Monday, July 9, 2018

It's Okay To Push Yourself

Sometimes our lists of things to do can be daunting. There's always outdoor work that needs to be done at home. There's an  'IN' box at work that is almost always full. Even the magnetic notepad on the side of the fridge for the next trip to the grocery store ALWAYS seems to have something written on it. There are days when you might want to just collapse when you get home and say 'enough is enough', but then you push yourself to do one or two more chores before you call it a night.

Why do we always have something to do? Great question; probably because we write our own To Do lists (at least that's been my problem). I am a glorified, semi-professional list-maker! I always have things to tend to (but who doesn't?). My problem is that I need to trust myself to keep track of it all and hopefully not let anything slip through the cracks of a busy day. I trust myself to do my best to get everything done (in a reasonable amount of time), but I can admit that I am human. On a busy day my memory isn't going to be fool proof ... so I make lists. If I don't get something done today I will revise my list this evening and it will be there tomorrow as a reminder that it hasn't gotten done yet. And that's okay. 

We all have busy lives; whether we are young parents juggling jobs and chauffeuring little ones or whether we are older and juggling jobs, a home, and caring for aging parents ... we ALL have things that require our attention. But the truth remains the same; there are still only 24 hours in a day and 7 days in a week. We will still only accomplish as much as time and ability (and sleep) allows for. My husband and I have been in the midst of a month-long backyard landscape overhaul. Out with the old and in the new; twenty years in a house will do that. We looked at the next step in our project and realized we had a small window of non-90 degree weather for a 48 hour period, so we tackled planting 19 shrubs! Trust me there were moments when we looked at each other's sunburned faces and dirty knees and thought, 'We're done! We can't do any more today.', but then we pushed ourselves and got it done and guess what? Today the temperature is back to 90 degrees and this stage of our project is complete.

It's okay to push ourselves when we're close to giving up; when it's the last two miles of a marathon, when three out of four walls are freshly painted, when we only have one more store to go in to finish up the Christmas shopping, or when you only have a week left of a medical treatment. When you set your goal and you see the finish line on the horizon, dig deep and just go for it. You are almost there! You've got nothing to lose and everything to gain. 

When is the last time you pushed yourself to accomplish something big? 

What was it and how did it go?


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