Uncategorized – Page 5 – tallgirltinysteps

February 20-tiny steps to help our minds

Yesterday I listened to a webinar (many success gurus) and they all seemed to have one underlying message-fix your thinking. How many times do we stop to think about our thinking? We charge through life with goals and hopes and dreams and plans and jobs and trips and…

So how do we fix our thinking? Well that is a multilevel issue and that I am just scratching the surface of at the moment. Before I used to think that it was just “having a positive attitude.” But what do you do when you DONT have a positive attitude and you don’t feel like trying to find one either?

Some say to practice gratitude. Some say to meditate. Some say to get more sleep. But what about our self talk? What about the stuff we say or don’t say to ourselves on a daily basis? For example, if you say “ugh, I gotta go to work today,” it starts off your day in kind of an icky mood. Some people say to change it to “I GET to go to work today.” I mean thats a nice technique but when your job is tough, its a little hard to swallow.

I definitely want to dive into this topic more. Some of the success gurus from yesterday have books that you can buy (and of course they have thousand dollar seminars you can attend) but I think I am going to start with the books.

I will keep you posted on this issue. This week, my tiny habit to “change my thinking” will simply be to wake up and tell myself that no matter what happens today…”I got this”

THANK YOU to my 71 followers-I hope you have an amazing week!

February 13-2022 Yesterday was a “burst” day-cleaned out 4 bins of papers and miscellaneous items.

I have been talking about the tiny steps and am currently working on a book that will have them laid out by sections instead of randomly like this. The blog is more for how I am “doing” and to show the actual day to day process of change and how hard it is for people.

For example, I only worked out 3 times this week despite getting a brand new treadmill.

I ate pretty well at the start of the week and then had some major slip-ups toward the weekend.

Money wise I am on track and actually hit a big goal amount for the Olympics that we are attending in two years (yes, I will keep saving because who knows what the world will look like in 2 years)

Work wise I have been doing a good job of keeping up with email, grading, planning, meetings, teaching, etc…

I am studying French and am currently managing a 49 day streak on Duolingo right now.

So all in all, pretty good. So what is a “burst” day

Its a day where you feel like tackling more of a goal but all it is is a temporary burst in time/energy/motivation/etc… YOU CAN NOT think that this is your new normal. Here’s what I mean.

Since we moved into our new house, I have used one bedroom as the office and it is where we store important papers/documents/etc… I have just been throwing everything into a laundry basket in there and not sorting or filing it. I figured I would get to it one of these days and one of my small steps of house management was to make sure that the dinner table was clear each night and that we had a place for mail and other things to go. I succeeded. Yesterday, my husband ran an all day wrestling tournament and I stayed home to rest. I found myself sitting in front of the TV and realized it would be a good time to sort out the giant basket of mail(tax time is coming up). Not only did I sort through an entire laundry basket of papers, I managed to sort through 3 other sacks that had miscellaneous objects in them. It was awesome. So awesome that I thought…”Ill do more tomorrow.” Well tomorrow has arrived and I haven’t done a single thing. This is where I have to call yesterday for what it was-it was a burst and it was great but it is over until the next time. Today, I simply focused on having a cleared off dining table and I succeeded.

And yet the laundry is almost done, the dishes are done, dinner is in the crockpot so the tiny steps are still at work for those things as well.

So what can you learn from this-some days are bursts and some days are tiny steps. You CAN NOT confuse the two or get mad. As soon as you learn this, you will feel better and be more productive.

THANK YOU SO MUCH to my 71 followers! AMAZEBALLS! You keep me on my tiny journey and I am so thankful.

February 6,2022-“we don’t wake up and say today is the day to destroy my life”

I just heard a YouTube interview with Mel Robbins and she said this almost word for word. She then went on to explain what she meant and it really resonated with me. We make hundreds of decisions every day. TINY DECISIONS. And when those add up, it creates a life we like or a life we don’t.

For example, lets say that I use a different coffee cup every day and instead of washing it, I leave it in the sink. Then I put my lunch and dinner dishes in the sink. Then the sink fills up so I stack them on the counter. Then the counter fills up so I use paper plates. Then the garbage fills up because of all the trash. Then the trash fills up but its cold outside, so I simply put one bag of trash in the garage and start filling a second. Then that starts filling up. Then the bathroom trash can fills up but I have no where to dump that so I start just filling small grocery bags full of trash and placing them around the bathroom. It seems silly but I didn’t “wake up and decide to trash my house-it just kind of happened” and I would be telling the truth. It did just kind of happen. THEN I have to spend HOURS cleaning and tidying and I get into a bad mood. Then I snap at m husband. Then, then then…

It is JUST like that book, “If you give a mouse a cookie”. If you don’t know the book, I highly recommend it. The premise behind it is that if you give a mouse a cookie, he is going to want a glass of milk and then the whole book is what he needs after that-a napkin, a plate, etc…

The two stories above may seem like silly examples but I want to ask you…Do you have a pile of unopened mail somewhere? Do you have a pile of laundry somewhere? Do you have a sink full of dishes? Do you have boxes stacked up in the garage or basement that haven’t been looked at in a while? Do you have items in one part of the house that belong in another part of the house? Do you have things sitting out in your bathroom that need to be put away? Do you have a desk at work that needs to be organized? Do you have bills to pay or accounts to look at to budget your money for the week/month?

If you spend 4.50 a day on coffee/pop/cigarettes/beer/etc… and have it each day Mon-Fri, you spend 90.00 a month. You didn’t MEAN to spend 90 dollars a month, it just kind of happened. Then at the end of the year, you either have 1080 dollars in your bank account or you don’t. you have 1080 paid toward a debt or in a retirement account or you don’t. Now, don’t get me wrong, I LOVE a fancy coffee as much as the next guy, I am simply pointing out these small decisions that affect us long term and when we try to just “survive the day” we sometimes lose sight of how that will affect us in the future.

Another example is my sophomore year in college. I needed to lose the THIRTY pounds I had put on from freshman year. I read an article that said very simply if you cut out 250 calories a day and burn an extra 250 calories a day, you could lose 1 pound per week. In my 19 year old brain, this sounded easy. I left cheese and mayo off my sandwiches and drank water instead of juice. I also biked to my classes (uphill) instead of taking the student bus. I managed to lose about 25 pounds that year. And I felt great! Nothing I did was super drastic, it was merely a couple of tiny steps that changed my entire body.

So here is my challenge to myself and my question to my readers. What tiny decisions are you making each day that are “destroying your life?” I know that one of mine is eating a small piece of candy each day. It doesn’t seem like much and in the grand scheme of life, it isn’t much. However, that little piece of chocolate MIGHT be destroying all the weight loss efforts that I have been putting into place. Its worth a try to see if that helps. We all owe it to ourselves to examine what we are doing and change it in a tiny way if we want. I don’t want pants that don’t fit, so this is the small change I have to make this week.

THANK YOU to my 69 readers and followers! You keep me inspired!

Jan 30, 2022-some days (or weeks) will just be bad ones

This week, I fell. We got almost a foot of snow on Monday while I was at school and as I was walking to my car, I fell. I am fine, but that one small thing basically threw off the rest of the week. How you may ask?

Well, for starters, I was sore. I fell onto my left side and it kind of jostled everything in my body. Each day when I woke up, I could feel a different part of my body reacting to the fall. Everything was just jostled. So I thought I should not do the elliptical until my body felt better. Today is finally that day (6 days later)

Then, Tuesday-Friday nights were busy with appointments, classes, basketball games after school. Every single day after school. My husband and I like to call this the “night shift” of our jobs. No disrespect to actual night shift workers but when you are at school from 6:45am until 3:45 pm and then you start another part of your job that goes from 4-10…it feels like 2nd shift.

On top of all that, my husband ran a 12 hour wrestling tournament yesterday and I spent the day studying for a French exam that I am taking 6 days from now. So we didn’t really have a Saturday either. And because of these things, even “tiny tips” weren’t helping-laundry and dishes weren’t done. Working out wasn’t done. Eating out happened instead of cooking at home.

It has been kind of a “just survive week” and you know what-its ok. At first I was super frustrated that we had dishes in the sink , bills to pay on the table, laundry in the hamper. I kept thinking to myself-just do a little and even that seemed overwhelming, so I just left everything. But then, something magical happened…I washed the coffee cups while my coffee was brewing. I threw in a load of laundry while I took a study break. I paid a bill while I was waiting for my husband to bring home takeout. And slowly but surely, things started to get done.

So embrace the bad days (or weeks). Call them what they are (survival) and start again. Start small. Henry David Thoreau says “One is enough” and I always thought he meant that owning one of something was enough. Now I am thinking that he also meant that doing one thing is enough. Just do one. Wash one cup. Pay one bill. Do one load of laundry. Wipe down one sink. Just one. Until you can do ANOTHER “one.”

Here’s to a great week for me and a great week for my 69 subscribers! KEEP GOING ONE TINY STEP AT A TIME!!!!!!!!!

January 22, 2022 -two tiny tips to help you this week

Here are two little tips I used this week.

Just do one minute

(This was a journal entry from one of my days this week)

Jan 18

So how did I start my morning? well I have been up since about 415 and tried to go back to sleep until 5 AM. Then I decided to get up and have a cup of coffee in my coffee maker It used water it already had in it and overflowed my coffee cup. Also that made my coffee very weak. I did not want to work out at all because my head hurts and I just didn’t want to do it. However I did tell myself that if I could just do one minute I would do the other 19 minutes when I get home from school today I just had to do one minute. So then I got on my elliptical and kept going and was looking for a book to read and before I knew it I had done seven minutes and I couldn’t believe it. So I kept going because might as well and when I got to 20 minutes I actually added a minute and a half because I felt pretty good I can’t believe it I’m still in awe.

I’m thinking that one of the most valuable rules is going to be the just give it one minute.

one minute of studying

one minute of cleaning

one minute of working out

one minute of doing your taxes (this might be a little harder)

Whatever it is, do it for one minute and then promise yourself to obey yourself so after that one minute you can stop and you have succeeded. Now eventually you will need to do more than one minute to get things done but let’s not talk about that right now. The goal is to just get us to the place. For example the tiny step is just to get us to the elliptical machine. You might surprise yourself.

Never leave a room empty handed

I saw this tip on a website somewhere about how to keep your house clean and picked up. Every time you get up from your chair, bed, dinner table, etc…take something with you that belongs in another room and put it in that room.

For example, when I get up to use the restroom and I pass by the kitchen, I take my water glass to the sink on the way. When I get out of my car each day, I take something with me that belongs in the house (sweatshirt, travel mug, papers, mail, change from my cup holder, etc…)

When I head downstairs to feed the cats, I take down a box that needs to be stored. When I come back upstairs, I bring a laundry basket full of clothes.

It seems to keep the clutter at bay.

Heres to a good week-make every day better than the last! And to my 69 followers THANK YOU!!!!!!!

January 15-two weeks past New Years (are you going to break your resolution???)

So it is 15 days into the new year and a lot of people are right on the cusp of when a goal or resolution starts to get hard. Mine hit me yesterday. Now I told you in the last post to get rid of your resolutions. I was JUST focusing on adding 1 minute of elliptical each morning to my routine. Today was 18 minutes. But yesterday (17 minutes) almost broke me, so I am here to tell you what happened and how I pushed through it

First, I woke up sweaty (we sleep at about 60 degrees so this shouldnt have happened). Then, even walking down to the basement made me winded-not a good start for a workout. Then, I got on the elliptical and EVERY SINGLE MINUTE was agonizing. It wasnt painful but it didnt feel good. I felt winded, out of shape, and just plain yucky(medical term-LOL)

I told myself to just go one more minute. I made it 12 minutes that way and felt like I had to sit down. So I stopped. I left the timer on my phone at the 4 min and 48 seconds mark that I still had to finish. All day I felt tired. But when I got home, I finished those 4 minutes and 48 seconds and they werent that bad. Sometimes we get so wrapped up in “how to workout like the magazines or trainers say we should” that we don’t cut ourselves any slack. My body STILL did the work. Am I proud of that? You betcha! And this morning, I was a little scared that I would feel the same way as yesterday but guess what? I did 18 minutes and felt not too bad-actually felt SUPER proud of myself. And isnt that the point of all of this? Feeling good?

So if you did set a resolution and are about to quit, can I ask you some questions?

Could you “break it up” when you work on the goal? (like I did with the 12 minutes in the morning and 5 at night?)
Could you “back off a little” but not stop? (just doing 1 minute instead of no minutes)
Could you “maintain” instead of trying to improve?-for example if it keeps being difficult I might stop at 20 min and only do 20 min for a few weeks until I feel stronger.

So this has been the tiny step I have been working on for 18 days. When I started back to school, I added a banana to my lunch. This is another one of my tiny steps. I am NOT dieting, but I wanted to let you in on another small healthy change that I am making. (each week I will try to add something VERY TINY and let you guys know how its going. So far the banana thing is going well -I love bananas so it was an easy healthy addition.

Good luck this week and I will see you next week!

THANK YOU to my 68 followers! You keep me motivated and smiling!

Dec 30, 2021 Get rid of New Year’s Resolutions

If they work for you, then keep going with them. However, in a 2016 study of the 41 percent of Americans that make resolutions, only 9 percent felt like they had accomplished them at the end of the year.

Top resolutions every year are to workout/improve fitness/get fit, lose weight, save money, improve diet. So that tells me something. We all WANT to be better and we start out with a bang and then something happens and we stop working toward the goals for whatever reason (I think it is because we go too big too soon and too many-hence the purpose of this blog)

I don’t know about you, but I have made resolutions for a majority of the New Year’s and I seem to always fail at them just like most people do. So I am taking a different approach in keeping in line with this website.

I started working out on the elliptical for one minute on Monday. One minute, that was it. Then 2 minutes on Tuesday, 3 on Wednesday, and I completed 4 minutes today. Going VERY tiny. It has been hard to get motivated since I had Covid. I am still very tired. My goal is to increase one minute each day until I get up to a good 30ish minutes of Cardio. But that might take a while. It might take until summer. It might take until next December. I don’t know but I do know one thing. One minute on the elliptical is better than no minutes on the elliptical.

I am not worrying about my diet at this moment. I am not worrying about losing weight or saving money or any of the other goals that I put on my resolution list. I am going tiny. Just exercise. Just one minute increases. Just that. Thats it. OBVIOUSLY, my long term plans would be to accomplish all those other resolutions but if I can get one under my belt, I know that I will feel better. I will keep you posted on this progress.

THANK YOU to my 65 followers! Keep on keeping on!

November 6-Tiny update aka “Where have you been?!?!?!?”

It has been so long! Well yes, please let me tell you why…

1. I got a new teaching job 4 days before school started

2. We put our house up for sale and purchased one closer to my new job

3. My dad passed away after a year long cancer battle

4. I got Covid and lost my taste and smell

5. I am studying to try to pass the French test for teacher certification-the test was last night.

6. My husband is having double cataract surgery

7. My cat got sick and needed 3 trips to the vet

8. My husband also started a new job about a month before I did

9. My husband got Covid and I need to pack us up and move us to the new house.

When I write all of this down, it is not hard to see why I havent exercised/written/done anything. I mean dang. How much more can a person take right? I have asked myself that many times during the last two months (yes this all happened in the last 2 months). And yet today, one of you read my blog and liked a post from August. So I reread that post. And I still believe in the tiny steps.

SO as I have been battling and surviving all of this, I am finally at the point where I can say…ok how do I make some tiny steps forward? My husband has a saying that I’m sure he got from somewhere else “survive and advance.” There has been a whole lot of survival lately. But I really feel like I am coming through on the other side and just might be ready to advance.

So I am taking ONE tiny step for the next little while. And do you know what it is? LESS. I’m making a conscious effort to DO LESS, EAT LESS, BUY LESS, WORRY LESS, STRESS LESS. JUST LESS.

What exactly does that look like? I am not 100 percent sure but I am going to give it a try and keep you all posted on my progress of it 🙂

THANK YOU to my 63 followers! You inspire me to “advance!!” Have a great week!

August 20-tiny steps when overwhelmed

So yesterday I did NOT exercise on the elliptical. I pulled out landscape and moved rocks and shoveled for about 3 hours, so I am positive that I worked out harder than 16 minutes of elliptical. However, two things were evident. 1. I think I am getting stronger and the elliptical is why and 2. Sometimes you have to give yourself a little grace on your goals.

Today, I jumped right back on and did 17 minutes of elliptical.

But this post isn’t about exercise, this post is about overwhelm. I have many things going on in my life right now.

My father is ill and having surgery and things aren’t going well.
I am moving into a new classroom, but the old person hasn’t moved out yet so I have nowhere to put my stuff.
We bought a fixer upper house so there are many projects to do that stare me in the face every morning.
I start school on Monday and I have a whole new curriculum and two of my “teacher friends” aren’t working for the district any more.
My husband has taken a brand new job and is very busy trying to do all the things necessary for that.

So what is a person to do when it feels like everything around them is in chaos?

Find one tiny task that you can complete and do that.

So I am doing a load of laundry. I like doing laundry. I love the fact that I can put some soap into a machine and walk away and about 50 minutes later, Voila! Clean clothes! Then you move them to the dryer and about 50 minutes later, Voila! Clean, dry clothes! I am sure I get a little too excited about laundry, but I have been doing my own for about 25 years now and the process never ceases to amaze me or make me happy. Also, pro tip (that I just started). Separate the darks and lights BEFORE you even think about laundry. I have two laundry baskets-one dark blue for all dark colored clothes and one is white for the light/white colored clothes. When one of them gets full, I take it downstairs, dump the whole thing in the wash and push a button. It almost seems too good to be true!

So while I can’t seem to affect a lot of the stuff that is overwhelming me right now, I can focus on one tiny little task like doing a load of laundry and it makes me feel better. what tiny little task can you accomplish today that might make you feel better?

THANK YOU to my 56 followers! You make me smile every day!

August 18- Staging vs Living

Everyone’s lives are hectic. Work, house, kids, school, illness, self improvement, self care, etc… The list goes on. Some of the “hectic” we make ourselves (feeling the need to achieve certain goals) and some of it is thrust upon us (like a loved one getting sick). No matter what your story is, you probably have at least one part of your life that is a little crazy.

I used to try to calm the crazy. I used to try to control the crazy, or brush away the crazy, or ignore the crazy. You can’t. Just when you get the crazy taken care of in one area of life, something else pops up. For those of us that are perfectionists, this can eat at us terribly. We just want things to settle down.

Well, I don’t think it is going to happen. After 42 years of life, I think it is about riding the crazy. Staging to sell a house falls into the “control the crazy” category, OR the “don’t let others SEE your crazy.”

I titled this post “staging vs living” because if you have every tried to sell a house, you usually “stage it” a little so that potential buyers can imagine themselves in the space. It involves decluttering and removing personal items. It sometimes involves very neutral decor.

Well, yesterday I decided to flip the script. We have 3 bedrooms in our new house. 1 for my husband and I. 1 for the cats (they have a bedtime and get put in the bedroom for the night so they don’t run around the house-they like it I promise!) And 1 spare room. I SHOULD stage it as a bedroom. However, my husband and I would like to have more closet space….Soooooo….I am turning it into a GIANT closet! This is NOT realtor approved by the way. However, I had to look around at what we needed/wanted and figure out how to make it happen. We have very busy jobs and so having a clean and organized room for our clothes and shoes would be hugely helpful.

Yes, minimalism would tell me to get rid of some stuff, but I don’t want to. My husband doesn’t want to. And we are paying for a house every month so why can’t we make it what we want? Thats the realization I came to yesterday. I CAN have a GIANT walk in closet. And when it comes time to sell the house, I will box up my clothes and turn the room back into a bedroom. I will “STAGE” it. But for now…I am going to “LIVE” in it.

The tiny step part will be that I can’t do everything all at once. I will slowly move some of our clothes into this room, look for dressers at yard sales, paint, get curtains, etc…but I am going to LIVE in this space.

My question for you today is where are you “staging” your life instead of living it? Basically where are you putting on a show for others instead of taking care of what you need? For me, it is with this closet. For you? Ask yourself if you are “living” or “staging.”

Happy Wednesday to my 55 followers! Hope you have a great rest of the week. And tomorrow is going to be a tough one….I am supposed to do 16 minutes of elliptical AND rip out a bunch of landscape. My body is gonna HUUUURRRRRTTTT! Wish me luck!