WushuWarrior

Oops forgot to mention I answered Mini-challenge 3 in my challenge thread!

I'm not sure this challenge can be for recruit monks but I figure I'd share anyway. BlackTezca and Teirin, I resonate with you both. I want to do all the things, for all the peoples, and then seemingly have no time to complete things on my own list... And then I want to be good at everything I try to do, but am illogically surprised that I'm not as good as I thought I would be at something I haven't put years of practice in.... thus I feel I must declare war with the shadow that is cognitive dissonance. I have discovered that (under God and Family) I do value my innate need for creativity above all else and yet feel the biggest failure in that because I chose to ignore it, not practice it and instead I took the more "logical" computer programming path in college and thus my career because I felt that choosing a more creative path would be taking too much of a chance with my and my potential family's livelihood. I honestly couldn't see where in our world the career of artist would work out to benefit my family - or at least I had no opportunity of meeting someone or a group of people who were able to make ends meet in an artistic career. I was scared and didn't know myself enough and honestly wasn't confident enough, and when I compared it to a doctor, lawyer, or computer engineer, I couldn't put into words how art really did anything for people and felt guilty for wanting to attempt to do it for a living. So life in technology is exactly what I expected - highly stable, good pay and benefits, awesome coworkers. But you know... I just didn't realize how unfulfilled I would still feel 4 years in because I was ignoring my heart all this time. Hence my main 3-5 year goal to find a creative avenue to make a living - its probably going to be way harder than what I'm doing but I can't imagine myself doing this for another 30 years.

Mini-Challenge 3 So your challenge for this week has 3 parts: 1. Pinpoint the quest in your journey that is giving you the most uphill (or one that you're struggling to achieve) That would definitely be my 6 am wake up in the morning. 2. Search through NF (forums or articles) to find one that is able to offer some assistance I searched "sleep goal". Thanks to Gravitas' recruit challenge thread - I get to see someone during this challenge who is succeeding at their sleep goal and voiced the same issues I am having with getting to bed before 11 pm: "thanks man, not going great so far. Actually the only bit that is going well is the sleep work! I'm managing to turn off all my device between 10-10:30 pm 6 nights out of 7 and I definitely feel like I'm sleeping better. The one night I was up late and switched on (levelling my Bounty Hunter Mercenary in Star Wars: The Old Republic) i spent most of the night dreaming I was running around blowing shit up and woke up exhausted in the morning!" 3. Apply it to your challenge (no collecting underpants here). No updates to computer or phone or TV exposure after 10 PM - I have to cut myself off of this constant need for these late night brights. If I must, I will read a book in bed. Week 3 Review: Seeing too much pink on my new chart because of my daily sleep goal... :/ Eat Real Food: All PASS on the 90-110 protein grams. Suck it up and Shine: All FAIL on the sleep wake. Become a Strong, Flexible and Agile Lady Ninja: Monday I did my PT exercises at home and then went to wushu Tuesday I went to PT and then dinner at a friend's house Wednesday I did my PT exercises and went to bible study Thursday I went to PT and then wushu. I spoke to my PT about stretching and flexibility. I told her that since last year when I began Wushu, I was expecting more flexibility gains than I've seen. She gave me a hefty reality check by saying for people to really make gains in flexibility when they dont have it naturally, twice a day is the norm. Think training for ballet or gymnastics level.... Friday I went to wushu - sparring/grappling focus class, I came home and watched a ton of wushu training videos on youtube to get a reality check on what kind of training I need to be doing to make it to the advanced level. Saturday (Today) - I am exhausted and not doing anything but a relax yoga video. I am so so tired, I slept in and then took a 3 hour nap. My body feels sore and weak at the same time. Sunday - Yoga and more rest, but i should be OK to do all my PT exercises and walk through my forms. I am looking forward to preparing all my food based on the whole30 program. I still am waiting for the book I have on hold to come in at the library so I can read about the diet details. but the whole30 food list is free on the web so I have already started integrating those foods into my diet. Overall I am knocking the PT and Food out of the water, doing pretty well on flexibility, and majorly sucking at the habit of sleep which I have analyzed and created a small plan of attack to fix from this week's mini challenge 3 above. Thanks and good luck to everyone in week 4!

Hey Gravitas, I really appreciate getting to see you succeeding at your sleep goal. I have a sleep goal as well to get out of bed by 6 am each morning and I am totally failing it atm because I can't seem to go to sleep earlier without my mind racing through the netflix/manga/movies etc... Reading this has motivated me to try cutting off my electronics... (I was up til 2:30am last night flipping through netflix just randomly...ugh...talk about a serious late night addiction.) Anyway keep at it! I'm rooting for you!

I know how you feel... I get home and am like "Now I have to PREPARE FOOD?!" Its so nice to have at least one or two "one pot" recipes precooked and chillin' in the fridge that we can just pop into the microwave and enjoy. I found a favorite and made it a few weeks in a row and now i can prepare it by heart, but I still slip up quite a bit where I come home and haven't prepared anything or maybe I ran out of my "safety meal" so I end up foraging for nuts and fruit... to make it easy on myself, i'm trying to find recipes that are limited to three ingredients since remembering things in threes tends to be pretty doa...so last night I made a whole bag of stripped collards with 3 pieces of bacon and one onion. ohhh my goodness it was good. but that was probably the bacon.

I've been curious about this for a while and have seen multiple trains of thought on the lifting/running combo. Which do you do first? and do you do them back to back or do you leave time in between?

Made a new chart to reflect my updated goals. Day 15/42: 6:30 am wake up - FAIL Wushu PT exercises 20 min yoga 90-110 G protein 11 pm bedtime

This one made me feel like a super over-achiever since I did all three at the beginning!! Woot! 1.Signature is done and updated it to reflect the changes to my goals starting in week 3. 2.I am apart of the Renaissance Rebels! 3.I have followed about 6 people in the recruits and monks challenge threads.

Dude. Better in the trunk of the car for a week or two than in your now-more-spacious-and-peaceful abode. but it did annoy my hubs a bit to constantly be hearing stuff rolling/clunking around in the trunk so I allowed myself a 2 week trunk festering time maximum, sometimes 3.

What type of flossing exercises do you like to do? I was just given this PT exercise called the sciatic nerve floss and love it. Its my first floss ever haha. Basically combines an active hamstring/calf/hip stretch with activating the sciatic nerve by lying on your back, holding one leg bent at a 90 degree angle where the bent leg knee is positioned a bit inward over the belly button and not the hip, so as the lower leg is being raised and lowered its not straight up in the air but at a diagonal. My PT is having me do 30x per side before the ab work. Did you try any sorbetto or gelato in Italy? I ate it twice a day while I was there... I'm a total binger when it comes to soft frozen desserts. lol

Wow, that picture looks surreal, is that a real place!? Your meal plan looks tasty, especially that Parmesean Pumpkin with balsamic... Do you go light for cottage cheese or full fat? I used to love cottage cheese, and then I bought a light publix brand and it tasted like liquified cardboard so haven't bought it in quite a while since. I might try it again but go full fat or maybe just a different brand of light... but i don't know if I'll trust publix's cottage cheese after my experience. lol.

You are an inspiration! Reading about days like this make me want my own RAWR days.

Yeah so I'm right there with ya. I have no cardiovascular fitness to support the power I have behind my punches in the beginning of a form. 30 seconds in and I'm dead. And like you I have like this seemingly never-ending list of accomplishments I want to attain and that can feel so daunting so its good to just zero in on one or two from the list and contract selective amnesia about all the others. lol Rooting for you to get that perfect pull up. Rawr!

I LOVE reptiles!!! That is a gorgeous gator shot. --- I finally drew the wing draft for my jewelry display... but my new jigsaw is taunting me and I'm starting to scare myself away from finishing this project... Do you all ever have that problem? Like you dream up and plan and collect materials and start a project and then realize, oh crap I still need this or i can't do this step until I learn how to ....

Well if it can be seen in any positive light, certainly it would be through the lens of good humor. I have a hole from the inside to the outside of my home that I can stick both my fists through, 470.00 later, and throwing in the repair supplies, I have almost reached the cost of the sink and cabinet. .... Oh well, its a accidental sunk cost and I just gotta move forward with the hole repair, whistling while I work thinking "Now I know where the plumbing is, yay!" Thanks, I'm gonna finish this out and when we start up the next 6 week challenge I am definitely only allowing myself two goals instead of four. If I even try to eek out with three please post-slap me. It stinks when plumbing goes awry, this time at least not literally since I hit the water and not waste line....

Posted my answers for mini challenge 1 in my thread here!

Hi fellow Nerds, Does anyone remember Eyore from Winnie the Pooh? Yeah, right now I feel like Eyore. Today was going well until a "no good, horrible, very bad day" started for me when I left work. I left work in time for wushu, but the crazy amts of rain backed up the traffic so bad I was still 15 min away by the time class was starting, so I went home and said to myself, "i'm finally going to finish installing my bathroom sink!" to make up for the missed class. It looked so easy, all that was left was positioning the sink cabinet mounts over the screws i'd already predrilled. There were 4 screws positioned in a rectangle equal to the cabinet mount spacing. So far I was pretty proud of my measuring and drilling newb accuracy; I had to measure and level and remeasure and level... then predrill through cement the other day for the bottom two screws.....anyway so the screw heads were pretty fat and one in the cement wall area was a slight half a centimeter off... so i had to unscrew it to place the cabinet over the first two screws and to my chagrin I discover that I CREATED A FOUNTAIN IN MY WALL. queue explit$%#$^ves. Spent the rest of the evening trying to DIY fix it with a very annoyed hubs with no water and scheduled a plumber for tomorrow morning. I think I drilled through an old copper pipe. I am now way past my bedtime and trying hard to hide my malcontent and self-disappointment in both goal and home improvement failings. Here are my official SMART mini-challenge answers, because of course SMART is definitely how I feel right now. Mini-Challenge 1: Here are some questions to put your goals to the test: Is your overall quest achievable (over a short or long period of time)? Is it reasonable? At first I thought so, but then after my physical therapy started a week into this challenge, I realized that the BBWWs are not really what I should be focusing on. I need to focus on doing my Physical therapy exercises completely and with perfect form. Therefore, I am changing those out for a new PT goal: do PT exercises every day. So with four weeks left thats 28 days total opportunities to succeed. Do your 3 quests all build towards your main quest in little ways, or are you taking on too much? Do your quests have sub-quests or is it just one thing to focus on? Well the Sleep/Wake change became very hard, very quickly because I changed up my work schedule to account for the after work Physical Therapy. I have to get to work by 8am to leave by 4:30 pm to get to PT in time. I was succeeding at my -3 min per day but I fell off the wagon and changed it to "go to bed before 10:45 pm." I questioned today why I even wanted to change my schedule since I woke up at 6:30 am this morning, could have got up but chose to stay in bed til 8:30 am just because I literally mentally could not come up with a good enough reason to get up that early. I was so disappointed in myself that a fresh breakfast, dog walk and early work day didnt trump staying in bed for another two hours in addition to a late work day. What the crap is wrong with me?! The BBWW on top of necessary PT and Sleep/Wake change was the tipping point. So i'm chucking the BBWWs for now in lieu of PT. I'm fine with the eating and flexibility goals. Are your main goals realistic? Can you scale them to smaller steps to fit your life better, even if it will make it take a little longer to achieve them? I feel like they are realistic but the one strength goal needed to be changed based on my physical needs at this time. Are your goals able to be measured and tracked? What will you use to track them? So far using a points system is very trackable mathmatically. I will remake my chart but as far as character points go, I am not sure how to track them now that I'm changing them up at the end of week 2. How are you grading your goals? Are they pass/fail (“every dayâ€, “not even once over the six weeksâ€)? Is there a reward for the effort, or are you only grading yourself on whether or not you “lose the weight†or “run the distanceâ€? I am pass/failing myself for pretty much all of it except the protein daily grams goal i made into a range. I think I do better at a range since I am a natural procrastinator - i tend to do the minimum if a minimum is given but not below it... however I feel like pass/fail situations that are not life/death scenarios do not motivate me as much as the range with a min/max and I can't put that into words very well as to why... What is your plan for continuing/altering/grading those goals if you become ill or injured? I think getting injured would change all the goals to focus on getting back my health because thats the most important thing to move forward with the rest of it. Maybe just keep the original numbers and proportion the new numbers to match the originals... but trying to keep my math simple here... Did you take into consideration any special occasions (Labour Day, Independence Day, birthdays, anniversaries, etc) that may occur during the challenge? What modifications do you need to build into your goals for those? I built into the evening gospel meeting times and knew that PT was going to start. I dont think I will have a problem fitting this around the evening gospel meeting for a week but the PT totally blew away my BBWW goal. Do any of your main goals conflict with each other? Will one goal make it hard to do another? YES. Exhaustion from sleep change killed my energy for any Circuit training I was trying to do with Wushu. I could barely complete my last wushu class and was almost falling asleep in the middle of starting stretches... Do you already have the time in your schedule to actually complete the goals you’ve set? If not, what are you planning to do to make time for them? Sort of, this is where I failed to plan ahead perfectly. I had my totals and counts all complete, but did not completely commit to a time exactly for the BBWWs. I was able to get the first one in because it was the beginning of the challenge and I was feeling all "gungho" but by end of week with the sleep change killing my engergy I didnt have the umph to do the second one... Are you trying to build multiple habits, or is all your energy focused on your main quest? I am trying to build multiple habits... Food, workout sessions, and sleep changes... I am starting to think the sleep change was a 6 week challenge in itself.... but with the PT schedule solidly in place I should just suck it up. THEREFORE A QUEST REASSESSMENT IS IN ORDER: I am viewing this first 6 week challenge like my foundation. Its focusing on my basic bodily needs before I start to specialize with wushu forms goals, art goals and other fitness and food goals. Main Quest: Love God and my neighbor, become an advanced martial artist and swordswoman, and discover my creative passion and find meaningful day to day work. 4 Challenges and 3 "life tasks": 1.Perfect a Morning Ritual: Change my sleep wake schedule from 12-1 am to 8-9 am to 10-11 pm to 6-6:30 am 2.Back Attack: Do PT exercises 5/7 days a week 3.Fluid Mobility: 2-3 yoga sessions per week 4.Bodily Fuel: 90-110 G protein per day *Super Mini-Life goings-ons: Bathroom sink, jewelry display and procuring art desks are still in progress...

So for the past two nights I have had such bad sleep quality that I am struggling to wake up before 8am. I put myself in bed at 11pm Tues night and 12 am last night and couldn't fall into a deep sleep. My second day of PT was yesterday and she is working me pretty hard so I feel much more sore than I expected . I have not had any BBWW motivation in between PT and wushu. I want to say I will do it when I get home but to be honest all I can think about is just getting one good nights sleep. Mini Challenge: SMART I feel like my results have been sub par and it's already past hump day on week two. I am thinking I should throw in the towel on the additional strength goal and just add more yoga instead? 3 wushu + 2 PT is kicking my butt not to mention committing to do the at home PT exercises on off days. As for the sleep I need quality and quantity so I feel it's still very important I push hard on that goal even tho i feel like a failure since last Thursday. I have had no issues with sticking to my protein goal. It has enlightened me to my meal choice pitfalls and made me choose to eat higher quality foods per meal. Let me know if this looks more reasonable based on my current PT/wushu schedule: 1 full body (40-60 min) yoga and 2 mini (20 min) yoga sessions per week = 3 points weekly / *5 + 1 = 16 points possible Sleep at 10:30 pm with Tylenol PM tonight Wake up at 6:30 am tomorrow morning and then begin to remove 1 min from both morning and night times. This will make me arrive at 10pm-6am sleep schedule Keep the 90-110g protein per day rule.

I did!! I wasn't asleep til about 11;30 tho... And then my brain woke up at around 3 am and wouldn't go back to sleep so I laid in bed tossing and turning til 8 am. I started having a sore throat around Sunday afternoon and I feel a bit worse today so the crappy sleep quality probably made me worse. But I will not quit. Hoping tonight I am extra tired and fall into bed around 10pm. Change is hard. My hubs went to the grocery (go team!) on the way home yesterday so I was able to prep lunch and made another hearty breakfast. Making breakfast in the morning for us both is nice and I'm starting to look forward to that. I still want more time to drink my coffee at home and take my doggie for a morning stroll. I also couldn't sneak in that BBWW last evening before bed bc there was too much laundry. Took me an hour to fold and put away everything after prepping food. So I just crawled in bed after that.

Thanks ya'll for the encouragement. 1.BBWW - gonna get this in now. not having it done in the morning is hard. 2.Have dinner 3.lunch for tomorrrow is made/ make a weeks worth of preportioned snacks 4.bed time 10:45 pm I'm gonna do it!!!

Sorry Its been too long since an update. I am slipping back into my old bad habits... DAY 5 - Friday: went to bed at 12 am, pushed snooze at 7:30, woke up at 8:15 am, fail, but got to work in time for last day of training. I was on time to watch friend's belt test it was 9:30 pm when I got home and I was feeling lazy so no time for BBWW. Fail. Ate full protein meals, broke out, itching after dinner. there was flour in the bread... but there wasnt flour in the oatmeal packets so I'm still not sure what exactly it is that is causing me to break out. I am closer to committing to Whole 30... sick of breaking out. Day 6 - Saturday: woke up at 9 am, fail.but was on time to wushu, passalso on time to play escape game with friends downtown. Worked on the bathroom sink, broke one of the mounting nails in the cement block so need to get a vice grip to pull it out... sink is taking 3 weeks from start to finish and that is frustrating... I ate the last two eggs with the same veggies so i supplemented with a protein powder and soy milk before class. Lunch and dinner were thrown together and I highly doubt I got 90 g of protein so I'm gonna have to fail myself on that as well. Day 7 - Sunday:Woke up at 7:30 am, still fail.on time to church to teach bible class, which is a pass. Did yoga late around 10:30 pm - 11:15 pm - rodney yee's power foundation and back bends... felt pretty good afterwards. Made the mistake of watching netflix til 1 am Day 8 - Monday:woke up at 8:15 am, failing even bigger. regression is taking place.... @Blackteszca I will take your advice on the sleep time. I'm going to rewrite my #1 goal for the mini challenge to factor in a hard sleep time of 10:45 pm. As far as food goes, I'm still out of eggs bc we didnt go grocery shopping over the weekend. So i was under for breakfast but incorporated another snack to counter that so I am still on track for my 90 G today. day 1 of 12 for PT at 5:30 pmwushu or BBWW after... I feel like i met my goals 50% over all the first week.... here is how I think I sabotaged myself, feel free to add to this list if I am missing something: 1. I allowed myself to have out of control bed times.2. I was too lazy to get up and grocery shop when out of certain important foods.3. I didnt set aside time to meal plan for week 24. I didnt plan exactly how I was going to cover for the BBWW missed on Friday due to last min invite

Day 4... is full of somewhat annoying challenges 1. SUCK IT UP AND SHINE: I went to bed at 11:30 pm which was certainly better than 1 am. Woke up at 6:17 am to some unexpected back pain this morning and to be honest I was a bit frustrated and I didn't want to get out of bed. I had set my alarm for 6:50 pm instead of am on accident so I changed that and I went back to sleep for a half hour more, but I was tossing and turning the whole time. I got out of bed at 7:15 am and did 1/3 of the things I wanted to do on the first day of leaving earlier than usual: shower, coffee with breakfast instead of on the go and a quiet morning dog walk. I had made lunch and chopped my breakfast veggies the night before to help. I got a shower and ate breakfast as usual but had to drink the coffee on the go and let the hubs walk the dog. Eventually I would like to get a calm morning dog walk. That will be kind of my meditative reward for rising early. 7:15 am is still way before today's original wakeup schedule 7:51 am so I'm counting this as a success. I have until next week to get to 6:30 am so I can meet that 8 am hard in time for PT 2x a week. I'm doing my best to help myself win at this big 6:30 am jump. See my updated schedule below. 2. BECOME A STRONG LADY NINJA: Something in the evaluation the physical therapist did yesterday tweaked that spot in my back where I have a disk tear and it hurt on and off for the rest of the day, even while in bed or standing, which doesn't usually happen. My Dr. said it takes 6-8 weeks to heal something like that so I thought I was finally on the mend and suddenly feeling that pain level again was disheartening. Today is Wushu so I'm looking forward to it. * RANDOM EVENT: Today I got a last minute Friday invite to go support some friends in their belt test. Choosing to go would mean I have to change my kungfu day to saturday which isnt that big of a deal except Friday is the grappling day. I feel its these type of family/friend instances that come up alot and its hard to say no. But then again if nothing like that was going on then my life would probably feel pretty empty. Especially because I know if I go to see them it makes their experience more special and strengthens the bonds I have with them. Relationships are very important and I can always fit some practice sessions in on my own this evening (can't grapple without a partner tho). 3. EAT REAL FOOD: I know its only day 4 of the challenge but compared to two months ago and even early last month, I already feel like a BIG success with my relationship to food. I was eating a few bites out of an ice cream container, an apple and a few spoonfuls of PB and calling that lunch... since mid last month and up til now, I only feel I need to ingest more greens in addition to the protein goal I'm doing well on. 4. BECOME AN AGILE AND FLEXIBLE LADY NINJA: I am telling myself to put the insecurities aside and hope for the best to come from the upcoming physical therapy sessions starting next week. I will be doing the exercises at home as well and i will add that to my Flexibility/Agility challenge as a daily pass/fail requirement since all i have in there is a weekly yoga and stretch requirement after class/strength training. * DIY: Bought a Jigsaw and cabinet mounting screws on my way home last night. Gonna attack these two projects ASAP - I want them DONEEE!

Something else that may help is to try to stay in size range of a favorite pair of jeans that currently fit you perfectly.... I don't use a scale so If mine start feeling too tight, I know I gotta make some adjustments to keep from getting out of range.... that's helped me a lot this year and now I can kinda predict the mornings when they will feel too tight (aka when "all you can eat wing night" happens right after friend's bday party and well....30 wings + cake 2 days later and my jeans won't shut up guilting me about it......like I tell them to stop making fun of me: "zip your lip and button up!" and they say, "no, we like... really can't zip it.") :surprise: "Fine then Jeans, CHALLENGE ACCEPTED...."

Stay strong Trawlerman!!! And if you need any more bad examples to scare/motivate you to stick to your EARLY BIRD-AWESOMENESS here is my typical life 4 years before this challenge:

You mean unlike last night when I went to bed at 1 AM thinking, " crap I still have to wake up at 7:54 AM?!" lol You are so right...with this in mind I'm going to be shooting for 11 PM hard bed time... on the strength days probably even earlier because I was having a hard time getting out of bed yesterday morning!