Happy Sunday Everyone:
Final Sunday Thoughts of the year. I’m going to skip the recap of 2019 except to say it was confusing. 2020 is about clarity for me, and finding clarity in everything I do, and doing so quickly. Part of me finding clarity is a full recognition of my strengths, my weaknesses, and finding my bright spots and blind spots. Bright spots being talents I don’t fully understand or appreciate that I possess and blind spots being areas of weakness that I don’t recognize. I’m sure I’ll fill you in on that project throughout next year. Please do not feel compelled to send me possible examples of blind spots at this juncture.
Thought I’d close this year with lessons learned from the push up challenge of 2019. The challenge started on January 1st with 1 push up and will end on December 31st with 365, and a whole lot in-between. There were 7 of us that started out on this voyage, 4 will end the year having completed it. Also a quick thank you to Rob H. and Stew S. for having given us the idea from completing it last year and challenging us to do the same.
Lessons to myself:
* Having accountability to others drives me to do things I don’t always want to do for myself. I’ll always wish I was more disciplined and I hope my personal discipline continues to grow but having back up when that discipline isn’t there is smart. Had it not been required to send a daily recap of pushups completed with the # done I can guarantee you I would not have done this.
* Things are harder to imagine than they are to actually do. I need to remember this when I tell myself I can’t do something. When I told myself last year at this time I was going to be doing 363 pushups today my head didn’t really believe I could. I honestly wasn’t sure at all I’d have stuck through this. Now that I’m here, the pushups are actually easy, I swear this to be true. Imaging pain is much more painful than the pain itself.
* How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Waking up each day thinking “crap, I have to do 100 or 200 or 300 pushups” is not fun. Am I going to do 60 or 70, then break….was messing with my head (like ground hogs day). I hurt my shoulder doing them in late August so I decided I was going to do sets of 20 and wait 30-45 seconds between, I’m realizing literally as I type this I took the thinking out of it. I just knew I needed to do sets of 20 until they were done. This could be said for a lot of daunting projects we have in our lives, one bite at a time, or for me now…”set of 20″.
* HOLY CRAP, IT WORKS. I’ll skip the full blown meathead bragging with providing actual numbers but my upper body is stronger than it’s ever been in my life from doing this challenge. Lesson to myself is slow and steady still works and is something I need to remember. It’s easy to look at everything happening around us, comparing someone else’s situation to ours. If I play my own game, knowing how I best play (slow and steady), my foundation will be strong (clarity moment for me). Now that the foundation is built, I’ll maintain it by doing 1,000 pushups a week, broken down to 5 days of 200, and 10 sets of 20 on those days (clarity once again). Its already working .
For those of you that read these, please know I appreciate it. I only wish you could be in my own head to know how much it helps me to release the thoughts from this crazy brain onto an email. If its helps any of you in the crazy club with me, that’s the bonus prize.
Happy New Year!!