taking small steps
This is my transcript from today’s Wake up to Wogan show. What is your small deed that could help change your life? Leave a comment below the post.
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I am – I confess – terribly unfit. It affects my life because I have – with three children, a full time job, a fair amount of speaking engagements and some volunteer work – a pretty packed life. If I was fitter it would be easier to do all these things; but because I do all these things it is difficult to carve out time to get fitter. It’s a bit of a conundrum really…
And with this conundrum in my life – I have – for some time – imagined a new me. A me that goes regularly to the gym; a me fit from aerobics; a me with muscles built from Pilates. I imagine a me – not quite Olympian – but certainly not the totally exhausted, unfit me that I currently am. But I cannot imagine me with all that jumping up and down in aerobics, or a me down at the gym lifting weights. And I really cannot imagine me at a Pilates session, even if David Beckham recommends it.
But I am unfit, so I need something that goes beyond imagining and actually gets me exercising… But what?! Something I do naturally every day would be useful.
Breathing of course springs to mind, but that’s not exactly exercise. I type a lot. I talk a lot. I drink a lot of tea – but none of these things would help in my quest to get fit.
Then I found it – walking. If I could find a way to increase my walking to such a point that the walking became exercise – now that would be a way for me to get fit.
So I thought about it for a long while – one can’t just rush these things… Then I got myself two things: a decent pair of walking shoes and a pedometer.
The shoes just make the whole thing more comfortable, but it’s the pedometer which really helps. It measures how much I walk. It’s there – every day – clipped to my trousers – telling me how well I’m doing. My target is 10,000 steps a day and I am doing pretty well. Yesterday I managed 13,465 steps. I am patting myself on my back as I speak because that’s a big improvement from the 3000 steps I started with.
Without the pedometer measuring me I would not have anything to strive for each day. I realised it’s vital to have something tangible to aim for – a target – however small really helps.
My lack of fitness was becoming an issue in my life, a problem that seemed too big to sort out, but too big to ignore. In the end, I think the answer has come in something very mundane and everyday.
There is a Muslim saying, “God loves the small deeds done regularly.”
And for sure: small deeds, even small everyday, mundane deeds, when added together can form something big. In my case, I hope it’s a collection of small steps that will allow me to walk to fitness. But for each of us, I believe there is a small deed, which can make a big change in our lives.
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To listen to the slot on the Wake up to Wogan Show, click here (available online until 9:32am Wednesday 5th August)
(My bit is around 1 hour 45 minutes)