found the one…
After a few glasses of wine I downloaded two dating apps and set up my profile on both and started swiping left and right! By the end of the evening I’d matched with a couple of people and received a couple of messages, it was late by this time so thought I’d leave it to this morning to reply.
However, in the cold light of the day I realised that this was a step too far for me and just the thought of having to reply to messages brought me out in a cold sweat and made me feel quite stressed so less than 12 hours later my profile and apps were deleted off my phone.
Like with every area of my life that I’m working on during this year of transformation, embracing love is right up there as important for me but I know that I have some work to do on this, especially around my self confidence, self worth and self love.
As much as I want to find the love of my life, I’m also a little scared of it and know that I put great big walls up or make excuses why I can’t make more action in this area to move me forward, the deleting of dating apps is a casing point. I can’t quite put my finger on what I’m so scared about, this definitely needs exploring more.
Today was a day where I looked back rather than forward.
The main reason for this is that last week I celebrated running my business full-time for 10 years, 10 years of self employed, the celebration was slightly delayed as a friend had to self-isolate until today!!
The last 10 years now seemed to have past in a blink of an eye yet also feel like a lifetime!
I’ve had so many memorable highs and some forgettable lows too but looking back makes me even more determined to make this 365 transformation a success!
If there is one thing I can take away from the last decade (there are so many things but I’d be here for hours) is that when I want something bad enough I will put everything on the line to achieve it!
Tomorrow is the day when I take this challenge seriously & to the next level, no more playing small!
Another day, another dollar as they say, it maybe a Sunday but this gal had work to do so it was wall to wall work for me today which in all honesty is something I relish, having my own business and the stress that comes with it is something I’ve learnt to live with over the decade I’ve been doing it.
I know that every hour I put into it I get it back in reward, not always financial reward but the satisfaction that I am helping a person or business improve so that’s worth it.
However, over the coming year I do want to be in a position where I can take time off and not worry about work I might be missing, being more financially stable is a big goal for me as I think I underestimate the impact the instability has on physical and mental health and my life in general.
The first thing I need to do is to work on my money mindset and blocks, I’ve got a number of books around this so it’s time to go back to them and not only read them but actually do the tasks and activities they suggest!
Today has been one of those days when time runs away with you. The day started well with getting up, feeding Sophiecat, meditation and leave for intervals in good time, do interval training, quick top up food shop and home before 9am and then I’m not really sure where the rest of the day went as when I looked at the clock again it was 3pm and hadn’t really achieved half of what I had planned.
This is actually the story of my life, I plan stuff like this transformation and before I know it time has passed me by and I’ve not made much progress!
I really feel like I need to get a grip and do some inner work around this if I’m going to make the changes I so desperately want to happen and look at my motivations around certain activities – mainly the ones I avoid or procrastinate on until they stress me out enough to do them!! Why do I do that to myself?! I add a layer of pressure/stress that could easily be avoided so am interested as to what this is telling me, what is going on in my unconscious/higher conscious! Will keep you posted if I find anything out.
Lincolnshiregirl 