Wow, day 7 of my 68 day transformation. Actually, I don’t care for that word “transformation”. I guess it could be correct but time will tell. Speaking of time, this is usually the time when I begin to second guess my commitment and lay down my goals or put them in a drawer. Thankfully, I don’t feel that way yet but there’s a long way to go to December 31st! However, I’m inspired to keep going and I’m all ready compiling a list of possible things to work on for the 1st Quarter of 2025. I’m also inspired by you reading this and sharing with me the changes you are working on! Do so in the comments if you wish. It’s great knowing that someone out there supports your efforts even if just virtually. Let’s take a look at today…
Physical
The Fit Father Workout continues to go well. I’m often tempted, like this morning, to bump up my level. I’m purposefully not doing so yet because I want to work up to it slowly, not be discouraged, and after climbing to level 5 and back down – I’m glad I haven’t made that change yet. You wouldn’t think that just one of each exercise would be that difficult but by the end of the workout, I’m ready to be done. I guess there’s some psychological part to this. In other words, using an apex style program helps you be your own cheerleader or coach. In my head I’m telling myself, “come on, just one more, you can do it.”
Spiritual
I enjoy sitting down after my workout to pray through the Office of Readings and Morning Prayer from the Liturgy of the Hours. At that point my mind is fully awake and I can focus easily on what is written. It’s also awesome to imagine the thousands of other priests, religious, and lay people throughout the world praying those same prayers. In fact, if you go to the website that I’ve been linking or get the app, you will see how many others are praying along with you at that time! I just checked while writing this and there are 735 people praying – using the app – at this moment 10:05 PM EST. That’s pretty cool!
The daily readings were inspiring as Jesus talks about the difficulty of entering Heaven. It fits well with the difficult work I’m attempting on myself. I also wrote a meditation on the readings for today. You can read it here.
Emotional
Today has been a good day. I’ve been able to accomplish a great deal of work for my job as well as some things around the house. One thing that made me really happy today is how my table looks after the final epoxy resin coat. My hope is that it looks this way when it dries and we can use it to replace our original kitchen table. My fear is that it won’t dry correctly and be sticky. I had this issue with the last coat and I think that I’ve figured out why but we’ll see… here’s a picture I took right after pouring and going over it with a heat gun to release air bubbles. The reflection of the ceiling makes it look a little strange but it’s like a glass mirror!
Tonight, after a meeting, our dialogue question will be, “What feeling do I hide from you?” Some of these questions Nicole and I are covering can be heavy at times but it has really helped us to communicate and understand one another. The thing I love about our dialogue sessions are that they are strictly about the question and our feelings. There’s no problem solving, accusations, etc. It’s really about understanding each other and each other’s feelings. We share, discuss, and dialogue on the feeling until we felt understood by the other and vise versa. If you’d like to learn more about this wonderful tool that we feel could turn good marriages into great ones, GO ON A MARRIAGE ENCOUNTER WEEKEND (there’s your sign). The couples there will teach you how to do this and do it well. If you have questions, reach out to me.
Intellectual
Learning Spanish continues to go well. I remembered that a woman gave me a large box of Spanish books years ago, so I got those out for some “immersion”. I’m trying to surround myself with as much Spanish language materials as I can to help speed up my learning. The books she gave me were really intended for children in a Spanish speaking family, like our English and Grammar books here in the US. I’m hoping that reading those will help me be more fluent.
Today I worked in capital cursive D’s with my left-handed cursive writing experiment. The capital D’s are pretty easy or I’m just getting better control with my non-dominant hand. I noticed today that I really had to concentrate because my brain is looking at the letters almost as if looking at them in a mirror. I’m not sure why this is but I’ll continue to give it some thought. This is the book I’m using if you are interested in challenging yourself in the same way.
That’s all I have for today. How about you? Making progress? Just getting started? Let me know in the comments and if there’s anything I can do to help, just let me know!
A.I. did a nice job of summing up this day with the title. The image isn’t half bad either. I see a weight (physical section), a table or desk (emotional – building a table and intellectual – handwriting). The floating shelves are the only thing that looks a little funky to me…at least there aren’t a bazillion fingers in the image today!
James M. Hahn, Author 