This week was pretty bad as far as working towards my goals. I fought myself every step of the way. I was already struggling with my carb cravings when I stepped on the scale to see a number I haven’t seen since a year ago. I knew my weight had gone back up because my clothes were starting to feel snug again.

Funny thing is, seeing my suspicions confirmed by the scale didn’t inspire any motivation. Instead I wanted to shovel hot fudge in my mouth. That wouldn’t help anything. You see, my problem is, eating the right foods and exercising isn’t nearly as fun as getting fat. Being fat stinks, getting fat not-so-much.

Let me just stop here and say this: I’m not looking for a pity party or any motivation even. The funny thing about this all is, it happens in my head. My struggles are internal. You can’t change them and I don’t expect you to. I just have days where I struggle to remember WHY I want to do this so that I can WANT to do it. Sometimes I have a week of those days.

Before I tell you some tips I found helpful, I’ll give you a final update on my January goals:

• Memorizing scripture. I did not memorize the ones listed, but I did achieve this. I memorized at least one scripture per week with my kids. We do this during our morning group-work session.
• Pray daily. I did do this. I did pray daily. {psst, check out that link}
• More water. Did great with this until this week. Funny thing is, if I would just stick with this, it would help with the food issues. I simply don’t have enough room to stuff myself with sweets if I am drinking enough water. I will continue to work on this.
• More veggies. This isn’t going as well as I had hoped. I’ve struggled to include fresh anything in our diets.
• Remove HFCS. Going well. Feels less strange to check labels.

The one thing that I’ve actually had the most success with this month was not even on my radar at first: getting up early. I’ve successfully gotten up by 6:30 every week day for the past two weeks. Now it’s my turn to be the crazy person and tell you that it really does get easier the longer you do it.

The hardest mornings follow the nights my 11 month old gets up to nurse. He’s very busy during the day and doesn’t want to sit still to nurse. So he makes up for it at night. Not an ideal situation for getting good sleep.

Now, some things I found helpful in motivating myself.

Interrupting the whine my inner voice will fall into (I’m just so tired, but I waaaant to, etc.) with a reminder that I have enough time to get my work done, that I WANT to do the things scheduled for my day, and WHY I want to do it. Sometimes I just repeat to myself, just do it. Corny? Yes. Helpful? Sometimes.

I do not mean this to replace the one change you must make, this is in addition to.

Drink a glass of water. Sometimes my fatigue is simply my body telling me I need water.

Pop a pill. No, I’m not talking about prescription drugs here. Sometimes with my glass of water, I’ll take a couple Vitamin D3 and Vitamin C. I’ve noticed a lot of this comes at me when there isn’t much sunshine. Ultimately, I aim to get outside and walk every day, but for now, this is where I am.

Letting go. It’s funny, in my rebellious self, sometimes the only motivation I need to get something done is to give myself permission to NOT do it. Oftentimes, that breaks this mental “gotta do it” weight on my shoulders and I find myself getting the task finished because I can think clearly enough to remember why I wanted to get it done in the first place.

Re-evaluate. Sometimes I’m not ready for a goal I’ve set. Sometimes there is more work to be done before I can work on a task. Reevaluating does not mean I’m giving up, it means I realize that I’m not perfect and sometimes it takes my optimistic, overachiever, loves-to-plan brain a while to realize that. Goals are flexible. Goals are personal. Just because it sounds like a good goal, doesn’t mean it is a good goal for me.

The point of this post is not to give any revolutionary ideas. Clearly. The point of this post is to show that sometimes, most of the time, little things matter much.

The most important thing to remember when reaching for a goal is this: Never give up. Fall, stumble, pity party if you need to, change directions, but get back up and KEEP GOING.

You can do this. After all, if God is for us, who can stop us?

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