Don’t beat yourself up if this is your fall back excuse, but rather, use these action steps to create the life you want by reclaiming your time.

RE-FRAME YOUR MINDSET:
It’s important to lay a solid foundation for change by having the right mindset.

• Make Yourself A Priority
  Where are you on your priority list?  This is a duh, no-brainer for most people.  Of course you haven’t had time to exercise because when you take a hard look, you’re probably way down towards the bottom of that priority list.  Making time for exercise is about self-worth.  Start believing that you matter and you are worth taking time for.

• Know Why You Want It
  Establish and reinforce your emotional connection to exercise.  Ask yourself WHY you want to make exercise a priority.  Take a moment to jot down: 1. All the benefits you will get from exercise.  2. How empowering yourself to make this change will make you feel.

• Feel Empowered
  Take control of your schedule.  Believe you are a person who creates their life by their own design rather than allowing your days to be dictated by pressures and demands beyond your control.  You always have control.

IDENTIFY OBVIOUS WAYS TO UNCOVER MORE TIME

• Weed out non-essential time-wasters
  TV, incessantly checking emails, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and web-surfing.

• Say “No” more often
  I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, It’s perfectly ok to say “NO” to people.  Perhaps it will feel better if you say “No, thank you.” (wink)

CREATE A WEEKLY WORKOUT SCHEDULE

• Planning is essential
  We schedule important meetings on our calendar to make sure we don’t forget about them, so do the same for your workout.  Pick a day each week to schedule your workouts into your upcoming week and then honor those workouts as if they cannot be rescheduled.  This is also a great time to strategize – get your dog grooming appointment rescheduled, arrange to have someone pick up your kids from soccer, confirm with your spouse that they will be available to watch the kids, etc.  Remove all potential Roadblocks that you might anticipate.

• Schedule it early in your day
  Morning workouts are golden for several reasons, but most importantly because if you can fit exercise in first thing you’ll be less likely to be de-railed by unexpected conflicts popping up.

Plan to be flexible.  Just because you took a few days off does not mean you’ve fallen off the wagon.  Take a look at what happened and where you can make adjustments.  Stay motivated by reminding yourself why this is important to you and giving yourself plenty of time to adjust to a pretty big change in your life.

“That was the day she made a promise to herself to live more from intention and less from habit.” – unknown

The number on the scale doesn’t mean a damn thing. What matters is how you feel.

My favorite three words here are FIT, STRONG & ALIVE.

What are your favorites?

• Comparing.  Period.

• Eating something without really tasting it.  (What a disappointment to realize you missed out on the enjoyment.)

• Worrying about what others will think if I say “No” (We are the ones living our life and we have to answer to ourselves.  No is liberating.)

• Slipping into diet mentality & thinking ‘If I’m not suffering, this isn’t working.’

• Worrying about the small stuff.  Chill-ax Sista!

Go ahead and answer the question and make a list for yourself.  What would you like to stop doing?

We shape and form our lives through our choices every day.  Acknowledge these things that are holding you back & start to stop them by choice.  Maybe it’s only a little at first, and maybe sometimes we’ll forget, but around the next corner you’ll have another choice to stop again.

Inspiration for this post came from Danielle LaPorte’s Burning Question of the Week.

This recipe has been around awhile, but I recently made it to take to a party and thought I’d share my version of it here with you.  It’s simple, easy & good for you, & all the colors make it look so pretty.

When you use fresh ingredients, you get a mix of tons of great flavors, and the beans really bump up the fiber and protein content too, so even though eating chips and salsa might feel like a splurge, it’s actually got a lot of nutritional value.

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Black Bean & Corn Salsa

Ingredients:

• 1 can of black beans, drained and rinsed
• 1 cup of frozen corn, cooked and cooled
• 2 fresh tomatoes
• 1 can diced tomatoes with green chile peppers, partially drained
• ½ of a large red onion, diced
• 1 T. minced garlic
• Spritz with lime juice
• Cilantro optional

If you’re tired of the old chips and salsa routine, think outside the box by using your salsa as a topper for:

• Grilled fish (fish tacos)
• Chicken breasts
• Omelets
• Poached eggs
• Baked Potatoes

I used to believe that the person I presented to the world needed to be funnier, thinner, prettier, more polished, more well-spoken, more interesting, more mysterious, more sophisticated, more exceptional.

Why do we believe pretending is necessary?

First of all, it’s human nature.  We’ve all done it, and we’ll all do it again.

We pretend because we’re scared of being judged and we’re scared of rejection and we’re scared of coming up short.  Ironically, when we pretend, we’re rejecting our own self before anyone else even has a chance to know us!

We also pretend so we don’t feel so vulnerable.  It somehow feels safer to pretend, because then if someone rejects you, they’re rejecting the fake you.

Does pretending get us more of what we want?

Will people like us more?   I don’t know.  Maybe.

But, if people like us more when we’re pretending then they’re really liking the pretend us, not the real us anyways, right?

Why pretending is dumb.

Pretending takes us farther from ourselves.   The basic message to ourselves when we pretend is rejection.  We’re rejecting ourselves as we naturally are and we end up feeling detached from our true selves.

Pretending feels awful.  It’s exhausting, unsatisfying and feels like a betrayal.

When you keep pretending your way through your life, the lines become blurred and you lose clarity of who you authentically are at your core.

What if we could just start to notice when we’re pretending?

There is a freedom in just being who you are.

I still catch myself wanting to pretend sometimes.  When I met my kid’s teacher in the fall, I wanted to give the “right” impression – that I was a responsible mom.  My story was that it was for my son’s sake – to make life easier for him.  As I look back, I find it interesting.  I really believe I am a responsible mom already.  Why pretend at all?

There are many ways we pretend, and some are so subtle we don’t even realize we’re pretending.

How would it feel to trust that you are enough without pretending? – to move through life without apologizing for your likes and dislikes, your body shape, your hair, your job title, your messy house, your income, your car, etc.

Pretending is far from necessary.  It’s tragic.

How the message was delivered doesn’t really matter, but our interpretation had a lasting impact. What it meant to us was that we weren’t acceptable as we were. We started wishing we were different. We secretly wished we didn’t want a third cookie – and we started asking ourselves, “What is wrong with me?”

Even as children, we didn’t really have to work very hard to connect the dots that thin equals goodness and being fat somehow translates into unworthiness, laziness & lack of self-control. Maybe we didn’t fully understand it at the time, but we were seeking love and approval from those we trusted to care for us – and from ourselves.
That’s when many of us learned to become closet eaters and start to mistrust our bodies. Sneaking food and eating it in a place where no one could see us and judge us was a coping mechanism – a way to demonstrate our control (and worthiness) in front of others yet smother our bad feelings with food in private. But, it felt shameful because we knew. We couldn’t hide it from ourselves.

As children we were programmed and heavily influenced to think, feel and react to our environment and social situations in a certain way. At times, we didn’t have a lot of choice in the matter, and we didn’t have the maturity or forethought to question any of it. We simply accepted it as reality.

The good news is that as adults, we have the intelligence and freedom to question everything – every thought, every feeling, every action or non-action we take! We’re no longer at the mercy of school teachers, relatives, neighbors, or our parents. We get to choose how we think and feel about ourselves and our body and we have the choice to ask ourselves whether we want to keep rejecting ourselves or start accepting ourselves as we are. Believe me when I tell you this: Nothing is wrong with you and you don’t need fixing.

When you make a choice to stop overeating in secret you’re making a declaration to yourself that you have nothing to be ashamed of. Self-acceptance is a powerful thing.

The intention of this article is certainly not to place blame on our parents or whoever you associate this story with in your past.  I simply want to help you become aware that things may have happened in our past to shape who we are, but as adults we have the power of choice. Freedom to keep what works in our life and change what doesn’t.  You can make the choice to not let your past define you.  Everyday, you get to wake up and say, “Today, I choose…”

Taking a hot bath without looking at the cause of your stress is simply a temporary Band-aid solution.  Why not treat the cause of your stress rather than just treating the symptoms?  Why mask the problem when you can prevent it from happening in the first place?

Be Present in Your Physical Body

Many of us are so busy in our minds that we’ve totally disconnected from our physical bodies.  In fact, some of us are so disconnected that we’re not even always aware of some of most basic sensations like hunger, thirst, hot, cold & tired.

The stress created from our thinking manifests in our bodies.  It ties our shoulders into knots, causes our stomachs to ache, negatively affects our digestion & sets us up for chronic illness.

Self-care means paying kind attention and noticing when your body is speaking to you.  It will begin with just a whisper, but if you’re not listening the message will become louder and more clear until you have no choice but to listen.

5-MINUTE BODY SCAN MEDITATION (VIDEO)

Have a hard look at the things you “have to” do

We live in a very action-oriented society that values doing more than being.  We make impossibly long to-do lists with very little thought and intention to how we actually want to move through our day.

When you look at your to-do list, ask yourself some important questions:

• How many of the things on my list are really, truly important for me to accomplish?
• What comes to mind when I think of a life well-lived?
• How many of the things on my list will make me feel happier and more fulfilled?  It may feel satisfying to check things off our to-do lists, but the feeling is usually temporary – and at what cost?
• What two things do I really want to accomplish today?  Overestimate how much time projects will take and you’ll be much more likely to actually accomplish those things.  If you accomplish more, great, but the result will come without pressure and stress.
• What projects can I kick to the curb?

To-do lists can be helpful when breaking down big projects into manageable chunks and to help prioritize, but be careful because time management is tricky, and in my experience checking things from my to-do list never leads to feeling of peace or contentment.  Focus only on what truly matters to you and what feels like quality in your day.

Our thinking causes our stress.

One of the most common stress-inducing feelings that many of us experience on a regular basis is overwhelm.  Start by paying attention to and identifying what thoughts are causing the feeling of overwhelm.   Thoughts like: “I don’t have enough time.” and “How will I get this all done?” set you up for anxiety and panic.  Immediately, your brain will begin to generate more and more thoughts that support your overwhelm.

What thought could you choose to think instead that would create a better feeling for you?  Try on thoughts like, “I’ll accomplish exactly what I’m meant to today.  The rest doesn’t matter.”  Keep trying different thoughts until you find one that feels good to you.  Sometimes it takes awhile, so just be patient until you find the right thought for you.

Find your own definition of self-care

There are many physiological benefits to taking hot baths and getting massages, so I really do encourage you to do them as often as possible.  I’m only suggesting that along with doing those things it’s important to also understand the real source of your stress in the first place.

Self-care means something different to everyone.  Here’s what it means to me:

• Self-care means paying close enough attention so that you know when to give yourself a break.

• Self-care means knowing when you’re taking yourself and your life too seriously.

• Self-care means knowing you are worthy of your own love and attention.  Thinking that you’re worthy of some down time is just as important as the action of taking down time.

• Self-care means noticing and unplugging from negative thought patterns.

• Self-care means choosing an attitude of compassion and kindness towards yourself.  Always.

• Self-care means accepting that you can’t control everybody and everything.  Let stuff go and be responsible for yourself.

• Self-care means creating gaps in your schedule on purpose.

• Self-care means choosing only the most meaningful stuff for your life and stop being “busy”.

• Self-care means guarding and protecting your leisure time.

• Self-care means not letting the clock be a tyrant that rules your life.

• Self-care means turning off your cell phone and returning voicemail when it’s convenient for you.

• Self-care means learning to appreciate imperfection in yourself and others.

• Self-care means giving yourself permission to take a nap when you’re tired (even though you have mountains of laundry to do.)

Go take a hot bath now… It will relax your muscles.