Finding the Time Part 1: Before we run, we walk

A lot of people ask: How do you do it? How do you find the time to exercise? How are you fitting in the training for this upcoming half marathon? I wrote so much on this topic, that I’ve decided to devote October’s posts to Finding the Time - A Series.

If you’ve not yet started your training journal, it’s a great day to begin. Goal: give yourself five minutes a day this week. Let’s call it your “take 5”. Plan to write in your journal, do some thought downloads, explore a little. (If you’re not sure where to begin, see last week’s post about the Thought Model, keeping a training journal, and how to do a thought download.) If you don’t like to write, or if you don’t want to write, that’s okay. Give yourself five minutes alone somewhere, somehow. A five minute walk is perfect. 

I’ve found that we are great at showing up for our commitments, are we not? Work, spouse, partner, kids, family, friends, volunteer work, you name it... 

But when it comes down to it, to be quite honest, we have a bad habit of blowing ourselves off. Our brain offers a lot of thoughts: “You really don’t have time for this. You could be doing x, y, z. This exercise can wait until you have more time.” Trouble is, we all lead busy lives. There is never going to be a time when there is more time. 

So, I like to reframe these thoughts in this way. I have a commitment to show up for work: a commitment to my colleagues, to my patients. And similarly, I also have a commitment to myself, which is why I am going to show up for myself this week, with five minutes a day.

I know some of you are thinking: “But it’s just five minutes. What’s that going to do?” Exactly. It’s just five minutes. I find that many of us feel like we are on a merry-go-round. We are moving from the moment we wake up until the moment we close our eyelids at night. What would it look like to step off the merry-go-round for a few minutes? I know that there doesn’t seem to be time in the day for “one more thing,” but I promise, it’s just five minutes.

Could you go to bed five minutes earlier, so that you could wake up five minutes earlier before the rest of the household gets up, and give yourself this time? For my sisters in medicine, maybe five minutes to yourself happens with some deep breaths taken in a call room at 4am. Maybe you take a five minute pause in the kitchen right after making everyone’s lunches in the evening.

If you aren’t sure what to write about in your journal, or what to think about during these five minutes, I can offer a few suggestions:

What is your motivation? 

Why do you want to exercise? 

What do you like about exercise? 

Once you delve in, you will then be able to set some realistic short term and long term goals. And once you’ve found five minutes a day, we can work on finding ten minutes a day, and then twenty, thirty. And then, that idea about the race that you’ve always wanted to run? It won’t seem so far-fetched, I promise you. 

I’m determined to help you find the time, or rather, to take back some time in the day for yourself! If you’d like to share your thoughts, or would like some assistance in “finding the time,” I am happy to help: michelle@mindful-marathon.com