myzinefolder
Hi! I wanted to come here and talk about something I was prompted to think about lately. I was watching videos on youtube, and came across this creator named Inayah, and watched a video about bridging the gap between what/who you want to be and where you are.
She brought up this fantastic point about how the reason we become so disengaged with our goals is because the distance between what we want and where we are is lined with a lot of small but hard changes that we’re not necessarily willing to make. A way that we deal with that is by thinking, “it’ll hurt if I try to force myself to do it now, I’ll just wait until I feel like it”.
And she’s so right. I’ll never, ever feel like exercising. I won’t feel like picking a time in the day to sweat on purpose. That’s something I’m not used to right now, it’s something I’ve felt shame around due to my body and when I try I get this tiny voice in my head about how it’s not going to pay off and it works! It has worked for two decades straight! But as I get older and my body gets stiffer and slower, I see why I need to exercise. It’s not only good for my health, it’s good for my mind. But I desperately don’t want to do it.
In my routine, I really feel like exercise is that one key thing I’m not doing. With my particular stew of neurodiversity, I often have to set up runways for myself in order to build a habit or do something and not forget anything. For example, next to my bedroom door, I leave shower shoes, a body towel, washcloths, my clothes for tomorrow, toothbrush and toothpaste. I do this, so that when I wake up in the morning (very early, I did this on purpose so I have longer days), in my delirium I know I walk to my door, put on the shower shoes and grab all of that stuff and walk right into my bathroom. That way, I have all the stuff I need to wash up in the morning. When I get back to my room, my skincare, lotion and meds are set up in that order because that’s the order I do things in to avoid cross contaminating FOOT LOTION with SKINCARE! Once I’ve done all of that, I’m ready for the day and can move in whatever order I wish. At the end of the day, I repeat.
I feel like it took me forever to come up with this method and tweak it so it works just right for me, and it takes a lot of willpower to add to that routine or change things around because it throws off my memory and I’ll forget certain things. For example, I found that my ADHD meds work way better on an empty stomach, so I’ve started taking them first thing. Problem is, I’ll often forget to take the two other meds I need in the morning AFTER my meal. I’m remedying that with a daily pill organizer, so hopefully that’s a good solution for me, but you see how things can get messed up with the littlest adjustments.
As for adding a routine to my midday, I honestly do have room to do it, on weekends I literally sleep in between those two endcaps. But it’s the I hate doing it part that really gets me. I have proof that I can do those things I really dislike and incorporate it well into my routine. I used to not be a huge flosser, and super hated how it felt because, since I didn’t floss much, my gums would bleed. Recently, I’ve been able to add it into my daily routine because I see the satisfactory part of it. Having a perfectly clean mouth before bed and seeing what gunk I’m actually removing. I also get a little joy in the fact that I’m doing something net positive for myself.
This leads me to believe that I can apply that same logic to myself with working out, I just need to create my runway. I know that I feel great after workouts, and I do take a little happiness in the soreness because I know I’m working a muscle that hasn’t gotten much love. But I hate sweating. I always break out! I don’t always feel like showering after a workout, and usually don’t like it because it breaks up my daily wash up routines. I’d save that for the evening. Now I know I’m able to wrench in a midday shower if I want to, I have the capacity, but I want to only add 1 new routine item at a time to avoid wanting to give up too soon.
I’m including some sketchbook pages of my planning for this addition to my daily routine, and if you could wish me luck in actually becoming someone who works out 1hr a day, that would be great!! I highly highly recommend watching Inayah’s video in it’s entirety, she has a lot of great points about self improvement in there.
BONUS: I’m also including a list of things I want to dabble in... that obviously have gaps in between those things and my abilities as of now. I think it’s kinda interesting to see other people’s aspirations and daydreams, so I hope you find that interesting as well.
A Song 4 U ❤︎