Building a Healthy Year: June/July

Let’s face it: Summer goes way to fast. We just started. The kids just got out of school, yet somehow the 4th of July has already come and gone. I don’t want to be too negative, but August will be here before we know it and than it’s already Fall. You get the point.

For that reason, I’d like to use this part of the calendar to do something easy. We don’t always have to be striving for greatness or pushing the biggest rock of the steepest hill.

Part of living healthy is knowing when to relax, how to relax and giving ourselves the grace to trust that our choice is the right choice for us.

Trust me, I’ve spend enough time beating myself up over a day, an hour, even minutes or seconds lost or missed. It’s never worth it. It never leads to a better week if I’m still upset about last week. Today will not be better than yesterday if all I do is focus on the things I didn’t do yesterday.

So, this month, or more realistically, these two months, the heart of summer, June and July, let’s focus on something simple.

Just be.

Just be…

Present

Grateful

Nice

Be present in your life. Be present in the summer. It’s the time of year we look forward to throughout the rest of it. It’s the time with the kids are around more, when the weather is nicest and we can do the most. (or the least…depending on how you want to look at it)

Be grateful for the year you’ve had and for the year you have left ahead. Be grateful for the things that make you want to be present. The trips, the moments with a loved one, the goals you’ve reached, or even the goals you have yet to set, but feel more confident about as you look ahead.

Be nice to yourself. That sounds simple. But, I can personally attest that it is NOT simple. It might be one of the biggest things I have worked on over the years and it is not included here just for you. It is included here for me as a reminder to not sweat the small stuff and trust that we are doing our best. It isn’t going to be perfect. That’s ok. Just don’t waste energy beating yourself up over the final 1%. Just be nice to yourself and enjoy the 99% that you have to enjoy. Because it is 100% of what you can control.

That’s it. June…and July are about JUST. Just be present. Just be grateful. Just be nice to yourself.  

 

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