Arthritis Walk

Since I took a little vaca from blogging over the summer, I will need to backtrack to share one of the things I did that I had wanted to do for a while. My Mom has had arthritis for over 20 years and I had been wanting to participate in the Arthritis Walk in honor of her. There was a great group of people who came together for this walk.



Arthritis has taken a tremendous toll on Mom's body and overall health. She has been through so much, but remains upbeat and optimistic. Though her hands are disfigured, she remains as active as she can, which includes knitting and drawing. She has entered her work in the local fair the last couple of years and has won blue ribbons each year. You can sneak a peak of Mom with one of her blue ribbons here: http://tinyurl.com/3efodew

I want to thank everyone who sponsored me for the walk. I really appreciated it!

Is there a cause that is near and dear to your heart? Please feel free to share about it in the comments.

My blogging goal got a bit sidetracked, but I'm ready to try again. ☺

I hope you are all having a great summer. I'd love to hear about some of your adventures. I've had the opportunity to go hiking, swimming, kayaking, and to the beach. I've also gone to some local festivals, which included lobsters and fireworks. I like them both, but think the lobsters win out over the fireworks for my favorite. ☺ It's been a really nice summer to be outside. What have you been up to? Feel free to share in the comments and let me know.

The summer is going quickly now, so this is a good reminder for us. Let's take advantage of the weeks that are left and do some of those things that we had planned to do, but haven't gotten to yet. What's on your list?

Exercise…I think I can, I think I can…

I thought I would pick a few goals that people have in common to talk about. I’m starting with exercise. Why? There are 2 main reasons I’m picking exercise. A) It really is important for our health, and 2) It can be a real struggle for a lot of people.

I’ll share a little bit about my personal experience with exercise. As I mentioned in a previous post, I am a list person. With exercise, I have a list in the form of a daily record that I keep to monitor my progress. When I say I can empathize with anyone who struggles with exercise, I am not exaggerating. When I first started using my elliptical machine, it was everything I could do to stay on it for 3 minutes. Yes, you read that correctly, three minutes. I was pretty embarrassed that that was all I could do and not very eager to write that number on my daily record.

But I’m here to tell you that there is hope. Before I knew it, 3 minutes became 5, then 6, 7, 8…until I was amazed to see the number 20 appear. I have a rowing machine and stationary bike as well. I now like to break my workout up and do 20 minutes on each machine for a total of an hour. (I’m good like that with math.) It didn’t happen all at once. I found I really needed to be realistic with myself and take small steps so I would stick with it.

If anyone had told me I would be exercising for an hour at a time, I would have thought they were crazy. No matter how good I felt after exercising, I still had the hardest time convincing myself to exercise again the next day. But then some stressful things happened in my life and I found exercise was a great stress reducer for me. That became my motivator. Now that I have reached my time goal, I am still keeping my daily log. Now I track mileage and calories burned. It is a way I can continue to see my progress and challenge myself.

Now that the weather is getting better (well, the snow is mostly gone anyway) I am going to mix in outdoor activities like hiking and bike riding. I find variety is good so your exercise doesn’t get boring.

What do you do for exercise, or what do you wish you were doing? What is your motivator? I’d love to hear your stories.

I didn't think I could do that, BUT I Did!

AOCDRNDICG TO RSCHEEARCH AT CMABRIGDE UINERVTISY, IT DSENO'T MTAETR WAHT OERDR THE LTTERES IN A WROD ARE, THE OLNY IPROAMTNT TIHNG IS TAHT THE FRSIT AND LSAT LTTEER BE IN THE RGHIT PCLAE. TIHS IS BCUSEAE THE HUAMN MNID DEOS NOT RAED ERVEY LTETER BY ISTLEF, BUT THE WROD AS A WLOHE. LET ME KONW IF YOU CAN IF YOU CAN RAED THIS. OLNY 55% OF PLEPOE CAN.

Besides being cool, what does this have to do with goals? Sometimes (often) we don’t THINK we can do something, only to find out that we actually CAN. Who would have thought you could read the above paragraph at first glance? What are you putting off because you don’t think you can do it? Are you ready to give it a try?

You can learn more about working on goals at my website.

I'd love to hear about something you didn't think you could do, but you DID!

Recreating Yourself

The wonderful thing about individuals is just that, we are individual. We all have different and unique talents, hopes, and goals. Throughout the year, this blog will discuss goals in general as well as a variety of specific goals. This will be done by myself as well as by guest bloggers. Today I am pleased to share from our first guest blogger. Her name is Marcie. Let's listen to what she has to say:

Have you ever decided to do something that seems totally crazy, downright impossible and even unattainable? Well, on January 8th 2010, I did just that! I changed my entire lifestyle and started eating a vegan diet. It has been a year with my new life and I would like to share some of the highlights.

The original decision to do this came out of some health issues and the age-old problem of a few extra pounds. But currently, my new lifestyle is the basis of how I will lead my life forever. I started to research vegan diet plans, factory farming and the benefits for our planet of eating a plant based diet. Everything I read brought more knowledge that this is what I was supposed to do to make a difference in myself, but more over our planet.

Making the decision to not eat meat and all dairy was only the beginning; I also stopped eating refined sugar and flour and started eating all whole grain. I stopped drinking coffee (and I was a coffee junkie, I used to think about my morning coffee when I went to bed at night). Now vegans do drink coffee, but I stopped coffee because I didn’t want to be addicted to anything anymore. All of this sounds like it would have been excruciating, but it wasn’t. I started feeling better after about a week to 10 days and I began to lose the cravings that used to haunt me. I started exercising more, my energy increased and naturally I started to lose weight. I had a new sense of calmness, kindness and awareness that I hadn’t experienced before.

In the beginning, I think I was thinking more about myself, how will this help me, what is in it for me. Now, I am vegan for my family, our future, for the animals, for the water ways, for the air and for the truth of what the Government and Meat Producers do not want you to know. I know this sounds slightly like an activist rant, but that is not me at all. I am just excited about how this has made such a difference in all aspects of my life.

I feel there is a new awareness of better food choices and how they impact our world. There are so many ways to make small changes in your life, but the easiest is to be informed. Search the web and see for yourself or read a book, knowledge is power.

Some good reading material-This Crazy Vegan Life by Christina Pirello; Eating Animals by Jonathon Safron Foer;

Websites-http://www.vegetariantimes.com/
http://www.vegsource.com/ great recipes- www.goveg.com
Marcie

It is always exciting for me to hear about how somebody comes to set a goal for themselves and then bring it to fruition. I want to thank Marcie for her willingness to share her story with all of us. I also want to share something else about Marcie with you. She has a lovely shop where she sells beautiful handmade jewelry that she creates herself. You can take a look for yourself at www.marciejanedesigns.etsy.com.

Your goals may be different than Marcie’s, but I hope you will look at the steps she took in making her goal. Then you can see how those same steps might be applied in helping you achieve your goals. Here are some of the steps Marcie mentioned that stood out to me:
~ choose a goal
~ think about your reasons
~ do research
~ think about the benefits
~ decide what small steps you can take toward your goal

If you have a topic in mind that involves goals that you would like to learn more about, or that you would like to share with all of us, please feel free to let me know. You can contact me at info@professionallifeadvisor.com or learn more about goals HERE.

Are you working towards your goals?

We’re one month into the New Year. A lot of people’s new year’s resolutions are nothing but a memory. But not for us. We’re making GOALS that we can start (and restart) any time. So how are your goals coming along? 2 of my goals are going very well. 1 has crashed and burned. It involved another person and I found out it wasn’t a realistic goal. That happens. Maybe I will be able to revamp it some day. But for now, I’m going to focus on other things. And my 4th goal is making a small amount of progress. I’ve decided it’s time to develop new strategies to kick that goal into gear.

Let’s talk about a few strategies for goal success.
1. What would you tell a friend to do? Sometimes we don’t know what to tell ourselves to do towards working on our goals. But if you think about a friend asking you for your advice if they had the same goal, you just might have a bunch of ideas pop into your head. Also, we often treat other people better than we treat ourselves. If someone else was struggling with a goal, would you give them a hard time or would you offer encouragement and ideas for improvement? Be a good friend to yourself!

2. Lists, lists, lists. I am a total list person. Write down your goal, and the steps you plan to take towards that goal. Make a “to do” list that you can cross things off as you complete them. It will give you a great sense of accomplishment. Some goals may require a daily list.

3. Don’t give up, just readjust. This is true if one of your goals is going slowly, or not going at all, but it’s still something you would like to work on. Think about what is working and try to figure out what’s not working.

You might be thinking that this sounds like a lot of work. In 2 words…it is! If you don’t want anything in your life to change, then do nothing different and that’s what you’ll get. But if want things to change, you will have to do things differently, and that does take work. The rewards far outweigh the effort though! And remember small steps lead you to the same destination.

I’d love to hear how your goals are coming. Please feel free to comment and share.

Roads...

Highways
Country roads
Dirt roads
One way streets
Bicycle paths
Mountain trails

What kind of road represents your life?

Do you go through life so fast that you sometimes forget to enjoy it?
Are you passive and lose your focus or drive?
Are you type of person who really appreciates the simple, important things in life?
Do you have a hard time learning from your mistakes and keep doing the same things hoping for different results?
Do you shortchange yourself and not give yourself credit for all you can do?
Do you like a challenge?

Getting in touch with what makes you tick, so to speak, will be important in helping you achieve your goals. Are you on the road you want to be on? Do you need to add a little bit of mountain trail mentality to your country road personality?

Just wanted to give you some things to think about on the road to your goals.

The Infamous New Year's Resolution

The infamous New Year’s resolution... How many have you ever made? How many have you ever kept? I actually prefer to think about life’s goals rather than New Year’s resolutions. It may seem like a little thing, but somehow the idea of a New Year’s resolution has to start on January 1st and as soon as I “mess up”, I feel defeated and that’s the end of that resolution until next January. But goals do not have a specific start date. And when I get off track, I can just set my course straight again at any time.

While we are making goals of things we want to work on, it is important to take the time to recognize and appreciate those things we have accomplished and the things we do well. It's easy to find positive things about others, but it can sometimes be easier to find our faults than our strengths. It's important, however, to take the time to find and acknowledge what is positive about ourselves. If we made a list I bet there would be a lot more strengths than we might expect to find.

As this New Year begins, let us take the time to reflect on how far we have come and where we want to go. There are so many areas of life to focus on. Where will your goals take you? I'd love for you to comment and share what some of your goals are for the coming year.