Progress…? The Power 9 Challenge
Blog 2 of 4
By Stella Drepin
In last week’s blog post, I addressed the challenge that I was accepting to choose three of the power nine habits of long-living people to adapt for myself and to see how it goes. I chose to adapt the concepts of moving naturally, downshifting, and engaging in community. My idea of how to incorporate moving naturally was to periodically get up and move when I am doing school work. This is the time when I have the greatest difficulty with sitting for too long at one time.
In the last week I have tried to remember to periodically get up and do something that requires more movement. For example, one day while doing homework, I got up and did a few squats every so often. I did a few in the living room too which garnered some quizzical glances from my family. So far, all of my movement has been done alone. But to make my new habit more systematic, I have downloaded an app called Stand Up!
It is supposed to help remind me to get up and move while I’m at work. You can set the timer and what days of the week you want it to operate. You can look forward to my comments on the effectiveness of this in next week’s blog. I anticipate looking forward to this alarm going off so that I can get up and move.
My next challenge was to commit to downshifting once a day. That is more challenging than it seems. It is very difficult to set aside time each day to just refocus and slow down. I have pursued this habit on my own as well. There are a lot of things that need to be accomplished each day! However, I have been making more of an effort to be quiet and pray every day. I need to keep brainstorming new ways to make this habit stick for the long haul. I think that once this becomes a habit, my attitude will have positive changes.
Finally, the habit that I have committed the least attention to is engaging in community. This one seems to be incredibly tricky during the school year, and when it’s snowing in April. It is very hard to want to go be social when the weather is not friendly. I did go to church this week, but I didn’t go to my small group, or reach out in any other way. I haven’t done much of anything different to develop this habit. I haven’t done anything different on my own or with anyone else. I anticipate that to change. My actions will have to become more intentional to make sure that I incorporate changes in this category.
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