Getting Back on Pace

Funny how easy it was for me to encourage people who would express difficulty getting in exercise when I was going so great at getting mine in.  Do it in the morning I usually would say.  But low and behold once my schedule got a bit more hectic I certainly let some of my own routine slide. Not entirely since I still was doing a fair bit of walking etc - but definitely not in top form.  But I finally feel like I am a bit back into stride.  This week I was able to make it to 2 pilates classes and I went swimming once (plus today I had quite a large amount of walking into the mix as well!).  So all in all it feels like it was a reasonably good week.

I posted something from one of Covey's books (Principle Centered Leadership) on the WW message boards the other day.  And I just want to say it speaks very deeply to me about what this whole process of change has meant to me so far.  The first part of the quote was about how we often self identify ourselves based on our habits - we let those habits become our identity.  Later he also goes on to talk about how we often let how we think others perceive us become our own self perception as well.  Both those things just really speak to me.  The idea that we need to get to know ourselves so that when we want to change our habits we don't threaten our own identity.  And we need to get to know ourselves and be confident in our selves so that we don't let the perceptions (or our thoughts of the perceptions of others) become our own self definition - that we define ourselves as we are.

The other thing that really spoke to me is that we are not victims of our circumstances and that when we let ourselves be victims of our conditions or conditioning that we are not reaching our potential.  We are not doing the self reflective work of understanding ourselves and gaining the control that we have but sometimes let get away from us.  There are no quick fixes for this - when we search for the quick fix we simply set ourselves up for some condition or circumstance to interfere with our progress.  As he says it isn't just about being simply "psyched up" about doing something good for ourselves and then once that initial thrill is over just abandoning it.  It is about digging deep and getting into ourselves and understanding how we are able to carry on with what we want because we really and truly and deeply understand what it is that we want.