Champion Challenge “Charting Our Course “

Hey Friends! I hope this post finds you with Peace upon you, around you and especially within you. If you are new to my blog let me be the first to say Welcome to the randomness that is my blog !

Today started as usual we woke up, gave our Thanks, and stumbled down stairs to start the coffee. We feed Elvis after giving him his morning love and say buongiorno to everyone as they wake up.

This photo below is of his new favorite sleeping spot. His sleeping spots change and he has a few of his favorites. I think this basket is now a new one of his favorites.

Elvis had a hard couple of days last week. It was raining pretty hard for a few days and he was strange kind of like a cat living in the wild.

He started stretching and walking in deep mud puddles ( Elvis doesn’t usually like water on his fur ) He barely ate (we all know Elvis loves him some food. ) , all he did was sleep and go around doing things he does not normally do.

Thank God he was back to his self after the rain ended. He was back to his schedule of eating, napping in the sun, surveying his kingdom and then back to eating and napping in the sun.

When we go out to water the plants or tend to our garden He usually follows us around and sits with us while we do our tasks which I find simply adorable.

I say usually because there are times when he is so comfortable, the sun is hitting him just right, the breeze is blowing though his fur and he does not want to do anything or go anywhere.

He just picks up his head a little bit to see who we are and is back to his nap with out a care in the world.

This morning my husband had our coffee together and gave each other a kiss as we both started our champion stuff for the day.

I began to do a deep cleaning, then I got my work out out of the way, did my meditation, breath work and got ready for the day.

Speaking of doing my tasks…let’s talk about the giant elephant in the room.. You guys I can’t believe I’am saying this but I failed the 75 Soft Challenge.

Not only did I fail it but I actually failed it two days before I realized I failed. I was doing good with working out, drinking water, fasting for 12 hours but I somehow blocked out reading the 10 pages.

It was on the third day that I sat down and began to check off things on my to do list when I realized I had not read the 10 pages in 3 days. I was so bummed.

At first negative thoughts swept in like…” I failed because I am a failure and all I do is make mistakes. ” I could not believe I had failed the 76 SOFT Challenge.

Not the Hard challenge but I failed the Soft challenge. The one that is specifically designed for us NOT to fail. Yeah …so that happened.

So after my day of sulking and dwelling in my failure I asked myself what did I learn from this?

For me I learned when you already have a full plate it does not make sense to keep adding to it. I was setting myself up for failure.

I also learned that I still have work to do on my negative self talk. I would never talk to anyone the way I speak to myself. So I will be working on this.

Now that we got that out of the way we can get back to our own regular scheduled program 😉

After I had finished getting ready for the day I began my blog and work related tasks until lunch time. You guys we have been having some lunches that have been off the chain good.

Between my husband and his mom we eat super well and healthy. The other day my husband made this amazing bread.

You know how sometimes when you make bread maybe it doesn’t come out looking that beautiful but it tastes really good or the opposite happens and maybe it looks beautiful but it tastes like cardboard?

Well this time my husband nailed it! It was both beautiful looking and tasted amazing. Just look how yummy and beautiful it looks guys..

After lunch I started back on my tasks with making the dreaded phone calls and the all the stuff I didn’t want to do but needed to do.

I ended up being on hold for around 45 minutes and then on the phone for around 3 hours. This is why I say the DREADED phone calls but it’s fine I got it done.

After all that I stretched for few minutes and started on my blog work related tasks once again. I worked until 5 when my alarm went off to go out and water the plants.

Speaking of plants… We have a garden update. Our experimental garden that we planted from seeds was not thriving in the least.

Despite our best efforts we could not get rid of the little mushrooms that turned black and took over our garden essentually.

After we discussed it we saved the plants that were savable and then have decided to turn the soil and let the sun hit it for awhile before planted some plants that have already been started.

We planted some more lettuce, some purple onions and some more peppers. Our berry bushes are thriving as well as our watermelon seeds have sprouted and are becoming stronger each day.

The other side of our garden is still thriving and becoming bigger each day. It is strangely satisfying to watch what we planted grow and thrive.

The good news is in our other garden we have some baby calliflowers and our plants are indeed thriving in this garden. They are adorable.

Life in our little part of the world is alive and well. The flowers are in bloom even the roses around the yard.

The bees have been very busy around here but they seem to be happy. Even the insects are happy and content living their best little lives.

We found this little caterpillar under a flower pot. So we gave it a new home in the trees so it can build it’s cocoon without the ear of the birds eating it.

We got the birds a bird house but before we present it to them we have to make a few modifications like adding a bigger door and a little stick for them to stand on.

Since the last time I posted I have finished a painting as a gift for my husbands parents. This painting is of some of their grapes from a photo I took last year.

My intentions were to paint something I had never painted before and it was for the joy of painting whatever I wanted to paint. It has been awhile since I painted something just for the joy of it.

Food For Thought: Charting our Course

Food for thought for today is about ” Charting our Course.” It has been said that to life life to our best potential we have to chart our course like captains of the sea.

They say that part of charting our course is that we are to be planning for storms that may arrive in the future, analyzing the data and charting the course to arrive at our destinations .

They say we are to be doing 20% of our time doing what has to be done on the day to day and then 80% of our time planning for, working for, analyzing our data, and dreaming about our dreams and goals.

Data has said to show that for the individuals who were in a controlled environment this was much easier to maintain then those living in the regular world having to handle everyday life.

Turns out that life happens and our futures take a back seat to the nuance as we find ourselves putting out fires of the present moment and dealing with our tasks at hand which leaves us drained of our creative energy.

It reminds me of building igloos out of snow when we were kids. As kids we would build these little igloos at school and the point would be to build your igloos while also protecting it and yourself from incoming snowball missiles.

So as we were trying to build our igloos we would simultaneously be having snow ball fights. We would be throwing these snow balls at each other with one hand and with the other hand trying to build and protect our igloo walls from the incoming snow balls being thrown.

You could always tell who was experiencing their first snow ball fight because they would scramble to build their igloos as fast as possible and in the end their igloos would collapse leaving them unprotected.

We needed to make sure we made a solid foundation because the igloo is what was going to protect us from all the snowballs we were getting pummeled with.

Each one of us learned very early on that we could not be so caught up in making and throwing snow balls that we did not have a solid foundation for our igloo.

If we didn’t have a solid foundation everything would fall apart and we would still be pummeled with snowballs. Which as we all know hurts and should be avoided at all costs.

My point to this little journey down metaphor lane is that even when we were getting pummeled by snowballs ( Life ) we still need to build a solid foundation for our igloo (Future ) .

If we don’t build a solid foundation for our igloo ( Future) then everything is going to fall apart and we will still be pummeled by incoming snowballs ( Life)

Life is always and forever going to happen to us but if we stay on course and our foundation is solid in our spiritual life with God we can withstand the storms, the snowball missiles and anything else life can throw at us.

We got this guys! Lets focus this week on grounding ourselves, making sure we have a solid foundation to build on while still continuing to be the best versions each day more.

Let me know how you guys are coming along with the 75 soft challenge and how you are charting your course! Sending much love to you guys.