Feel better. Do better.

 

When you feel better you do better. And when you do better you feel better. But what is better? What is it that you want to be doing? How is it that you want to be feeling?

The hard part is that sometimes we don’t know until we do something that brings us there. When we go for a walk in the middle of the day and realize that break did a lot for our mental health.

When we get a good night’s sleep and realize how much better the next day is when we are rested.

When we drink more water throughout the day and feel the difference in our body, our mind.

Even the accomplishment will bring a good feeling. If you set out to do something and you accomplish that goal, that feels good. It gives us that sense of accomplishment.

And when we are feeling good about an accomplishment, we have the confidence that we will continue to reach this goal. Maybe even set the next goal. In other words, it gives us energy to go on to the next thing.

I realize this is kind of a chicken and egg situation. But that can be a good thing too. It can be frustrating to not feel good, so the things you want to do seem even harder. I get that. I’ve been there too. But a step in the right direction helps us feel better. If you wait until the perfect day when all the stars align and you feel exactly how you want to feel, guess what, you will be waiting for a very long time. In fact, the day that you already feel exactly like you want, and your schedule is perfectly lined up? We all know that day doesn’t exist. Sorry, but there will be other reasons to not do it later too.

So if you feel good. Go do it. Go do something. If you do that something, even a little something, you’ll feel good and want to do it again. If you don’t feel good, go do it. Once you do, you will feel better and want to do it again.

No matter how you feel, the step forward can spark energy to not only accomplish today’s goal, but it will bring us a step closer to tomorrow’s as well.  

When you feel better you will do better. Sometimes you have to do better, in order to feel better. That can feel frustrating, but at the end of the day, we know what will work. The more you try it, the more real it gets, and before you know it, it’s just part of your routine.

Go do it, go feel good.

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Momentum

  Sometimes we can get stuck because we aren’t already doing something. It is hard to start things. If something is new, it is difficult to start it and even more difficult to be doing it regularly right away. I’ve talked about not being afraid to start something. I’ve talked about not being afraid to be bad at something. Anything you do for the first time, you will not be an expert. Period. That’s just how it works. But something else that can keep us from taking that first step, or trying to take another step after we’ve been off for a while. It’s momentum. We’ve heard the law of physics: an object in motion stays in motion. That is literally true. It can also help us get going. More importantly, it can help us not beat ourselves up about it. You can tell yourself that you want to be doing something. It can be any habit. More water, less screen time, more movement. Whatever it is, there is our desired place and there is where we are now. Even if that gap is small, it ca...
Read more

Listen to your body.

  Your body has a way of telling you something is off. Whatever it is, we really should listen. The best way I’ve heard it put as: "Powering through what’s draining you won’t make you stronger." We’ve always been told to push through, or "no pain, no gain", all the cliches, but think about life and all the situations where something just didn’t fit. I can think of many experiences like that myself. No matter how hard you are on yourself, it isn’t going to work. And that’s ok. We just have to do it differently. Or do something else.   I am thinking about that a lot today. I am thinking about what it means when something isn’t working. When something is harder than it should be. As I step into my new role…well it’s not new, but I had to listen to my body telling me to come back to this. I really feel like I’m coming back to myself. No matter what path we are on, we need to listen. We need to be able to look at ourselves and our goals. We need to be able to name wh...
Read more

Do you know what you want?

  Do you know what you want? I’m not used to deciding what I want. I’m an easy-going, go with the flow type of person, so if you put something in front of me and ask me if I can do it, the answer is yes. If you ask me if I will do it, I will. If you ask me if I enjoyed it after the fact, I will likely have done it with a smile and so yes, it wasn’t too bad. But if you ask me beforehand, what do I want to do. I often don’t know what I want to do. I’m working on that. My wife asked me the other day, what do you want to do. On a good day that is met with a question mark. But on a bad day, that can be met with genuine anxiety. I can handle a lot. I know I can do a lot of hard things. I have had some difficult tasks put in front of me and I take pride in my ability to get it done. But I have realized that just because I can do something, even well, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s what I want to do, or even what I should do. In school, in our careers, many of us have been doing thi...
Read more