checking in
This past week has been a bit nuts. I am way behind on my reading but I wanted to at least say hi. I'll be catching up here over the next few days, I hope.
We were part of the ice storm last week. We were only without power for about 24 hours so we were way better off than a lot of folks. Due to where we are located, the ice trapped us in the house until Saturday. It was still kind of tricky driving then but hey, sometimes you just gotta get out of the house. Besides, I was out of creamer for my coffee.
I've been thinking a lot about goals lately and the struggles I'm having with making some changes. It seems a lot of the blogs I read have been writing about the same thing. Maybe that's a beginning of the year thing. At any rate, I wanted to share some thoughts with you - get some feedback. When we try to change an old habit or add a new habit, many of us try to leap from point A to point Z with no real steps in between. We think that because we’ve decided to exercise, we ought to be able to just jump into the middle of it and be perfect at it. We set great big overwhelming goals which of course we can’t meet. We get discouraged by our “failures" instead of being encouraged by our small successes.
I’ve written the words “successive approximations" repeatedly for the past month or so. Just in case someone new runs across this and doesn’t know…..
When you train a puppy, you don’t walk up to the puppy and yell “Sit" and then beat the puppy when it doesn’t sit. That’s hardly motivational nor is it very nice. Yet don’t we do that to ourselves? “Exercise, Zaz!" I tell myself. “Do it every day!" And when I fail to live up to that or life gets in the way or whatever reason I don’t feel perfect enough, I beat myself up for being a failure.
You don’t wait to reward the puppy until he’s done the behavior perfectly. He’d get bored and we’d get mad. You stay enthusiastic with the puppy and make the training fun. You only train as long as the puppy can stay interested and you reward, reward, reward. Just like we shape the puppy’s behavior and reward each small step, we need to shape our own behavior and seriously feel good and successful about each step we make in the direction of our goal.
There are some folks, I should add, who do best by jumping into the new behavior. I’m not one of them! But I know that they exist. If that’s you, please consider writing about why that works for you!
p.s., why does this board always delete my line spacing?
We were part of the ice storm last week. We were only without power for about 24 hours so we were way better off than a lot of folks. Due to where we are located, the ice trapped us in the house until Saturday. It was still kind of tricky driving then but hey, sometimes you just gotta get out of the house. Besides, I was out of creamer for my coffee.
I've been thinking a lot about goals lately and the struggles I'm having with making some changes. It seems a lot of the blogs I read have been writing about the same thing. Maybe that's a beginning of the year thing. At any rate, I wanted to share some thoughts with you - get some feedback. When we try to change an old habit or add a new habit, many of us try to leap from point A to point Z with no real steps in between. We think that because we’ve decided to exercise, we ought to be able to just jump into the middle of it and be perfect at it. We set great big overwhelming goals which of course we can’t meet. We get discouraged by our “failures" instead of being encouraged by our small successes.
I’ve written the words “successive approximations" repeatedly for the past month or so. Just in case someone new runs across this and doesn’t know…..
When you train a puppy, you don’t walk up to the puppy and yell “Sit" and then beat the puppy when it doesn’t sit. That’s hardly motivational nor is it very nice. Yet don’t we do that to ourselves? “Exercise, Zaz!" I tell myself. “Do it every day!" And when I fail to live up to that or life gets in the way or whatever reason I don’t feel perfect enough, I beat myself up for being a failure.
You don’t wait to reward the puppy until he’s done the behavior perfectly. He’d get bored and we’d get mad. You stay enthusiastic with the puppy and make the training fun. You only train as long as the puppy can stay interested and you reward, reward, reward. Just like we shape the puppy’s behavior and reward each small step, we need to shape our own behavior and seriously feel good and successful about each step we make in the direction of our goal.
There are some folks, I should add, who do best by jumping into the new behavior. I’m not one of them! But I know that they exist. If that’s you, please consider writing about why that works for you!
p.s., why does this board always delete my line spacing?
Hiya Zaz
Glad to see you made it through the icestorm.Happy your power was restored quickly and that you were able to venture out and about.You sound like me on the creamer LOL.
I don't really set goals for myself,maybe i should but i just don't. If i do and i don't make the goal,then i just feel like a failure,And then i end up asking myself WHY? So i just don't go there...
I am still working on new behaviors,Hopefully someday i will get it right but until then i am just a work in progress.
Looking forward to reading more about you and your success.
Love and Hugs Deb
Glad to see you made it through the icestorm.Happy your power was restored quickly and that you were able to venture out and about.You sound like me on the creamer LOL.
I don't really set goals for myself,maybe i should but i just don't. If i do and i don't make the goal,then i just feel like a failure,And then i end up asking myself WHY? So i just don't go there...
I am still working on new behaviors,Hopefully someday i will get it right but until then i am just a work in progress.
Looking forward to reading more about you and your success.
Love and Hugs Deb
Hi and thank you for your thoughts. I guess it comes down to what works best for you - and we're all different.
I know very well the cycle of setting goals that I don't meet and then feeling bad about myself, telling myself I'm a failure. That's why I'm trying really hard to keep small, manageable goals and rewarding myself for each success. I took this online class in diabetes care and I liked their goal setting process.
For me, it's like writing down what I eat. Much as I hate it, if I don't write it down I don't have any idea how much I'm eating. I don't have a choice, at least right now, to not write it down. If I don't set my little goals and reward myself, my exercise and stuff just slides on by... "Oh yeah, I was going to exercise," I say.
But that's only me. That's what I was hoping to hear in this thread. How different people approach this and what works. I'm still a work in progress and maybe one day I'll get it right, too.
I know very well the cycle of setting goals that I don't meet and then feeling bad about myself, telling myself I'm a failure. That's why I'm trying really hard to keep small, manageable goals and rewarding myself for each success. I took this online class in diabetes care and I liked their goal setting process.
For me, it's like writing down what I eat. Much as I hate it, if I don't write it down I don't have any idea how much I'm eating. I don't have a choice, at least right now, to not write it down. If I don't set my little goals and reward myself, my exercise and stuff just slides on by... "Oh yeah, I was going to exercise," I say.
But that's only me. That's what I was hoping to hear in this thread. How different people approach this and what works. I'm still a work in progress and maybe one day I'll get it right, too.
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