#20 Be healthy

So #20 Be healthy....Wooo... what an "open ended" item, huh?  Originally I had "Lose 30 pounds...", but let's be real.  30 pounds in 3 months?  Not healthy, and not realistic...

So the challenge with this challenge?  It's so freaking open-ended.  It lacks definition.  It lacks a "do this specific thing by x date or you fail" quality.... a "SMART" goal - Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timebound.  Lesson learned, just in case I ever do another challenge like this one (foreshadowing, maybe???), I will pick more well-defined goals!

So, in May (which was 5 weeks in to the challenge, 8 weeks left), I had made ZERO progress, and tried to come up with some specific goals, like...

1. Get at least 30 minutes of exercise a day for 30 days in a row
2. Do not order take out food for 30 days
3. Give up the booze for 30 days

And then I got distracted by my other, more fun, well-defined challenges and completely forgot about the 3 sub-goals I had created... yeah...

Fast forward to mid June. I STILL had not made progress, so I figured I would take a fresh approach and do some research, like a real writer would! So I went to the internet.com (of course, everything on the internet is true, esPECIALLY if it's laminated!), and found the definition of "healthy" (according to dictionary.com) as:

1. In good health: "feeling fit and healthy".
2. (of a part of the body) Not diseased.

Well, if I go by that definition, then I win.  I do feel fit and healthy, and I definitely don't have a diseased part of the body... so challenge completed, right?

Wrong... for me at least.  It would be too easy if I just accepted that, and if you actually read the list of 30 things to do, it's clear that I don't do easy... I like challenging :)  So I continued my research with wikipedia! And, after several lengthy paragraphs, it gave me the usual advice of "get exercise, sleep and don't eat too much or booze too much, and don't smoke." 

Yeah yeah yeah.  Tell me something I don't know.  I'm a winner with two out of five.  I definitely get enough sleep, and I don't smoke.  I'm a bronze medalist with another two... I try to exercise and try to not eat too much.  But limit booze?  Yeah.  I'm a single lady in one of the most amazing cities in the world.  Not gonna happen, people.  I mean, I have an app on my iPhone that tells me where the closest happy hour location is - really!

So again, I got distracted and stopped working on this challenge...

Now, fast forward to the end of June... and I happen to get an invite to attend a Women's Leadership Conference for women in banking, hosted by American Banker Magazine.  And it turned out to be a freaking amazing conference... it was filled with positive, happy, and phenomenal (female) speakers, who were all dynamic, engaging presenters, and who I REALLY want to invite to a cocktail.

So you might be wondering "what does a Banking conference have to do with being healthy?"  Well, one of the speakers, Jeannie Jones, is the Health & Wellbeing Manager of GSK, and she spoke to us about "Bulletproofing personal resilience".  She told us about the multiple roles we women have in life and work (daughter, sister, aunt, employee, friend, etc...), and how all these roles are important to us, and how we need to have Work-Life Harmony (notice she didn't say Work-Life Balance... as there is really no such thing!).  We also learned how our "energy battery" (i.e. our energy level) can be drained (to where it shuts off and the iPhone dies) or can be fully charged (full green bar!) and ready and raring to go!

We took a moment to reflect on all the things in our emotional, mental and physical lives that drain us... and the things that we do (or can do) to recharge our "energy battery."  With this idea, it dawned on me - being healthy is not just about focusing on what I eat and how much I work out, but also about my mental and emotional health.
 
Now, there were a couple of other moments that just made me go "Wow", and I want to share them with you:

1. You can continue to fan the flames of negativity, or fan the flames of positivity.
2. When at work and someone is yelling at you, Don't take it personal. (We all know this one, but it's good to be reminded)
3. You can either say "I have to go to work, the gym, pay bills, etc...", or you can change your mindframe to say "I CHOOSE to go to work, I GET to go to the gym, I am PRIVILEGED to have a home and pay bills..." -- there are so many that don't have a job, don't have the ability to go to the gym, and don't have a home... BE GRATEFUL. 
4. "I've experienced a lot of negative things in my life, but only a few have actually happened." -  Mark Twain.  Essentially... stop worrying. You can't control the outcome, you can only control yourself and your reaction.
5. Disconnect to Connect.  Spend time with people, sans mobile devices.  Live, laugh, love, and enjoy the moments, as my iPhone, as much as I love it, will not be there to hold me when I'm sad...
6. And finally, my FAVORITE one, courtesy of Betsy Myers. We should all be "freaking out with joy" in our lives.  If we're not "freaking out with joy," we need to find something that makes us "freak out with joy."  I'll tell you the story behind this phrase in person :)

So after all these weeks of trying to figure out what "Being healthy" meant... One hour of one conference re-energized me.  Re-focused me.  And made me reflect.  I'm a relatively positive person, but we all have times in our life when things wear us down and we want to quit and give up but we just trudge along and become bitter and yell and are mean and cranky and have the "Nobody likes me!" syndrome.

I was there, for several years, and my amazing family and friends put up with my crap. And I've been coming out of that funk for about a year now (hopefully!), but this 30by30 challenge has really helped me, as I have taken the time and energy to focus on myself and do things that make me happy.

The things I heard at this conference reaffirmed that for me. It gave me the "time out" to just sit there... and to think about me, and about all the ways that other people and situations can drain me (ahem, WORK) and how I can either choose to LET them drain me, or I can CHOOSE to let them not bother me.  They are not worth my energy. I have plenty of other amazing things to focus my energy on so that my energy battery is recharged.  :)  For example, my family, my friends, and, of course, this blog, which has me "freaking out with joy".

"Me: Freaking out with joy"