31Ways2GetItStarted™!: January 7, 2013

Day 7: Do One Thing Today to Make Tomorrow Easier

AKA start cultivating healthy habits. I write this as a someone who has really made an art form of procrasturbation. Interestingly enough, a habit I started in law school. (#surprisesurprise) Ahh law school: wherein, if you have a paper due at 9am Monday morning...why would you get started before midnight or even 1am? Where's your love of adventure? First of all, you have to catch up on DListed.com; what your friends are posting on Facebook; the apartment needs to be vacuumed... oh there's a ton of sh*t to do whenever a legal writing assignment is due! Eventually, it's 8:52am and you're calculating how long you need to print and drive furiously to the law school, depositing the paper on your prof's desk at 09:01. Smirking. Ahh, good times. #notreally

Of course, in college, when I studied subjects I was actually you know, interested in, I was the kind of nerd who would turn in papers weeks earlier than requested. (I suspect that if I had done that in law school, the professor would have thrown it back at me with a disdainful grunt for actually making him work, when he really wanted to be giving interviews on public radio...or blogging. Not that I'm at all implying that law professors are hideously overpaid for the small amount of work they do. No, not at all.)

Now, as my own boss, I get to do a lot of stuff I love (coaching), and many things I dislike (too many to list), but invariably, when I ignore my own to-do lists, they, also invariably, keep growing till eventually it's 3am and I realize that I'm under the proverbial gun. On the other hand, when I force myself to suck it up and do today the irritating things I wrote in today's to-do list...usually they're not as horrible as I anticipated, and afterwards I feel less guilty and the next day is a lot easier. "Usually."

Thus, on Day #7, my hint to you is to continue working on cultivating health habits and do one thing today which will make tomorrow easier. Whether it's going to the gym, or returning an irritating phone-call, or working on your resume: do it, get it over with and make your life easier. Because the more you do today, the more you'll feel able to do tomorrow. Conversely, the harder you make tomorrow, the harder you'll feel it to be and then forget it. That thinking leads nowhere fast. Eventually you'll be holed up in an underground bunker waiting for the end of the world...but hey, you still won't be a law professor, trying to pretend that learning civil procedure is valuable, so things aren't all bad!

Want some help figuring out which one thing to do today? (I've actively deleted any and all knowledge of civ pro from my brain, so please, don't even bother.) Email me @carlotazee@gmail.com! And feel free to leave any rants, comments, praise in the comments section!

31Ways2GetItStarted™! January 3, 2013

Day 3: Allow Yourself to Succeed

Yesterday I implored you to be realistic as you set about making changes--since it is a process, not a one-time thing...well, it is if you want to be successful!--so on a related note...allow yourself to succeed. Whether you're trying to make big changes or small--and all big changes start out small--you have to allow yourself to succeed. Translation: Don't sabotage yourself! Some of you are rolling your eyes at this one...and yet, I know I'm not the only one who has, routinely, sabotaged herself. 

And by "sabotaging," I mean, consciously, or even sub-consciously, creating situations, or at least not stopping certain situations from creating, which I know are going to waste my time and stop my emotional development. I've dated men, or worked in jobs, which I knew were wasting my time and allowing me to luxuriate in bad habits simply because I didn't have the courage/determination/desperation to say, "Basta! This is not the person I want to be. This cannot be my life!" Or, for example, I've let myself sleep through morning workouts, on days when I knew there wouldn't be any other time to workout, and then groggily rolled out of bed at 9am, feeling like crap and pissed off at myself, which meant that I'd be eating crap food all day since, whatever, who cares, I didn't work out anyway, which meant I didn't do all the other things that day which would have made me feel good which means, Hello Shame Cycle!

(None of this, I stress, means I'm perfect now. Oh my no. It means I can see where bad behavior and bad habits will eventually lead me, IF I ALLOW THEM, so I refuse to allow them, since time is passing and I have a lot of people to nag, um I meant "help." Yes, help, right.)

So, my hint for today is about allowing yourself to succeed. Whatever you're trying to do, before you go wild, take a moment to be honest with yourself and make sure you're not, in fact, setting yourself up for disaster. Take it step by step. You don't have to change your life today, and in fact just thinking of it that way is exhausting and makes me want a mug of Scotch. So how about you pat yourself on the back for acknowleding that you want to make changes, and you understand how difficult making changes can be, and you do one small thing today which will make tomorrow easier? How about that...?

Want some help making those changes? Email me @carlotazee@gmail.com!

Channukah Hints, Jewrican Factoids #2: Just Get Started

I'm going to title this second hint, "Just get started," since taking action, as opposed to just talking about taking action, is huge. It can and will change your life...if you allow it to do so by taking action. People truly are creatures of habit. And habits can be good or bad, but usually a little bit of both, so if you're trying to make big changes, well you're lying to yourself if you think, "Even though I haven't looked at a gym in 6 months, tomorrow, I'll start 'P90X' and become ripped, so today I can go eat some chicken fries." (ZOMG! How good do some chicken fries sound right about now? What? Am I hungover? Well, thanks for asking but no, not more than usual...HA! I'm kidding. Shut up.)
Anyway, that scenario isn't going to happen, because you're going to build up the thought of going to the gym in your mind till it's exhausting and scary. You're going to feel overwhelmed and defeated and depressed and soon you'll be drunk, in your undies, eating 'Cherry Garcia' ice cream out of the container and shopping on Zappos. (Once again: I am full of awesome ideas. Invite me to your party.)
For example, you know those people who hate, say, their job, or their weight, or their relationship, and blabber on: "Yep, this year, I'm going to [fill in the blank]." And then a year passes, and everything--including their excuses-- is still status quo? Oh, you mean all those excuses didn't help you achieve a better career or become a size 6? How weird!
Or, people who say, "Well, I hate my job, but I figure things will work out one way or another." Really? If by "things will work out," you mean, "things will stay exactly the same, or maybe just worse..." then yes, you are correct! When I, years ago, was in a horrible, stagnant long-term, long-distance relationship, wherein we had zero interest in each other, but neither one of us could bear to end it...things didn't "work themselves out." No, things got much, much, much worse till we both were forced to take action and end it. And that was every bit as fun as it sounds, but we did it.
Therefore, Coaching Hint #2 is: just get started. Take some, even a little bit, of action every day till it becomes a routine. You need to lose weight? Go to the gym for even 15 minutes. Download your favorite TV show onto your iPod and watch 15 minutes of it as you walk on the treadmill. I know, no one knows your suffering, the torment of your existence, Bono should do a concert in your honor... but you can do this. 15 minutes. And you can keep doing this, till one day you'll look at the clock and think, "Hmm, have I been here for 35 minutes? Did I actually break a sweat? That was fun!"
You want to change your job? Invest 15 minutes a day EVERY DAY in networking, working on your resume, researching opportunities, and even more networking. Does that sound like a lot? Interesting...cause I suspect you spend hours a day on Facebook. So, you have time to post photos of your kids, or of the new shoes you purchased, or to scrutinize your boyfriend's female friends' pages, or IM your friends...but not even 15 damn minutes to take the steps necessary to begin improve your life? Really? Interesting.
Just get started. Just do something today. Because there will never ever be a perfect time. Perfect excuses, sure...but a perfect time...no, not so much.
Jewrican Factoid #2: Despite my thing for those country boys from the Midwest, I have indeed been on JDate, but invariably the men would say, "Wow, so hot...but you're not Jewish, too bad." Really? You get to decide what I am? Seems like a lot of responsibility for someone so short. (Zing!)