Consistency... Breakthroughs Microstep by Microstep

I am allergic to the term “exercise.” The word “habit” is bland and tasteless in my mouth. And “work” feels heavy and uninteresting to my body-mind.

So how in the world would I ever have consistent “habits” around “work” and “exercise”?

The people I engage with typically find me pretty consistent. I show up on time for appointments and circle calls. I take care of my home, pay my bills, etc.

But there were a few key areas where “consistency” felt like an allergen to me.

Exercise. For this I have always had to put it into a different context. Dance, for example, is technically exercise… but I dance for the pleasure of moving my body in surprising ways inspired by music and dance partners. If I “danced for exercise” I just wouldn’t.

The Morning Mile is a catchy name that works to give a focus to 17+ different benefits I want from consistent movement. Today is Day 65 – pretty consistent! It helps that there’s nothing about it that feels like “exercise” – even with a lot of tapping, exercise as an attitude feels icky.

My first invitation here is for us to check in and see if there is something that actually would be an uplift to our energy and vitality that we’ve been avoiding because it is labelled as something we loathe (or at least find distasteful)?

Exercise is one.

What about work?
What about habits that would benefit us… might even give us a breakthrough!?!

Work… showing up as a professional for something that matters

It was Seth Godin who activated this re-frame in me.

  • Showing up… it’s what professionals do. It’s what devoted people do.
  • It’s worth it to bring our energy (and labor) to assert on behalf of ideas that matter.

Seth shows up on his blog everyday. He’s decided that showing up with consistency is what a professional like him does. He understands that to be a professional means to have real skill in managing your focus and energy… even when “you don’t wanna.”

It was when I got clarity that showing up consistently was a skill, and being able to tune to the state of being to write a fresh post here on the center is a skill, I decided to start microstepping my way to a breakthrough.

It’s been 46 days since we opened the Community Center and I’ve made 46 new topics here. I’ve missed some days, which is okay. Other days I’ve written more than one fresh topic. I do not believe that consistency always should mean an uninterrupted streak.

It’s also clear to me, in my own life and working with clients and the emotional freedom community that…

Sharing your creative work matters

Seth’s book called The Practice has shipping (publishing, sharing) creative work as its focus. It was here, again, where Seth helped me reframe the consistency implied by habits (including Bad Habits) into something activating of my energy:

Instead of Habits… Cultivate Practices

Develop Practices (and We-Spaces) that make it easy for you to share your creativity.

I know there’s heartistry in you that we in your community would benefit by you sharing with us.

If you don’t think so, convince me in a reply! And if you want, maybe we’ll do some tapping together on it.

If you do feel that there’s something in you that matters to your heart that you really want to express, consider a microstep that if practiced with consistency could lead to a breakthrough for you… reply and let us support you in your heartistry! We’d love to!

A quick note about the word “breakthrough” –

Love to you :heavy_heart_exclamation:

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Hi Rick,

Bless you so much. When I read that you have this feeling towards exercise like an allergen, I was amused and yet I can relate on other matters - not the exercise per se, but rather the topic. Showing up is a huge thing.

I happen to love and thrive on exercise. Love the endorphin rush, but I’ve had to go through my own battles with exercise from a different way - addiction, injuries, obsession, health. I’ve used EFT, EMDR, prayer, the Bible to help me come to balance with exercise and I’m getting there, but it’s been a journey that is taking years.

June 1, 2015, I decided I was no longer going to bow down to other’s expectations, societies, nor even mine regarding exercise. Because of my passionate love for exercise, it’s resulted in injuries that have kept me down sometimes for months, feeling miserable to not be able to exercise. I repeated this cycle from basically 1984 to 2015, so nearly 30 yrs. Lots of exercise, get injured, physical therapy, no exercise - repeat. It was crazy and I was tired of being on this cycle.

Began praying and what God showed me was that my expectations were too high, unrealistic and I wasn’t listening to my body. What? Exercise is supposed to be good for your body, right? Well, yes and no. I always defined a workout as being at least an hour long and it had to be intense. But, can exercise (like you said with dancing) be something else?

So the lie that I believed was that it had to be long and intense. The other lie was that it had to be long. God popped that idea into my head that why don’t I just make it a goal to get at least ONE minute of exercise/movement/energy work a day and then I can check off that goal (I’m very goal-oriented). And, usually if I start with 1 minute, it leads to more minutes and I’m no longer bound to any limitations with time and can just have fun.

This ONE minute meant that even if I was traveling a lot, super busy, injured, sick, even having had a heart attack, I can get at least ONE minute in for that day. I’ve not missed one day since 1-Jun-2015 (that’s 2,069 consecutive days so far and counting). I’ve gained the freedom from exercise to seriously love and embrace it in a healthy, balanced way. I get injured far less and recover much quicker if I do.

There is such great joy, rather than obsession, about exercise now because I know it can be a real workout that may be as short as one minute or it can be lots of movement like hauling bricks and soil, weeding for my gardening, or can be doing EFT. EFT helps move the energy in my body so that counts. I learned how to redefine and reframe exercise.

Though I’ve known and been tapping for nearly 20 yrs, I saw tapping as a good tool, but IDK why I was never consistent until this past summer. I started in mid-July every day saying I would tap at least a little bit each day. If I couldn’t use my hands to tap, then I could do mental tapping. Six months of tapping every single day, I’m seeing my life changing so much.

Some days I do lots of EFT, other days just a little. I’m really just tapping along with whatever EFT audios I have or videos (that includes some of your stuff too, Rick) and just doing the borrowing benefits thing. I don’t see these one minute wonders, but I do, at some point notice, “Hey, this isn’t so hard to do.” I’m referring to my messy pantry - I bought 2 carts, assembled them and did some organization, decluttering yesterday. But for months it was a mess.

The benefits of daily doing EFT is a little bit of junk removal at a time. How do you drain a pool? One teaspoon at a time. I’m not sure how big my pool is, but after 6 months consistently doing it, I’m feeling much greater freedom in life. And, I don’t just do EFT from tapping scripts and audios, I’ve begun using the tapping points when I pray and/or when I read/study/listen to the Bible or my Bible reading plans. I think it’s helping infusing the Word of God more into my life as well as helping me see the LIES I’ve been believing and living.

If you’re read this far, thank you.

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Thanks for sharing with us! You reflected many aspects of this topic.

  • When our expectations are driving us outside what is realistic and good for our body, we end up be INTENSE but then having to stop because of injury or exhaustion or just “I can’t do it!” Recalibrating for a microstep like 1-minute of exercise brings us back to engaging AND listening. Sometimes 1-minute goes to 5, sometimes 50. The breakthrough is the freedom we get from listening and engaging in what matters for our delight and our health.

  • Making it easy to be successful. One round of EFT Tapping. “A little bit of junk removal at a time.” It’s sustainable, and there’s pleasure in that!

Warm smiles,
Rick

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image
See the book

I have a new habit:

TOUCH my guitar.

It sits in its stand on the way to my desk. Pretty simple to touch it. How can I say no?

And one yes can lead to another…

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Quite a few years ago I realized I wasn’t picking up and playing my guitar at home very often. I thought about this for a bit and realized that some ‘part’ of me felt it was WAY too much work to bend down, unlock the case, flip up the lid, and lift out the guitar. Then when I was done I’d have to go through all those arduous multiple steps in reverse to replace it. Now, it seemed ridiculous to me that this is what was stopping me but I had enough sense to just listen. So, I went out and bought a guitar stand and that simple move made all the difference. The guitar was just sitting there for me to grab…no intermediate steps to complete before the reward. I was picking it up and playing multiple times a day after that. We all know KISS…Keep It Simple Stupid…well this is MISS…Make It Simple Stupid (or you won’t do it!!)… :slight_smile: I had to create a ‘micro-step’ in order to engage with that activity.

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I remember being told that to keep the guitar in the case would be to almost never play! So a stand is what I’ve had since the start. And yeah, makes quite a difference. Thanks for sharing. I wonder how many other things we “set up” so that “too much activation energy” is required to start the engagement… so we don’t. Hmmm.

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I’ll bet I can come up with quite a few pretty quickly for myself…lol.

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**

“The blog you write each day is the blog you need the most.”

**

That speaks to me !!!

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I almost hate to admit that I’ve felt this way about many things including:

Setting up my keyboard

Getting out paints (they still sit in the box from years ago and are probably dried out.)

Starting a garden (too much bending over)

Is this a fear of not thinking I can do things well I wonder?

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Maybe.

It can also be just inherent animal laziness. :wink: We human animals have inherent programs that value conservation of energy. It’s resistance. It helped our ancestors survive. We will “work for food” but if we work “too hard” we end up depleting our reserves (or hurting our body), so we’ll… not.

I did not use the keyboard more than a few times in 2 years that it was downstairs in the kids area. Now that it is set up with a bench in the office, I’m playing it almost daily. Interesting, eh?

Proximity and ease are not ENOUGH in and of themselves to get over resistance. But out of sight and needing to be set up and torn down each time is FRICTION. And friction takes more activation energy to overcome than something more easeful and in-flow.

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I definitely got that app :wink:

I also have a bit of a “where do I set the keyboard up” problem. Tried several places and it was always somehow in the way. Also it was during the shutdown and I was feeling way too much like “let’s just take a nap, play some games or watch a Hallmark movie” frame of mind.

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I do keep a DAILY EMOTIONAL blog that is private, so no one but me reads and writes in it. I started this last summer after I took an Emotional Intelligence test and found that my EQ was fairly low - in the 50s. My husband is in the 90s. So you can see there is a fairly wide gap there and a great potential for conflicts.

Seeing that EQ test was a relief, though, because I didn’t understand how someone like me with a fairly high IQ was challenged at so many emotional type things. Well, IQ and EQ are not the same thing, which I thought they were until I took that test.

Now I’m actively working on getting my EQ up, which you can learn skills to bring your score up. That’s when I started doing daily EFT back in July. I’ve done EFT on/off for nearly 20 yrs, but never with consistency until last summer. The EQ book I read said to keep a daily emotional journal so you can begin to track your emotions and see any patterns.

So I did that and I would tag each post. I noticed anger, frustration kept coming up for months. Somehow now, I’m starting to make breakthroughs and I’m seeing fewer posts where I’m frustrated. I keep my posts short, focusing on the predominant feelings for the day. It’s very eye-opening.

I love data analysis, but I have to be mindful that this can be quite addictive for me and I have to not get carried away with this.

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When I was growing up, emotions were all painted in primary colors. Red, Green, Blue, Yellow. Maybe a dash of orange.

Auburn? Maroon? Azure? Emerald? Cyan? Magenta? You’ve got to be kidding.

I’m drawn to point to this Feelings Inventory. Consider the different vibrational tones of each of the words, how they feel in your body as you “put them on” and feel the difference between dazzled and eager, for example. Even wary and worried… different eh?

Might be a microstep to explore these feelings words and feel for which might fit your current mood even better than some of the catch-all ones like angry or frustrated.

May you find it enchanting… :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

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I’m going to check this out. I’m a big sponge!!! Thank you, Rick!

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