0 empty calories/processed foods
1 hour of exercise/reading
2 liters of water
3 cups of green tea/green juice
4 mental and stretch breaks
5 things you are grateful for
6 am meditation
7 minutes of laughter
8 hours of sleep
9 thousand steps daily
I came across this countdown on Instagram the other day. With a little bit of research, I traced it back to Brenda Strong, who is a yoga teacher, fertility expert, and actress, best known for portraying Mary Alice Young on Desperate Housewives. It's a little self-help ish and a little New Agey, and I don't usually have much tolerance for such things. But this list, for some reason, kind of stood out to me and made me think. It's been a stressful few weeks and it doesn't look like life is going to get much less stressful. The main contributing factor is my stress is how so many things are out of my control right now. I can't control certain things going on at work and I can't control how fast my house sells. But I can control me, and it seems like lately other things are controlling me, as opposed to me controlling me. This countdown (count up?) seems like a way that I can take back some control, and maybe make myself feel better in the process.
0 empty calories/processed foods
I swear, I have the best of intentions with food. I do. I know what is good for me and what is not. I also know that at 7:00 at night after a full day of work and an evening of taking care of my kids, food takes a backseat. It's way too easy to just eat a bowl of cereal or frozen french bread pizza. Definitely something that I can plan better and work on this summer.
1 hour of exercise/reading
Easy. I'm almost always on the treadmill first thing, and I love reading. Just have to keep it up.
2 liters of water
I'm really good at drinking water at work. Not so much when I get home and my 6:00 Diet Coke just sounds soooooooo good. Something else that needs improvement.
3 cups green tea/green juice
In an effort to get myself to stop drinking a pot of coffee every day, I had already started drinking green tea. I'm not crazy, I still have my two cups of black coffee first thing, but I switched to tea after that. Green juice is harder because this is Ohio and the only place I can find it is on Chagrin Boulevard and I refuse to go there. But I will look into it a little more and see if I can find a way to make it work.
4 mental and stretch breaks
Easy to do, hard to remember to do. Thankfully it is summer and if it ever stops raining I can grab a friend to take a lap around the parking lot a few times a day.
5 things you are grateful for
My family, my friends, the fact that I have a job, the fact that I have a house to sell, the fact that I have the means to purchase another one, and the weekly Farmers Market where I can buy non-processed healthy ish cookies. Look, I found 6 things!
6am meditation
I was quite the yoga person for a long time and I will admit that I have never gotten the hang of meditation. If I sat quietly on the floor with my eyes closed at 6 am I would fall asleep. Couple that with the fact that I tend to get lost inside my own head if things are too quiet for too long. However, I have a commute to and from work everyday, and that is time that I can use to kind of think and straighten myself out, or just listen to music and not think about anything. I'm going to read up on meditation though, it might be something I just need to figure out.
7 minutes of laughter
That's why God invented Youtube.
8 hours of sleep
Um, I have children. But I guess there are ways I can do better. I can go to sleep earlier, I can keep working on the whole sleep training thing with the little guy. Progress, not perfection right?
9 thousand steps daily
Time to fire up the FitBit. I wonder if this is in addition to my hour of exercise. I'm guilty of sometimes being really lazy for the rest of the day if I have a good morning workout. But I have children to chase and a house to take care of and co workers who are always up for a quick walk, so maybe it is just a matter of putting forth a little more effort into moving around.
It looked like there was a #10, but it was cut off from the image and Google has not helped me find it, so I guess this is where I leave you. Like I said, this is a little self help ish. But maybe I need a little bit of that now, more than I would like to admit. I'm glad I found this and it's nice to have a list to work from in order to work on myself a little bit. And maybe I can help someone else find some inspiration too :)
