No excuses

You know that little voice inside of you that stops you from trying to do the thing you know you need to do? I call it the "excuses" voice. It comes up EVERY TIME I am planning to do something I need to do. And I have to learn to recognize it and FIGHT it.

For example, say it is almost lunchtime. Here is the conversation in my head.

Me: "Maybe I'll have a spinach salad with grilled chicken."
Excuses voice: "But wouldn't a trip to the drive-thru at Jack In the Box be so much easier?"
Excuses voice continues: "You can have a salad tonight. One drive-thru meal isn't going to hurt you."
Excuses voice keeps going: "Besides, you have so much work to do. It would take much less time to drive thru Jack In the Box."
Excuses voice keeps going: "Plus, the salad would only keep you full for an hour or maybe two hours at the most. You'll just have to stop again and fix something else. You are just too busy for that. You need to get filled up enough to work for the next 4-5 hours."
Excuses voice keeps going: "You can have the salad another time. It's just one meal."

Notice the "me" voice never comes back. I almost always let the excuses voice keep going and talk me into doing what I really shouldn't do. It just keeps going and going until it convinces me. This happens with what I eat, exercising, cleaning house and every other thing I know I need to do (and sometimes even WANT to do), but I let that stupid voice win too many times.

It reared it's ugly head again tonight. But I won. The trick is recognizing it immediately and shutting it OFF.

I was planning to go to my exercise Zumba class tonight at the gym. My son was going to go to the gym with me, however, he came home from school with a headache and took some Advil and laid down.

The excuses voice started in immediately.

Excuses voice: "Well, since Blake isn't going, you really don't need to waste the gas...." I shut it down and completely put it out of mind.
As I'm putting on my workout clothes, it comes back.
Excuses voice: "You really don't have time to do this. You are on deadline and you have so much work...." I shut it down again, literally shook my head and kept moving forward.
On the WAY to the gym:
Excuses voice: "You know you don't even really have to go to the class. You can just walk around a store for a little bit and......" Shut it down again. Shook it out of my head.

The more I shut it down, the less the voice was able to get out. All the way to the class it kept trying to come up but I shut it down immediately, made it to my Zumba class, did the full hour (excuses voice was even trying to justify leaving early!!!!) and felt GREAT afterwards.

Not just from the exercising, but I felt victorious over that excuses voice that has mostly succeeded in keeping me from the life and health I deserve!!!

I think if I can remain aware of that voice and recognize it when it comes up, it could really make a HUGE impact on reaching my health and fitness goals.