I have noticed in recent months that my self care routines around exercise have fallen away. I have become swallowed up by the juggle of family life and little by little my space for myself has been let go of. I know this happens from time to time, self care is a constant process and sometimes I do better with it than at other times.
Exercise is a really important part of my emotional well-being – this is probably even more important to me than the physical fitness benefits of exercise.
This week I decided I needed to take some committed action to bringing my self care back into alignment and I created myself a little 30 day personal challenge.
Guidelines of my 30 day challenge
- I need to actively move my body for 15 minutes each day. This can be a walk, a run, a swim, some yoga … anything.
- If I do more than 15 minutes it cannot carry over to another day. For example if I swim for 30 minutes that does not count as 2 days worth of movement.
- It is preferable that the 15 minutes happens in one block but if I am struggling to make that happen I will at least do 3 x 5 minute activities. Something is always better than nothing!
- Keep this challenge fun. I really want to achieve 30 consecutive days but I am not going to beat myself up if a few days get missed. Perfectionism is not the aim here.
How am I going with the challenge?
I only started this challenge on Friday so it is early days yet but so far so good. I have been keeping a simple list in Evernote to keep track of what I have done as well as create a sense of accountability for myself.
I have noticed an increase in my awareness each day around taking opportunities presented. For example on Tuesday we had a family outing to the beach, and when my husband asked if I would like to take a walk I said ‘yes … I’ll be back in 15-20 minutes!”
I will be interested to see how well I sustain this over the full 30 days ….
Is there a part of your self care practices that have slipped recently? How could you take some small steps to get back on track?
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