You have set the goal and intention to reduce your weight and improve your health so that you can be the best parent, partner, and person you can be.

What feels better—to get up and do the workout, or to stay in bed?

While you may assume that staying in the warm and comfy bed feels better—does it really? Can you honestly say you don’t’ feel discord, both in that moment and later when you get up? How do you feel about yourself throughout the day when you think about that missed workout?

How did you feel when you got up and did the workout anyway?

Now if you were truly at peace and it felt good to stay in bed, you probably needed the sleep. But if you listen to your heart, you can always feel if your thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and actions are in alignment—even if you are taking an action that on the surface seems like it would feel way harder.

This is true whether you are reducing your weight, improving your life, or standing up for something that you believe in. Your emotions are your direction, gauge, guidance, indicator, litmus test letting you know if you are moving towards who you are meant to be, or are taking a detour.

My Mother taught me this from her example. In 1957, she was a student at Little Rock

My mother in the late 50s.

Central High School when it was first integrated by nine African-American students. She did what she felt was right. Simple things, liking sharing her desk and math text book with one of the incoming students on their first day. Smiling and offering encouragement throughout the year.

And for this, she was spat on, harassed, and sent threatening notes on almost a daily basis. The other white students made her last year of high school a living hell. And yet she did not waver.

To this day, I don’t think she feels better about anything else she has done in life. If anything, her regret is that she didn’t do more.

But clearly she did enough. During one of the anniversaries of the integration, Oprah Winfrey asked the Little Rock Nine, as the students came to be known, if any white students had helped. My mother was the only one they remembered. Oprah flew my mother out to her studios and reunited her with the student with whom she had shared her book, and he let her know how very important her smile across a room had been.

Doing what feels good, what feels right, what feels like it is in alignment with who you are, what you value, what you believe, and who you want to be may be damn hard. But the reward will always be absolutely worth it.

Doing what feels good does not necessarily mean doing what is easy. Nothing feels better than doing the work to meet your goals, or facing the challenge.

Together we can do it!

Photo by Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net