Obstacles

In the past when I have hit obstacles during an attempt to start up a new workout regime most of the time I end up giving up if they don’t “give way” easily or quickly.  I have allowed an obstacle of having sick kids the past few weeks to grind my newest attempt to a complete stand still.  I did throw caution to the wind on Thanksgiving Day to participate with my family in the Mesa Turkey Trot and take baby (all bundled up of course) on the 1-mile walk even though he is a little congested so that we could also have Caleb participate in the race.  It was a good family outing and a fun new tradition to start, but I am not sure when I will be able to get back to the gym because now Caleb is sounding sick again.  He started with a cold two weeks ago and I thought he was getting better when baby started up, but alas he is back at the super hoarseness.  Caleb has a physical abnormality in his trachea that normally doesn’t slow him down, but he develops a nasty sounding cough about every 2 months that sticks around for weeks on end.  Most of that time he isn’t actually sick, but because he sounds so horrible I can’t take him out much out of respect for all those other mothers trying to keep their kids healthy.  After 4 years of raised eyebrows when they hear his hacking-up-a-lung cough and countless attempts to explain that he is not sick it is just easier to try not to take him many places.  So because I can’t really take my little boys out I have not worked out.

In the past I would let this excuse continue until I finally give up on trying to keep a regime, but I don’t want to do that this time, so what is my solution?  I am still working on that.  I have an XBOX Kinect at home with a yoga “game” that I suppose I could play, I have never been very good at working out at home.  I am one of those that when I am home I feel like I need to clean or straighten up or do laundry or work on some other project, and if I ignore all those feelings it is to spend time being lazy on the couch in front of the TV, not working up a sweat.  So this is one way I can remedy the exercising with sick kids in the house.  The other thing I guess I could do is to as others for help.  I could get those people that I know and adore that understand that my 4-year-old really isn’t sick to watch the kids while I go on a jog or to the gym.  My problem/obstacle there is that I tend to not want to ask cause I usually feel like a big burden and I do all in my power to not be a burden to others.

The other big obstacle that I suppose I am dealing with is that of allowing my desire for change to out shine my habit of laziness.  This is so not an easy obstacle to overcome.  There are those days that I think if I could sit down and write in my blog every day it would force me to be more accountable because my failures or successes would be out there for others to scrutinize, and I would like to hope that I would have more success than failure that way.  I was all prepared to blog the day after my last post about the difficulty I had on the treadmill at the gym, something I hope to document because I feel it will be a good part of my journey to have written down, I just had such a busy, crazy, hectic day after I did that the best I could do was to record my thoughts in a voice memo on my phone on my way to pick up my kids from school that day. 

That is my other really large obstacle, finding the time to exercise, the time to plan to exercise even.  I am still really struggling to figure out the balance needed in this latest phase of my life.  I have school starting in just over a month and it scares me to death that I am going to get too overwhelmed with everything and quit the exercise and/or schooling to be able to cope.  This is what I have done in the past.  I have wanted to change and improve and grow, but the moment things get hard instead of looking at the not-so-good habits I have and taking some of those out of my life to make room for the new better habits, I stubbornly hold on to the bad and give up on the good.  How to I change to not make this happen?  I am praying that this week I can really strive to begin to confront these obstacles so that I can then begin to overcome them.