Thought for the Day:

Few tasks are more like the torture of Sisyphus than housework with it’s endless repetition: the clean becomes soiled and the soiled is made clean…over and over…day after day. - Simone de Beauvoir

Today’s Action Challenge:

Yesterday I mentioned that a woman’s life is typically a ”nebulous mass of un-do-ability”  — family, career, staying fit, the nuts and bolts of running a household, having a social life…on and on.

Anyway, today I heard something simple and powerful today from Brian Tracy in his excellent book, Eat That Frog — specifically that you need to completely release yourself from the notion that you are ever going to be “on top of it all” or “all caught up“.  Tracy says that this quite simply will never happen!! 

He says that life being what it is you are always going to have a significant backlog of work, reading, projects, etc. which you just won’t get done.  Moreover, a continual onslaught of new projects will continually be dumped on you. 

He says that this is really not a tragedy, just a reality.  In fact the tragedy (or potential tragedy) is actually when one spends most of their time doing things of “low value”.  He says the trick is not trying to get all of it done, but focusing on the most important things everyday and being willing to let those less important things fall to the wayside — or to delegate them to someone else.

I think this is particularly important for women to remember when trying to carve out 30-60 minutes to exercise.  All too often women put themselves on  the bottom of the “to do” list — just after “make the beds” and “pick up milk”.  But the truth is that in the sum total of your life hours spent taking care of your body will pay off to a much greater degree than hours spent sorting out your sock drawer or dusting the bookshelves. 

Hey, believe me — I’m for a neat house just as much as the next person.  But if something has to wait (or be pushed back to the next day) may it should be things like that rather than activities that improve the way you look and feel.

So for today, I would ask you to consider based on your 2009 goals (both fitness and otherwise)… what kinds of things you need to move to the top of the list to make those dreams a reality?  

Geralyn Coopersmith, MA, CSCS is an exercise physiologist, certified personal trainer, author of Fit + Female:  The Complete Fitness and Nutrition Game Plan for Your Unique Body Type and the creator of The Best Me Ever, a comprehensive weight loss and wellness system just for women.  It’s a first of its kind program designed to fit into a busy women’s life.  Lose weight and look great — 90 Day Unconditional Money Back Guarantee!!