Month: October 2017

Urban Hiking

Woohoo I interviewed and got an offer to teach an Urban Hiking (HFIT 196) class this spring. It’s a 6 week, one-credit Saturday class with up to 12 students. I get to take them on various DC trails and introduce the necessary hiking skills and concepts to hike for outdoor travel or as a recreational fitness activity. Content will cover fitness for hiking, route planning, proper clothing and gear, safety concerns, and environmental conditions.

I’m PUUUUMPED

Design Your Life

I’m on a waitlist for a three session “Designing Your Life” workshop led by Professor Chris Palmer, a passionate advocate of personal growth and how people can become successful, productive, and fulfilled. Palmer is an author, film producer, and father. 

In a recent article Chris Palmer offered up seven tips for designing a successful life:

  1. Choose to accept your mission. Create your own “personal mission statement.” Your personal mission statement helps you decide at what to do with your time and energy. In creating it, you are beginning to write the story of your life. What gives your life meaning? Who do you want to become? What matters deeply to you?
  2. Spend your time wisely. You want congruence between how you spend your day and what matters most to you. Are you spending time on projects and relationships that won’t matter to you in the long run?
  3. Be fearless and free. What can you imagine doing if time, money, and fear were not obstacles? What would you do if you knew you could not fail? If you had all the money in the world, what would you do for free?
  4. Take care of home. Keep your life in balance. Be aware of all your important roles and responsibilities in life, not just at work. Having a happy home life should be among your highest goals.
  5. If you can see it, you can achieve it. Set goals. Put them in writing. This is a powerful process. Without goals, our lives are essentially drifting without focus. Putting your plans on paper makes goals more concrete, meaningful, and real.
  6. Know when to walk away. Improving your success involves more than ridding your life of time-wasters like poorly run meetings, interruptions, and gossip. Major gains in success and productivity come from ceasing to pursue a course of action-a job, a contract, a career, or a relationship-that is wrong for you.
  7. The power of “no.” Sometimes the best time-saver of all is the word “no.” Declining a request from another person without causing ill-will is a learnable skill. Identifying activities in your life that are not important to you is key to improving your productivity and happiness. What can you stop doing to free up time for the things that are important to you?

http://www.american.edu/spexs/Design-Your-Life/

WIW

Last Week: 188.5

Today: 189.7

Change: +1.2

I was expecting that after a fun weekend in Auburn. I need to stop having so many fun weekends that undo all my hard work during the week. Actually, no, I love (albeit NEED) my fun weekends. My new approach is to try and stick to my points 6/7 days of the week – I know I can do it. 

Parallel Lives

So as I’ve mentioned here this summer I came to terms with my identity of being an Adult Child of an Alcoholic (ACA). I started learning more about this identity last January after a particularly traumatizing Christmas at my mom’s. 

It’s unbelievable how much my mother’s addiction has shaped me. The more I read and talk with my counselor and ACA group the more I learn about myself, how to cope, and how to choose myself despite being manipulated by an addict. I was taught that anything my mom didn’t essentially like/approve of/suit her was “bad.” And more than anything I have this overwhelming desire to be a “good girl.” 

I get guilted for not living in New York or jumping at her every need. She’s 66 (today actually is her birthday which led to a stressful call) and physically healthy. Heck she’s intelligent and funny too. Nothing I do/could do (even again my better sense) is going to help her. She needs to change for herself PERIOD.

This summer I came across this blog and holy hell it’s like I WROTE it. The weirdest part is that she starting writing the day I went to my first ACA meeting. There’s some amazing honestly, sadness, but also humor here too. If you love someone struggling with addiction or just a fan of good writing check it out

http://grumpysunshine.com/

WWWI

189.4 at my weight watchers weigh in today

I’m .4 away from being down 15 lbs since I joined at the end of January! 

This is my lowest recording WW weight in so far (I blame drinking coffee and wearing clothes haha).

Took my measurements today after falling off the measurement wagon for a bit.

My hips and arms are ones that I can really SEE.

In terms of scale

  • Last week: 188.0
  • Today: 188.5
  • Change: +0.5

Not the end of the world, I’m coming off of my period and a lot of beer over the weekend. The plan is to push hard today and tomorrow in terms of getting my steps in and eating well before heading back out of town on Friday for some southern fried fun! 

Brothers Osborne Doing “While You Still Can” on the Bobby Bones Show

Brothers Osborne Doing “While You Still Can” on the Bobby Bones Show

God, I love radio – it’s such a powerful format.

Despite being a devoted Elvis Duran listener, I do sometimes flip to Bobby Bones when Elvis is on vacation. I flipped to Bobby yesterday following the Vegas shooting because he’s on the country station and turns out Bobby and his band played the Harvest 91 festival Saturday night. Bobby was super raw yesterday. I listened to him this morning because he had a ton of artists come into the studio to play songs to honor all the victims and fans. 

I’ve never heard of the Brothers Osborne before, but this song SHOOK me. I needed to like decompress in the car before coming into the office.