Celebrate!

Photo: Tim Hamilton

So, it’s almost January 1… are you getting all psyched to change your entire life in a few days with a whole slew of earnest and optimistic New Year’s resolutions?

Or perhaps you regard the whole resolution routine as a futile and somewhat amusing cultural exercise in self-delusion? No worries! Either way, what with a fresh new year almost upon us, it does seem a handy time for a bit of reflection and self-assessment.

However, before we all start running around figuring out how we can be fit, slim, well-rested, courageous, non smoking debt-free vegan triathletes with clean closets and abs of steel, might it first make sense to do a little celebrating of all the things we DID manage to tackle and triumph over in 2011?

Wait, what do you mean there isn’t much to celebrate?

Of course there is!

Even if you’re one of MizFit’s Honest 82% who didn’t technically ‘succced” on last year’s resolutions, and may be recycling them again this year... I bet there are all kinds of awesome things you did this year that you deserve a pat on the back for.

So, wanna find out How to Find and Celebrate This Years Accomplishments, Cranky Fitness Style?

1. Make it easy: Celebrate the Obvious


Did you accomplish something big and meaningful this year? Or even last year, what the hell, we’re not too picky here. Did you graduate from something, give birth to someone, win an award, launch something new, break a personal record, lose a bunch of weight, celebrate a Big Anniversary, finish a novel, or otherwise Succeed in Doing Something Hard You Weren’t Sure You Could Manage? Well go ahead, revisit your triumph and celebrate all over again! The end of the year is a great tme to recall your ass-kicking triumph and bask in the warm glow of smug self-congratulation.

All too often, people who are conscientious and hard-working will finally achieve a long sought after goal… then immediately jump to the next thing on the list and start pressuring themselves without ever stopping to wallow sufficiently in their own awesomeness. Sure, if you do it frequently and out loud, others may think you’re an egotistical asshole. But there’s no law against jumping up and down in your own head and shouting “No wonder I won Widget Salesperson of the year, I did an incredible job selling the crap out of those stupid freakin’ Widgets!”

2. Aim Low: Celebrate the “trivial”

Here at Cranky Fitness, we’re big believers in Baby Steps. Did you dig out the exercise bike out from under the pile of crap in your garage and start pedaling 20 minutes a week? Hooray for you if that’s 20 minutes more than you were doing before! Did you lose a little weight, or discover a new vegetable you don’t hate this year? Did you compete in a race, start biking to work, finally repaint that ugly guest bedroom? Break out the champagne and noisemakers, no doubt you did some damn thing or another this year that you can feel proud of. Spend a few minutes recalling even the little triumphs, it's far healthier than ruminating over the Stuff that Sucked.

3. Make it subjective: Celebrate Effort, Courage and Endurance

As you may have already have discovered: Life is Not Fair. So there’s no use letting arbitrary, superficial external measures of success govern your own sense of accomplishment and self-worth. Did you do an amazing job starting a new exercise program and yet the scale didn’t move? Did you make a huge contribution to your workplace and still end up with a pink slip when budgets got cut?

If you worked hard this year, tried new things, endured scary or ugly or unfortunate situations with grace and good humor, and just generally made lemonade (or margaritas) when life handed you lemons… then give yourself huge amounts of credit.

External success will come later... when life is finally good and done f#@cking with you.

4. Ditch jealousy: Celebrate the Successes of Others


If an acquaintance, friend, coworker or family member achieved something impressive this year, we all know what we’re supposed to do: smile and cheer and hug them and wish them our sincerest congratulations. And yet… sometimes the success of others can trigger a subconscious feeling of jealousy or inadequacy. (Or heck, sometimes the feeling isn’t subtle and subconscious at all, sometimes it’s a big seething stinky pile of nastiness that’s hard to ignore, especially if the party is all gloaty and obnoxious and the “success” was via good luck rather than merit).

So, how to be sincere in your happiness for this other person and thus garner more happiness and celebration for yourself? Well, unless the person is truly an undeserving dickhead, the answer probably lies in decoupling your own sense of self-worth from comparsions to others and to superficial measures of success. There is actually enough joy and happiness to go around for everyone, and YOU are the one responsible for your own feelings of self-worth. If the triumphs of others are getting you down, spend extra time looking for your own strengths and achievements and congratulate yourself. And then take that little smidgen of unpleasant resentment and repurpose it as motivation to set some realistic achievable goals you’ll feel proud of yourself for completing this year.

5. Have fun! Celebrate Continued Existence

Made it to the end of 2011 alive? Hooray for you, celebrate just for the hell of it, and have an awesome New Year’s Eve Weekend!!

So, anyone have anything to celebrate in any of the above categories? Here are a few off my list:

1. The Obvious: Dusted off underutilized but perfectly serviceable psychotherapy experience, reactivated MFT license, and retrained as a Life & Wellness Coach.  Started a practice, found awesome clients to work with, and semi-resurrected the formerly deceased Health and Fitness blog you are now reading.

2. The “Trivial”: Lost a bit of belly fat, and regained the ability to do unassisted pull ups and chin ups. (Am now up to 4 chinups, yay me!)

3. Effort and Experimentation: Recovered from a broken arm and a hysterectomy, which meant having to bust my ass in order to get back to where I left off before I got sidelined. I’ve been playing around with spinning class, bicycling, stair steppers, body weight exercises, tabita intervals and a bunch of other random (and quite possibly stupid and dangerous) cross training moves. Also, I revamped my eating plan to ditch a few more refined carbs and include way more weird, ugly, and extraordinarily healthy foods.

4. Other’s successes: I’ve genuinely enjoyed seeing fellow fitness bloggers and tweeters gain increased recognition with their inspiring books, panel presentations, magazine articles, awards, tv interviews etc. Charlotte, Carla, Joyce and the FBG's leap immediately to mind, but there are many more!  And family and friends have given me lots to celebrate as well… marriages (especially the gay ones…and yeah so sue me, I’m a bit biased), births, new ventures, anniversaries, exciting relocations and happy travels... all good stuff and made me very happy and vicariously proud!

5. And Existence: Hey, I'm alive and not even incarcerated or anything! Hooray! I’ll drink to that!

How about you guys? Anything you’re celebrating this New Year’s, whether it’s a little thing or a huge amazing accomplishment?

Fresh Starts!

Image: Plan59

Hello? Hello? Can you hear me? Helloooo... Um, is anyone still out there?

I'm thinking it's a long shot, what with my semi-abandoning the blog and all. But on the off chance there might be a few old friends and followers still lurking out there, I thought it was about time for a new post. (And if you hang in there, or skip straight down to the end, you'll find out the sneaky secret mission behind this post. You may even score a semi-valuable service for free!) But, putting hidden agendas aside: let's talk about: Starting All Over Again, Damnit.

(Hmm, SAOAD isn't a very catchy acronym, is it? I don't envision going viral with handy SAOAD tips. And sadly, "Fresh Starts" sounds too much like a fruit-flavored laxative or a meth rehab clinic).

So... have you ever worked really hard at something, gained a lot of ground, and then for whatever reason, found yourself right back at the beginning again? Perhaps you lost 30 pounds, hooray! And then gained back 45 pounds, not-so-hooray! Or maybe you took a job at a big company and worked your ass off for decades, gaining massive expertise, taking on more and more responsibility, until management finally recognized your enormous contributions by shipping your job offshore and laying you off.

There are lots of reasons for having to Start All Over Again, Damnit, and many possible happy outcomes. Haven't we all heard the stories about people who were plucky and they never gave up finally one day they invented gravity or became invisible or dug a hole clear to China with their bare hands? (OK, so maybe not those stories exactly).

The problem? If you're an over-thinker like me, you may have to deal with a couple of stubborn mental obstacles in order to get from Starting Over Again Damnit to Happy Outcome.

1. Shoulds and Shouldn'ts
These are potent de-motivators in any situation, but they're particularly tough to avoid when you're trying to accomplish a goal that you've already achieved.  "I shouldn't have to go through this again, I already did it once!" "I shouldn't have to respond to 500 job postings to get one measly interview, last time I landed a great job at the first place I applied!" Or, "WTF? I've been starving myself and working out like a maniac, and I've only lost 5 pounds--I should be WAY thinner by now!"

Thing is, an aggrieved attitude, even if perfectly justified, is rarely helpful. (And this is coming from someone who has studied and perfected whining as an art form). Sure, sometimes it's great to vent and commiserate with others. But at some point, it's worth shaking off the self-pity and trying to deal with sucky reality in a constructive way.

Hey, here's a happy thought: people all over the world are being tortured or are dying of horrible diseases or are suffering from actual, not self-imposed, starvation. If you're not one of them, do you really want to spend much time pondering what "should" and "shouldn't" be happening to you? Chances are there lots of things you are grateful for, and plenty of accomplishments you are proud of, and even some silver linings to your current unwelcome situation. And so if you can catch yourself descending into a cycle of "this shouldn't be," try thinking: is there anything good that might come of this? Am I learning and accomplishing anything different, or deeper, the second time around? And if you can't find anything at all to celebrate, are there any other ways in which you're still a pretty darn lucky person?

2. Been-Down-This-Road-Before Buzz-kill

It may be hard to recapture the innocent enthusiasm you had about your goals a second time around. You got there! You ran that marathon! You wrote that novel! You met the perfect person and found the perfect house and started the perfect family!  But then maybe you got injured, or your masterpiece was roundly rejected, or your scumbag husband squandered your life savings at the racetrack and ran off to Albuquerque with a cocktail waitress. Now how are you ever supposed to feel that same sense of drive and motivation to achieve your dreams, knowing that you did it all before and yet here you are back at the starting line again? It can be easy to sabotage yourself with an unconscious "what's the use" defeatism, even as you are going through the motions of working towards your goal.

Well, here's one idea: make it a slightly different goal.  Make it bigger, or broader, or more meaningful.  Or, hey, remind yourself that "it's all about the journey, not the destination." (Which, while it's a tedious cliche, is actually kinda good advice.) For example, that marathon?  Perhaps it could be a triathlon. Or it could be about being in the best shape of your life, and still enjoying most every run or workout.  That new job? Perhaps it won't be the same as your old job. It may be that in discovering new priorities, you're now looking for a better job: one that may not pay as much money, but is more creative or satisfying.  Those 45 pounds you gained? Maybe they're not about the scale anymore, so much as regaining your strength and vitality.

So Why All this Talk of Starting Over?

Well, as you may have guessed, I'm currently in "Start Over" mode myself, on several fronts. Physically, I'm only recently back to weight training, after a hysterectomy and a broken elbow. I'm trying hard not get discouraged at the huge amount of ground I need to cover to get back to where I was last fall.  (One goal on turning 50 was to be able to do an unassisted pull-up, and I got to FOUR!  Now, I can only hang from the bar helplessly like a 125 pound sack of very, very sad potatoes).

And another way I'm starting over?  Well, here's where we get to the "hidden agenda" part.  Before I became a lazy ill-tempered health and fitness blogger, I was a licensed psychotherapist with a practice in the San Francisco Bay Area.  Sadly, it's not really possible to live in two different states and maintain a psychotherapy practice.  But a Life and Wellness coach?  Much more portable!  The field of life coaching has its origins in executive coaching, and unlike therapy, is typically done at a distance over the phone.  And now, with Skype and email etc, a long-distance coaching relationship is even more feasible.  Plus, huge bonus: coaching, because it isn't therapy, will let me work with mentally healthy folks who don't need "fixing," but who want to focus energy on making their lives better.

The upshot:  I've retrained as a Life and Wellness coach, and I'm starting up a coaching practice. And I'm hoping to use Cranky Fitness to pimp for it! 

And so what does this mean for former Cranky Fitness readers?

1. More frequent Cranky Fitness blog posts.  Nah, not daily, but maybe once every week or two, not just a few times a year.

2. The same 'ol Crabby McSlacker, complete with swear words and whining.  Are life coaches allowed to be cranky, skeptical, irreverent, and even, on occasion, clueless?  Or do they have to be relentlessly well-informed and upbeat?  I shall find out, I guess!

3.  A blog that will shamelessly direct readers over to my life coaching website.  There will be ads for "Live a Little" Life and Wellness Coaching.  Also, Cranky Fitness blog posts may start with just a teaser here, and then end up over at my life & wellness coaching website, because I'm sneaky that way. And say, did you notice the annoying way I stuck in keyword links?  Expect a lot more of that sh#t.

IMPORTANT UPDATE!
Due to a way heavier volume of responses than I counted on, I'm afraid I have no more free slots right now.  But check this updated post if you're interested in heavily discounted life coaching after the first round. So sorry!!!! And thanks to all who commented or offered to be guinea pigs!

4. Discounted or maybe even FREE life coaching for CrankyFitness readers!  I figure if you've read this far, you're probably someone who is Cranky-Fitness-compatible, not some weirdo googling in hoping to find a colon cleansing cure that will magically eliminate 25 pounds by Thursday.


Here's the deal:  I'm trained, qualified, and ready to start life coaching, but I'm brand spankin' new at it and need some "beta" clients to work out the kinks before I officially open for business.  Ideally I'd like to find some easy-going, patient, highly motivated clients who are ready to make some changes in life, but feel like they'd have a better shot with a personal coach to bat things around with.  (And if the whole notion of Life Coaching sounds weird and confusing, check out "What is Life Coaching?" for some thoughts on that).


So, is anyone interested in an intake session plus four free life coaching sessions?  (Further sessions would be deeply discounted off normal rates if there were any interest in continuing).   Note: There's no guarantee we'll be compatible, so I'd reserve the right after our intake to refer you elsewhere if I didn't think we were a good match).  I'm also hoping to find some clients willing to do sessions by Skype or email too, not just by telephone.

Curious? Or just wanna be nice and check out my website and give me some feedback? It's at www.livealittlecoaching.com.  Email me here or there if you're interested in the possibility of some free coaching.

So, back to the topic of  "starting over "--anyone have any thoughts? Frustrating experiences, inspiring stories, or just wanna say hi?  I'd love to hear from you!