French Fry Runner

Thoughtful Thursday | Light the Match

As I was looking for a quote to share today, this one stood out a lot to me. For me, to meet my goals, I have to have the right amount of training, which I will hope is enough to succeed when I need to. We all have things we would like to accomplish, and to do so we need we need to think of every training session, every article we read, every visit to physical therapy, and so on as fuel to the fire.

I hope you meet your goals this year and light your match at the right time and succeed like you never thought possible.

How will you light the match this year? Are you running any races? Doing a squat challenge? Swimming a mile? Let me know! 🙂

Strike a {Yoga} Pose: Tree Pose

It seems we have been focusing balance sequences in my yoga classes. One of my favorite balance poses is tree pose (or Vrksasana). I had a bit of a breakthrough in my last yoga class. We were facing away from the mirrors in the room the during whole class so we could focus inward and just be in our practice instead of being critical of ourselves–which I loved. I was able to go further in this pose than I ever have. Great moment for me. My favorite is to get into the pose with my hands at heart center and then raise my arms and spread out my arms and fingers. This brings joy to my practice.

The beauty of any pose in yoga is that you can be where you are. You can keep your toes on the floor, place your foot on the opposite calf or thigh or even cross your foot over the top. (I hope I’m making sense.) Check out the video below to learn this joyful pose:

Video by Yoga with Adriene. Find her on YouTube.

My Mantra for 2015

I’m linking up with Patty from My No-Guilt Life, Erika from MCM Mama Runs, and April from Run the Great Wide Somewhere for Tuesdays on the Run. This week’s topic is Goals for 2015–but since I already posted on that topic for Friday Five last week, I’m going a different route (pun intended). I’d like to talk about my mantra for the year:

I have some really lofty goals for this year (ahem, a marathon), and I’ve been trying to figure out what can motivate me to get the job done. I’ve always loved collecting quotations from famous people and love to read about others’ mantras, so when I saw this phrase on a bracelet, it stuck with me, and I decided this year I would “own the day” every day. To me, this means that I’ll make every day a positive one, that I’ll work and run hard, meet my goals, and won’t give up. I believe that as I own the day, I’ll feel satisfied with what I’m doing and live positively.

So, how about you? What’s your mantra? How will you own the day this year?