Who I Want to Be

            I came across an article not too long ago meant to help people begin changing personal habits. While I can no longer find the page I borrowed from I found it to be a great exercise in visualizing what I wanted to be and how to make the changes required to become that person.

Let’s begin:

Who do I want to be?

            I want to be that mom who gets up early to work out before packing her kids lunch and getting them off to school. There is no over reach here. I am fine with handing them a generic toaster pastry and a piece of fruit for breakfast. I want to be able to dedicate myself to writing and volunteering in the hopes of someday making the world better. I want to put everything aside in the evening to play the soccer mom and have dinner on the table at night when everyone gets home. Crockpot meals make this a complete possibility for me since anyone who knows me knows I am a lazy cook. I want to help my children realize that the world is so much larger than just the everyday routine that they see. I want to be healthy. I want to go hiking and bike riding with my husband and children on the weekends during the summer and play video games or watch movies with popcorn during the winter. I want to learn to rock climb and kayak. I want to read to my children everyday even if it is only a comic strip. I want my children to see me reading the Bible daily so that church isn’t just a “Sunday thing”. This is the person I want to be.

What does that person do every day?

            Get up early

            Exercise

            Makes healthy meals

            Writes

            Reads

            Studies the Bible

            Here is the catch. In order to make these changes, you just start with one change. Since I already read the Bible daily with my husband in the evenings and there is a rule in our house that whenever a child brings you a book we have to stop what we are doing in order to read that book to the kiddos, I am choosing to exercise. Can I make this a daily habit for two weeks? Yes. By not planning out a daily routine, I can choose daily exercises that I am comfortable with. As my body hurts less, I can push harder. I can change up routines from day to day based on how I feel. Even on days of rest, I can dedicate that day to stretching.

            There are days when I wake up and don’t feel like working out. In order to keep going, I keep a health journal where I record the food that I ate, the exercise that I did, and how I feel about the day overall. I have to take a blood glucose test several times a day which is another reminder to exercise as it helps keep my numbers down.

            Here is the big thing to remember in attempting to make change. One slip up, two, twenty, it doesn’t matter. Momentum matters. Mantra: No harm. No foul. No feelings of failure. I will start again. Tomorrow.