Our old friend, Rationalization

Good fine day to my bloggy friends. I am riding an endorphin high this morning. School starts back in a week and so this week, one of my goals is to get in the habit of getting around in the morning so that I can get Lauren up and started and then get out the door to the gym so I can get a work out in, get home and showered and then get out the door for my first class of the day on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. I don't have to be in class until 11 on those days, so my goal is to get up at 5, coffee made and drank by 5:45, then get Lauren started on waking up and getting out of bed. My goal is out the door no later than 6:15. Get to the gym by 6:30. Weights lifted, running/biking/whatever cardio I feel necessary that day done by 7:45, back to the house by 8 and showered and out the door to Fayetteville by 9 is the goal.

All this is doable, but I need to take steps to make it happen as seamlessly as possible. Why you ask? Because I am the king of rationalization. If I want to find a way to not do something, I can attach a very convincing argument as to why it is impossible for me to do the necessary activity in a second! I am working on that, but until I am better at it, I am taking some steps to try to cut my old buddy rationalization off at the pass.

1. I am getting Lauren an alarm clock. a real alarm clock, not the joke of an alarm clock she has that stops going off after 1 minute and isn't loud enough to annoy you out of bed EVER. I am going to set it for 5:45 and when it goes off, I will go assist it at first. But once I get Lauren coherent enough to realize she needs to be getting around, I need to jet.

2. I am going to make a new habit of laying out the clothes I will be wearing to the gym and to school the night before. This will take 10 minutes off my morning almost immediately.

3. We recently got our garage door fixed and it works splendidly! However, now the remotes do not. Add to that that I have a great deal of fitness equipment I am not using in the garage and I have a cramped garage area. I mention this because part of my plan to stay on track is that I want to use my garage for what it was meant, to park cars in! It is the winter and that means the very real possibility of frost on the windows in the morning. If I was to have a vehicle parked in the garage, as well as a garage door remote, well then I would save myself the time I would need to get a car ready to go first thing in the morning since it is warm and frost free right from the start.

4. I think I need to find something easy to reheat and chow down on before I head to the gym. My new found and awesome habit of not eating after supper is great, but it makes me wake up HONGRY!! in the morning. I need something to make my belly not be griping at me, but also that will not get me acidy in the morning. This will be a work in progress I am sure for sometime.

5. A little help from the Big Guy upstairs is being requested to help me keep a good attitude about my soon to be busy schedule again. One of the things I think about regularly when I am busy and going 100 mph is all the days I was sitting in my 1 bedroom apartment, watching tv, surfing the net and wishing I had a life. I credit my loneliness and lack of a life with making me so dang fat to begin with. Eating was the one joy I had and I developed an unhealthy relationship wit food because of my non hectic schedule. So this crazy life is by far better than the old one! I just have to keep remembering that God has blessed me with a wonderful family and many great opportunities that requre a lot of hard work and perserverance, but in the end I will be able to glorify His name with the opportunities these tasks will afford me!

Sorry this blog is a bit less rah rah than usual. I wanted to get these thought down in black and white and make them real so that I take positive steps to make them happen. That is another lesson I learn. Thoughts and wants are just arbitrary until they are written down, then they become real and that usually motivates us to do something about them. Why do you think list making is such an effective tool?

Hope everybody has a great day!