I'm a firm believer in investing in yourself and personal growth and then seeing everything around you start to grow and come up higher, too.
Lately, I've been on a mission to come up higher, level-up, and start preparing myself for new opportunities. I'm seeing new opportunities in my business, new clients, new avenues for income, and that didn't just happen. Even this blog post is preparation...as I continue to grow, I know I'll receive more and more questions about "how did you...?" and "what did you do to...?" so I'm preparing now by writing this blog post and answering a few questions, as well as documenting part of my journey and process.
I can think back to every major change in my life, and it was always preceded by a time of preparation, a change in my daily routine, or a new commitment to better myself.
In this post, I want to break down the practical, daily life routines I go through as I work on personal growth. Everyday, I want to be mindful about what I'm feeding my body, my spirit, and my soul. I start each morning by doing something to grow my body, my spirit, and my soul. This will look different for everyone, but here is my current routine.
WORKOUTS
If you've been around my channels for a while, you know I love a good workout, sports, and movement. For the last few years, I've been focused on studio-based workout classes. I love a group fitness class, and have connected with some amazing people over the years through local fitness studios and classes.
Earlier this year, I knew I needed to make a change; my morning schedule wasn't quite flowing how I wanted it to. My husband leaves for work around 7:15am and we like to have breakfast together at 7:00am. Most of the studio classes I wanted to take started at 6:30am and weren't quite working for me + drive time. I have done studio classes for years so I was nervous to make a change. "What if I hate it and then I stop working out?!" (lol)
I decided that summer was a perfect time to try something new. I signed up for the Hot Girl Summer Challenge, a 6 week virtual workout program, hosted by Stay Fit Virtual and Stay Fit Britt. The program also included weekly meal planning help and recipes, so I figured I would give it a shot.
After 6 weeks, I decided to keep it up. Stay Fit Virtual offers live workouts every MWF, and a library of past workouts, categorized by muscle groups that I use the rest of the week. Most of the workouts are 45 minutes and are a mix of strength, cardio, and some pilates-ish moves. It's been about 3 months of doing the workouts, usually 5x per week. I'm loving the results. It all comes down to consistency.
I like that the trainer, Britt, also shares her healthy lifestyle on IG, preaches consistency, balanced nutrition, and enjoying your life...no crash dieting here!
I've had a few questions on IG about the workouts, if I'm liking them, getting results, etc. I love the ease of being able to walk into my home office each morning, unroll my yoga mat, grab my dumbbells, and start my workout, no drive time required.
After my morning workout, I have breakfast and coffee with my husband, and spend about 1 hour posting on IG on my business pages. After that, I go for a 30 minute minimum walk.
NUTRITION
The past 3-4 weeks, I have been focused on a body reset. Everything was going well in my fitness journey in early summer, but during July, my stomach started to feel bloated more often than not; I was feeling anxious, my face was breaking out (not normal!) and knew something was off. In July, I celebrated my birthday, traveled to Mexico, hosted a few fiestas, and I knew I had probably over-indulged. So I made a decision to do a mini-reset, not knowing that it would actually take *weeks* for my body to get back to normal.
You may have noticed a shift in some of my meals and eating out. We eat pretty healthy most of the time, and we cook at home a lot, but I started to cut out gluten and dairy to test if something specific was bothering my stomach. I'm laughing as I write this thinking about how in my twenties, I could "eat clean" for a day and feel perfect the next day, but that's not the case anymore! ;) Over the weekend, we went to Javier's to celebrate new clients in my business; I had a handful of chips, a healthy grilled chicken dish, and a skinny marg - my first drink in a month. I'm happy to report that I felt great after dinner!
I'll put together a separate post on some of the healthy alternative snacks and recipes I started to turn to but here are a few: chia seed pudding, coconut yogurt + granola, coconut cream, and smoothies.
I got more serious about meal prep. That sounds a little intense, but don't panic. I *love* fridge organization, and was thrilled to have cute mason jars filled with veggies organized on my shelves. ;) For me, meal prep looks like grocery shopping on Saturday or Sunday with a plan of what I want to cook that week. Then prepping fruits and veggies for easy snacking/cooking. I don't bulk cook and make all of my meals for the week.
I love to prep egg bites/mini veggie frittatas, so I keep chopped bell peppers and onions in mason jars. If I'm "browsing" the fridge for a snack, it's great to have something I can just pop a few bites of...so I keep fresh blueberries in this adorable berry basket, front and center. I make batches of chia seed pudding, and top with coconut cream and fresh fruit as a dessert, and my husband has even gotten on board with chia seed pudding as a healthy snack.
ROUTINE
Last week, my husband and I agreed to make a change to our routine. We had been getting up at 5:30am, but slacked off a little and started snoozing. We recommitted to our goal of starting our day strong, and decided that we wanted to get up at 5:00am. It's both easier and harder to get up early when you're married. Now you have accountability, but you also now have a reason/excuse to stay in bed. If one of us is dragging, the other one has to pick up the slack and turn on the lights! Get your s.o. on board with your wakeup time, if possible!
I get asked a lot about how I get up that early. I don't share my wakeup time to say "look how awesome I am." (lol who cares) BUT I share to show that investing in myself is my priority before I invest in anyone/anything else in my day, AND that if I can do it(natural night owl!), you certainly can too!
I start getting ready for bed at 8:30pm; I'm in bed at 9pm. Lights out at 9:05pm! Like I said, I'm a night owl naturally, and I *love* getting distracted by one million tasks and ideas right before bed, but bedtime is the key to wakeup time. Period.
MIND
I love reading and always have! Sometimes you know something, but you have to keep hearing it over and over to get it deep down inside of you and really start to believe it. I love reading as a way to introduce new information and also to solidify information that I want to hold onto and live by.
Two books I recommend if you want to grow personally:
In the morning, I spend time reading the Bible, praying, journaling, reviewing my goals and vision board (actually a binder), and then reading a non-fiction personal development book.
I mentioned that I was feeling anxious and I've been working on replacing any negative or anxious thoughts with positive WORDS. Not just positive *thoughts*....when you have a negative thought, you have to stop it by *speaking*. So I've been very mindful lately about my thoughts, and if something pops into my head that I don't like, I'm quick to replace it by speaking something positive out of my mouth. This could be affirmations, this could be goals, this could be a bible verse...anything that comes to mind the quickest!
Over the past week especially of focusing on mindfulness in my thoughts, I've seen a huge shift. Please note: this is something you have to commit to work on DAILY.
In addition to having a strong body, I want to have a strong MIND. I've set some big goals for myself in life and in my business. Some are for this year, some are to be realized over the next five years, and I know that every decision, every daily habit, every small routine I put into place now is inching me closer and closer to those goals.
I say this all the time: if I can do it, you can do it. If you have questions about my routine, shoot me a DM @rhondajenkins.