The weekend after Thanksgiving is when we "deck the halls." I know many people who have the same tradition. If my sons had their way, the house would be decorated for Christmas immediately after the last trick-or-treater is handed a Snickers bar. They begin playing holiday music on November 1st and they start counting down to the moment that I drag the boxes of ornaments and bags of trees (we put up and decorate 10 of them) from the storage room in our basement. I am faced with the same dilemma every year. Even though each tree is carefully un-decorated each year, and the ornaments and lights are painstakingly reorganized and stored, there are many strands that inevitably no longer work. What happens to the lights in those boxes for the 10 months of the year they are in hibernation? Wouldn't you like to know?
Last year, I even went to the trouble and expense of purchasing light strand holders with their very own boxes. I spent a lot of time when I took the trees down in January carefully wrapping each strand around its own special holding rack. I thought for sure that this was the year that I was going to "beat the system" and preserve those strands of lights (many of which were newly purchased in 2016) for another season of use. So much to my surprise and disappointment, I found most of my light strands were unusable once again this year. As I pondered the fate of my Christmas LED's, I realized that the lights are just like we are...they are meant to be used regularly and not stored away like a hibernating bear in a dark cave.
Have you ever fallen off the workout wagon? You know what I'm talking about...you miss a day or two because you aren't feeling well enough to go to the gym or the roads are too icy for your daily run. What happens after that? Isn't it tempting after you have recovered from your cold and the roads have cleared to sleep in an extra day or two? Sometimes those days turn into weeks or even months.
They say it takes 21 days to make a habit. I am here to tell you that I think it takes much less time than that to break a good habit. When I am on a workout roll, it is easy for me to make time every day in my schedule to get moving. Once I miss any period of time, I find it way too easy to make excuses for not putting my sneakers on. Once enough time has gone by, I feel like the strand of Christmas lights that will no longer turn on. Much like the hibernating bear, when you stop working out, your metabolism slows down and your heart rate is impacted.
The weather has gotten much colder recently, the sun doesn't rise until after 7am and it is dark by 4:30pm. That means we barely have 9 hours of daylight and our workdays are bookended by darkness. That also means there are plenty of ready-made excuses for not sticking with our exercise plan. How different would the holidays feel for you if you made time for yourself this year?...if you unpacked yourself like those strands of dormant lights and hit the ground running? When the bears come out of hibernation, they are just as strong as when their long winter's rest began. If only I could say the same about my Christmas lights and me.