Category: goal-setting

Creating Our Ideal Lives

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Marie Kondo was at it again with the book above that she published one year ago.

Kurashi is Japanese for “way of life” or “lifestyle.”

The way you live in your home can enable you to achieve your ideal life. Marie Kondo said that after doing the work her clients often were happy in their current home and stayed there. Or were able to move into their dream home a couple of years later.

Toying with using the word ideal has been hard. Then I realized that the ideal life is an authentic life. In this regard it IS possible to live your ideal life when you’re true to who you are and what your purpose is.

Each of us can thrive when we find our “kurashi” at home where we can be our authentic selves (and have beloved books on the shelves).

A tidying tip I recommend is to line up the spines of books right to the edge of the bookshelf. Refrain from placing objects in front of books. Presto–instant order joy and calm.

My intuition tells me that when we don’t like our living space it’s because we’re out of sync with ourselves.

Even in a bedroom in a halfway house a person can decorate with a poster of The Cure or listen to music or buy a colorful bedspread. We can make our homes our own wherever we live at any time in our life.

Right after turning 58 I started to embark on a new routine with atomic habits.

Was it the start of drinking water or the burst of spring cleaning that gave me more energy. On an odyssey I’ve been to create my own sustainable “kurashi” at home as I near 60.

In the new Marie Kondo book she has worksheets you can photocopy to write on to plan your day.

More in future blog entries about how I–a real person not a celebrity–changed her life for the better.

Taking Control

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Whether you are experiencing a form of trauma or an ordinary struggle you can feel overwhelmed.

It can feel like you have no control over what’s happening. Only you have control over how you respond.

Getting help is the first order of the day. A true-blue friend I can always count on to give me the right advice.

Differentiating what things are your responsibility and what aren’t yours to take on is imperative.

One: just to be kind and gentle toward yourself will go a long way in helping you feel better when you’re going through a setback.

Two: it could help to break things into what I call “bite-size chunks.”

Three: That is to do only what you need to do in any given moment.

Making it as convenient as possible to have a healthy routine is the key difference in helping me feel like I’m in control.

From FreshDirect online I buy single-serving packages of Gaea olives for a snack.

Instead of having cereal for dinner when I can’t cook I heat up a can of Amy’s Organic soup like Lentil or Chunky Tomato Bisque or Split Pea.

On nights when I have no energy at all to cook I order from a restaurant that has salad and vegetables and seafood on the menu along with organic chicken.

As hard as it can be to see a way out of what’s going on this is precisely when I think that setting a realistic goal or two can help.

Key word in that sentence: realistic.

In coming blog entries I’ll talk about setting goals again.

Having a goal to set your sights on can make the struggle bearable.

As Viktor Frankel wrote in his book Man’s Search for Meaning:

He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.

Frankel was the founder of logotherapy that focuses on healing through meaning.

He was a holocaust survivor.

Whatever you’re going through I’m confident that each of us can persevere and get to the other side victorious.

It’s not going to take a couple of days or weeks. It might take longer. It might take a year or longer.

Yet remembering that you have something to look forward to can keep you going.

In a coming blog entry I’d like to touch on the concept of healing through meaning as well.

Surviving a Setback

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I’m going to write about making changes after a setback like the COVID-19 outbreak or any other struggle.

Often we experience a setback that causes us to change our behavior or our routine.

I’ve started today to do things differently. On short notice I might have to act as the caregiver for my mother.

It’s the classic dilemma: How to care for yourself as well as you care for others?

I’d like to talk in future blog entries about how to overcome setbacks.

In the coming blog entry I’m going to talk about how to feel like you’re in control when things are collapsing in front of your eyes.

The COVID-19 outbreak is no joke. It has tested everyone’s ability to be resilient.

So what I’m writing I hope can help others as we move into 2021.

Living Out of the Blue

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The year ends soon.

The advent of January brings out the focus on New Year’s resolutions.

You can click on my goal-setting Category to read blog entries about the Changeology book 5 Steps to Realizing Your Goals and Resolutions.

I’ve used this 90-day action plan to set and carry out numerous goals in the last 3 years.

I would like to talk about goals and resolutions in this blog again.

How sometimes you reach a point where you shout: “Enough!” or basta as Italians would say.

What I know with confidence:

A change that happens out of the blue is not always sudden or quick. Your discontent with an aspect of your life was most likely percolating in your mind.

This subconscious brewing leads to the day when the water in the coffeepot whistles because it’s reached boiling.

This is how you’ve come to do something different after months–or even years– stuck in an old familiar behavior.

The day comes where you shout: “Enough!”

The point is that any serendipitous change should not be discounted or questioned. In fact I’m not so quick to abandon one change I’ve decided to make.

Waking up one day and deciding: “Today is the day” is the beauty of self-change. It can happen at any time in a person’s life.

Having lived through the pandemic for 9 months it’s possible that you and I are giving birth now to an idea a plan a Self that has been growing inside of us.

Should you find yourself suddenly faced with the desire to make a change or two I say: go with this and go for it.

The time is now. And for goal-setting I will once again recommend Changeology: 5 Steps for Realizing Your Goals and Resolutions.

2021 can only be better. I firmly believe this. Cheers.

Fitness Progress During the Pandemic

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The COVID-19 outbreak disrupted everyone’s lives and not for the better.

In early June I spoke with my personal stylist who told me: “You’re not a typical New Yorker.”

She had asked me how I was holding up and I told her that since June of last year I was exercising at home. So that I wasn’t affected when the gym shut down in March.

We need to be kinder and gentler toward ourselves in this time when the pandemic has not yet been eradicated.

I wasn’t so happy with my fitness progress which I felt was scattered and inconsistent since the outbreak started.

Until. I viewed the calendar sheets and tallied up my workout schedule from February through the end of July this year 2020.

Folks: 6 months have gone by. Half the year is over. We’ve spent 6 months in the throes of the COVID-19 outbreak.

Diving into the calendars I computed that since February 1, 2020 through August 2, 2020 I exercised as follows:

2x per week for 14 weeks.

1x per week for 9 weeks.

0x per week for 3 weeks.

On the monthly calendar sheets I write on the day I exercise “UB” for the Upper Body and “LB” for the Lower Body routine.

I recommend using a calendar to track your progress along with keeping a hardbound fitness journal. I inserted my calendar sheets into an orange fitness binder. I stopped writing in a fitness journal.

Luckily I’m able to text my personal trainer to get encouragement for my efforts while the pandemic is in effect.

As you can see from what I learned I have been exercising fairly consistently. Not in an ideal way–I’ve had to recycle workout sheets I used before and do them again.

Yet in light of this challenge I think: you did good kid.

In the next blog entry I’ll talk about the myth of exercising 5 days a week for an hour each session.

Tracking Fitness Progress

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At the start of the year I printed up 12 months’ of calendar sheets from an MS Word template. I inserted photos at the top right and an inspiring quote on the top left of each month.

You can despair when you have a setback. I advocate for taking the long view. Think in terms of the cumulative effect instead of getting upset over every slip-up along the way.

This is how I approach fitness and nutrition. Recording my workouts on the sheet for each month I can see whether I’m making progress.

As regards exercise too many people set restrictive or impossible goals like “I should exercise 5x per week.”

In Step 4 – Persevere of the Changeology 90-day action plan change makers are told to condemn the behavior not the person.

Tracking your progress is a catalyst in every one of the 5 Steps.

In the time of the pandemic it’s easy to give up totally when you have a setback like this.

Enter using a calendar to track your progress. You can see in black-and-white what’s really going on.

In the coming blog entry I’ll talk about my own fitness odyssey while living indoors since March 16.

Michael Jordan’s Winning Tactics

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  1. Motivate yourself for the long-term.
  2. Bust yourself harder to achieve things than you expect others to do.
  3. Be completely present and focused on what you’re doing right now.

In a museum gift shop I bought a flat metal paperweight inscribed with this Michael Jordan quote:

Don’t be afraid to fail. Be afraid not to try.

You don’t need a pair of $100 sneakers to succeed in life.

Taking your lead from a champion is more like it to get empowered.

The tactic of focusing on the present moment I would say is the number-one strategy to adopt.

Come on how do you feel when you ruminate on the past or worry about the future?

It saps you of the energy to enjoy your life today.

As I’m fond of saying: today is how it is and tomorrow can be better.

Taking action today to move closer to your goal is a way to change how you feel about your current circumstances.

Focusing on doing one thing at a time on one day at a time is how you get to win 6 championships in 6 years.

It’s like what I wrote about in reviewing the Danica Patrick book Pretty Intense:

She tells readers to simply do One Healthy Thing. Then do the Next Healthy Thing. And the next healthy thing after that. And so on.

To be honest I’ve given up on thinking in terms of a 15-year goal. I do have a 15-year goal. I use a four-word mantra to talk about this long-term goal. That’s it.

Other than that I act like Michael Jordan and focus on what I can do today in the present moment to bring me closer to a goal.

I’m going to talk more about goals in coming blog entries.

Changing Habits

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My epiphany with food and exercise occurred when I moved into a new apartment nine years ago.

In the 1q90s my weekly menu consisted of Velveeta mac-and-cheese (marginally OK when I added broccoli to it), hot dogs, hamburgers, frozen TV dinners and other cheap crap.

Not surprisingly I was 20 pounds overweight. That was my typical diet for too long. I kid you not I used to eat unhealthful food every week for years and years.

This hungry woman used to “treat” herself to Hungry Man TV dinners all the time.

So I can tell you that my story is living proof that it’s possible to change your exercise and eating habits at any point in your life.

I was 46 when I first started to lift weights and eat organic food.

I’m 55 now and feel better than ever.

I tell you this story to give readers hope.

I’ll end here with this:

Our lives are going to be too long not too short to put off doing what gives us joy and makes us feel good.

We should not have to live one minute longer in pain than we absolutely need to.

As a therapist once said: “Suffering for the sake of suffering is bullshit.”

The point is not that you have to be skinny or have six-pack abs.

The exclamation point is that feeling good feels so much better than being out of shape.

Good food as said can put you in a good mood.

I’m going to talk in the next blog entry about slowing down and focusing on the present moment.

A new documentary about Michael Jordan–the Last Dance–talks about 3 tactics he employed to win championships.

I’ll talk about them here because they can assist us in real life.

Taking Control in a Crisis

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I think taking control in a crisis goes back to what I wrote in here recently about prioritizing your essential activities and letting fall away everything that doesn’t reinforce your immediate goals.

While indoors you can as I’ve written plan out the goals you want to achieve once back outside like usual.

The financial toll can be hard to weather right now. I’m not a CFP so can’t give specific advice about finances.

What I can say is that while living indoors it might conversely be easier to achieve some goals that you had put off.

Maybe you wanted to live more frugally before the pandemic. This is a great opportunity to edit your spending and change your habits.

A friend told me that it could be common that people living through this crisis feel like we have no control over what’s happening.

I’ll end here by saying that each of us can only manage what’s within our control.

What’s outside of our control we need to let it be. To focus on what we can control.

To this end I’ve started up a new 90-day action plan using the Changeology 5-step method for achieving goals.

My long-term goal is to live in a 2-bedroom apartment. To use the second room as an art studio.

To do this I’m using the Danica Patrick tactic listed in her book Pretty Intense: I’m doing one healthy thing. Then I’ll do the next healthy thing.

Feeling like you have control can be as simple as yes compartmentalizing your weekly habits.

Focusing on the here-and-now reality can help you weather this crisis.

While keeping in the back of your mind your long-term goal.

Again I will refer readers to the other useful book: Atomic Habits.

Making small incremental consistent changes to our behavior can pay off.

I will report back in 3 months the outcome of my latest Changeology action plan.

Status of 3-Month Challenge – Update

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Hmm _ forgot I scheduled this blog entry and wrote 2 entries with the same title 🙂

On January 14, 2020 in this blog I wrote about the 3-Month Challenge I wanted to achieve.

My goal was to cook my own dinner 4x per week and do a walk-run on the treadmill 1x per week.

On March 17, 2020 the gyms in New York City were forced to shut down along with the retail stores.

As far as my goal of cooking dinners 4x per week this has been achieved.

In the time of the pandemic and living indoors it has been easier to cook dinner nearly every night.

My concern is how the changed nature of living life during the pandemic had disrupted anyone who was using the Changeology 5-Step 90-Day Action Plan to realize our goals and resolutions.

In this extraordinary time each of us needs to act kinder and gentler towards ourselves and others.

I live with the belief that everyone living on earth is doing the best we can with what we were given in life.

No judgments–that is the way to move forward–to live with no judgments.

Before the pandemic hit I had started to use the treadmill. I continued to lift weights.

Now that everything has changed I understand what it feels like to have your life upended by a circumstance outside your control.

I will talk about this more in the next blog entry.