In all honesty, I feel like i fell off a few wagons in the last 60 days, and I wanted to talk about it — because I’m pretty sure you can relate. Around 2.5 months ago — we started our annual snowbirding trip at the National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas. I always plan to take those two weeks off from everything — but clearly my planning to take some days off needs some help, because I still had work to do once we got there! What wagon did I fall off? I let up on my commitment to posting every single day on Instagram. I also fell off my self care commitment to practice Pilates 4 times a week.
I’m Becky, the owner of Farm Girl Marketing Solutions and I partner with Pilates Studio owners to develop social media content, blogs and emails that create results. I have always struggled to balance my “client work” and the work I do for my own business, but in the past two months i feel like I lost control completely. I had been sharing tips and tricks for developing social media content on IG faithfully for months, and then — I fell off the wagon.
I’ve beaten myself up for weeks, which didn’t help anything, but it didn’t get me going again. If i’d have spent every minute I spent beating myself up brainstorming ideas for content, or scheduling my Pilates before I scheduled other things – I’d be rolling again already, but I didn’t do that. I wallowed, and I said — I’ll be better tomorrow. Really i said that thing about tomorrow a lot of days — and somehow — many tomorrows came and went without me taking action!
You’ve probably heard that joke about how people with ADHD are like a dog when it sees a squirrel: overexcited, hyperactive, and easily distracted. I don’t know exactly how it happened but somehow I let my ADHD control me — instead of me controlling it. You know that Joe Pilates quote, “Be in control of your body and not at it’s mercy”? Well clearly that can apply to a lot of situations.
I made excuses to myself, I told myself I’d work after I got home from an event or an adventure, but I felt like my fingers were frozen every time I got to my computer. Then i’d see a squirrel, which led to another squirrel, and I ended up not in control of anything. What am I going to do about it?
First off, i’m going to do what my Dad always taught me when I fell off my pony. I’m going to get off my butt, get back on the pony – and correct my mistakes so I don’t fall off again. Then I’m going to apply some of the time management skills that people are always talking about –every single day. I’ll put both work and Pilates on my calendar. But I won’t just write “work time”. I’ll make a list of tasks – pick out the three most important — and focus on those until I get done with them.
Another of the wagons I’ve fallen off (for maybe months if I’m being honest) is practicing gratitude. So the second thing on my list to get me back in the productive wagon is I’ll actually write in my gratitude journal. There’s a section of my planner to record your daily feelings of gratitude, but it’s one of those things I sometimes skip. Like everything else, I talk about here — gratitude works more miracles when you practice it every single day.
Finally — I’m going to give myself grace. If i fall off the wagon for a day — I’m going to try and stop from beating myself up. I’m guessing this may be the hardest thing on my list, but I’m going to try! I was telling someone yesterday about the years I spent being a caregiver for my parents, and how I didn’t know how stressful it was until after I was through that time in my life. I had no idea that I needed some self care at the time, but it’s easy to see now that a little self care might have kept me off of blood pressure medicine for hypertension!
I’d love to know if you’ve found yourself in a similar situation. Whether it’s with exercising, eating healthy, or marketing your Pilates studio. Do you have tips that you use for staying on the wagon? Go ahead and reply in the comments and let me know!