Greetings and Salutations, Blog Readers!

Today, I am writing to you as someone who has continued their progress and has gotten closer to the life they want to lead!

As you may recall from previous blogs, I have been hard at work undoing my raising, and building my own healthy habits, and not settling for complacency.

I have been slowly working on getting up earlier, to accomplish more before work starts. I want to be able to greet the day with morning yoga, run through some floor workout stuff with my yoga ball and resistance bands etc, before hitting the cardio and finishing up my work out with some miles on my stationary bike or treadmill. I would like to do this daily, or at least every workday, with weekend workouts being in the afternoon. (I know it is best to not sleep in on the weekends but small changes, right now, sleeping in is a joy I give myself, in the future I will maybe revisit this)

Yesterday I woke up at 5, and today, 4:45. My goal is to get to 4:00 AM wake up time, which should give me enough time to do a full work out, get ready for work, and make breakfast/coffee.

Slowly but surely, I get closer to my goal time. I don’t want to cause burn out, and Atomic Habits teaches us to make incremental changes for lasting change, so that is what I have been doing.

I did wake up at 4:00 AM but I didn’t want to get out of bed, despite knowing I should have just gotten up.

I didn’t though, and instead got up at 4:45. I need to start listening to my body more, since I could have easily gotten up at 4:00, but chose not to, even though my body was clearly ready to get up, and my end goal is to get up at 4:00.

Tomorrow I may set my alarm for 4:45, or maybe 4:30, and see how I do, and next week I will be building on that to hopefully wake up by 4:00 AM to do a full workout, by the end of next week, and then, of course, continue to do so every weekday, so I can get into much better health, and be in a better place physically and mentally. My goals this year aren’t just to be healthier, they are to do things that require me to be healthier, so I need to make sure I do everything needed to serve those goals.

It doesn’t matter if I wasn’t raised to be a hiker, if I wasn’t raised to be in better shape, to prioritize working out, to make choices that lead to healthy living…No one but me should decide my lifestyle and habits.

And to truly embrace that means making choices that lead to the habits and lifestyles I want, and to not stay stuck in the way I was raised to be.

I do not want to be lazy, I do not wish to be in bad health, so I am doing everything I can to make the choices needed to be the person I want, to choose the habits and lifestyle I want. No one but me will pick the life I want, and no one but me should.

I don’t know if this is a good time to offer a lesson for you all, but I do hope you are making choices that serve YOU and your desires, and not living the way you always have based on your upbringing. If that is the way you want to be, then awesome, but if you don’t like it? I hope you find yourself changing things until the life you lead is the life you want. Everyone deserves to live the life they want to live, and not settle for the same ole same ole simply because they have never known any different.

I was definitely not raised in a house of people who woke up early to work out, who ate healthy food with healthy portions. I was not raised to take care of yourself. My mother always pushed for fast showers, literally mocking long showers and praising short ones. If you can get in and out in under three minutes, she is happy.

But like…It doesn’t serve me to shortchange my own self-care. Those are choices she makes – and not based on water consumption either, since water isn’t that expensive, and a ten minute shower is hardly going to make a difference. My mom never prioritized self-care, things like taking a long shower, doing your hair and makeup if you like to, doing a face mask. While that may be how SHE wants to live, it isn’t how I want to live. I like to spend much of my spare time serving my own needs and goals. Taking showers or baths, taking care of my hair, my skin routine, working out, eating healthy, investing my time in myself, these things all serve me and my goals.

I do not have to be beholden to the way my parents are. If it works for them, cool, but it doesn’t work for me. My parents are content working their jobs, taking care of their house and hobbies, and not investing any more time to their continued growth or goals. And that is fine for them. My dad has his gun stuff, my mom her crafting, and that works for them.

I want to not only have my crafting I do, like knitting, (or candle/soap making like I once did), and my reading and my hiking, but I also have a large desire to publish my writing, to bring in an income, a side hustle as it were, with the words I spin. Maybe publish some pictures I take on my travels and adventures. I want to invest my time and money to serve my future. I want to live in different places than they do, travel more, hike and camp, etc.

It’s okay that I wasn’t raised that way. It isn’t okay to not make my choices for myself. In the end, no one but us make the choices for how we will live, even if we were raised a certain way…so pick the life you want and go for it.

So, incrementally, I am making changes, and building the life I want. And this is another blog on that journey.

Thanks for reading,

Abbi