Monday Moment - Another Reason to Keep On Keeping On!

Well it's happened again. For the second week in 2007, I have failed to meet my exercise goals of 300 minutes per week. I anticipated that it would be difficult to fit in that much intentional exercise last week since I was visiting family and working with my good friends from Executive Edge at Ernst & Young's International Intern Leadership Conference. (This is such a cool program where we help E&Y facilitators know how to conduct exciting and challenging team-building activities with over 2000 student interns who have worked among Ernst & Young's other 130,000 firm members across the globe. You can find out more about it at www.executiveedgeinc.com!)

Amidst all the time we spend working together - and the time we spend socializing over wonderful dinners - my 300 minutes of intentional exercise just didn't happen. There was a lot of unintentional exercise - walking all over a huge convention center, bursts of running during energizing breaks, a little dancing, a lot of getting up and down from the floor, and one Qi Gong routine that was great fun to experience and that I think I'd like to practice on a regular basis. But I only did the briefest intentional exercise during the whole week.

By any measure, I'd have to say that I failed to meet my goal last week. And yet, I feel renewed and excited about my 300 minute goal in ways that surprise me. I've been committed and true to the goal without fail, but I have to admit that my excitement about it has been on the wane. It's just not easy to always fit in the time - and frankly I had hoped that I might be seeing more weight loss results from my commitment. I have lost a little weight - but a lot less than I'd hoped, and it hasn't been difficult to feel just a little discouraged with my meager loss.

Last week though, I discovered another way in which my 300 minute commitment has made a difference. I mentioned earlier that there is a lot of getting up and down from the floor in the work I was doing last week. We introduce an activity, then do it, and then sit down on the floor to talk about what the group did well, how the team's behavior reminds them of real life experiences, and what lessons they want to take away - to their lives and to the next activity. It's up, down, up, down, up, down, all day long.

In past years, I'd start to ache from all the up and down by at least the second day - and know that I'd have four more days to go! I discovered muscles I apparently hadn't used in a long time, and I got very stiff and sore. But this year, I managed the ups and downs with surprising ease. I didn't need the Advil and Aleve that I'd relied on in other years. It felt good to sit down - and it felt good to get back up again. Clearly I was both stronger and more flexible this year - and that has to be due to my 300 minutes of exercise commitment.

See why I'm excited? I saw results! They weren't the results I was hoping for - 15 pounds gone instead of a measly 6 - but they were results nonetheless! I handled the rigor of our up and down work with more ease than some of my younger colleagues - and more importantly than I did just a year ago! Hooray! One more reason to keep on keeping on!