SISTER WISDOM

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Day 02: 25 Hour Challenge Comments Off

Filed under monthly challenges
Written by Annie on 2nd Feb -09

Today begins a new month and my next monthly challenge.

I’m ready for a challenge and excited about how this one will help me get closer to some long-held goals. I’ve noticed that most of my personal challenges related to time and how I manage (or mismanage) it. Same with this month’s: my challenge for February is to work 25 hours a week. On business (writing and web work). Every Mom works far more than 25 hours a week doing Mom-stuff; we don’t need a challenge for that sort of thing, unless it might be a challenge to do less.

25 hours a week of business work is going to require some good sticking-to-a-scheduleness, which I’m not good at. I make great schedules, but I don’t use them well. One day I will pull all the pages out of the old planners stuffed into bookcases and wallpaper a room with them. It will be my annotated life history.
Joe and I were talking last night about doubt and how it sabotages our lives. We let it. I set high goals for myself, and not two minutes later I start questioning: “Who am I to think I can do this?”

I’m Super Woman, that’s who I am!

Except for the leotard. And the super powers. And except that I know I am not. I know that there’s a good reason for doubt (really? is there?) because I do have limits, and I do fail. How often do I fail because of doubts? They tend to be self-fulfilling prophecies.
Women tend to multitask; women who happen to be wives & mommies & worker-bees, whether at home or in an outside job, multiply their multitasking. Quadrupletask? Sometimes we multi(quadrupli)taskers need to step back, say no, take a break, simplify. Well and good.


But doubt is not a good thing. (Doughnuts are, though.) I may not be able to achieve all my goals, but then again, maybe I can. Successful people are the ones who go for it, taking for granted that they’ll acquire the abilities and resources needed as they go. (This is not a blanket justification for taking out large loans on faith that you’ll have the ability to pay it back as needed; just want to clear that up.) You can never be perfectly prepared, or perfectly anything. Sometimes you just have to take the risk and figure it out as you go along.

I don’t want to fail because I talk myself out of trying. Reaching goals is difficult. Resistance always shows up in, in its various toxic forms. It’s my job to squish the resistance, not feed it cookies and give it a warm bed right next to mine.

Once again, this month’s challenge is my opportunity to change the habits that hold me back. I hear plenty of opinions and cultural idioms that encourage mediocrity, complacency. It starts way back in school when one year, instead of getting an A and waving around your gold star running home to show Mom, you get an A and quietly turn your paper over so the kid next to you doesn’t notice and tease.

Opinions and cultural idioms are notoriously inaccurate. I have a feeling there’s a greater motive behind all those voices, and it’s not rational; it’s fear. Fear of failure, yes, and fear of someone else succeeding, showing us it can be done, raising the standard.

We rarely expect enough from ourselves. We never demand it. Your version of success is, I’m sure, not the same as mine, but it requires the same kind of fundamental change to reach it. We have to stop expecting, and accepting, less from ourselves. We are capable of more.

How will you challenge yourself to be more this month?

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Image Credits

Hourglass photo courtesy of bogenfreund on Flickr; Superwoman Cartoon courtesy of Inspiration Line.

Day 29: Exercise Challenge Comments Off

Filed under monthly challenges
Written by Annie on 30th Apr -08

Self-respect is the fruit of discipline; the sense of dignity grows with the ability to say no to oneself. Rabbi Abraham Heschel ( source) Update (Tuesday): 35 minutes cardio (walking).I find myself continually missing the stretch/tone part of this exercise challenge. Let me rephrase. I continually choose to neglect the stretch/tone part of this exercise challenge.

See how easy it is to make yourself a victim?

Discipline. We have misconceptions about discipline. We perceive it negatively, as connoting deprivation, pain, denial. Things we do not like and never desire. Like a root canal.

You probably don’t like going to see the dentist. (Unless, perchance, you are married to a dentist.) So you brush your teeth, floss, use mouthwash, chew gum. This is discipline, the instructive side.

If you didn’t instruct yourself (teeth need to be cleaned, flossing is good, plaque is bad), equip yourself (toothbrush, toothpaste, mouthwash), and apply yourself, you might end up with a cavity. Maybe even a root canal. Lots of wasted time, discomfort, pain, and a nice chunk of money. That’s the corrective side of discipline.

To discipline means to train. To be a disciple is to be one who learns, one who is trained. The nature of teeth, of sugar, and of tooth decay trains me in the right way to care for my teeth so I don’t lose them. I can foresee the possible consequences of neglect and prevent them; or I can blithely ignore them and endure the results.

Wisdom is looking ahead, getting instruction, equipping yourself to follow the instruction, and applying it to avoid negative consequences before they occur. Wisdom is brushing your teeth.

It’s not all about avoiding bad stuff. To stretch our example to the limit: brushing my teeth gives me fresh, minty breath, and healthy gums, and strong, clean teeth, and the ability to masticate unhindered. Somehow, though, the avoidance of what is bad motivates us more than the existence of what is good. We take what we already have for granted. It often takes a consequence, a loss, pain, before we recognize value. We may be able to recover and regain what we’ve lost, and go on wiser. Sometimes we can’t.

The universe conspires to discipline us toward life. Examples in nature, plants, animals show us simple principles to apply. Corrective consequences show us what not to do. Don’t touch the hot stove; you’ll get burned. Don’t date the bad man; you’ll get burned.

Successful lives and relationships, peaceful countries, prosperous years: they are instructors. As are personal failures, wars, poverty. The demonstrated consequences of ignoring principles of life should be enough. They are, if we choose to listen. If not, we will experience our own failure and war and poverty.

It’s far better to take advantage of that instructive side of discipline. We can be proactive. We can stop many negative consequences from touching our lives. We can bring good things in by the choices we make in heeding and applying the instruction. We can be disciplined before we are disciplined.

Resources: Read some more quotations on discipline. Write a few down and post them on your bathroom mirror, your refrigerator, by your computer, in your car.

Read what the Bible has to say about discipline. A great practice is reading from the book of Proverbs daily. If a chapter is too much, try a verse. Or go here for a verse-by-verse explanation of the Proverbs or to search the proverbs topically.

Tip: When you read a quote or a proverb that specifically addresses something in your life that you know you need to change, take a few minutes and memorize the line. Review it daily. It doesn’t take long. You could always do that while you’re brushing your teeth…

Day 28: Exercise Challenge Comments Off

Filed under monthly challenges
Written by Annie on 29th Apr -08

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great. Mark Twain

Update (Monday): 5 minutes stretching; 40 minutes cardio (walk through town with one kid in the stroller & one in the carrier).

On Writing:
It takes a certain amount of audacity to be a writer. You have to overcome the tendency toward self-degradation. Who I am that I have anything worthwhile to say? Why should people pay attention to me? Well, maybe they shouldn’t, but nobody else is writing what I’m thinking. Maybe they’re thinking it, too. Maybe I’m not original or wise or witty. But I’m the only one willing to put it on paper and judge what it’s worth. Once that’s done, once it is written, we can all disregard it as we please. But I can’t disregard it until it is written.

On Saying No: (from Alexandra Stoddard’s book Making Choices).

Nothing materializes without a program. …The essence of no is to have priorities and keep them in order.

No has a negative ring to many, but if we don’t look at it clearly and use it, we will lose the opportunity to discipline ourselves, to manage our own affairs.

No saves you from the dangerous myth that you’re indispensable.

No is not negative; it actively leads to the positive. My own struggle to accept certain restrictions on my time, energy, and money have helped me reach my goals.

Tip: Write something today. Say no to something you normally say yes to today.

Day 26: Exercise Challenge Comments Off

Filed under monthly challenges
Written by Annie on 28th Apr -08

What we hope ever to do with ease we may learn first to do with diligence. Samuel Johnson

Update (Saturday): 20 minutes cardio (running around, pushing Mara and my niece up and down a hill in a little car).

Just as I get to the “end in sight” on my somewhat sporadic exercise challenge month, I am thinking I will start it over again. (You may think some cliched phrase like “glutton for punishment” here, but I don’t want to actually put that in my writing. Cliches are so evil, after all. In fact, it’s really a cliche that they are evil…)

I picked up a book at the library sale the other day. It’s one of an apparent series: The 28 Day Plan by Christine Green. This one is called Get Fit for the Beach. I’m hoping that if I follow the 28-Day GET FIT FOR THE BEACH! plan, at the end of it I will be magically transported to said sparkling, pristine beach. (Did you catch the clichs in that paragraph? There were two.)

I’m a sucker for 28 day plans, or 30 day plans, or 21 day plans, or monthly challenges. The beach premise is also pretty thrilling. We’ll see. I shall review and report. Maybe I would do better with a book titled “Get Fit for the Midwest!” but I see why that wouldn’t be a great seller.

Resources: I couldn’t find anything online for the book except for the publisher’s website, which doesn’t itself have much information but you can watch a little scrolling slide show of all their adult reference titles.

Tip: I don’t think I can say it any better than Samuel Johnson:

Don’t think of retiring from the world until the world will be sorry that you retire. I hate a fellow whom pride or cowardice or laziness drives into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl. Let him come out as I do, and bark.

When a country is rebellious, it has many rulers, but a man of understanding and knowledge maintains order. Proverbs 28:2

Day 25: Exercise Challenge Comments Off

Filed under monthly challenges
Written by Annie on 26th Apr -08

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions. Albert Einstein Challenge Update (Friday): 30 minutes cardio (walking). I got in a little stretching and toning, too, random lunges and squats and Kegels and some Tupler ab squeezes. Resources: After my first pregnancy, I read the book Lose Your Mummy Tummy by Julie Tupler. It’s worth a read, or you can just check out the Tupler Technique online. I haven’t been very faithful in these (my tummy would be flatter if I had), so I won’t post pictures of my great six-pack abs produced by these exercises. I do recommend them, especially for post-partum exercise but also for anyone who wants to tone and flatten the belly. If you’re pregnant, this book on Maternal Fitness (also by Tupler) looks worthwhile.

I’m a big fan of the Bradley Method for actual delivery and coaching methods. Check out Husband-Coached Childbirth by Dr. Bradley himself, or Natural Childbirth the Bradley Way, an updated version with lots of specific coaching help.Tip: Kegels and Tupler moves are great for any woman, whether you’ve never had children or vaguely remember having children or are trying to breastfeed one right now while you read this and try to move the mouse without disturbing your baby! Both the Kegels and Tupler moves are easy, can be done anywhere, anytime, without anyone knowing, and will produce great results if you’re diligent with them. Try it for long enough to make it a habit… then you’ll keep doing them without even trying.Remove the dross from the silver, and out comes material for the silversmith. Proverbs 25:4

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