Way of Life

It occurred to me yesterday that I think way too much about the negative things in life.  Instead of thinking about all the good things and looking for positives, my mind is entirely focused on the negative.  This makes me moody, upset, and grumpy.  I decided that I did not want to be that way anymore.  I have always wanted to be the type of person that can see the good in anything, but my natural tendencies don't lean that way.  So I have to retrain my brain to think positively.  After last weekend's binge I knew I needed to change something.  My all or nothing mentality is really getting in the way of me making progress in my health and weight loss goals.  I am either doing everything right, or I am doing nothing right.  So instead of worrying so much about weight loss and being good or bad, either getting in all my water or none of my water, eating all my veggeis or none of them, I want to focus on creating a new way of life.  The way you create a way of life is by changing your habits.  I made some very small goals, since lately I haven't been able to achieve any goal I've set, and I want to start a little slower.  My goals are: tracking every day, even bad days. Exercising 5 days a week, drinking three 8-oz glasses of water a day, eating 2 servings of veggies a day, stop stress eating (although that is a larger goal).  Instead of focusing on doing everything right all the time, I am going to try to gradually improve to eat healthier.  I found a habit changing and tracking app called "Way of Life" that I am using to track these goals.  It's pretty simple and reminds you of what habits you are trying to form or break.  I also like how you can make notes on every task for every day.  That means that I can even put in my positive thinking habits.  I set up a reminder for three times a day to think of something positive that has happened today and also to think of something good about my kids and my life.  (My kids stress me out the most so I need to start focusing more on what makes me happy about my kids, and focusing on the good things they do instead of how they fight all the time).  I also put in self esteem where at the end of the day I will write one thing I love about myself or something I did that day I am proud of myself for accomplishing.  If I want to continue on this journey I am going to have to do some internal cleaning.  Retraining my brain to think positively instead of negatively could be the single most important thing I do to make the rest of my life happy, and to find internal peace.

See Each habit?  Green means you did good, Red means you missed.  Blue are skipped days and don't count as either good or bad, so if you only want to exercise three days a week you would skip 4 days.  Source

You can add a lot of data and analyze how you have progressed over the weeks, months, years.  You can get charts, graphs, and look at your data based on percentages, include skip days or not, lots of customization and lots of feedback.  Source

Today for my morning positive thinking I wrote this:  Lily and Chloe are happy this morning.  Lily is playing outside and Chloe is watching a movie.  I am thankful I was able to catch up with tracking my facebook challenge group points.

Afternoon positive thinking: I am thankful that I was able to visit my friend today.  Lily and Chloe were well behaved which made things even better.  I am proud of myself for swimming 20 laps in the pool without stopping.

Evening positive thinking: Lily is creative.  She has fun drawing maps on blank pieces of paper.

Lily had been bugging me because she was pretty dramatic a few times today when she bonked her head and a 20 minute scream fest ensued, so I felt the need to think about the positive aspects in Lily's character.  My goal is to naturally think these positive things instead of needing to stop and come up with things I want it to be natural.  As it is right now, my mind naturally reflects to: How terrible my allergies are already, and it's only the second day of having allergies!  I'm on three different meds (anti-histamine, decongestant, and tylenol for the headache), I'm tired from not sleeping last night.  Allergies hit hard and fast and I wasn't quite prepared, last night I had snot dripping from my nose all night, I had toilet paper stuffed up my nose and had to breath through my mouth, so I did not sleep well.  (Anyone with bad seasonal allergies knows this feeling).  I could go on and on and on, my mind ruminates on these negative thoughts, it's no wonder I'm constantly stressed, upset, and unhappy.  When I think about the good things that happened today like how I went swimming because my back still hurts and I was able to swim half a mile without stopping! After that I made up my own HIIT training and I swam 50 yards (one lap or down and back) with a 1 minute rest inbetween and I shaved off 11 seconds from my previous fastest time!  I used to swim 50 yards in 1 minute and today I hit each one in 49 seconds!  That's my sprint pace so I couldn't maintain that for longer than 50 yards but I was really proud of myself for improving so much! 

After my pool swim I walked on the treadmill for 30 minutes.  Nothing intense, I think my speed was at 3.5mph.  My back and foot still hurt so I didn't want to do anything too hard.  It felt good to walk and stretch my legs.