If I hadn’t been inspired by other running bloggers I probably wouldn’t be running my second marathon in 10 sleeps. 

If I hadn’t been inspired by other career-driven individuals who enjoy what they do every day I probably wouldn’t be at my current workplace. 

If I hadn’t been inspired by quotes, movies, music, books, art and more I might not be the same person I am today.

If I hadn’t been inspired by a fellow classmate’s blog I probably wouldn’t be writing this blog post right now. 

If I hadn’t been inspired by world travelers I probably wouldn’t have experienced my own world travels and constantly be thinking about and planning the next big trip. 

Inspiration is a funny thing isn’t it? We feel powerful, happy, even on cloud 9 when we’re inspired by something and when we set goals for ourselves that are just out of our reach – at least that’s how I feel when a wave of inspiration hits.

Who Inspires You is a contest sponsored by Tri-Cyclen Lo to help inspire young women across the country. To enter the contest you need to upload a video of five minutes or less to YouTube telling the judges what you aspire to be and how you would use $10,000 to get there. Pretty awesome, right?

Last year’s winner, Daniela, used the money to pursue her dream of making music her career. I can’t wait to see what this years winner aspirations are!

To learn more about the Who Inspires You contest check out their website, twitter and facebook!

Disclosure: This post is sponsored by Tri-Cyclen Lo. All opinions expressed are my own.

Question of the day: Who or what inspires you? Have various forms of inspiration helped you get to where you are today? 

I read this post on Zen Habits the other day and it really struck a chord with me. If you don’t have time to read it the post is basically about quashing our urge to constantly “improve” ourselves.

One of the driving forces of my life for many years was the need to improve myself. It’s one of the driving forces for people who read my work as well.

It’s an incredibly pervasive urge: we are always trying to improve, and if we’re not, that’s something we should improve.

It’s everywhere. Where does this urge come from? It’s embedded in our culture — in the U.S. from Benjamin Franklin to the early entrepreneurial titans, everyone is trying to better themselves. It goes deeper, to ancient Western ideals of the perfect well-rounded person. But it flourished in the 20th century, from Dale Carnegie and Napoleon Hill to Stephen Covey. And now it’s in full bloom, with blogs. And yes, I’m part of this movement.

So what’s the problem? You could say it’s great that people are constantly trying to improve themselves, but where does it end? When is anyone ever content with who they are? We are taught that we are not good enough yet, that we must improve, and so … we always feel a little inadequate.

…

What if instead, we learned to be happy with ourselves?

What would happen?

That last paragraph and two lines from further on in the post, which I’ve bolded, is the one that really struck a chord with me. When does it end? When are we good enough?

Don’t get me wrong, I am all about goal setting and would not be where I am in my life right now if I hadn’t set some lofty goals for myself. Especially when it came to my career and running. But I also feel like now-a-days, especially around this time of year, all anyone can think about is how they want to improve or change. This falls into the “I’ll be happier when…” way of thinking for me.

I’ll be happier when I lose 10 pounds.

I’ll be happier when I move.

I’ll be happier when I have a new job.

I’ll be happier when I’m done university.

I’ll be happier when I have a partner.

I’m not trying to be hypocritical because I will admit to having these “I’ll be happier when…” thoughts a lot. I’ve set goals and New Years resolutions on a regular basis. Some I’ve achieved and some I haven’t. However, in the last couple of years I’ve started to really settle into where my life is right now. I’ve started trying to find joy and contentment in the every day, in what I have and who I am RIGHT NOW.

I think the urge to self-improve is good. Great even. But I think our society has taken it too far. I think that if we continue to get so caught up in this urge to be better one day we will be 90 years old, on our deathbed, and look around and wonder where our life has gone. Heck, we’ll probably wonder that regardless because life is so fleeting.

Keeping with the idea of being happy with who I am right now this year I am not setting New Years resolutions nor am I writing out a list of changes I want to make in 2012. I am just going to live my life as I am right now and as who I am right now. I will do exciting, fun and wonderful things in 2012 but because I want to and because they make me happy not because I have to “improve” who I am.

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Questions of the day: What do you think of this urge to self-improve constantly? Have you encountered it in your own life? Do you think it’s a good thing to constantly be trying to improve oneself and set goals or do you think it’s become too much?

Hello and happy Sunday friends. How have your weekends been?

I have had a crappy weekend as I’ve had a head cold since Thursday night. I’ve had three crappy nights of sleep in a row since I couldn’t breathe through my nose and was waking up with a dry mouth every hour. I finally went and bought a neti pot today despite my initial fear of it and it seems to have helped a bit. I skipped my run with friends this morning due to feeling under the weather and I don’t want to have to skip anymore workouts this week so I’m hoping I’m better asap!

Anyways, I was writing posts to schedule this week and was going to make this into two separate posts but decided to hodge-podge it into one. Especially since I’m sure a lot of people won’t be reading the latter half of this week with American Thanksgiving coming up!

Meal Planning

On Tuesday when Eric and I got home from our trip I made a grocery list and a meal plan. Something I never do! It has been so successful this week I am definitely starting to meal plan regularly.

I was in a major cooking funk this spring/summer but I’ve quickly realized that all it takes to get me back in the kitchen is cold weather and dark days. I have really been enjoying cooking our meals on a nightly basis this week. Cooking is a great release for me after a long day of work and I find it really relaxing and soothing.

This week I made squash, green bean and mushroom casserole, thai veggie burgers, lentil and olive enchilada’s, and spaghetti and lentil meatballs (the last three were all from the Peas and Thank You cookbook!)

These were all delicious meals and relatively easy to make. Plus the boys enjoyed them and anyone who lives with boys knows how hard it can be to get them to eat healthy food! Meal planning was so successful this last week I definitely want to keep it up.

This weeks challenge is to meal plan from what’s in the cupboard/fridge as we have enough stuff NOT to make another grocery trip just yet. I think meal planning from the cupboards will be a whole ‘nother challenge!

Base Building

I have been thinking a lot about marathon training lately. I think one of the biggest mistakes I made during my first marathon training cycle was I basically took five weeks off running (sprained my ankle, went to Europe, got strep throat) and then jumped into marathon training without building much of a base. The very first week of training I went out hard with five runs on deck and by the end of that week I was feeling a tweak in my shin – the very first week of training.

This time around I’m doing things differently. And one of those things is building up a decent base before starting to train. My mileage has been low since I ran the half-marathon in October and the last two weeks it’s been laughable. We went to Orlando and I didn’t run for five days. Then I got sick this past week and didn’t run for five days. Bah.

I have until January 2 before my training cycle actually starts, so my biggest goal is spending the next six weeks building up a solid base. I want to climb back up to running 20ish mile weeks comfortably. I also want to focus on strength training and building a strong core and upper body.

One thing I discovered when I was training for my sub-2 hour half was figuring out my training plan week-to-week worked better for me then having it all mapped out ahead of time. Usually on Sunday’s I would sit down and write my running + cross-training plans for the week in my life planner.

So today I mapped out the long runs for the next six weeks and I will figure out the shorter mid-week runs as I go. I want to do 8 miles, 9 miles, 10 miles, 11 miles, 8 miles, 10 miles (starting with 8 next weekend on the 26 or 27). I’m hoping that this will allow me to start my marathon training cycle feeling strong and prepared!

This is also making me feel better about barely running the last two weeks…I’m determined to come back strong this week!

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Questions of the day: Have you ever used a neti pot? Do you meal planning? Any advice or thoughts r.e. base building?