Sometime this winter I had decided that I just needed to get up earlier; my current routine was not working for me and I needed to find more productive hours in the day (there are only so many hours!). I had to shift some things around to make sure that what was important was getting done.
Welp, it was torture.
I HATED IT.
I hated the thought of having to get up early before I even went to bed and when my alarm went off, the thought of leaving my warm, cozy bed was uggghhhhHHHHH.
I despised the fact that I had to do this…
Every year as the year ends, I begin to reflect on how my year played out. I am someone who loves New Years, it is such a clean slate for me and I feel I get to reinvent myself every year. I think, “K Linds, what are we going to do this year?”.
I love to grow, change and evolve. It is so exciting for me to think about the chance of change ahead and it has led to some pretty profound changes over my years.
The holidays are my time to slow down and look back and see what went well and what I would like to have done differently and change going forward.
I decided that next year, I am going to be one of those successful people who just gets up early at the same time every day before the world wakes up and starts their day a on the right foot After all, we are just the sum of all the tiny choices we make each day.
My goal time is 5am right now. Not 5:05, Not 5:01, but 5:00am.
I started this past week, I know…it’s not New Years yet! BUT I started my CrossFit/health journey on Monday Dec 19th in 2011: I could not wait to get started and my coach thought I was crazy, but ever since that decision, I have never waited for the perfect time to start anything – it never needs to be perfect to start!
Something weird happened though…
Instead of complete dread and anxiety about going to bed on Sunday night, I was excited. In fact, I could hardly sleep!
It was like that sleep on Christmas Eve, waking up several times to see if it was time to wake up yet, was it time to start my new life yet? The new me??
The reason I am telling you this is because I went from finding it IMPOSSIBLE to wake up at 6:30am to not being able to sleep past 5:00am in a couple days time.
Why?
Because my mind shifted.
I want to be someone, I want to embody what the people I admire do, I want to become that. It also came from a place of love and not lack. It came from a place of excitement and not resentment.
Rather than me thinking,
“I have to get up earlier because I’m not getting enough done” and “I hate that I HAVE to get up early”.
I started thinking,
“I am excited to wake up and take care of me” and “I get up early because I love myself and like to take care of myself”.
Instead of focusing on getting up in the dark and cold, I thought about the life this was going to create for me and that had me excited to the point of not being able to sleep! This can be applied to your fitness and dietary choices as well, or maybe you would be a lot more successful with those 2 things as well as other areas of your life if you got up earlier too! What kind of body and life can you create by doing these things??
Don’t think about the hard, think about the life it can create for you!
Listen to the differences in these sentences:
“I have to workout because i’m not thin enough, strong enough, fast enough, look good enough”
“I workout because I love myself and like to take care of myself”
“I have to eat healthy because I don’t like how I look and feel”
“I eat healthy because I love to eat foods that nourish me”
“I eat well because I am someone who takes care of myself”
As we look forward to the new year, who do you want to be? What do you want to embody?
Change is hard, but embodying who you want to be is a really great way to make real change. Look at the people who have what you want, what do they do? How do they act? What actions do they take day to day?
“If I was this type of person, what would I do? How would I be?”
It starts with your mindset, followed by the actions you take.
Look back on your past year, what served you? What did not? What changes can you make?
-Coach Lindsey