The Pattern

As I work through the Couch to 5K program, I’m seeing a pattern develop:

Step 1:  Look at the upcoming week’s schedule, which gets progressively more challenging, and think to myself “There’s no way I can do that.  Well, there goes the running idea!”

Step 2: Spend Monday, my appointed “Day 1”, swinging between dread and beating myself up for being such a defeatist.

Step 3:  Get home from work and dash upstairs to change into gear and program the new workout into my timer, trying to pump myself up with thoughts of the beer I will have when I finish, and how good it will feel to stretch after the run is over.

Step 4:  Climb onto the treadmill and begin, focusing only on the movement of my feet, and whatever show I’ve thrown on for distraction.

Step 5:  Through the first (shorter) run interval, thinking “That wasn’t so bad”.

Step 5:  Through the second (longer) run interval, thinking “If I can’t get through the next round, at least I did it once!”

Step 6: Through the second short interval, thinking “Almost there, almost there, almost there!”

Step 7: Through the final interval, mentally bargaining and bribing myself to Keep Going, Keep Going, Keep Going!

Step 8: Victorious!  Triumphant!  Enjoy my stretch, unable to wipe a big, goofy grin off my face that I did it!

Step 9: Complete Day 2 & 3 without dread, knowing that if I did it once, I can do it again.

Step 10: Begin the cycle all over again.

Maybe one of these days I will be confident enough to step up to the next week’s challenge without fear, but honestly, the payoff of overcoming the fear and exceeding my own expectations is worth the anxiety.  In the meantime, I will continue to let the pattern repeat itself for five more weeks, knowing that I will get there in the end…

Patience

Patience…why do I have so little of it? 

I am midway through Week 2 of Couch to 5K, and don’t get me wrong, I am extremely proud of myself!  Even a month ago, if someone had told me that I was going to be following a running program, and already signed up for a 5K, I probably would have pulled a muscle laughing.  Since I started this journey about two weeks ago, I have been actively sweating at least 30 minutes every day, I’ve given up Diet Pepsi, and I’m drinking water enough to flood Lake Champlain.

Unfortunately, being my impatient self, I look at my current running pace and think “Ugh, I’m so slow!”  On the logical surface of things, I know that slow and steady is the way to build.  I don’t want to injure myself or burn out, or generally suffer from those “Terrible Toos” of a new program:  Too much, Too fast, Too soon.  I know this, and yet…my competitive juices begin to flow, and I want to WIN! 

In order to retain my sanity, my sense of accomplishment, and my motivation, I am going to have to set small goals for myself, and continue that pattern of what my motivator Charles Duhigg calls “small wins”.  Every day, and every run is a new one, and an opportunity to stretch myself just a little farther, or a little faster.  Not to the point of insanity, but just to the point of finding some tangible, measurable improvement each time, no matter how small.  Hopefully, all of those small wins will continue to motivate me to chase the larger goals on my horizon.

Too Late to Turn Back Now

Aaahhh!

I did it!  I signed up for my first 5K run!  Even better, I signed up my husband and sister-in-law too, so I will have some company.  On July 22, we will be running the Shipyard Old Port 5K.  I thought this looked like a great first event, because the after-party has live music and beer, which makes it worth running J

I am making a point of telling everyone about it, because I want no possible opportunity to back out.  I have a feeling that as we draw closer, my nerves are going to overwhelm my excitement, but if I have heavily advertised my participation, I will not be able to bear the shame of telling people I bailed.  I’ve also already paid the money (and ordered a shirt!) so if I don’t run, my husband’s frugal nature will be offended.

Basically, I’m peer-pressuring myself into completing this, and I think it’s going to be successful.  Scratch that, I know it’s going to be successful.  Power of positive thinking and all that, right?

Anyway, my SIL texted me this morning about how excited she is about the race!  This is good, because I feel like I totally blindsided her with the suggestion. I’m happy to know she doesn’t feel strong-armed into the event!

So now it’s for real.  I’ve got the time, I’ve got the place, I’ve got the company, and now I just need to get (and keep) my butt in gear!

Slight Change of Plans

So truth be told,  I’ve found my grand vision shifting a bit over the last week.  When I started this blog, my goal was to focus on changing smaller habits, and slowly work from a base of “small wins” into implementing larger changes in my life.  Originally, I was going to focus on getting up earlier in the morning to do a few minutes of activity, and give up my decades-long addiction to Diet Pepsi.

Somewhere along the way, I decided to visit some different websites, looking for healthy living inspiration to help me motivate myself into following through on my plan…and stumbled upon the Disney Princess Half Marathon. 

Insert sound of record needle jerk here!

I’ve spent my life as a certified (and probably certifiable!) Disney freak!  I visit the parks about once a year, and have since I was a kid, and yet I had no real idea that runDisney, and their various programs existed.  For me, Disney provides the kind of motivation that brings me to another level.  I am always trying to figure out a way to worm in another trip.  What better way to focus my desire for a healthier lifestyle than to dangle a Disney-based carrot at the end of my proverbial stick?  After all, one lesson I learned from Duhigg is that in order to be successful in creating a habit, you have to create a craving for the reward.  In this case, my craving for all things Disney already exists, so why not build upon it?

While I’m happy to report that I haven’t had a Diet Pepsi in a week (win!), and I am down to only one snooze per morning (semi-win!), my goals have shifted a bit.  My new BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal, which I am totally appropriating from another business book) is to run the Disney Princess Half-Marathon in 9 months, give or take.

How am I going to get there?  It’s a valid question, considering that my current exercise level is a whopping zero minutes per day.  You gotta love the internet, though, because a quick Google search revealed a number of training plans for people just like me.  After some internal debate between the Galloway plan and Couch25K, I ended up going with the Couch 2 5K plan to start with.  Honestly, I love the idea of following a specific training plan, because on my own I would have no idea where to begin. 

I’ve started the Couch 2 5K plan, and after 3 run/walk training sessions, I am not dead yet!  In fact, I’ve felt surprisingly good after each session!  On alternate days, I’ve blown the dust off my old Wii Fit, and am doing the strength training and yoga exercises for 25-30 minutes.  Every spare moment in between, I am reading blog entries about the Princess Half, watching YouTube videos of the race, and mentally planning my outfit for the day that I, too, am RUNNING through Cinderella castle!

The First Step

Is there anyone who truly finishes everything they start? I know I am not that person. Sometimes, I look back on a trail of dying container gardens and incomplete knitting projects, and think that my goals of changing my habits might just be another pipe dream that will be half-forgotten in a week, and a hazy blur in life's rear view mirror in a month.

When these thoughts start to discourage me, or slow me down, I remind myself that I said I was going back to school, and now I am three credits away from my degree. I can achieve my goals when they are big enough to truly mean something to me, so if I want to be successful in changing my habits, I need to focus on the bigger picture.

In the last 24 hours, I've taken some big steps. Big step #1, tell my husband about my plan to start running. In the past, the fear of failure and the shame of acknowledging the reality of my inertia would have kept me hugging my ambitions close to my vest. I know my husband will always support me in anything, but my fears have always been more about myself than other people. Opening up about my goals (to start running, and eventually to compete in a runDisney event) forces me to set aside my fears, or at least not let them control me. It is also a tacit acknowledgement that I can't do it alone. I need the support of others to achieve my goal, and I won't get that support until I put myself out there.

Big step #2 was to take the information I've gained by reading and researching training programs, and actually take the first step. Today, May 13, I went on the first run of my life. Okay, we'll, to be technical, it was alternating intervals of running and walking, but I did it. In public, no less!! And you know what? I made it! I didn't die of embarrassment, I didn't keel over out of exhaustion, and I didn't collapse into a shameful heap when I was done. Granted, I didn't go very fast, but that doesn't really matter. What matters is that I said I was going to do it, and I did it. I don't kid myself that the road ahead will be a tough one, but I have taken the first step, and I am already farther than I imagined I could be, even a week ago.

And that feels pretty freaking good.

Strategy Session, Part 1

Not to sounds like a total Duhigg-bot, but The Power of Habit tells me that I am much more likely to be successful if I have a plan for the potential obstacles I may encounter when I try to change my habits.  Let the strategy session commence!

Habit #1: The Snooze Button

The first obstacle to this habit appeared this morning.  When the alarm went off at 5:25 this morning, I was greeted with windows full of gloom and the sound of rain beating against my window.  For some people, and I have always been one of them, rain is my Kryptonite.  Not only does it make my hair frizz and my mascara run, but it makes me want to curl up into a tiny ball under a blanket with a hot drink and a chick flick.  Not exactly the response that will help me pop out of bed and power into a new habit!

When I am facing the prospect of crawling out of a warm bed into a cold, rainy morning, I will remind myself that I have to get up anyway.  As I am not a major league baseball player, I can’t call out of work because of rain.  And even if I were a major league baseball player, school doesn’t close when it’s raining, so I still have to drag myself out of bed eventually to get the kids ready for school.  So really, if I have to get up anyway, why delay?  Why not get up and get moving?  It might shake me out of my rainy day blahs.  And if it doesn’t, I will remind myself, I have permission to curl up in a blanket after work.

Another hurdle I will face in changing this habit is the sleep patterns of my children.  God, I love my kids, but they did not inherit any of their parents’ love for sleep.  I often awake in the middle of the night with a little face looming over me, asking “Mommy, is it good morning time?” or “Mommy, it’s dark and I’m scared.  Can you sit in my room with me?”  Even if I can convince a little nipper to head back to bed without an escort, it’s still a sleep disruption.  Once I’m awake, I have a terrible habit of keeping myself awake with thoughts of unfinished projects or worries.  Some days, I find that when my alarm clock goes off, my eyelids are still glued closed, crying in exhaustion over my broken and unfulfilling sleep.

How will I overcome this hurdle?  I will make sure to shake my husband awake more often.  There are many nights where I let him sleep, knowing that he stayed up later than I did, or that he didn’t have a great sleep the night before.  Just because I happen to be the parent the kids have come to doesn’t mean that I have to be the parent to get up.  Besides, if my husband is shouldering a larger share of the night shift, he will be more apt to work with me to help the kids change their own nighttime patterns.  Win-win!

The final hurdle to overcome is just the habit of snoozing itself: letting my drowsy brain slap down the 8 minute time out button instead of starting my day.  Weirdly, this will be the easiest of my hurdles to overcome, because I know I can do it.  I’ve done it before, daily, for long periods of time.  This is a little thing in the grand scheme of my life, an easy thing to take ownership of.  An easy win, if you will.

I know bigger battles are coming, so I will take these easy wins where I can get them.

I Can Do This

One thing I learned from The Power of Habit is that in order to change a habit, you have to understand it.  What is the cue that triggers the habit, and what is the reward that the habit provides?  So much of what I do every day is just automatic, I do feel that I am cruising through most of my life on autopilot.  In order to be more fully engaged in my world, I have to start to recognize those "autopilot" moments, especially those that have a negative impact.

The more I start to think about my habits, and where I can improve them, the more overwhelmed I get.  There are so many things I do in a day, for work, for school, for my kids, for my husband...when I think about trying to do a complete overhaul, I become paralyzed with exhaustion.  This has always been the case, which is why I'm here in the first place.

Instead of thinking about all of the things I do "wrong" in a day, this time I am going to start small, and recognize that, for me, there is no one magic "reset button" that will erase all my bad habits and lethargy with vim and vigor.  Instead, I am going to focus on two habits that I want to change, and go from there.

Habit #1:  The Snooze Button

My alarm is set for 5:25am.  For a long time, months even, I actually got up out of bed immediately when it went off.  The extra time in the morning allowed me to blowdry and straighten my hair and apply some makeup before descending into the craziness of my family's morning: serving breakfasts, making lunches, power struggles with my 3 year old daughter about getting dressed, searching my 6 year old's backpack for hidden contraband.  Getting up at the sound of my alarm helped me to set aside some time for myself amid the chaos, making me feel more put together and ready for my day instead of like a frazzled mess with wet hair stuck in a ponytail and toothpaste dribbles on the front of my sweater.

And then we had to "Spring Forward".  That first "Spring Forward" Monday morning, I couldn't bear to open my eyes at the sound of the alarm clock.  I hit snooze instead.  Then I hit snooze again.  I hit snooze until it was past 6am, and I absolutely had to get up, or be late for work.  It felt so good, I did it the next morning, and the next, and the next.  Now, even though my alarm is still set virtuously to 5:25am, I always hit snooze, and live with my wet hair.

The first habit I am committed to changing is hitting the snooze button on my day.  I would like to get up at 5:25.  This is something I know I can do, because I've done it before.  I am going to get up every morning at the first sound of my alarm, and instead of snoozing, I am going to head downstairs to do 10 minutes of exercise before I climb in the shower to start my day.  I know 10 minutes doesn't sound like a lot, but if I can do 10 minutes of activity instead of 10 minutes of sleeping, I will have accomplished my first small goal.

Habit #2: DP

Not long ago, someone in my acquaintance mentioned in conversation that "Soda is soon going to be considered the new crack."  I didn't respond at the time, but I certainly had plenty of commentary in my head.

I'm a soda drinker.  My drug of choice is Diet Pepsi, which my husband and I lovingly refer to as "DP".  I've tried to give up soda in the past, only to find myself beset with caffeine headaches and crankypants syndrome.  In the end, I've always gone crawling back to soda, and in the back of my mind, I've always known I would.

However, as much as I resented my soda habit being compared to that of a crack addict, the reality is I know soda is really not good: full of empty calories and additives.  There's a reason my children are not allowed to have it!  While I do crave the caffeine fix I get from an afternoon soda, there's really nothing that I get from it that's not purely psychological. 

The second small habit I'm committed to change is to give up on my daily DP.  I will save money, save calories, and give myself another small win in my quest to change my habits.

So there you go.  Two small changes in my life, neither one so overwhelming that I will be completely at a loss, both which will improve my overall health.  Ican do this.  I can do this.

I can do this.