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Is there getting “back to good”?
Matchbox Twenty used to be one of my favorite bands. They didn’t do anything to change that…I just haven’t listened to their music in many years. But I turned it on today and it was as good as I remember. I guess I haven’t changed all that much in all these years. These lyrics really hit home… This don’t mean that, you own me, wellThis ain’t no good, in fact it’s phony as hellYeah, but things worked out just like you wanted toIf you see me out, you don’t know meTry to turn your head, try to give me some roomHow to figure out just what I’m gonna do Matchbox…
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All the hard things
We can do hard things. A lot of the âhard thingsâ we mean are physical challenges. We listen to some David Goggins motivation and forget our pain and push through to the finish line of a race, or get up out of the bottom of a heavy squat, or forego dessert for one more day to reach our goal. With the physical âhard thingsâ there are steps! Just put one foot in front of the otherâŠeat fewer calories than you burn…increase the weight by 5-10% or increase reps to failure in order to squat that heavy weight you set a goal for. The emotional âhard thingsâ are a lot different.…
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There are cows that can jump over the moon…
…And cows that can’t make it over a fence. For the past few months, I have been the latter cow. Stagnant. Stuck. Spinning my wheels with nothing to show for it. What is my fence? Some of this is my own fault. I’ll admit I wasn’t as focused on the habits that would get me closer to my desired results. I let the stressors of life get in the way of my routines. Life is always stressful in some way, we build our routines to work for us in times of stress so we don’t spend the mental energy thinking about it. I did an extremely poor job building those…
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Ultra Fail
On a chilly fall morning in north Texas, I was ready for what I thought would be a challenging day. Bags packed, knees weak, arms are heavy…oh wait. That is Eminem. The start line feeling isn’t much different. Heart pounding, butterflies in your stomach, anxiously waiting for the last “Aroo Aroo Aroo”…and then you’re off. My battle buddy and I did have our bucket packed and we thought we were ready for whatever awaited us. We had completed the Beast last year…and yes, one more loop would be hard but it is just one more loop, right? Wrong. Loop 1, the beginning Things started out like they normally do. My…
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Gratitude Challenge
One challenge I received recently is to start a gratitude journal. I have always wanted to start a gratitude journal, but I get stuck. I have the rote 4 or 5 things I’m grateful for, and my journal always said the same thing daily: Very generic! Very boring! Yes I’m grateful for all of these things but I can also recite them automatically and not actually think about why I’m grateful for these things. I received this challenge a week ago. I have not started this journal. (Much to the chagrin of my persistent friend, who asks me daily whether I’ve started…and only sent a few eyeroll đ emojis when…
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Staying Sore to be Better
The other day I was complaining about how sore I felt, and loudly wondering if I would always feel this way. My friend quipped, âremind me the name of your blog again?â TouchĂ© my friend. TouchĂ©. The comment got me thinking about what the title of this website actually means to me. Does it truly mean that I am okay with feeling sore every single day? (Answer: abso-freaking-lutely not) Does it mean I expect others to push themselves to the point they are sore more often than not? (Also no) What it does mean, however, is that there are some days Iâll push myself past limits and feel the repercussions. It wonât be daily,…
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The Little Engine that Could Say Affirmations
Affirmations. According to Dictionary.com: The act of process of affirming something or being affirmed. In case you are wondering what exactly it means to “affirm” something (like…a friend of mine did đ) it is to “state as a fact; assert strongly and publicly.” Just like the Little Engine that Could got up the hill because he repeated “I think I can” to himself over and over until he could say “I thought I could” in triumph at the top of the hill. (There you go–now you don’t really need to read this particular book if you haven’t yet.) I’m learning …the things we say to ourselves matter. I’m also learning…
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Hyrox Recap Ft. Worth 2023
Stay hopeful, stay humble, stay HY. These are the words repeated at the start line of every HYROX race. Honestly, everyone should run at least one Hyrox race just to experience the emotions at the starting line. The combination of butterflies and rocks in your stomach at the beginning — you know the torture you are about to commence, but you also know it isn’t anything you can’t do — is a crazy combination for sure. While in line to register, I overheard someone telling her friends that we get nervous before these races, because we care. If we didn’t care about the outcome, we wouldn’t be nervous. She was…
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Collect those raindrops
Life hits you at the strangest moments. As I was driving my daughter to school in the pouring rain, I looked up into a street light. The rain drops seemed to flow down to the earth in super slow-motion, and I could see individual drops, not merely sheets of a downpour. Seeing all of those individual droplets made me think about flooding…and I realized something. An individual droplet won’t cause a flood. It is an annoyance — but it doesn’t change its surroundings except to make them a little bit wet. Unless there are millions of droplets…the environment doesn’t change much. Millions of droplets, however, cause huge changes in their…
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If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it
We all have those days, weeks…months?…where we feel frustrated. Where we are making all the “right” moves toward our goals, but not exactly getting where we want to be. It’s complicated, and there is so much data to look at. How do you measure your progress? The Dreaded Scale Many people have a love/hate relationship with this device. It is the most common way to measure progress with health. The problem is, most people have a “weekly weigh-in” and don’t take into account the daily changes our body goes through. What you ate for dinner, how much water you are retaining, whether you have had a bowel movement…these all play…