Lets be honest mamas, how much of your life is spent being proactive verses reactive? My professional life requires me to be reactive 100% of my workday. I see the misfortunes of the clients I help daily, so I spend my personal time being proactive to avoid and minimize risk as much as possible. Don’t I sound like a fun person to hang out with? 

Or at least I like to THINK of myself as proactive.

I have shared before, how much I love my fit bit. (insert free advertising here) The daily goals are a source of great motivation AND frustration.  I have mastered the daily steps, floors and miles goals. But the calorie and 250 hourly step goals remain a source of frustration. How is it that I can go above my step and mile goals and I STILL cannot reach my calorie goal????  I can’t ‘will’ myself to burn more calories.

I am without excuse with the hourly goal. I certainly can take 250 steps an hour. I even get a helpful hourly wrist buzz at the end of each hour when I am about to fail at my hourly 250-step goal. Each time the buzz happens, I have every intention of standing up right then and there to walk. Inevitably, get a phone call, or I try finishing one more task that requires just one more minute. Then I BLINK and I have lost that hourly goal, and I fail. This happens over and over, hour after hour.

So what was my solution? Ignorance is bliss! When I couldn’t improve my 250 hourly step goal, I hid that goal on my Fit bit dashboard. If I can’t see it, than I am not failing. Sound logic, are you with me mamas? Is this proactive or reactive?

One day I had a fit bit epiphany!  Why not get my 250 steps at the beginning of the hour? Remarkably this new, SIMPLE, proactive approach WORKED! This literally took YEARS for me to trying the old way. The new way was an instant success.  

I realized a pattern in my life. I was using the same ignorance approach with my baby loss grief: If I didn’t think about my babies, I wouldn’t cry. This didn’t work. If I allowed work to distract me, I wouldn’t cry. This didn’t work. Then much like my fit bit epiphany of trying something new. I had my own grief epiphany. YEARS after my baby loss, I finally ‘surrendered’ and joined a Christian grief share group. That decision laid the foundation for my healthy healing journey. 

Mamas, we were not meant to do life alone, neither were we meant to grieve alone. Whether you are proactive or reactive, focus on what you can control and what you want to change. I can’t will my body to burn more calories, so I have to let that goal be. But I can take 250 steps an hour. I am the sole obstacle to achieving that goal.  It is a New Year mama: a perfect time to try something new. JUST. DO. SOMETHING.