4 habits to keep crushing goals despite chronic illness and a book that will challenge your perspective on pursuing goals and success…

We all hear about those people that are ‘Crushing Goals’, ‘Making It Happen’, ‘Killing It, ‘Rock-Star Status’, and all those other labels society decides to use.

Maybe we ourselves have even been referred to in relation to one or more of those labels during our life.

As a person fighting chronic illness we tend to tell ourselves things that are way off base. We can find ourselves in a stuck mind set or even a bullheaded mindset, opposites I know, instead of growth and grit.

The debilitating or stuck mindset might look like this:

• I can’t do that
• I can’t take this anymore
• I can’t accomplish my hopes dreams, and desires
• I’ll never be able to ‘grind it out’ again
• I can’t work as hard as normal people

A bullheaded or someone trying ot ignore it might look like this:

• I can still do all the things and I’ll just sleep all weekend to catch up
• I’ll just get more caffeine to keep up
• If I stay busy enough no one will notice it
• If I stay busy enough I’ll forget about it and overcome it
• Keep up the busy ‘Hustle and Crushing It’ lifestyle and ultimately sacrifice health even further in the process.
• If I just keep going it’ll go away eventually
• If I just keep working relaly hard to get to _____ spot then I’ll slow down and take care of myself.

Let me tell you…I was the second list for a long time! I still struggle with not telling people no, overloading my plate, trying to perfect everything, and putting off my self care.

Just don’t!

I’ve learned that if I will just slow down as my body is telling me too, the recoup doesn’t take near as long and I end up getting more stuff done believe it or not.

I also end up figuring out what things are actually important instead of urgent…more on that one in a minute.

What’s funny, not really but looking back I think to myself “What were you thinking?!”, is that I struggled most days with the second list and then as my health would decline I’d promote myself straight up to the first list!

My mindset kept me in a roller coaster mentally, emotionally, physically, and even some what spiritually! Honestly, when I didn’t ‘feel’ good or was super distracted, my time spent in scripture, prayer, and truthful thinking was way down. And so was my attitude, patience, enjoyment, and hope.

I started taking note of things that I had adjusted or focused on when I started seeing a positive shift in my health, my emotions, my patience, my outlook, and just my life in general.

Then I narrowed the actions down to see what foundational habits were in common with the actions and had started forming, taking root, and growing.

I’m not promising they’ll work for you, but for me, when done consistently and persistently, they’ve made a major impact in my life and I feel they’re worth sharing!

Below are my personal TOP 4 Habits that lay the foundation for Crushing It Chronically:

1. Personal Development –  

I noticed when I read a book I am focused mentally on the act of reading and grasping what I read. I am also focused physically on sitting, which rests my body; somthing I’m not very quick to do honestly. So, my brain rests because it’s fully focused on one thing instead of the typical laundry list of ‘to-dos’ and my body rests because I’m sitting instead of trying to tackle that laundry list of ‘to-dos’.

2. Planning, Time-blocking, Organizing – 

We don’t get to plan a flare, a bad day, or sleepless night so, why is time-blocking my calendar so important? Well, that’s exactly why planning is so important! If I fill my day full of tasks without wiggle room or organization, I don’t know about you it may just be me, but I am setting myself up for a flare, bad day, or sleepless night!

Hubby and I time-block our days, write out the non-negotiables for the month, and plan ahead for trips or large expenses coming up. I also make sure there is some down time and our time blocked in.

Talking about planning, we also do a quarterly budget with a monthly check up. This sounds extreme to some, but in all honesty that 30 minutes to an hour of time invested once a week to complete those tasks and be on the same page as a couple is priceless!

It reduces the daily and compounding stress of chaos while removing a ton of miscommunication while saving time during the week! This habit also gets credit for getting us out of debt before 30!

3. Speaking to Yourself Instead of Listening to Yourself!

THIS! This is a big one! Remember the comparison list towards the beginning of our conversation? My guilt of the second list and then self-promotion to the first list? 

Think about this for a minute:

Your brain is your central control center. It never sleeps by the way, which is just insane. It tells your feet to move, your tongue to swallow, your eyes to blink, your heart to beat, your face to make expression, it directs your dreams, and so on. All conciously and subconsciously!

That’s why it is so important what you speak into yourself becuase those words will be feeding your brain consciously and subconsciously…even while you’re sleeping.

For example:

The days filled with pain and stiffness, if I tell myself over and over ‘I just can’t walk today, then guess what I finally noticed?? I truly feel like ‘I just can’t walk’ yet when I started telling myself ‘walking doesn’t feel good today but my legs are moving, and my toes are wiggling’ then my mindset and outlook on the day is completely different!

1. No, it doesn’t make the pain and stiffness go away, don’t hear me wrong, but it does change the way I tackle the day. Even if I don’t ‘do’ more, my mind is open and aware of more positivity in the day and things that I can do without having to use my legs a lot that I would’ve missed if I allowed my mind to close itself.
2. Yes, I may have needed assistance to walk to the bathroom…but I got there and I got back. I accomplished something that previously I would not have recognized with that thought of ‘I just can’t walk today’ (confession: in my mind I would picture wanting to do a HIIT workout, go for a long 2 mile walk, or play with the dog in the yard…I didn’t recognize walking across the house or putting away laundry as an accomplishment at that point in my life.

Being pro-active in my self-talk helps me to better fight off the emotional and mental exhaustion of chronic illness.

4. Self- Care

For everyone this is needed but it will be different for each person, illness or not. For some I know, self-care looks like a girl’s day at the spa or hair salon, a range day with friends and family, a boat day filled with fisihng and diving, trail riding horses or ATVs, or a bubble bath and staying in for a movie.

For me, self-care days are none of those. Honestly, they are all too exhausting usually.

Nope. Friends and family don’t understand how a bubble bath, spa, or laying on a boat can be exhausting…tiring maybe but not exhausting.

For some of us, just taking a shower feels like we just took on a triathlon. (ok, probably not a realistic comparison 100% but you get the point)

Very few people see that side and since they can’t see the cause of it (invisible illness) they can’t wrap their head around it generally speaking. It’s my body and I can’t wrap my head around it!

Seriously?! How can I be free-diving and playing volleyball one day and the next morning I can’t get out of bed without my husband’s help? Unfortunately, I’m not exagerating on that one.

So, taking the time to consistently schedule self-care, as opposed to just waiting until your illness takes your knees out from under you, is a life saver for me. I have 2 days a week I have a minimum of 1 hour set aside for some sort of self-care. (This time is outside of my devotional/journaling time and date/couple time)

Confession: I’m still working on being consistent speaking to myself words of encouragement and hope instead of listening to the doubts and frustrations. I’m still learning to slow down and focus on what really matters or takes priority while I keep my plate balanced.

I recently had an inspiration that is helping me keep balance so that I can keep Crushing It Chronically…but without over-doing it:

I was taking some planned self-care time for personal development, see how I combined those there? I read a book that totally challenged my perspective and I thank God for it! I have a lot of great traits as a person but I also have had some unhealthy habits I am overcoming.

Overloading my plate, stressing myself to unhealthy measures, and worrying about everything I wasn’t doing good, instead of recognizing everything I am still fully capable of doing, are just a few previously bad habits.

The book I’m referring to and totally going to read over and over again is The Carpenter by Jon Gordon.

If you haven’t read this book, I don’t want to ‘give it away’ because it is such a good read BUT I will share two of my biggest take-aways:

1. Stop listening to yourself and Start speaking to yourself; and
2. Slow down to focus on what’s important, like your health and relationships around.

There are two perspectives I got out of this book.

1. the perspective of the main character Michael
2. the teaching perspective of ‘the Carpenter’

See, I related to Michael and his traumatic health event due to stress as much as I related to The Carpenter’s success principles for business and life. I learned a lot from both characters honestly.

If I shared everything I got out of this book the times I’ve read it, we would be here all day! So, instead, I suggest you read the book yourself with an open mind of both characters and the principles you can learn from each one to apply to all areas of your life.

I love learning new things and developing myself!

Do you have a book that has encouraged or inspired you?

I’d love to hear recommendations in the comments or connect with me via email or social media 🙂

Chat soon and God bless,