• Skip to main content

Gina Prosch

finding joy one day at a time

  • About Gina
    • bio
    • Book an Event
    • Private Mentoring
  • books
    • this day’s joy
    • finding this day’s joy
    • How to Read and Understand the Story of Your Life
  • blog
  • tip jar

try something new

Exercising New Muscles

 

Last week I wrote about how Behavior is the Truth, and since that time I’ve spent more time thinking about what that means.

If behavior is the truth, then how do I want to behave? What do I want my truth to be?

If I don’t like the truth I see, then I have the ability to change it.

The choice is up to me.

That reminded me of an experience I had a few years ago, when I took my son to his regular weekly archery lesson.

For some reason he was the only one at the range that particular day, so he challenged me to shoot with him.

Bow and arrow target shooting is fun, even though I’m not very good at it. I reached for a bow and took him up on his offer.

We shot several rounds together, and his arrows hit the target in neat little groupings, while mine were a bit — shall we say — less focused.

To say he trounced me is an understatement.

We both had a great time, and as he razzed me on the way home, I laughed and filed the experience under the “it’s good for children to be better at some things than their parents are.”

It was all in good fun…until the next morning.

I woke up feeling absolutely horrible. I had chest pains, and my whole neck, torso, shoulders, and back were screaming at me.

I honestly thought I’d had a heart attack in the night.

Then it hit me: archery.

Do you have any idea how many little teensy, tiny muscles you use in your upper body when you shoot a bow and arrow?

The answer to that question is “a lot.”

So behavior.

And specifically — new behaviors.

New behavior is like my new experience of archery.

It doesn’t matter what the activity is, doing new things causes you to stretch yourself and use muscles that you didn’t even know you had.

Behaving differently works the same way, only the muscles that may experience a little fatigue are emotional muscles.

When I choose to behave differently in response to everyday problems that I have faced before, to deliberately attempt to solve those problems in new and different ways, it’s working new muscles.

Or perhaps working those muscles in slightly different ways.

When I behave in a way that takes me totally outside my comfort zone by trying new things, there are also new emotional muscles at work.

And I experience sore muscles — it’s just that they’re all in my head…literally!!

So if you’re trying to change your behavior — stopping a bad habit or following through on a new, deliberate objective– remember that you’re exercising new muscles and cut yourself some slack.

Like an athlete in training, you will get stronger over time.

Keep going!

And, as always, please drop me a line and let me know how you are doing!

Filed Under: Gina Prosch Blog Tagged With: form new habits, keep working on it, try something new

Back to School

 


I’ll admit it — I’m a sucker for this time of year.

I love all the sweaters, pumpkin spice, and colored leaves.
But it’s more than that.

I’m talking about Back to School.
A neat tidy desk. New pens, new pencils, crisp clean notebooks with no coffee stains or dinged corners, pages and pages of bright white paper just waiting to be filled, and multi-colored sticky notepads.

It’s finally here in all it’s glory.

There’s something magical about it — including the fact that even though I’m not quite sure how it happened, my online shopping cart was somehow filled with newTiconderoga black pencils (the absolute best!), a scrumptious new daily planner, and some nifty stickers to go with it. 😉

And just in case a box filled with back to school goodies isn’t good enough, these days my Facebook feed is filled with pictures of smiling kids all decked out for their first day of school finery. Their faces reflect all the hopes and dreams of a new school year. It’s a new time, a new year filled with learning and new adventures.

That’s another reason I love Back to School — it’s the second New Year of the year!

After a long, hot summer, it’s a welcome reminder to hit the reset button.
To restart the clock.

I’ve come to depend on this Second New Year of Back To School for its ability to help me refocus.

It’s like when I’m taking a picture and — Presto! — the image is suddenly sharp and crisp, but then I move the lens a bit too far and the image once again turns fuzzy.

Then I have to dial it back so things come back into focus.

Isn’t that a good metaphor for life?

Sometimes I take pictures and realize the foreground thing I originally wanted to capture isn’t really that important. Instead, I want to focus on what’s in the background — what’s farther away.

Sometimes the opposite is true. Sometimes I get so caught up in focusing on things in the distance that I’ve totally missed what’s right in front of my face.

Back to School time is the perfect time for dialing your life back into focus and righting the course of a year that may have run a bit off the rails.

Happy New Year! Again!

Filed Under: Gina Prosch Blog Tagged With: always learning, back to school, try something new

Copyright © 2023 Gina Prosch