It’s okay to get a little crazy sometimes. Shoot for an extreme and if you’re self-aware you’ll catch the hints your body gives you to change.

The trick is to listen well enough that you catch problems and can adjust before you’ve pushed too far and need to quit.

Thursdays are typically my “Is this change making me go nuts?” questioning day. I hit a nice even stride this past Thursday and will be changing things up again starting Monday morning. This coming Thursday I’ll discuss the past 72 hours with a friend and figure out if I need to change anything in order to finish the week strong.

Sound crazy? It probably does and I haven’t even told you what I’ve been doing! I’ll tell you soon. Some of it, at least. =)

If you want to get something done. If you want to reach a particular goal. If you want to make something happen.

Don’t be afraid to get your crazy on.

We’re here to cheer for you.

For those of you who’ve been wondering about when challenges will start up again, it seems that most would benefit from another early rising challenge. Perhaps after 3 or 4 of them you’ll be dragging your sleepy butts out of bed on time! I’m game.

Image: Source

Becoming an early riser isn’t about trading sleep for productivity. It’s about taking back a part of your life by trading tired evening hours for productive and wakeful mornings.

You probably can’t tell your boss that you’ve decided not to work between 9-11am because you need productive time for yourself and personal projects. You’d be laughed at. What you can do is make a habit of waking early and add hours of productivity to your every morning!

Here are just five of the benefits you’ll enjoy as an early riser:

1. Freedom from distractions -

Whether you have a house full of kids or a phone that never stops ringing, the early morning is the best time to escape the distractions of daily life.

2. More time for personal projects -

If you’ve ever wanted to start a blog, save your marriage, write a novel, get more exercise (one of my early-morning heavy-hitters), or paint your kitchen, do it in the morning. You’ll get more done in an hour of early morning productivity than you could ever hope to accomplish in the evening after a long day of distractions.

3. A change in perspective -

Have you ever gone for a swim in very cold water? At first, the temperature is shocking. Then you become accustomed to the coolness and begin to find it refreshing. Getting up early allows you to approach your life with the same technique. Instead of leaping into your day and stroking furiously for the other side, starting early leaves you with enough time to paddle around a bit and enjoy the process of wakefulness.

4. The Sunrise -

I’m entirely with Leo on this point. I’m usually a mile into my morning walk by the time the sun makes it over the horizon. There is no greater primal joy (except holding one’s child for the first time, perhaps) than experiencing the warmth and light of another new day beginning.

5. Starting the day off right -

When you begin your day by acting in a way that says, “I am going to take care of my body, mind and spirit” you set a precedent for the rest of your day.

So how do you become an early riser? Just follow two simple steps:

1. Read 5 Steps To Falling Asleep Easily and practice the steps each evening at a time that will give you plenty of rest before the start of your day.
2. Subscribe to Primal Stride so you don’t miss upcoming articles with great tips to help you start your day with a spring in your step! We’ve already done one seven-day challenge with an early-riser component. Stay tuned for the next!

If you’re already an early riser, sound out in the comments with something you enjoy about the early morning! (And no, staying up until 5am doesn’t count… although it is fun.)

sunrise

Much of what you’ll find in the self-help section at your local bookstore points to “self acceptance” or “self love” as the ticket to living a happier life. We are told to look in a mirror and say, “I love what I see.”

I’m not sure that’s such a good idea. The mirror tempts us to regard ourselves with the same all or nothing mentality of a critical stranger.

For example, here’s a photo taken of me this past summer:

What you see in this photo is an overweight guy who shouldn’t have cut his hair off but seems to have a sense of humor. I, for lack of a better term, have man boobs…moobs? Yep, that’s embarrassing.

But when I look at myself in the photo, I don’t just see a fat guy in a blue shirt. I see a man in the middle of climbing a mountain he had no business being on. I see a guy who didn’t let his physical insecurities get in the way of his hilarious fascination with challenges. I see a guy who is trying to change.

When I look in a mirror today, I see a similar person. But I am no more proud of myself than I would be of a friend with a half-written dissertation or 13.1 miles through a marathon. I can love the participant but it seems foolhardy and even dangerous to base my affections on what amounts to being just one of many points in a process.

It’s easy for us to define ourselves by exterior checkpoints because that is how most of the world judges us. They only see fat or thin, rich or poor, bald or hirsute. It takes a special set of eyes to notice changes in patience, kindness, and generosity. The world judges us on a shortsighted scale of extremes. Is it any wonder that most of us slip into the same mentality when examining ourselves?

The self-help books tell us to accept ourselves for who we are in the current moment. But how can we accept a person we view with a winner-takes-all approach to existence? Doing so will lead the majority of us to look in the mirror and see only a loser.

How do we cope with a loser? Not with acceptance, but with resignation. We give up some of our hope that things will change and find a way to survive by overlooking the particularly noxious bits. What a terrible way to live! Instead of appreciating our strengths and working to shore up our weaknesses, we steep any chance at satisfaction in a dark brew of doubt and self-hatred.

You are not a loser. I am not a loser. And yet we often begin the internal dialogue of a loser when we look in the mirror.

How do we break free of our tendency to greet failures with resignation and mirrors with disgust and self-loathing? How do we move from saying, “I am a failure because I have failed in this” to acknowledging our struggle and finding ways to conquer it?

Finding multiple ways to measure my progress toward a specific goal has proven to be a tremendous help in vanquishing my mirror demons and keeping “loser” out of my vocabulary. Instead of looking at the cover of Men’s Health and feeling like a loser when I see myself in the mirror, I have five things I use to measure my progress:

1. Truth Pants – I have a pair of pants that I try on every week. When the pants fit me perfectly, I buy another pair that is a bit smaller to keep the cycle going. When I’m down to my optimum weight I’ll have a pair of pants I make sure I fit into each week… just to be sure. =) Some people take lots of measurements. I prefer truth pants.
2. Scale – At this point I have a pretty good idea if I’ve lost weight or not without looking at the scale. What I’ve found the scale VERY useful for is making sure I’m staying hydrated. If my weight is down too much, it nearly always coincides with my failure to get enough water.
3. Gut Feeling - I have less of a gut to feel with these days, but there’s something to be said for listening to one’s body once you’ve had a chance to get to know each other. At this point, I notice changes in energy levels and mood based on how well I’ve taken care of myself during the week.
4. Mileage – I have a hunch, and it’s just a hunch, that I’ll not get fatter if I cover at least 30 miles by foot each week. My mirror demon has yet to come up with a good answer as to how I’m a loser if I’ve met my mileage goal.
5. Friends – Because I see myself all the time I tend to ignore positive changes in my quest to fix remaining problem areas. Friends who only see me every few weeks have been an amazing encouragement in that they notice and remark on changes that I’d forgotten about or no longer took joy in.

It’s not a perfect system but it’s doing a lot to keep me on the path of self-acceptance and away from the temptation to resign myself to things I can actually change.

When I look in a mirror, I see a person who is making a difference. I see progress. I see a guy who accepts himself but sees no reason not to change the things he’s capable of changing. I see somebody I can be proud of.

What about you? What do you see when you look in a mirror?

Many Paths Converge On A Single Mountaintop

I could never call myself a yo-yo dieter because that would imply that I lost weight as a result of dieting. I didn’t. I was a victim to my own expectations.

I expected myself to fail and, true to form, I always failed.

Then I began to look at the mechanics of my many failures and, over the course of a few weeks, came up with a list of 3 reasons why I failed.

1. I expected dramatic short-term results without implementing dramatic short-term action.
2. I wasn’t willing to accept failure on any front.
3. I didn’t really believe that I could make any lasting changes in my life.

Once I had my list of reasons why I failed, I began to look for loopholes in my logic. I wanted to find a way to trick myself into succeeding. All I needed was a small success that I could build upon and attack my failures directly.

I decided to try walking 3 miles on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday that week. The first two days went well. My feet hurt a bit, but I was okay. Friday morning rolled around….then afternoon…then evening. At 10:30pm, I stared at the clock, then at my shoes, then back at the clock. I picked up a pen and wrote on the back of an envelope: “Put your shoes on”.

It was still Friday when I finished my walk. I’d made a healthy change…without failing!

Now that I had a success to stand on, I focused on how to build that one success into many larger triumphs.

In order to absorb all the little failures I was bound to experience, I needed to set a long-term goal with multiple ways to reach it.

I heard as a kid that, “if you are 1/4-inch wrong on Earth, you’ll miss the Moon by miles”. I worried about the astronauts until I learned that they are able to steer the spaceship and things weren’t as bad as we’d thought. Now suppose you were in outer space and your only goal is to reach Earth. Any back-and-forth movement doesn’t matter as much because your goal is some distance away and you know what direction to steer in.

In that knowledge, I found a key to a healthy lifestyle. I set my goal, back in January, as “To run 3 miles in less than 20 minutes”. Now, instead of asking myself, “Did I eat something not on my diet today?” I can ask, “Did I do something today to bring me closer to meeting my goal?” If I eat the wrong thing for lunch, I haven’t failed entirely so long as I follow through on an intense workout. If I skip my workout because I’m exhausted or injured, I haven’t failed so long as I eat healthy food and rest well. Giving myself multiple ways to succeed allows me to experience successful daily progress toward my long-term goal.

I had the opportunity to put my belief into practice after my Week 4 weigh-in revealed I’d lost only 6 pounds in two weeks (this is after 26lbs in the first two weeks). I could have been frustrated and given up, but I chose instead to focus on how I’d moved toward my long-term goal. It turned out that I had caused the slow-down by not eating enough. I wasn’t consuming enough protein, specifically, and calories in general to make my body happy with letting weight go. I began to eat more and felt entirely renewed within days. Focusing on achieving healthy progress toward my long-term goal allowed me to take the slow-down in stride. I was still succeeding!

When I look back on that Friday night and how close I came to failing myself again, I’m gladdened by the progress I’ve made. I have failed in small ways ever since, but the trend has been one of success.

Are you making a point to set long-term goals that allow you to succeed in a variety of ways?

photo credit: kmphotography