practising

I like Forrest, he’s an optimistic guy making the best of a lot of tough situations. But I disagree with his mama- life isn’t anything like a box of chocolates.

Life is like a sit-up.

If you want stronger abs, you have to do sit-ups, everyday. They are going to be hard and they are going to hurt. Embrace the pain and you’ll reach your goal. Avoid the pain and you’ll be stuck with flabby abs.

Life works the same way. If you want to grow and change, it’s like a sit-up, you have to be ready to work hard and there’s going to be some hurt. A life spent avoiding pain and hurt is stagnant.

Even with all the working and the sweating you aren’t home free. One day the sit-ups get easier, with hardly any hurt. Welcome to the plateau. Those 25 sit-ups aren’t challenging your ab muscles any more. Guess what? You’ve got to step it up, 50 sit-ups and add in some reverse crunches.

Every part in your body will scream out in protest.

Emotional growth is the same. You will tell yourself ”But I did the work already. Surely all this pain and growing is over now.” Perhaps you will wail and gnash your teeth too, it won’t help. I know this for sure. You will cry and fear that you have regressed and that you have lost all your hard work.

I maintain that getting off a plateau is harder than getting started.

When you are stuck there on the plateau dreading the work needed to get you going again, you need to find a coach. Or as I like to call mine- a mental health support team. She’s not a team, just one wonderful lady but calling her a team makes me feel like I’m well taken care of.

You’ll also need a mentor, this change business isn’t easy and it takes a village of help to get through it. Find someone who gets it, gets what you are dealing with.

I’m painting a pretty grim picture of life, all this pain and sweating. But it’s my belief that if we aren’t ready for the hard parts of life, if we think we can somehow skip over them, we are setting ourselves up to fail.

Embrace the pain and embrace change. Otherwise you’ll be exhausting yourself on an emotional hamster wheel running away from anything that might hurt. And that’s where the analogy ends because a hamster wheel is like a treadmill and that’s a pretty good workout.

There are worse things in life than an orange liqueur chocolate be ready for it.

Once upon a time a very wise friend taught me a lesson. It was the lesson of do. I don’t remember where or when, I suspect it was in response to some lamenting and carrying on I was writing about. But I remember the lesson.

Only I don’t always remember. It seems I needed a refresher. And I got it. Hooray for friends that don’t give up on your when you don’t learn something the first time.

That great friend, Sara from My Points of View, provided a much needed refresher this week to do. On Tuesday’s “oh poor me, I hate cleaning up” post, she commented-

I am one of those tidy people who loves to clean. Sorry. Part of it might have to do with having a PT job for 8 years (as a teen) that involved A LOT of crazy cleaning (at a vet clinic). Since then nothing has seemed as gross or bad

I divide my tasks up and since I got pregnant have enlisted kid/DH help. Mondays I dust, Tuesday’s I do bathrooms (all four), Wednesdays or Thursdays I vacuum and mop all the floors and twice a week I tackle a big job (purging one room, baseboards on one level). I clean the kitchen after every meal and do any task I see that takes less then 5 mins when i see it. And I agree with Heather Anne – regular/massive purging makes it so much easier to maintain!!!

Since Tuesday I have been going about my house cleaning business thinking “This is a 5 minute or less job, I’m going to do it”

And you know what? That doing, it’s energizing. It makes me feel in control of my house. I am the boss of my house.

Practising do, who else wants to do?

Also, my dog has been to the vet twice in 3 weeks to have a cyst drained- ugh and yuck, cleaning up that mess would be enough to make me laugh in the face glitter and barbie shoes. But I am not brave enough to actually do that.

Life Is Like A Sit-Up

Practising do

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