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Hullo. Me again. Doesn't matter if you don't know who I am. I've been back and forth on the Rebellion forums for years and it has always done me good to keep my life in balance. I haven't been around for a while because life's been crazy and I found myself "accidentally" ignoring the forums and my challenge goals. Other things to do. But now I feel like I need the structure of the challenges again to reboot the end of my year and stop this little funk I've been in for the last month or so. Stuff about me in general: I live in Australia. I identify as female. Roller derby is my team sport of choice. My fitness journey has so far gone like this: Yoga --> BW --> NF --> more BW --> Roller derby --> gym --> Lifting --> Roller derby --> broken ankle --> sedentary --> rehab --> skatey --> gym rehab --> moar derby --> meltdown --> little to no cross-training --> now. I'm at work and my brain is starting to turn to jello. Long Story: TL;DR Life. Madness. Had some panic attacks, been in a funk. Haven't been cross-training or eating like I should. Also decided I should really address my self-esteem issues. Gonna do it. Get better. Be awesome. Kick ass. etc. Long Term Goals (very vague I know) Food prep every week, eat less snacks, fuel body for athleticism Cross-train in equal amounts to derby practice. Win an MVP award in a derby game next year Be able to clean my house without getting all angsty about it Stop being so mean to myself. Challenge Goals! This challenge is all about the hinge habits. Small habits I need to work on so that they can lead to bigger and better things. Like fitness, and a clean house. My motivator is monetary this time around. It's not very druid-y to be motivated by money I know - but heck, the warm fuzzy feeling of a clean house isn't doing it for me so I've gotta try something. My challenge will be scored in $1's. Every time I achieve something, $1 is added to my score. At the end of the challenge I'm going to use the total I've earned to buy something nice for the new house I've moved into. 1. Stop Pity Eating. Replace bought snacks and soft drinks with alternatives. Chocolate. There is always a fundraising box of chocolate bars at work which I have been snacking on WAY too often. it's time to stop that. They aren't even as good as I think they're gonna be. Instead I can bring a snack to entertain myself while at work. $1 for every time I go to buy a chocolate bar but have an alternative, or resist. I have to consciously think about buying the chocolate and reason myself out of it though. No just counting the amount of times I walk past the box. Soft Drinks. Not gonna lie, my partner and I played the McDonalds monopoly game hard. I know fast food is bad for me, so that's why I usually eat much less of it. But to begin with I'm going to work on cutting out the sugary soft drink part of it. $1 every time I have the chance to buy a soft drink and choose an alternative. Like water. Or tea. 2. Just do some damn exercise. I know I should cross-train. It makes me a better derby player. I've just lost the motivation. And now that I've moved house I don't drive directly past any gyms so I can't even guilt trip myself into stopping by on the way home from work like I used to. So I'm going to start with the basics. Push ups and single leg squats on alternating days, with one run on the weekend. Following the 50 pull ups system for the bodyweight exercises so I do the form and work my way up. And following the C25K system for the run so I can work on my cardio endurance from the ground up again. $2 earned for every push up I can do at the end of the challenge. $2 earned for every controlled negative pistol squat I can do at the end of the challenge - that's just the going down part. Asking myself to do a full pistol in a month is probably asking a bit much. We'll see. $5 for every km I can run non-stop at the end of the challenge. Bigger bribes here because I really, really, really want to get better at roller derby. 3. Keep the house sparkly. We bought a house. It's brand new. An ex-display home. No one has ever lived in it. You know those cartoons where they clean a room and the whole thing literally sparkles? that's what it's like. It's absolutely beautiful. And I want to keep it that way. Working sort of off the Flylady system of house cleaning, I'm going to focus on keeping one area of the house spotless every week. Week 1: Master Bedroom/bathroom/walk-in robe Week 2: Living space and dining room Week 3: Entrance and outdoors Week 4: Kitchen $1 for every day I clean something in the right zone. Maybe bonus points for doing extra. I dunno yet. $1 for every box of stuff I unpack during the challenge. Right now I feel like I'm camping in someone else's house. 4. Brain Train. Toot toot. That's the sound of me tooting my own horn. Read those Sport Psychology books you fucking downloaded for fucks sake. After my meltdown one of my teammates suggested a sports spychologist* psychologist might be able to help me work on my lack of self esteem. And being that I live in a small country town, there is no sport psychologist. So I googled it. Found some books. Downloaded some books. Read one and it really resonated with me so I started another one. But I've stopped reading them lately. No time? that's a bad excuse I know. Books to work through: The Brave Athlete: Calm the Fuck Down and Rise to the Occasion (currently half way through) - by Simon Marshall & Lesley Paterson The Subtle Art of not Giving a Fuck - by Mark Manson. Read the sample and sounded real good. Unf*ck yourself: Get out of your head and into your life (re-read) - by Gary Johnn Bishop. If I finish the others I would like to read this one again. I'm sensing a theme. $1 for every night you spend some time reading about your brain. *it's late. my typos are getting bad but that was too funny to delete. what do you think a spychologist does? Like I said. total $$$ scored is how much I get to spend on house stuff. There;s already a list of things I want and will probably buy but if I see something I just want just 'cos, that will be my goal. I like to track my challenges on a spreadsheet so I can see how many days I've skipped. Also excel does the math for me. yay.

Challenge 1 - System Restart Main Quest: To create and entrench self care routines for body, mind and spirit Mini 1: Cardio - 20 min daily (STR, STA) Mini 2: Eat a healthy, low carb, minimally processed diet, not exceeding 1500 calories in any given day (CON, STA) Mini 3: Meditation - 20 min daily (WIS, CON) Mini 4: Yoga - 15 min beginner routine daily (DEX,CHA) Mini 5: Journal - thoughts, feelings, dreams, whatever 10 min twice a day (first thing in morning and last thing at night) (WIS, CHA) Life Quest: Lose 4 clothing sizes and self loathing, gain energy, charisma and inner peace Epic Quest: This one is a 3 parter: 1. Pay down my credit card * Take card out of wallet and stash somewhere I will forget about * Set up automatic transfer on paydays to transfer $50 to the credit card account * Hide the account from view online I believe this will take approximately 1.5 years 2. Save a $5000 emergency fund * Set up an automatic transfer on paydays to transfer $50 to the emergency account until credit card is paid off, then increase transfer to $100. * Hide account from online view I believe this will take approximately 2.6 years 3. Save $30,000 towards a home deposit & stamp duty * Set up an automatic transfer on paydays to transfer $50 to the home deposit account until Emergency Account is up to $5000 then increase the transfer to $150 * Hide account from online view I believe this will take approximately 6.6 years

Ok, here it goes. I'm going to lay it all out here, hoping that someone has gone through the same things and can offer advice or support. I'm hesitant to post my fears online but everyone seem helpful here and I've gotten a lot more hope after starting to read Steve's book. I have been a quitter of most things all my life, that's pretty sad considering I'm 32 years old now. I'll be all "gung-ho" at first and really work at it, say eating better or exercising five days a week, and then I'll just stop after a few weeks or a few months. I start to see some good results and I just stop...like something comes up and I get sick or I can't work out one day so that one day becomes a few days and then I quit. The only real things I haven't quit in my life are: college, my marriage, my current job (that I so want to get out of), and then my studying of Japanese (going on 2 yrs now, woot!) I've be diagnosed with anxiety/depression, borderline personality disorder, and ocd...so...not fun things but meds help some. I've also got some of the lowest self-esteem that I've ever seen. I've also been thinking a lot lately and have come to the conclusion that not only am I scared of failure and success but I'm afraid who I will become if I do succeed...which I guess does fall under the fear of success. I am terrified of the person I could/would become if I succeed and get that job that doesn't treat you poorly or lose those 60 lbs that I need to lose to be healthy or go on that language learning vacation to Japan alone (which would be my first trip/time alone Ever). Fear just has me by the throat. I'm so scared that I'll turn into someone that isn't happy with my current surroundings after I succeed. I mean, my husband is doing great at his side business now and I admit, I am jealous but proud of him, but he is overweight and choosing to do this side job vs get healthier. So if I really get at it, lose the weight, or do things by myself...what if I really like it? What if I feel great and then realize that I may not need him anymore or want to be with him. I love him dearly and maybe this is the stress of the lack of time we have due to the side job, but I really fear these things. I also feel guilty because my husband started the side job (which he loves because it involves his hobby) because I was complaining a lot about lack of savings. So here I am aggravated with my life and knowing something needs to change and it starts with losing some weight and gaining self confidence but every time I get started I start to worry again. It seems so silly because no one can predict the future and it sounds dumb to not get healthy or not try to fulfill my travel dreams because of what-ifs. And of course, I'm just plain lazy most of the times and feel like after I get home from work and do chores that I'm poop and don't want to do anything. Then i find that excuse that I'm too tired and I'm not a morning person so I can't get up an hour earlier. Gosh, I'm so full of excuses. So, I'd appreciate any comments if anyone has had these types of feelings before. I thank you for bothering to read if you got this far too! lol