The past couple of days I’ve been exploring the impact of which activities we choose to spend our time pursuing on effectiveness. Now I’m gonna put on my Minute Movement hat.
Personally (and I’m sure for a lot of you can relate) when I feel overwhelmed one of the first things that I give up is exercise. When I stop being intentional about living healthfully I find myself caught in internet rabbit-holes, watching more television, and eating too much (especially snacking on high carb garbage late at night when I should just go to bed). Those indiscretions make my energy drop and I get less done and before I know it I’m stuck in a vicious cycle of ineffectiveness (yet again).
When Aaron first came up with the concept of Minute Movement I wasn’t exactly a willing participant. Even though I could see that his shape was changing drastically while he still got to sleep in and get things done, I felt that I was too busy to interrupt MY tasks every hour to exercise. I insisted that my way of doing things was to put on my blinders and focus completely on one task until I was finished and that even one minute’s deviation would drastically damage my effectiveness. Don’t even get me started on how many times I told Aaron that I would NOT stop in the middle of the grocery store to do one minute of squats (seriously, sometimes I don’t know how he puts up with me). Every time my timer sounded I’d simply dismiss it with mounting irritation.
Then one day Aaron and I were running errands together and his timer sounded (I’d deactivated mine by that point) and Aaron invited me to take one minute for myself.
A minute for myself.
Seriously?
Could I DO that?
what if I did that?
So I did the exercise with him, sitting in the car, before we ran into our next appointment (envisioning a mini beach vacation for some reason). And from that point on I looked at Minute Movement differently. Instead of piling it with all of the other things that I should do (but didn’t) I could just do this one thing little to improve my life (well, two things actually, one was opening my mind a little bit).
If you don’t actually do your movements – that’s okay (I hope you start doing them at some point but it’s okay today) but please take care of yourself. Walk around the block, play with the kids, take the stairs, whatever it takes to move your body.
Doing that one vital thing will change your life.
Make Your Minutes Matter!