100-day challenge: Day 50

If anyone had told me the first 50 days would pass by this fast, I wouldn’t have believed them. (Much like the years of my life - I blinked, and I was in my 50s.)

On 1 May 2015, I set myself a 100-day challenge: to dance for 20 minutes a day, for 100 (consecutive) days.  A bout of flu saw me stopping for about 12 days. When I resumed, I decided to approach it differently, for a number of reasons.

This was my thinking: I LOVE dancing, it makes me feel fabulous, I’m getting steadily fitter, and I want to keep doing this for as long as I’m able to. However, my life gets really busy, and it’s not always possible to fit in a workout. There’s so much to do, that I often get to 10pm and realise I still have another hour of responsibilities. In order to get enough sleep before the next hectic day, it doesn’t make sense to force myself to dance, especially when it means I’d get even less sleep. If life has taught me anything, it's that sleep is very important. 

After thinking it through, I committed to dancing every second day, which turned out to be a lot more realistic. I promised myself I would not skip more than one day between workouts, and…. so far, so good (for the past 9 days). I also told myself I’d dance on consecutive days, whenever possible. School holidays are ahead, my life will assume a more relaxed pace, and I’ll fit in as many dance sessions as possible.   

Yesterday was Day 49, and I did my 27^th workout. It’s the weekend, I have some Trudy-time coming my way, so I look forward to dancing. I used to do just 20 minutes, but now I can last for 35. It’s a wonderful feeling, moving freely to music and feeling myself going from being cold to getting so warm that I feel I could dance forever.

The truth is, it’s been only 7 weeks. I’m working through unfitness that took years to settle in. I need to stick to my resolve, and not give up. I can feel my body changing. I can even feel my spirit changing. I feel good, doing regular exercise. I feel younger. I’m starting to feel stirrings of a past time, a time when I used to run and do aerobics. A long time ago. J The point is, I need to be patient, and just ‘keep on keeping on’. External results always appear after the internal ones.

I knew the 100 days would teach me something, and that’s exactly what’s happening. In 2003, I did the Mind Power course, with Robin Banks, Early in the course, we discussed why people don’t reach their goals. Personally, I’ve found that my main reason for not achieving some of my goals is that, often, I’m just too unrealistic. For me, to think that I could add anything to my daily routine is unrealistic. Maybe I’ll get it right someday, but, right now, it’s not sustainable.

In the past, I’d set a goal, fail to stick to it, become demotivated, feel like a failure, and give up. I’m no longer that person.

This is my reality: I have a day job that takes up 7 and a half hours per day (excluding the extra time teachers work at home!). Travelling takes up about one and a half hours per day. Those two alone take up 10 hours of my day. Then there are all my domestic responsibilities – maybe another 3 hours? 13 hours. Being so active makes me tired, physically and emotionally, so I have to do downtime things, to restore some sense of balance. Before I know it, it’s late at night. In order to fit in regular dancing, I’ve got to arrange my whole week a certain way. In addition, for the past four and a half months I’ve had a bi-weekly gig at a restaurant, so that kept me even busier. It took trial and error to get me to the solution of dancing every second day.

I’m grateful for this lesson in setting realistic goals. Someone else helped me understand more about goal setting – my friend, Patricia Manshon, founder and head of the Academy of Life Coaching. She adapted the goal-setting acronym “SMART” (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-bound) to “SMARTIE”, adding the words “Inspirational” and “Emotional”. If my goals aren’t inspirational and don’t have an effect on my emotions, I feel too disconnected, and there’s very little chance of my sticking to them.  

Interestingly enough, one of the quotations in my appointment diary, this week, was:

"To be all that you can be, you must dream of being more. To achieve the possible, you must attempt the impossible."  Karen Ravn

After quite a few years of becoming increasingly unfit, I have just lived through 50 days during which I danced 27 times. That’s a huge achievement for me, and I’m super-proud of myself!

Wish me luck for the next 50 days.