Under normal circumstances, I find myself encouraging people to do more. These are not normal circumstances. I have written more lately about doing less and chilling out than possibly ever before, but some folks still need to hear more about that.
Here’s the deal: times are stressful. Not one of us needs a single other thing to feel guilty about. If exercise makes us feel better, we should do it. If we don’t feel up to it, we should let it go.
In more detail, here is what I suggest. Figure out a minimum acceptable level of activity. This is not the time to go all macho (it is almost never the time to go all macho, really…). My absolute base minimum is that I have to walk the dog around one block. If I’ve done that, cool. I’m still alive. I can get on with whatever else urgent is there. Having a really easy-to-meet minimum target is exceptionally freeing. There is no more guilt to lug around. And what usually happens is that the very act of starting out improves my mood so much that I do much more than my minimum. If I don’t, no big deal. But most of the time, I walk about a half hour, come home and feel like doing spin or Pilates or yoga. And then in the afternoon I feel like walking more because I need to go outside.
Exercise is NOT something we do to punish ourselves. If it does not feel good (in the larger sense, if not always right in the very moment we are doing it), don’t do it.
Our goal is to stay healthy right now, by whatever means necessary. We can get back to hard workouts when this is done if they feel like too much to handle right now.
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