20 Days of Nourishment

I love this “Train Your Brain to Run Your Best” article on Runner’s World. It says that thinking is a behavior and you have to work to improve it. Just like you have to train your body to run a marathon, you also need to train your mind to stay tough when the race gets rough. Training your mind and spirit is just as important as training your body.

Speaking of thoughts, I’ve been thinking lots of them. Yes, clap for me! Anyway, I won’t bore you by spelling them all out. I’ll word cloud them for you! Just a spoon full of visual helps the words go down.

That silly saying “You are what you eat” is creepy if you think about it literally, but it’s true. For about a year now, I’ve been asking myself over and over again…

What am I feeding into my life?

What am I speaking into existence through my thoughts and actions? What kind of nourishment is my mind and spirit getting? Physical nourishment is a useful analogy here. “You are what you eat” is such a common phrase it’s boring. However….

It is true for my mind.
If I entertain myself with some crap hollywood gossip article, it may seem juicy, but it isn’t edifying at all, it doesn’t make me think better of the world. Instead I can choose to spend time working on a hobby or a developing a skill. Or if I need easy entertainment, let it at least be something on Upworthy or an article on people doing good in this world.

“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.”
—John Milton, Paradise Lost

It is also true for my spirit.
Thoughts pop into our heads all the time. Some are truths. Some are lies. Which ones do I dwell on? Which ones do I encourage? Which ones do I allow to take hold in my spirit? Do I choose to meditate and reflect on positive, life-affirming truths, or do I let the lies sneak in and steal my peace, confidence, and joy?

Intentional Nourishment is Key

In order to feed good, positive, healthy, helpful things into my life I have to be intentional about it. It doesn’t just happen, much like a healthy home-cooked meal doesn’t just happen, or being mentally tough for a marathon doesn’t just happen.

So where am I at? How am doing with self nourishment in body, mind and spirit? 

To that end, I’m issuing a 20 day “challenge” (this word is tired, but it works), starting July 7th. I hope you’ll do it with me. Of course, you could do this any ‘ol time you wanted. Anyway, this 20 day challenge will help me assess my current nourishment practices. This is the kind of thing that I should probably do once a year just to check in and see how I’m doing.

It’s easy: write down what you feed your body, mind, and spirit every day.

Here are the details….

20 Days of Nourishment

DATES: JULY 7TH – JULY 26TH

HOW TO PLAY:
1) Keep a daily log of what you feed your body (eat and drink), mind (entertainment & education choices), and spirit (truths or lies you dwell on). It’s like a food journal for life. You must write down the good and the bad. It doesn’t have to be super detailed.

2) Give each of your items or group of items a score on a scale between 0 and 7.
Use 0 for anything completely unhelpful, or negative, or unhealthy.
Use 7 for anything completely helpful, positive, or healthy.

3) Add up your daily total and share it on social media using #howinourish. If you want to blog about it, use this image and link back to this post.

4) At the end of the 20 days, reflect on your entries and daily totals. What did your best days look like compared to your worst days? On the whole, how does your “diet” balance out between positive and negative? Do you see any good patterns to celebrate or unhelpful habits that need to be addressed?

5) If you’re on Twitter, join me for a #howinourish chat on July 30th to share how it went.

GOAL:
The goal is to give yourself a snapshot of your nourishment. Then, if you want to use that to think about how or where you can make improvements, great!

NOURISHMENT LOG:
I’ll probably do this on the computer, but for those of you who like to use pen and paper you can print out this nourishment log. Or pin this as a helpful template to remind you how to keep your daily log. Click here to download a PDF version.

SAMPLE:
I did a mock up of one based on my day. This should give you an idea of how to fill it out.

PS: The honest truth is that by doing this for 20 days, there is a sneaky side effect. If you’re like me, you’ll naturally want to be able to write down more positive things than negative things. You may find yourself skipping some chronic “bad foods” here and there simply so you don’t have to write them down at the end of the day! Not a terrible thing to have happen….

Will you join me?

If so, please leave a comment with your blog, twitter, and/or instagram link so I can follow you! If you don’t have any of those things, you can share your daily totals and thoughts on my Facebook Page: Running Hutch!