SISTER WISDOM : build a better life

Principle: Your behavior means more than your background.

This is good news for people with less-than-stellar backgrounds and bad news for people with a perfect past.
Oh wait. I've never met anyone with a perfect past. Have you? I guess that makes it good news for all of us.
True, there are prejudices to overcome, assumptions to dispel, and first impressions that aren't accurate. You have to deal with what other people expect from you because of what they know (or assume) about your background. You still have to reckon with the emotional burdens and false ideas that you carry from your past. But you aren't locked in there.

What you do, day after day, carries more weight than where you've been. People may expect one thing of you, but if they consistently see something different, soon that is what they will expect instead. That can be good or bad: what's good is that it depends on you. It's in your hands, your choices, your life. Who you are and who you become isn't a matter of determinism, but of your will.

Challenge Update

I'm doing better at getting up early: more early mornings than late ones in the last ten days, though I'm still not quite hitting my target. But I'm getting closer, and the more often I get up early the more I enjoy the time I have in that quietness and the more I want to get up (even earlier) the next day. I'm building strength here...

and with exercising, too.

The best idea I've had for exercising isn't mine. My neighbor asked if I wanted to start walking in the park with her. We live right across the street from the city park, which has a 1/2 mile paved walking loop. I feel a bit hamster-esque, yes, but it's easy to keep track of how far you've gone and easy to push a stroller. Last week I walked three times by myself. I went 2 miles the first two days and 3 miles the last day. This week my neighbor and I have walked together; we went 5 miles on Monday and 4 miles yesterday. My legs are so sore, but I feel so much better and more energetic overall. Having someone to exercise with makes a huge difference. If you struggle to fit it into your life consistently, see if you can't find a buddy.

House/Work

I'm working on getting some routines in place for the general (dull) repetitive (dull) house cleaning that must be done on a regular (dull) basis. (Do you get that I find it kind of, um, dull?) Routines are perfect for dull duties: you set up a routine, you pay close attention the first few times you follow it so that you don't leave anything out (that's important), and then you can go on auto-pilot while you're employing it the rest of the time. You can think about your next great writing project or hair style, talk to your kids, call your best friend, listen to a podcast, sing with the radio. Whatever. Makes the dull stuff much better.

Here are some house routine articles and tips I've come across:

Great article at Minti: Routine for Grown Ups - Easy House Cleaning Tips.

The Queen of Kaos (whose posts and podcasts I enjoy) has good advice for Creating a Daily Routine.

AOL Home offers some ideas to develop A Cleaning Routine for Busy Women.

Old-Fashioned Homemaking also tells us how to Create a Cleaning Routine.

And Zen Habits offers a somewhat broader article on how to Handle Chores, House Cleaning, and Errands with Simple Systems.

Hope you find those helpful!