How to Prioritize from your Spirit, Not Your Mind

Happy new year!

If you are like many (myself included), you are happy to see 2020 be gone, and you have a lot of ideas, hopes, and dreams for this new year. Part of my ritual that starts around the winter solstice and bleeds just into the new year is to take a while to do an inventory of my life of the previous year, all I have accomplished, what I’m grateful for as well as what I hope the new year holds. While I have specific goals in each area, I also come up with a word of the year for each. (You can read more on my word of the year and my specific reflections in my newsletter here - be sure to sign up to receive my occasional newsletter right in your inbox.)

One of the things that has to happen in order for us to achieve these goals in the new year is prioritization. I have a lot of things I want to accomplish this year, and also a lot of things I enjoy. So how do I decide what to focus on first?

There’s a myriad of different ways to prioritize, but my favorite way is to get underneath my prefrontal cortex and all of the things my brain things I “should” do, and listen instead to what my spirit really wants to do.

For example, I love to workout. I love yoga, I love to run, I love to lift weights, and I love to dance. If I use the executive function of my brain, and also what society tells me is good, I will do this a lot. Because health is a priority, and I enjoy exercise, and society tells me these are good things, it can be super easy to let this particular category dominate. (If you’ve been following me for a while, you know that for the past two years it has, running my first 50k in November 2019 to running 50 miles this past October.)

But if I give myself the opportunity to sit down and quiet, my spirit tells me that, while exercise is something important and crucial and necessary for my life, what I really want now is to write.

That means that, despite the fact that I would happily spend 3+ hours today moving my body, I know that 30-60 minutes is enough. In that extra time, I will write (or work on one of my other big goals for this year).

Prioritization is discipline. It’s taking a good inventory of everything that is important, both in your brain and in your spirit, and deciding how to spend your time accordingly.

For all of my perfectionists, this comes with some news: you cannot do everything. You cannot do everything and you certainly cannot do everything perfectly. If you were to take optimal care of your health, finances, relationships, spirit, home, etc., you would legitimately do nothing else but self care.

So, what are you holding on to that you can let go of? Or, where can you do something a little less perfectly?

For me, it’s swapping out hours on the trails and a daily yoga practice for just enough movement each day, so I can also write (and, fingers crossed, finally remodel the kitchen this year).

Let me know in the comments what your SPIRIT wants, and what you’re willing to let go of to follow that.

(Side note: you can borrow my word of the year of FAITH if that makes you a little bit terrified.)

Lots of love and happy new year!

A priority for everyone.

Self Care Is Not a Pedicure

Over the past month, I have been working with several individual wellness coaching clients. The issues we are working through cover a wide variety of topics, but the issue that seems to be recurring over and over again is on Self Care.

At least three separate clients this week have said some phrase to me this week similar to this: “I would love to work more on __________, but honestly it seems so selfish. My family/work/spouse comes first, and I feel guilty taking a moment for myself when I could be doing something for others.”

In recent years, self care is praised all over the internet. Unfortunately, the type of self care I see touted most frequently is not true self care, but is sold as such under some guise of consumerism or avoidance. How often do you hear the phrases below, think them, or believe them to be true?

• “I deserve this glass of wine.”

• “A pedicure is my gift to myself.”

• “My self care is watching Netflix at the end of a hard day.”

These activities, while not harmful in and of themselves, are a direct result of the consumerism of our society. True Self Care is a world apart from these activities. To be clear: there is nothing wrong with having a glass of wine, getting a pedicure, or engaging in some good old Netflix - the problem becomes the confusion between these activities and true self care.

So what is real Self Care? It’s the basic, mundane activities we so often forget in our attempt to please the world around us. Self Care is attention. It says “I am worth the time it takes to pay attention to my thoughts, desires, and needs. I know that sometimes, I will need to placate my inner four year old and eat ice cream for dinner, but most of the time I will remember the health benefits of broccoli and eat that instead.” It is parenting yourself, out of love for your future self.

It looks like discipline, but when we can tap into it as a choice we are making for a greater good, it feels like a powerful stance of freedom.

Sometimes, it can look like disappointing others in the immediate future. But, consider what is more kind: disappointing someone in the moment to take time for yourself to run, make dinner, journal, etc - or placating what they want, putting your own needs off, and building a slow and steady resentment that may eventually eat at the relationship.

Self Care is parenting yourself, so that you can show up more authentically for others.

Just for a nice visual, I like to remember the quadrants of prioritization that Stephen Covey outlines in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (image below). Self Care often falls under the important but not urgent category, and thus it can easily get steamrolled by things that are urgent and important (like a deadline at work) or urgent but not important (like a ringing telephone or answering emails). Sometimes, we let the things that are not urgent and not important (social media, phone games) step over this category, too, because Self Care is not always fun and glamorous in the moment, and things like social media can be a welcome distraction. However, real Self Care leads to lasting and meaningful change that trickles into all other aspects of your life.

What do your quadrants look like, and what is Self Care for you on its deepest level? How will you begin to take steps to implement that in your life?

(P.S. If you need some extra help - behavior change is hard - coaching can help with just this. We get to the root of what it is you want, and figure out how to take small steps in that direction utilizing your strengths to get you from here to there over a period of time. Contact me if you’re interested.)

Image Source: Wikipedia.

Lessons from a 50 Mile UltraMarathon in the Year 2020

A friend of mine suggested I write about my experiences ultrarunning, and how I have been recovering.

To begin: on Saturday, October 10th, I ran my second (technically third, I suppose) ultra-marathon, and the longest one yet of 50 miles. This was my top goal of 2020, and despite races being cancelled left and right, I continued my training. A handful (four) of us who had a race cancelled decided to go ahead with our distance anyway, and our running coaches at Team Sparkle held a small group run with aid for us.

There were two loops of approximately five miles (5.66 and 4.75) that came to a single location where we had access to aid. The three of us who ran 50 miles did both of these loops five times, each. Mark, who ran a 100 miler, did these ten times. A few friends in the community, our coaches, and a person or two from our families came out to watch us, help us get water, and make sure we were making it through the woods unharmed.

50 Mile Finisher

one happy camper.

People often ask me, “What do you think about when you run for that long?” A lot of things. I planned a yoga class and spoke it out loud to a voice recorder. I thought about my career, and ways to grow my business. I thought about my newest venture in coaching, my family, my relationships, my legs. At mile 40 I finally allowed myself the gift of listening to music, and that was a blessing.

Al the while in training for this, I wondered what the gem was that I was searching for in this process. It was unclear to me until I was out there, on the trails. Here are the top things I learned that day, and in this process, in no particular order.

1. Stay Adaptable. Things will not go as planned, so train like you’re planning for anything. You’ll forget your special snacks. The people you thought would be there for support will not be able to come. You will hit a deer en route and have to start forty minutes late after arriving with a totaled car that was somehow still drivable. (True story.) Your stomach will not digest foods properly, you’ll take a (few) wrong turns and wind up in fields, you’ll choke on a muffin in your last three miles and wonder if it’s the end. Keep going, anyway. It won’t look like what you expected, but you’ll still go on and you will be happy that you did.

2. The Body Is Cool. And - it wants to work for you. Around mile fifteen, your hip flexors will start to ache and you’ll think, “I have another 35 miles to run on these tired legs.” But, trust in your training. If you did the work to get there, your legs have more in them than your mind thinks that they do. They are going to keep going long after their first twinge, so your real goal is to keep your mind right. Don’t dwell on the tiredness, or the pain. Stay positive. Don’t ignore if something is screaming, but don’t give in to every twinge. It will probably go away in a mile or two, so in the mean time talk to yourself out loud and thank your legs. They’re working for you.

3. Keep Choosing It. It can be quite easy to feel tired and want to drop out. But that’s not what you came here to do. Distance running is about choosing, over and over, to keep going - even when it is no longer fun. Even when you’ve gone to the bathroom in the woods four times and you’re struggling to keep down food. You made the choice to get in it, so make the choice to finish it - and as long as you’re making choices, choose to be grateful for your feet that carry you. Your legs that are working for you. Your heart, your lungs, this gift of this body that offers you the opportunity of adventure.

4. Coca-Cola and Ginger Ale Are God’s Gift to Ultrarunners. Self explanatory.

That said, I am happy to have my main goal of the year complete. Doing something that sounds impossible is daunting. After having committed to this goal, my levels of anxiety were sky high with imposter syndrome, wondering if I really did have it in me. It feels good to know that goals that are seemingly out of reach are, in fact, possible, and even more so if you surround yourself with people and coaches who believe in you, see your strengths, and give you a roadmap to get there.

So what’s next? Time will tell. I went on my first run post race today - six days post race - and it felt great. I’ve also practiced yoga twice, gone on a few walks, and done a strength training session. My body was tight for a few days, but surprisingly, my traps hurt most of all from the anxiety of the race and from carrying my pack. Is it something I would do again? Absolutely, just not so soon. I’m looking forward to some extra sleep, weekends to work in my yard, and to explore some other interests before I get so heavily invested in another training program.

That’s it! Hats off to all of us who completed big race goals, to our coaches who supplied the training, to our friends who aided us in the station, to our families who came out for support and ribbon dancer finishes, and to Todd who made this fabulous video of the weekend, where I make a cameo appearance at the end singing songs about Coca-Cola and dancing with ribbon dancers.

Happy fall!