Dear Fellow Rotarians,

     A great big thank you to Yvonne Biely and Ken Dally for covering meetings in my absence. I’m finally recovering from my 3-week hiatus. My challenge now is that there’s so much to do that it’s overwhelming. Where do I start?

     It’s easy to get bogged down with all the things that we need to do and want to do. Setting out to accomplish that one goal that we have that’s so big, it’s easy to be overwhelmed by it and let it slip away.

     The days will continue to go by. The sun will rise and set tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that. What if we set out to make just a little progress every day? What would that look like? As Jack Canfield says, “You don’t have to get it perfect, you just have to get it going.”

     I was inspired by a friend of mine who recently lost 17 pounds. I approached her looking for the miracle cure. “You look great! What are you doing,” I asked. She said, “I stopped eating my kids’ leftovers and started eating better. It’s been less than a half pound each week.” I walked away inspired, thinking, “I can totally do that.”

     I know it sounds simple. We all know what we need to do but we’re not doing it. We want results and we don’t want to make the changes we need to make to get there because we overwhelm ourselves. What if we broke our goal down into something manageable? For example, a pound is 3500 calories. If we want to lose a pound a week, that’s 500 calories/day that we need to eliminate or burn from our usual routine. If we want to lose a half pound a week, that’s 250 calories/day. You get the point. Next year is going to come again anyway. The question is where do we want to be? One thing we can be sure of is: We can’t get there if we don’t get started!

     What will you set out to do? You can do whatever you set your mind to! You just have to get started! Dare to be EXTRAordinary! You can do it!!

     YIRS,

Michelle