This is just what I do...

So. I read a friend’s newsletter and she had a pic of herself, looking fabulous, and the newsletter was all about how she’d lost 40 pounds over the course of a year and what she’d done to do it. I absolutely opened that email.

I’m probably massively over-simplifying but what I remember of what she said is she made some lifestyle changes, one at a time, so small and simple that they weren’t this huge life burden but she just kept adding them one at a time until it took root to where it no longer felt like effort.

It was now just what she did.

It became part of her identity rather than something she was

    🥵 Trying to do

    📋 ✅  Scheduling and making spreadsheets about

    😭🤦🏻‍♀️🙃 Turning her life inside out to make happen then having to scrap it a few days in.

She didn’t say all that. I’m filling in details from what I have been known to do.  😬

I’m a faith and identity coach.

I help women get really solid on who they are in Christ and who they just are.

Her approach really spoke to me.

I have something to confess.

As in–

THAT girl gets up and walks every morning. 🚶🏻‍♀️

At sunrise.  🌅

Hmmm.

Usually ANY new habit of mine gets started with great fanfare and a lot of on-boarding. Everyone has had to hear about it. I’ve bought new equipment for it. I’ve made lists. Schedules.

But I’m not sure exactly when I started this new practice.  🤷🏻‍♀️😳

I think I did it most of July?

I just put my shoes on one day and said, “It’s not about the distance or time. I just have to do the thing.”

And believe me, I share this with a fair share of trepidation. The habit is still being built. Do I dare admit this for all the world to know and see?

Eep.

So I was walking the other day and realized…

This idea, of walking, and even of my entire morning rhythm, was probably from the Lord.

decades.

I’ve had reasons…

excuses.

My biggest one is that I fundamentally resist routine and I have one for my mornings that works really well for me.

And in the past–I’ve gotten a little weird about my attempts at walking every day.

Frankly, I’ve had to work through that a bit. It’s not entirely wrong.

It’s about 15 million degrees right now where I live. 🔥🥵

My skincare and hair routine has become sweat on top of more sweat.

I'm not necessarily a fan of that, but I have a confession. 

Since starting this walking business, I’ve gotten more done with what has FELT like less effort. The walking has made my brain a bit quieter and I think I’d been perceiving frenetic brain activity and constant looping as “work”. This is an unexpected benefit, for sure.

Which leads me to the next concern:

Well, that’s just ridiculous. I do a lot more time-wasting elsewhere–and I need to be all about investing time that will give me back more of it. I want to be strong enough to still walk fast through an airport to go somewhere fun, or through Disneyland with my grandkids, or go on a hike, or walk on the beach…and even to just be well to live independently a few decades down the road.

There were other: 

(Some influencer somewhere told me that would change my life.) 

And sure. That’s great. But truthfully, that’s super early and also a pretty tight time window to hit.

In one of my previous attempts at daily walking:

That chased me inside.

For a few years. 🙄

So I thought about this while walking.

I looked around and realized pretty much every “reason” that would have kept me from walking in the past was existing right then.

It was later in the morning than I wished it was.

Which means it was hotter and sunnier than I wished it was.

And I was kind of laughing at myself–hmm.

This can still work.

This is a lot.

The big insight here is I had had this persistent, quiet thought that I should walk in the mornings that has stayed with me most of my adult life.

Here’s the point:

You probably already know some of the answers for your life and you’ve been talking yourself out of taking the action for whatever reason.

I shared some of the reasons I dismissed that persistent thought of walking every morning.

But I’ve ditched those and now I’m a walker. 

I walk every weekday. 

That’s just what I do.

I can’t say I’m always enthused to do so. Most mornings I actually tell myself I’m not gonna, but I put on the clothes for it because I have to wear something and then it only makes sense to put on my shoes, and I remind myself I only have to step outside and go a little ways out and a little ways back for this to qualify as having walked.

Yes, this is making a difference in my health, my strength, my body.

Not nearly as drastic or as fast as I want it to.

But the biggest thing it’s doing for me is it’s increasing my confidence, and this is why I think that is so:

A lot of those are associated with the work I do already, but I’m finding I have better flow and more confidence even in other areas of my life because I’m living in line with my vision for myself.

Is there something you’ve persistently thought you “should” do? Some thought that won’t go away? It might be big. It might be small. But you’ve dismissed it, set it aside for “someday”, done your best to ditch the thought all together.

Go ahead and look at it again. Name it.

What does the you that follows through with that successfully look like?

What’s a micro-commitment you can make and take regularly that will reinforce the you that you want to be?

And if you know there's something there but you're having trouble separating the real prompting from all the reasons you've talked yourself out of it, sometimes it helps to have someone else help you pull the thread.

That's exactly the kind of thing we can sort through on a free clarity call—what keeps coming up, what's been getting in the way, and what one small next step might actually look like for you. We can also talk about whether my coaching program might be a helpful next step.