Day 7 / 30 (+10) The take off energy

 

Newton's first law of motion states that an object at rest stays at rest unless acted upon by an external force ... at rest unless acted upon by an external force.

Today is day 7 of my first 30 day-trend experiment and where am I so far?  Day 1: I planned to get up at 7:30,  but instead snoozed until 8:30, I was in theory not drinking alcohol... except for the Dom Perignon I had on Saturday, because frankly who can say no to Dom Perignon?  And a gift nonetheless!  I had some cheese with the Dom; I forgot about  the Facebook rule and went on this past weekend,  to post pictures of the Dom; I slept in the night after Dom...I sense a central theme here to my short comings..?  I didn't really keep tabs of the weight I wanted to lose, nor write as diligently as I had wanted to ... Oh DOM, why must you be so good! BANE of my existence :) 

Ok yes not a great start, however there is a silver lining; the one thing that I haven't faltered on is the every day yoga.  7 consecutive days of yoga at my yoga studio, some days Bikram, other days flow, mornings, evenings, whichever as long as it's every day.   Maybe because I do truly love yoga, maybe because of my history with sports, disciplining myself to do it is more in-sync with who I am, the aches and pains  I get from it take me back to my childhood in gymnastics, has a sort of poetic justice to it, or maybe because somewhere deep down inside, I know that this is the habit that will help me most. 

For the most part, the things on my list are very generic, we could all do with a break from even 'casual' drinking, from overspending, or God's gift to humans, French cheese, but all jokes aside, I don't essentially have a real problem with any of those things.  I'm not an alcoholic, except when certain friends come over, I'm not overweight, no real health problems, no physicals ones anyway, so none of these things pose an immediate urgency, they're entertaining as idle chitchat, but again nothing of dyer consequence.

Yoga however, and going to yoga touches on something else.  Firstly, I do enjoy it, but this is not to say that getting myself to go wasn't, and isn't, hard every time.  Every time I run a list as long as my arm as to why 'today' I should skip class and work a little more, take care of errands, why something hurt and maybe it's best to just stay home today, why I don't feel like going out in the rain...And every time when I get to my yoga studio, I can't understand why I made such a big fuss in the first place, until the next day that is, when I suddenly remember it all over again.

This type of mental procrastination, or mental indiscipline, is my Achille's heal, my alcoholism, my high cholesterol, that needs immediate attending to.  In the past 2, maybe 3 years, I've sunken into this rut,  I've spent days in front of my computer unable to get myself to focus on what I had to get done for work,  never being able to write for this blog, despite all the times I mentally rehearsed all the things I was goin to write about.  I spend hours constantly shifting from one thing to another; one facebook screen to another; one whatsapp conversation to another, on some days fretting non-stop if the person I was talking do wouldn't answer immediately when I needed them to; jumping from one Netflix series to another; cleaning sporadically for 20 minutes and then dropping everything.  This behaviour has kept me in front of my computer for 16 hours per day, in my PJs, isolated, getting maybe 2 real work hours in, and then too exhausted to do anything else, covid clearly did not help matter.  It's kept me awake all night, and then in bed until noon the next day, and breaking the pattern just seemed like it required much more energy than I had in me, yet was was really draining me, was giving into it every time.

That's where wonderful yoga, and going to wonderful yoga comes in. On day 4, after 3 days of spending more time going through the list of why 'today was ok to skip yoga', I just put my shoes on and went.   The hardest part of my yoga commitment, is not getting the transition between crow and headstand to work (although it is tricky), but just getting myself to go, and as soon as I just decided there was no other alternative, the energy required to take off, is now, on day 7 just a little less than day 1.  I have also been sleeping just a little better, have gotten out of bed before 8 for the past 4 days, in a slightly better mood, with slightly less desire to kill anyone who talks to me before 9AM, it's been a little easier to keep focus on one task at a time at work... everything just a little easier, we have take-off!

Now that, the wheels are in motion, that I've put in the 'maximum throttle' to get off the ground,  I'm going to optimize my cruising travel distance and add 10 days to my first 30-day challenge.  I'll be readjusting for the Dom Perignon moments :)  and trying to be more diligent about not only improving my downdog,  but also all the other conditions I've committed to.

Namaste!