live your life with purpose
I’ve been redefining discipline since I was 16 years old. Gymnastics gave me an eating disorder. It also gave me one of the greatest gifts of my life. Discipline. Both statements are true. That’s what has made this word so fucking complicated for me. Gymnastics …
The Fringe Tells You Exactly Where Your Bullshit Lives I’ve been thinking about this idea a lot lately. The fringe. That edge. That place where your brain starts feeding yourself every excuse in the book. Every reason why you can’t. Every reason why you shouldn’t. …
The Ten Minutes Count
Every morning, I give myself ten minutes.
Coffee. Birds. Quiet.
That’s it.
No phone. No food logging. No writing out my get shit done list. No mentally rehearsing the day before the day even starts.
And this morning, I caught myself trying to turn that ten minutes into something useful or productive.
I thought, “I could log my food right now. I could make my list. I could get a jump on the day.”
And then I stopped myself.
Shut the fuck up and just stop. Remember why.
I give myself those ten minutes for a reason.
They are not empty time and they are not wasted time. They are not a gap that needs to be filled with one more task.
They are mine.
And honestly, this is exactly how it starts. Do you feel like this?
The scurrying and the hurrying. The trying to get ahead before the day even starts.
You start the morning already rushing yourself and already pushing. Already thinking about what needs to be done next. Already stacking one thing on top of another in your head.
And somehow, even when you are doing more, you feel more behind.
That is the trap. That’s the bullshit we tell ourselves.
Because when the day starts with hurry, hurry becomes the theme of the day. You carry it into everything. You drink the coffee, but you do not really taste it. You hear the birds, but your brain is already halfway into the task list.
You are physically sitting there, but mentally you are already running.
And that was my whole reason for starting to do this. To slow the fuck down.
Those 10 minutes set my intention. They ground me.
They remind me that I am allowed to enter the day without sprinting into it. I am allowed to have a few minutes before I start handing myself over to work, coaching, decisions, messages, lists, people, and problems.
We have gotten so used to multitasking that stillness can feel lazy. Sitting with coffee can feel unproductive. Listening to the birds can feel like something we have to earn after everything else is done. So typical and so common and I am so done with that.
Your brain needs space. Your nervous system needs a minute. Your life needs small places where you are allowed to exist without performing, producing, fixing, planning, tracking, or optimizing.
And that is what I thought about this morning when my mind started drifting into other things.
It is only ten fucking minutes. Chill the fuck out. Ten minutes of quiet will not ruin my day. It helps my day.
It might be the reason I move through the day with a little more patience, a little more clarity, and a little less angst.
I do not have to squeeze every drop of productivity out of my morning.
I am allowed to have a few minutes that are just mine.
So I can drink the coffee. So I can listen to the birds. So I can remember that I do not need to start the day already chasing it.
The lists and the work will be there. The logging will be there. It is okay to let it wait. The day asks plenty from me already.
I give myself ten minutes before I hand myself over to everything else.
That is the point.
It is just ten minutes.
And I am allowed to keep it.
Ain’t a lot of boys named Gary these days… Man it’s been a while since I’ve written. But today the pull is strong. I heard a new song. Gary by Stephen Wilson, Jr. Songs always pull the memories out of hiding… But grief has its …
At what point to we become accepting and maybe even content?
As a victim of diet culture and body image issues for what seems like my whole life, I am leaning in to contentment.
All the cliche phrases come to mind about just fucking love yourself no matter what. But until you have walked in someone else’s shoes, you have no idea.
You can wonder all you want. You can ask yourself why don’t they just be okay with their body or their appearance or whatever is their actual hard thing? Only that person holds that answer.
We don’t know their perspective. We only see the outside. As a person who suffered from the body image thing and an eating disorder, I can say I relate. I still don’t know, but I can relate.
As I have traveled this earth for 60 years I am feeling more and more comfortable in this vessel that is called my body. It’s been a work in progress. And just like most people there are days that I might not like something about my body. And that’s normal. And that’s okay.
The sooner we realize that our bodies are okay no matter what and that our bodies are going to change over time and that it’s even okay to want to change our bodies, we just struck gold. Our body is not our wholeness. Our body is not our identity. There is so much more to each one of us than our outward appearance.
Our bodies change all the time. So many struggle with the expectation that they want to have a version of their former body self. What for? Start embracing the changes. Start really being grateful for this one body you get and learn to take care of it. Age in this amazing body you have.
I am still amazed at the resilience of our bodies. I abused my body with cigarettes and alcohol and binging and purging and still my body showed up for me.
My body gave birth to four babies. I gained a ton of weight and lost a ton of weight and still my body showed up for me.
I put my body through tough workouts and sometimes dumb workouts and still it shows up for me.
I feed my body well most of the time, and not so great some of the time, and still it shows up for me.
But the industry is going to try and tell you that your body is broken because you have some fat, because you have some jiggle, because you have some cellulite or because you have some fucking lines on your face or gray hair. Fuck that noise!
Congratulations you are normal. You are human.
Today, I had a minor surgery and am home just chilling, resting and reflecting. Today I am very grateful my body showed up for me.
In turn, I will keep showing up for it and for life so I can age well. I will keep showing up to stay strong and resilient. I will continue to be about it.
As I lie here on my bed, I am seeing the normal things on my body, the fat and the stretch marks that I have so often been embarrassed by.
I am grateful for a husband who strokes my stomach because he loves all of me and I don’t feel funny or self-conscious about it. He doesn’t care that my body has changed.
This picture of my stomach with the stretch marks and the legs with the bumps and dry skin….the industry would be trying to sell me a ton of creams and lotions and pills in order to “fix” my brokenness. No thanks. I’m not fucking broken.
Today I am grateful. It takes a long time to get to I love me. Today I feel that. Today, I feel content.
That is my stomach and my leg
This prompt is a good one. When I was little we lived in Hurley, SD. We moved to Pierre when I started Kindergarten. I played with my cousins all the time. My earliest memory is when I was probably around 4. There was a giant …
Brave – Courageous, dauntless, perhaps a little bit daring, a person who is brave faces dangerous or difficult situations with courage.
Do it brave. That’s how I look at myself. Doing things that are uncomfortable.
Talking into my phone camera every morning, usually around 4:30am, telling internet land what I feel can help them. Brave? Oh yes. It’s not easy to keep going when you get comments from people who are complete jerks. I keep going. I keep pushing. Because to me, getting the message out is more important than the jerks. I’ve learned to let it roll off my back. I’ve learned to laugh about it. I’ve learned to move on.
That is how I am brave.
Taking part in the bloganuary writing prompts. A writing prompt every day during January. Today is “What is something you want to achieve this year?” I can take this one two ways. A business aspect and a physical/health aspect. Let’s start with the physical/health aspect. …
