Stepping for Mental Health: Four Year Reflection of 10,000 steps a day!

Hello my loyal readers! Long time and no new blog postings. Anybody else feeling like life is moving a million miles per minute right now or is that just me? I apologize for being so MIA these days. Between work craziness and planning the wedding, I am staying pretty busy and just trying to soak up any quiet time I can.

I can’t believe that today is the first day of October, and we are entering into the last quarter of the year but also the best time of the year. What is your favorite part about the end of the year and holiday season? Personally there is so much I look forward to, especially since I live in beautiful Western North Carolina. Seeing the leaves change colors is one of the things I missed the most in the years I lived away from home.

Besides the beautiful scenery I am a sucker for the holiday spirit with Thanksgiving and Christmas, and with my birthday is in between those two holidays it’s extra sweet. Also this year my fiancé and I plan to revisit our proposal site and have a mini-moon trip for two nights away from home to celebrate being engaged for the past year. We haven’t been anywhere together in almost a year since we have been saving for the wedding, so I am really looking forward to some quality time with him away somewhere new. Plus we are going to try and knock out a few hikes I have been eyeing for over a year so I am excited about getting some miles in outside and in the forest!

Speaking of miles, last month I got to celebrate reaching my 10,000 steps a day goal for four years! I always find it significant when something lasts as long as the length of high school or college.

This past year was certainly challenging with meeting this goal everyday, especially during the winter season and my work deciding not to have the Fitness Center open for staff to use. Not going to lie, I was furious about this decision. I felt like the one thing everybody needed at the time was endorphins and a healthy place to relieve some stress during a very stressful year. However, I knew it was for the best in regards to keeping people safe during the pandemic.

Given the fact that I wasn’t going to have a gym to help me reach my daily step goal, I ended up investing in a cheap elliptical off of Amazon. It isn’t ideal to use if there are other options, but it gets the job done and helps me get a good cardio workout in while I am at it on the rainy or cold days. Much better and more productive than me pacing the house and annoying the dickens out of my partner and our two cats!

Finished up my 10,000 steps on my elliptical at home and smiling big time because I made it 4 years!

My fiancé snuck this note on my phone and I didn’t find it until a week later!

I am always so grateful when I hit my daily step goal, and when I make it an entire year doing so.

“Our health is truly the most precious gift we are given and it is so easy for us to take it for granted. Most of the time we only do something for it when we are forced to out of circumstance, and not as a preventative action for ourselves physically or mentally. To prioritize your health is a true act of self-love and self-care.”

I shared on my Instagram page a few weeks ago that I was taking a much needed mental health day off. I had already planned on taking the day off, but I didn’t realize how badly I was needing it until I cried almost an entire evening after coming home from work. All I kept saying was “I feel overwhelmed and like I never have enough time.”

Overwhelmed by the good in life with planning my future and wedding with my love.

Overwhelmed in reaching my goals, even the good ones like my step goal.

Overwhelmed by the increasing demands at my day job and feeling like my employer will never value my worth.

Overwhelmed by my finances and where they are at during this season of life, and wishing I had more money to work with both in my monthly and wedding budgets right now.

Overwhelmed by the horrible things going on in the world and feeling like I have no control in any of it.

There are prior seasons of life that made me feel overwhelmed, so being overwhelmed now isn’t entirely new. It’s the same feeling just disguised in a different package.

“The truth is there is so much in life we don’t have control over, but there are also many parts of it that we have more control than we think.”

We get to choose the person we decide to spend forever with and accept how they treat us and show us love. Likewise, we also get to have a say in the kind of employer we decide to work for and how they treat us over the long-haul.

We get to set goals that matter to us and help us feel like we are working towards something even in the most hard of times.

For me my step goal was born out of a place of hardship four years ago with battling depression and wanting to feel some sense of control and say in something in my life. I wanted to feel accomplished even on the hardest of days that would often leave me overwhelmed. It may be four years later, but my step goal remains the same and helping me feel good mentally on both the good and hard days in life.

I hope you enjoyed this reflection of how my step goal is connected to me managing my mental health, and the place it was born out of. Originally when I sat down to write this post I had an entirely different idea and direction I thought it would go. However, the writing universe wanted me to share a different side to it all and a side I had never really connected much myself.

Know that even in the hardest of times, days, situations, relationships, etc., that YOU do have CONTROL. You may not have control with what is happening to you specifically, but you do have control in your reaction to it and and how impacts your life.

Take ownership and love yourself enough to know that you do have the power to make changes for the better.

Until next time,