Practice What You Teach: Write it down!

As 2016 comes to an end I’m pretty excited to be able to say that I wrote a weekly blog about my Pilates and movement practice in my life. When I first committed to a weekly blog I was a little nervous that I would have enough to write about and be committed enough to write EVERY week! It’s kind of fun to go back and see what I was doing throughout the year. It is also a huge reminder for me at the importance of success boarding!

Never heard of success boarding? I hadn’t either until I started working with business coach Marlo Higgins this past year. In a nutshell success boarding is simply writing down your successes on a regular basis. Once a week is what I find works best for me. It sounds so simple but it’s amazing what a big impact it can have on just about any aspect of your life. I’ve been using this technique in my business, but realized as I reflected on my blog this past year that essentially what I was doing by writing the blog was success boarding.*

You see, what happens when you physically write or type something is that you have to acknowledge it. You realize that even though what you are doing may not be absolutely perfect…you are still doing it, you are making progress and you are learning and evolving along the way. And when you write about it every week you start having a list, a written record of all you are doing. Instead of focusing on things like what went wrong, the workout you didn’t get in, or the 1 exercise you couldn’t do perfectly….you start to focus on the fact that you had a crazy week but still worked out, that you are doing new things, stepping outside your comfort zone, and continuing to evolve in your life and your body. It can really change your perspectives, your attitude, and keep you moving in the right direction!

I know it’s not practical for everyone to write a blog or even a journal entry each week about your movement practice but what about a mini success log every week? What if you listed 5 positives about your movement practice each week in a little journal for 2017? These could be short and sweet like:

Went to Pilates even though I didn’t really feel like it
Tried a new class
I noticed my posture while driving
My back hasn’t hurt in a long time
Stretched at my chair at work today

I love to get my purple pen out and a cute journal or notebook and write…so I’ve decided to add Movement Success Boarding to my weekly routine! I’ll still be writing my weekly blog and I’ll definitely be sharing some of my successes with you along the way in 2017. If you decide to try this yourself I would love to hear about how it goes for you and what you learn along the way!!

P.S. Here is my Movement success board list for this week:

Daily walks with Max (even when the weather was miserable!)
A great morning reformer workout with my staff
Dancing with my daughter
Doing my Sat. Morning 50 squats at home that I usually do with my Return to Life Mat class even though we didn’t have class this week.
Watching my son run laps in our house, jumping jacks, and do push ups on Christmas Eve when he couldn’t get to sleep!! (I love that he thought to use movement as a tool to help him sleep- definitely a parenting success!)

Have a Happy New Year!!!

*If you’re in the Iowa area Marlo is the keynote speaker at a Women’s Power Luncheon on February 2 in Cedar Rapids and she’s going to be talking about Success Boarding. Get a ticket here!