Ever felt like you’ve got yourself in a rut?
 |
| My cheeky punky laddo, doing some Autumnal chilling 😅 |
I was feeling exactly that - especially as Autumn makes me feels lethargic,
sluggish, tired, and a bit like I just want to hibernate whilst its cold, dark
and miserable weather outside.
To try and combat this, a month ago I set myself a
challenge: a self-imposed “Operation Non-Hibernation”.
I set myself just three targets that I wanted to
complete consistently every single day that would benefit my wellbeing, which
were:
Apparently it takes 21 days to form new habits by
doing them consistently - and consecutively!
So I tried my very best, and
today, on the last day of November, I am pleased to announce that I have
successfully completed my challenge!
Looking back over the last 30 days, here’s some
reflections on what I did and what I learnt:
1. 25
minutes of exercise
I discovered earlier this year at the Leeds 10K that
I hate running with a burning passion (it makes me hot, tired, perspire, and chunky
bits of me, erm, jiggle!) - and so running is not for me.
Instead I had decided that my exercise every day would
be at least 25 minutes of brisk walking with my German Shepherd, Jerry Lee.
These
were the benefits:
- A tired
dog is a well behaved dog! Jerry Lee normally only gets a quick whizz round our
nearby park, so upping the exercise knackers the cheeky boy out for the day.
- Amazingly, no body weight has been gained, despite an
excessive amount of pizza consumption this month!
- When you exercise first thing in the morning, it
boosts your energy for the day. Some afternoons I didn’t even need my usual
nap!
- I now thoroughly enjoy being my local
neighbourhood’s Nosy Parker. I checked out new streets, assessed kerb appeals
of each property I passed, AND found two unkempt houses which then received a
direct-to-vendor mail letter, just in case they wanted to sell…
 |
| Captain Poser looking super sexy on his stroll! |
This gets easier the more you do it. You just have
to be organised!
Separate your water allocation into 8 glasses, or 4 x 500ml/half
litre small bottles, (which bizarrely is easier to drink than the glasses - ?!?)
Then make sure you’ve necked your allocation by each quarter on the clock: 9am,
12pm, 3pm, 6pm etc.
The days it goes wrong are when you don’t drink
enough consistently, and then you have to squash it all in over a short time
period – leading to about 48 toilet trips every hour!
Anyway, benefits I found were:
- Less
bloating from the water, as it replaced many of the fizzy drinks I would
normally have.
- Felt less
hungry than normal; water is good for filling you up - which is good in my
case, because I’m a greedy glutton who often tries to eat my own body weight in
chocolate.
- My skin is awesome!!! Bright, fresh, hydrated,
clear – if I’m not careful I’ll start getting ID-ed in supermarkets again!
- Water is
very good for, erm, digestion. Things go lovely and smoothly in the removal of
waste products, if you know what I mean… if anyone you know suffers from
constipation issues, tell them to get more water down them!
Finally...
3. Do
something nice or helpful for somebody else
I liked this one the best. However, some days it
was quite difficult to do. It’s ok if you’re working around people every day,
but on the days when you’re stuck in on your own in your little home
office, you have to make a real conscious effort to make something
nice or helpful happen.
Here’s some of my favourite nice and helpful things
I did for other people this month:
- took my dream
team refurb crew out for a celebratory/thank you curry
- donated to
someone’s charity challenge through JustGiving
- sold
poppies for the Royal British Legion
- took my
air cadets away on a camp in the Yorkshire Dales
- bought
lunch for a homeless person. Enjoyed the nice feeling it gave me so much that I
did it again today.
Bizarrely some of the other things I did which just
involved spending money – buying someone a cinema ticket / pizza / water / buying
a friend lunch / sacrificing my chips for my hungry friend / paying for a taxi –
these just didn’t feel as rewarding.
I think it’s an easy fix to just throw money at
something. And yet I fully appreciate my own self-contradiction that it’s a
shame that when it's so easy to do, more people don’t use their money to help others. Small things count better than nothing at all. Even the lady at the checkout who I
gave a 10p carrier bag to was grateful for the kind
little gesture.
I would love it if we all did more nice things for
other people.
I enjoyed it for no other reason than that nice feeling it gave
me inside.
So to summarise: my challenge felt difficult at
times, but I made myself do these things consistently, because I didn’t want to
let myself down.
The fact that I had mouthed off to everyone on Facebook also
had the advantage of keeping me accountable.
But consistency is key. One day at
a time.
Do something every single day which moves you towards your goal.
Completing this challenge has got me wondering:
What else could I achieve, if I set targets and stick to doing them
consistently?
Thanks for reading my blog!
If you'd like to connect, my Facebook page is here:
And my website is here:
Have a lovely day!
Kellyann x x x