30 Day Challenge - Day 23 - avoiding burnout

It's funny, right now everything I chose for my 30 Day Challenge is going swimmingly.   I adore my morning grass time. Today the angel's trumpet is full of blooms. There's nary a stray paper in sight because I spend ten minutes a day corralling the papers so they're not allowed to reproduce.

I'm still so happy to sit with my sketchbook and my super-smooth oil pastels and play on paper. Today I started a portrait of the sweet turtle who lives in the yard. Here's the progress:

But aside from that, I'm bushed.  I could press on and keep working, continuing to ignore my body, leading eventually to a lot more resistance and maybe even illness, and definitely some stress breakouts, or I can go rest.  I'm opting for rest.  I didn't make all these great changes to my life to keep playing the burnout game.

Do you still play the burnout game?  Do you kind of give yourself a break but not really, so that all the pushing and pushing eventually adds up complete body breakdown?  Or are you beginning to listen - to realize that your life is made up of minutes and hours, and how you spend those minutes and hours is how you spend your life?  And that spending minutes and hours pushing and being stressed and harried means living a stressed, harried life?

I'm going to go rest.  And all is well.

30 Day Challenge - Day 22 - mind disregarding body

My mind is completely overriding my body right now, which is screaming for sleep, so I'll keep this brief.  But I want to point out that if you let your mind keep overriding your body day after day, hour after hour, eventually you'll pay the price. All is well here - had a wonderful day.  Even made a lazy sketch of waterfalls. Maybe back to something a little more careful tomorrow.

30 Day Challenge - Day 16 - raising the bar

So funny - we do something we hadn't been good about doing in the past- we consistently do it for over two weeks - and now that it's habit and happens every day, we stop giving ourselves credit and raise the bar. I'm all for raising the bar, unless raising the bar puts living life right back into the overwhelming place it was before the bar was raised.  Because in my previous experience, that leads to abandoning the fabulous original habit.

Here's a question:  Why raise the bar?  What's the motivation behind raising the bar?  How does it feel to imagine raising the bar?  Does it feel like freedom or like overwhelm?

If it feels like overwhelm, ask yourself if what you're doing right now is enough.  Are the changes you're implementing right now enough?  Do you really need to pile on more?  Are you ok with loving yourself and your accomplishments just as they are?

If it feels like freedom, ask yourself what will be different if you add something else to your goals and raise the bar.  Ask yourself if you'll be just as patient and nurturing with yourself as you were with the first challenge.  Promise yourself you'll reevaluate if things start to feel yucky, just like mountaineers climbing Everest have to go back down in altitude over and over as they work toward the summit.

I'm asking myself these questions right now.  I'll let you know what I decide. Here's my appearing to be paint by number (but it's not!) drawing, complete with supportive cat, and photo that inspired it - they're key limes, by the way.

and here I am working on it.  My sweetheart came in with the camera and captured this image.  I like it because when I look at it I feel like an artist, even though I like to do my artwork sitting on the floor...

What are you feeling right now?  Is it time to raise the bar or keep it steady?

30 Day Challenge: Day 9 - rewards?

I'm typing this entry from my favorite coffee shop in New Orleans - Rue de la Course. I have all kinds of computer work to do, and so I've rewarded myself for sticking with this challenge by coming here to work - in fact I'm considering doing a tour of New Orleans coffee shops with wireless in the upcoming weeks - it really helps me keep focused when it's just me, a computer, a table,  a glass of iced tea and a giant slice of almond buttercream cake! Yay! So, here's what's going on with my whimsical cardinals.  Tomorrow I'll do some tweaking of things I'm not quite happy with and then start on something new.  More birds?  Cats?  Abstracts?  Not sure.  But something with color.  I like using all the colors in the box!

And here's my view during grass time today.  It's impossible not to feel relaxed with this view!

So, how are you rewarding yourself?  I know that just completing the challenge each day is a reward, but how else are you treating yourself and taking care of yourself or doing something fun?

30 Day Challenge Day 8 - Black and White or Shades of Grey?

Say you skip a day accidentally or on purpose with something you've been meaning to stick to - a diet, an exercise plan, a 30 Day Challenge... What does your mind do?  Does it immediately go into Chicken Little "OH MY GOD!!! THE SKY IS FALLING!!!" mode?  Does it tell you you're a failure?  Does it tell you to go back to square one - to start over - that anything you did up to this point, no matter how many days in a row, DOES NOT COUNT because you missed a day?

That, my friends, is called black and white thinking.  And according to Martha Beck in The Four Day Win, it's one of the hallmarks of people who have trouble losing weight (or organizing their lives, managing their time, and taming their paper piles!)  It is however, curable, thank goodness.  It's all about recognizing those thoughts.  You just have to watch your cute little Chicken Little mind and tell it to calm down.  You've got this.  One slice of pie or missed yoga class or unattended junk mail stack is not going to bring you down.  You will keep going.  You will be fine.   You will teach your mind to see shades of grey.  All is definitely not lost.

So far I haven't missed a day.  I enjoyed grass time this morning with two cats.  I went through a stack of old photos (we used to get double prints back in the age of film, and that makes for a lot of pictures that really don't need to be saved), and I worked on my whimsical cardinal drawing.

Turns out that's where my thoughts needed looking at! Here's a selection:

"This isn't going to turn out very well." "You don't know what you're doing." "Oh NO!  You're going to wreck it!"  "Real artists would have a plan for this instead of just winging it."  "Are you going to POST that for people to see?  What will they THINK???" "Why didn't you just leave it?"  "OMG."

Oh yes - another hallmark of people who struggle with weight loss, or getting things done, or managing their time, or letting themselves try creative writing or painting, is being critical.  Especially self-critical.  It can really stop you in your tracks.

So I just listened politely to my Chicken Little brain and said, "Thanks so much for your input.  We have to let ourselves mess up.  We have to try things.  It's ok to play.  I don't have plans for a gallery show at the Louvre.  There's no such thing as messing this up - we really don't need to be attached to those cardinals!  We can draw more if we feel like it!  Relax and enjoy!  This is fun!  I'm curious to see how it will all turn out! This isn't a final piece - it is just for us - it's in a sketchbook for goodness sake!  We are playing!  La la la!  Breathe!"

Yes - there's all kinds of black and white thinking to watch for.  If your brain says anything with the word always or never - or even with a version of the verb "to be" - as in "I'm disorganized", "I'm not a good artist", "I'm too heavy"  -- it sounds permanent and it's a sign of black and white thinking or assuming that things that are one way will always be that way- assuming fixed conditions.  What if we replaced those thoughts with, "My desk contains some extra papers." "I learn a lot when I play with art supplies." or "Right now my body has some extra weight." These don't sound as permanent or like they're part of our being - they're just circumstances and they are subject to change. They're not fixed conditions. They offer us many shades of grey to play with.

Here's what's happening with my whimsical cardinals (I spent a lot of the 30 minutes today staring and thinking, and stalling - see above) And here's a view of the sky from my grass time spot:

What kinds of black and white thinking or fixed condition thinking do you find yourself needing to watch for?

P.S.  During the past 6 days of this challenge, I also read all three 50 Shades of Grey books.  I will admit that I was entertained.  And I had no idea the story was ultimately so sweet.  I was prepared for something more 9 1/2 weeks and it was more like Harlequin Romance with a little steamy and kinky thrown in.  And this blog post title is totally a gratuitous reference to the Shades of Grey phenomenon - no doubt! ;)