Tag: motivation

What Really Matters

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I was going to send out a wrap-up email about what I learned from No Excuses November this month. I would have included my trials and tribulations peppered with funny anecdotes and Allison-style self-deprecation.

But last week, I read something that made me change my mind.

One of our NoExNos Ashley shared this via Facebook status update:

November 30th. Today marks the day that I have not had a single alcoholic beverage the whole month of November (I didn’t even give in on Thanksgiving when I really really wanted a glass of wine!). As of today, I am down 5 pounds! (I have a lot more to go to reach my goal…but I’m pretty happy with 5 for now) I am going to continue working out… and if I do drink, I will limit myself to only drinking on special occasions. 
 
I am so thankful for Mahdis G for introducing me to my new friend Allison Baker. Without her telling me and Jami about NoExNo that we participated in, I don’t know when I ever would have started this path to a new me! 
 

Today I am happy. I feel good and I am looking forward to continue pushing myself to be a better me. Raising my cup of coffee for a toast– To No Excuses November! 

 

As much as NoExNo started out as a way for me to force myself to write, I now understand that it had a much greater impact. For me, seeing this status update changed the way I viewed my NoExNo success. Yes, I was happy that I made my word count, but seeing how NoExNo encouraged Ashley to change the course of her life (she also quit smoking, which she didn’t include in her post) is incredibly humbling and moving.

It doesn’t matter if anyone or no one met their goals this month. Even if you simply signed up for the emails and did nothing after that, know that you were still a big piece of what happened this month. People were encouraged. People were motivated. People were changed.

What a beautiful journey this has been with all of you. And I mean ALL of you.

I hope you learned something about yourself this month. I hope you endeavored to do something you didn’t think you could do, even if you didn’t end up doing it. You are brave for even entertaining the idea of accomplishing something this November. I hope that you will continue to make and achieve your goals into the new year (and BEYOND).

Guest Pep Talk (Devora Zauderer): The Importance of Self-Care

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When we’re young, our parents take care of us. That’s the deal – we are adorable and precocious and loving, and our parents wipe our tears and bandage our boo-boos and generally tell us that we’re the best thing to happen to the world since sliced bread.

When we grow up, go to college, move out, our parents still take care of us – when we are hurt or need to get our wisdom teeth out, they make us chicken soup and always say yes when we need someone to drive us home from the doctor. When we come home for the holidays, they cook and make a fuss about our ever-changing lives and hug us. And if we’re very lucky, they take care of us in a myriad of big and small ways every day – spending time with us, helping us out financially when we’re in a tight spot, and always encouraging us to be ourselves no matter what that looks like.

We all have varying degrees of comfort with asking for help and care from our parents. Some of us expect it and take it for granted, some of us are awkward and shy. But one thing is always certain: that this is normal, to ask for love and receive it unconditionally from one’s parents.

If we are able to accept that love and that help from an outside source, what happens when we extend that love to ourselves from somewhere inside us?

Here’s what happens: we become someone overflowing with love and energy. We can then channel that energy into positive growth.

I have always been the kind of person who pushes against my own limits. More accurately, I’ve always been stubborn and angry that I have to have limits, that sometimes I just hit a wall, that I can’t keep going forever or always always always do better. Sometimes I am guilty of being that person who is so busy or angry or tired that I forget to eat (which of course only makes it worse). Sometimes I used to even deprive myself of good things intentionally if I felt like I hadn’t “earned” them.

But there’s one thing I’ve learned that tracks with me along pretty much everything I do now – that we need to reward ourselves just for existing every day! I can’t stress enough how much self-care is an essential part of reaching any goal. When you are feeling down on yourself, do something nice that makes you feel more positive and more courageous. When you are feeling discouraged, do something that reminds you of everything you’re capable of. And when you are just down in the dumps, do something that makes you smile.

Here are some of my favorite self-care methods for when you’re at home and need some comfort or some reassurance:

  • Make and drink a steaming cup of good-smelling tea! Pick tea you love the smell of. My current favorites are Numi Moroccan Mint, Trader Joe’s Pomegranate White Tea and Yogi Egyptian Licorice.
  • Take a nap. We don’t always have the opportunity to do this, but on weekends or days off take the opportunity to allow yourself to sleep as much as you need. Try to wake up early and take a short nap in the early afternoon, around 1 or 2. I’ve noticed that my optimal nap time is 1.5 hours – something about REM cycles or whatnot. Test it out – see what nap length makes you feel the least groggy and the most energized.
  • Call a lifeline. Call someone who makes you feel so good about yourself, who loves you unconditionally. This might be a parent, a sibling, another family member, or a friend. I’d recommend calling as opposed to anything else, even if you’re not much of a phone person, just because the connection is so immediate – you call and they pick up. Hearing my sister’s voice after a long day tends to make me feel like I can conquer the world.
  • Take a moment to scan your body. Do you have any pressing needs? Are you hungry or thirsty? Does anything hurt? Do you need to shower or pee? Take care of those needs as soon as you can and I promise you will feel some relief. Revel in taking care of your body so it can take care of you!
  • Don’t push. This is a little more of an abstract self-care tool, but – notice when you are resistant to something. If you can probe that feeling and move past it, awesome. But don’t push! If your resistance is there and it’s real, accept it. It’s probably there for a reason.
  • Put on something that makes you feel SPARKLY! Wear your favorite dress or a jazzy suit for when you go out to run those errands. Put on sparkly eye makeup and sit down to your computer with some pizzazz. Put on your favorite, most brightly-colored workout clothes and maybe that’ll help get your booty in motion.
  • Crank up the tunes.Sometimes when stress is all around, the best way to care for and nurture yourself is just to LET IT GO! I love to dance it out – pump up whatever gets you going and move yo’ body. Here are some of my faves:
  • Crank DOWN the tunes! Sometimes silence can be such a gift to yourself. Pop in those earplugs, sit back and relax.
  • Laugh at something. Laughter is PROVEN to be good for you. Plus, don’t your abs hurt after laughing too much? That means it’s working. 😉 Take a break from being 100% “serious business” and let yourself relax. It’ll energize you for diving back in later on.
  • Spend some time with a cute animal.
  • Make a list of things that were good about that day. I always get a little annoyed when someone tells me to write a “gratitude list.” Like, “this is a list of all the things that I should be grateful for or else I am an ungrateful hussy.” No, I write lists of things that make me happy, even if it’s something fleeting. Like if someone smiles at me on the subway – that makes it onto the list. Or if I make a really awesome collage that I love, that goes on the list. Or I eat some fresh-baked bread – yup, that’s on there. It’s a way to tally all the good things that happen to you during any given day, and know that they’re there even if you’re demoralized about something else. That, my friends, is real gratitude.
  • ABOVE ALL ELSE: TELL YOURSELF THAT YOU LOVE YOU! We don’t compliment ourselves nearly enough. Take a moment, tell yourself how much you rock, and do your best to believe it.


Even when there are other sources of nurturing and love in our lives, it’s our job to also take care of ourselves. And the more we can love and cherish and pamper ourselves, the more amazing things we will be able to go out there and create.

How do YOU take care of yourself? Please share!

Guest Pep Talk (Autumn Jernigan): Keep Moving Forward

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I like to collect quotes. I actually have 9 journals full of them. I have quotes for all occasions and I really can carry on an entire conversation composed of quotes.

My favorite quotes come from my favorite person: Walt Disney.

Did you know that Walt Disney never graduated from High School? And yet he created the second most recognized symbol in the world (after Coca-Cola)? As well as the first cartoon with sound. The first cartoon movie with color. The first full length animated movie. The first theme park (not to be confused with an amusement park). The first steel roller coaster. The first audio animatronic.

He said such great things like “If you can dream it, you can do it.” And “All our dreams can come true if we have the courage to pursue them.”

My favorite quote is this: “Around here however, we don’t look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things because we’re curious. And curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.”

My favorite part about this quote is that it was Walt Disney’s truth.

If I’m honest, I have a tendency to look back. To dwell on what was or what might have been. To base my present with what’s happened in the past. To not believe that things will get better because of what’s happened before.

It’s hard, because your life may not be what you expected, or it can totally suck, or there’s something you want to change and that’s why you’re participating in NoExNo. But you’re not alone. We’re here with you, fighting alongside you. And someday, you can look back and see that you were strong enough to endure this.

Walt Disney had his share of hard knocks too. He lived through the Great Depression, both World Wars. All the money he made he put back into his company, and for most of his life was flat broke. And yet, through it all, he really lived by what he said, he kept moving forward.

Did you know that before he created Mickey Mouse, he was making cartoons with Oswald the Lucky Rabbit? But because he didn’t have the know-how he needed, he signed a contract with a loophole. A loophole that allowed the manager to take it away, even though Walt himself had written, created and drawn all of the Oswald the Lucky Rabbit shorts. But, he didn’t give up. It was on the train from his New York meeting that he lost Oswald that he drew Mickey Mouse.

Did you know that the bank wouldn’t give Disney a loan for Disneyland? They thought it was going to fail. And on opening day it did. The toilets didn’t flush, there was no running water, ALL of the rides broke down and it was so hot that the asphalt melted and women got their high heels stuck in it. But today, it’s the second tourist destination in the world. Second only to Walt Disney World.

And I think about what one man accomplished, without a college degree, with all of the trouble that he met up with, and I think to myself that if he can do it, I can do. He had lots of reasons to give up, lots of excuses he could make, but he didn’t. And if he didn’t, then I won’t, because my excuses aren’t near as good as his would have been.

As this new week dawns, I will remember this. I will not make excuses and I will not give up, no matter how much I would like to. I will Keep Moving Forward. What about you?

STOP IT.

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This is one of my favorite comedy sketches of all time.  It’s amazing in its own right, but I also think it carries a relevant message for No Excuses November.

In the sketch, a woman goes to a therapist to address her fear of being buried alive in a box. The therapist listens to her for three minutes and then prescribes her a two-word mantra: STOP IT!

The woman goes on to tell him about all of her other issues, to which he offers the same solution: STOP IT!

While it is slightly naive to believe that all of our problems can be fixed that way, I think there is some value to the misguided therapist’s mantra.

A few years ago, I was complaining to a friend about the state of my life. I hated my job, I didn’t have much of a social life and I was feeling generally directionless and lost. Instead of telling me something like, “It’s okay, Allison. It will all happen when it happens,” she told me that the only person getting in the way of my own happiness was ME.

It was hard to hear but also made me wonder why no one had put it that way before. It wasn’t the economy. It wasn’t my job. It wasn’t my social or relationship status– it was ME.

It’s easy to shake your fist at the world and make yet another excuse for why you aren’t getting your work done on time. Or why you have an obscene amount of unread emails (guilty as charged). Or why you haven’t been able to lose the weight. The hard part is being honest with yourself about why you’re really stalling. And then doing something about it.

Granted, not everything in our lives is within our control, but think about how often we get in our own way. Sometimes WE are the obstacle.

You’re unhappy?

STOP IT.

You’re insecure about your body?

STOP IT.

You’re in a bad relationship?

STOP IT.

You’re making excuses for X, Y & Z?

STOP IT.

Are you letting yourself and your excuses get in the way of living a satisfied life?

Well, STOP IT (OR I’LL BURY YOU ALIVE IN A BOX)!

Guest Pep Talk (Hilary Frasier): We Are Worth It

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Hi y’all, my name is Hilary and I have something to share. I’ve REALLY been struggling with this whole NoExNo thing. My goal has been to successfully complete this quarter of graduate school, ending the first week of December. And it has proven to be quite a challenge.

Some of you know this, but due to a lot of life circumstances, I am basically doing the work of three quarters this one quarter in order to get back on track for graduating. And so far, it has not been going well. I have not been successful with this goal. In fact, instead of catching up, I’ve been falling terribly behind in my work. To the point that I’m concerned that I might be done with my attempt to attain my Masters Degree.

I’ve been full of excuses as to why it’s impossible for me to reach this feat. I’ve been blaming my current situation on all kinds of things. But tonight, while writing all of my excuses & blaming in my journal, I got fed up. And as if a light bulb went off, I had this thought come to me:

 “I am worth living my life successfully.“

 I am now committing to forgetting all that has happened before; all the people, places, and things I could blame my current situation on. And instead, for the next three weeks, I will be repeating this mantra incessantly:

 “I am worth living my life with no excuses. I am worth living my life successfully. I AM WORTH BELIEVING IN ME!”

Because at the end of the day, all of my excuses are really reasons that I’m using to tell myself I’m not worth the time, effort, or energy it takes to be successful. And that crap just is not true!! I can put in the work, I can lose some sleep, and I CAN finish this quarter successfully.

I don’t know if this will help any of you, but it has sure helped me so I wanted to share. Because if I am worth reaching my goals, then SO ARE YOU!!

What’s My Goal Again?

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The whole reason I even came up with No Excuses November was to motivate myself to move forward on a project I had been stalled on. I thought that if I was working on it everyday, I would have something to show for by the end of November.

My great master plan for NoExNo was to write a screenplay. My goal of 4 pages a day, for 30 days, was my attempt to write 120 pages in November. 120 pages is the length of a feature-length screenplay.

In the beginning of NoExNo, everything was going just as planned. Almost all of my writing had to do with the screenplay. Then I started working on Pep Talks and emails, and I began shifting my energy toward those instead.

Even still, I found that drafting Pep Talks and emails proved beneficial to my daily writing routine. And by “routine” I mean “sit down to write at 7, don’t actually start until 10, and finally finish at close to should-have-been-asleep-hours-ago o’clock.” In any case, it was nice to add a little variety to what I was working on for the month.

However, as of today, I haven’t touched my screenplay for five days. What have I been working on instead? Personal essays, guest articles, a flood of superfluous Facebook status updates (sorry), and NoExNo mail.

But something interesting happened. In the midst of trying to work on ONE project, I came up with and worked on MANY. In fact, I even came up with two new stories I wanted to write.

So what does this mean? Does it mean I’m a failure for not accomplishing what I originally set out to do? I’m reluctant to say yes.

While my purpose of doing NoExNo was to make significant strides in my screenplay, I still wrote. I created. I thought of ideas I had never entertained before. I worked and I saw results. It’s hard for me to see that as a bad thing.

From what I’ve seen happen within the group, a similar thing has occurred. We are changing our goals, or rather, letting them change as we understand them better. Maybe you are making your goal smaller, or maybe you are adding even more to your plate. It doesn’t matter– because you still have goals you are working toward.

And at the end of the day, isn’t that was this is all about?

****

Check out an article I wrote about No Excuses November for Girls on the Grid!

Showing Up.

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It is scary to have 1000 words ahead of you and no idea where they’re going to come from. Especially at 11:34 p.m., which is exactly when I am writing my first (productive) words of the day.

Even if you don’t share the same writing goal as me, I’m sure you can relate, in some way, to finding absolutely nothing inside of you when you need to put the pedal to the metal (for example, I first wrote that as “petal to the medal,” which makes no sense at all).

I’m not supposed to be writing this. I’m supposed to be working on the very project I set out to work on this month. And yet, I just want to make my word count tonight so I can go to bed.

These are the things I’ve been doing for the last two hours: Check Facebook. Post to Facebook. Check Twitter. Post to Twitter. Think about how tired I am. Check Facebook again (no notifications). Start to write. Stop. Make snack. Conduct a short debate on which will be my nightcap: coffee or tea? Come to the conclusion that such a debate is moot because coffee always wins. Start writing a NoExNo email. Become suddenly and inexplicably fascinated with what that one girl from high school is up to. Realize I am nowhere near where I need to be before I can go to sleep, and I start writing this.

Somewhere closer to 12 a.m., I wish I was stronger. That after a busy day, I could just sit down and create masterful and poignant work every single night.

So I check Twitter again. This time, I see that my friend Dan has tweeted the following quote:

“Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working” – Pablo Picasso

And then I get it. Tonight I was just going through the motions.  I was only writing so I could check my 1000 words off my check-list and be done with it already, quality be damned.

I was phoning it in. And yet, I was still doing the work.

Have you ever had your best workout when you least wanted to go to the gym? Have you ever wanted to stay in but then went out and had the night of your life? Have you ever found inspiration from something you did by mistake?

You have to show up to reap your reward.

The point is: unless you do the work, you’ll never know what will come of it. For better or worse, you owe yourself a shot at doing something great.

It starts with showing up.

Now do the work.

The Value of Short-Term Goals

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Let’s face it. It’s easy to let life get in the way of the things we want to do. We may want to go on a vacation, we may have an idea for a play, we may want to lose those extra pounds, we may want to start a business, we may want to make healthier choices for our lifestyles.

But we don’t follow through. Instead, we let day after day go by without making steps toward who we want to be.

Sometimes, thinking about the forever-ness of a goal can be daunting.  What if I never get to eat a pastry again? What if I find out the premise of my screenplay sucks? What if removing alcohol from my diet makes me realize I’m better off without it?

The truth is, making a commitment to self-improvement is scary.

I think that’s why the concept of making short-term goals is so appealing. In a sense, you are biting off just a small chunk of the giant Life Bagel you’ve been too afraid to endeavor to finish (apologies for this metaphor for those of you trying to lose weight).

This month (via No Excuses November), you are testing your own limitations in a safe and non-committal way.

As they say in What About Bob: “Baby steps.”

It’s also easy to lose sight of the value of a short-term goal. Just because you are only committing to do (or not do) something for a month doesn’t diminish its value to you in the long-term. The most important thing you are doing this month is proving to yourself that you are stronger than you think– if even for 30 days.

It is entirely possible that on December 1, we’ll all go back to our excuse-heavy lifestyles. It’s also entirely possible that we’ll go back even sooner than that. But from the stories I’ve heard from you and the progress I’ve seen, I am confident that if we work hard, NoExNo doesn’t just have to be a blip on our radars.

You don’t need me to stop yourselves from making excuses (as much as I’d like to take all the credit). All you need is to STOP making excuses and START taking action.

Yes, it will be hard. Sometimes, it will suck. Most of the time, you will be happy you did it. I said MOST of the time!

I challenge you to think of ways to extend your short-term goals into long-term ones. I’m not sure what that looks like yet, but I suppose we have 30 days to decide that.

Baby steps.

When the WORST Time is the BEST Time.

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For a lot of you, November is a busy month. I had a conversation with a friend yesterday discussing all the reasons No Excuses November happened to have occurred in the worst time ever for me.

This month my hours increased at work. This month I’m running 35+ miles per week for marathon training. This month my parents move out of my childhood home. This month I have various “social obligations” to attend to (e.g. day drinking, night drinking, day into night drinking). So things are pretty busy even without my NoExNo goal looming.

Hearing this, my friend told me, “You don’t have to do this. Don’t kill yourself because you know people are watching. It’s okay if one night you don’t write 4 pages. No one needs to know.”

But that’s not the point of this at all. I’m not doing this because people are watching (hello, people!), I’m doing this because I NEED to. I need to learn that it’s possible to write and make progress even when it feels like I can never catch a break. Even when I can’t keep my eyes open. Even when all I want to do is watch every episode of “Arrested Develpment.” Twice. Even when I think that every word I type is rubbish.

What is the main obstacle you are facing this month? Are you overwhelmed? Or are you inspired by the challenge?

There is never going to be a month better than this one because this is the month you’ve chosen to start something. In fact, I think it is the best month for that very reason. If you can accomplish something when things are crazy, you have NO excuse not to do it any other time.

Now is probably the worst time to start something. But it’s also the BEST time.

You’ve started something this month. Now finish it.

A Month Without Excuses

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I am BLOWN AWAY by the response No Excuses November has elicited. This email is going out to 38 people. Yesterday morning, I hadn’t even written the introduction email I sent out yesterday. I didn’t think that so many people, just like me, were tired of making excuses. You are getting this email because you want to make a change in your life. And if you’re my mom, you are getting this email because I shamed you into participating because your 80 year old mother was doing it (hi Mimi!).

No matter the reason you decided to reach out and ask to be added to this list of NoExNos (that’s a working abbrev), you have decided to make November a month without excuses.

Have you thought of what you want to commit to do (or not do) this month? While some of the people I talked to were still undecided about what they wanted to accomplish this month, a LOT of you knew exactly what you needed to do. Like you had been sitting on that ONE thing you keep letting slip away into Excuse Land (the place where dreams go to die). So if you haven’t chosen your goal yet, let your gut decide. Try not to over-think it. Make it simple. Make it tangible. Make it count.

Today someone asked me what the point of this was. Wouldn’t we have the same excuses now that we did two days ago and will have in December?

Yes. We will always have excuses. November isn’t this special, magical month. Unless we make it that way. This month, we are testing what we can do in a month without excuses.

What if you went to the gym even when you were tired? What if you edited your essay until 2 in the morning on a work night? What if you stuck to your running goals even when it was raining? What if you wrote 4 pages of a screenplay with pen and paper because your computer doesn’t have enough memory?

You will always have excuses. But let’s see what happens when we think about why we’re REALLY making them. Are we afraid to fail? Are we afraid to succeed? Are we just lazy? Let this month teach you about WHAT YOU WANT and WHAT YOU ARE CAPABLE OF.

In The War of Art, screenwriter Steven Pressfield wrote:

“The most pernicious aspect of procrastination is that it can become a habit. We don’t just put off our lives today; we put them off till our deathbed. Never forget: This very moment, we can change our lives. There never was a moment, and never will be, when we are without the power to alter our destiny. This second, we can turn the tables on Resistance. This second, we can sit down and do our work.”

What are you waiting for?

It’s time to give up on giving up.