Seven Movements

Hi Dan and the Takeseven crew,

I am so thankful for this program and have benefitted so much from your support. I thought I would make this post for all of those of us who are a little less than consistent with our movement practice. I have found that I have the best intentions and love the idea of doing my seven minutes, but seem to fall off the wagon quite a bit. I know that guilt and shame are mental and emotional motivation killers, so I am trying to focus on self-compassion as I continue to build a regular routine. What compassionate tips do you and other users have for supporting a more consistent movement practice? Karen

HI Karen. Awesome question. A few things come to mind as we just wrote a blog ( https://www.sevenmovements.com/blog ) with some tips like this but I will summarize.

1. First of all, it's totally ok to miss a day. Be kind to yourself. Focus your energy away from missing a day to motivation to not missing two days in a row.

2. Set your environment up for success by doing two vital things, people who are doing these two things are seeing the most success with our program. Go to www.sevenmovements.com/programs and download and PRINT off the program you would like to follow. Put it somewhere you will see it every day. . Secondly, download the VHX app on your devices including your smart TV if you have one.

3. Sign up with a friend and do the program together. Why? because being with friends is fun AND you can hold each other accountable.

4. The easiest way to incorporate Take Seven into your day is through our 7-Minute Morning series. Make this part of your morning routine as the morning is generally when we set up our day. Get that early win.

5. If you are having "One of those days". where you just don't have anything in the tank we will suggest you always continue the habit by at least completing the first minute of a video which is usually tissue preparation work. This will give your body tremendous benefits and allow you to continue the habit while not overdoing it.

Anyone else doing anything to keep themselves on track please share :)

All in all, these are just tips. Ultimately building a new habit is up to you. There are no tricks that work in the long term, I think we know this intuitively while we are often searching for that perfect technology or perfect process that will MAKE us build a healthy habit. So set your environment up for success, remember you are in this for the long haul and be kind to yourself.

I would also ask you to re-examine and separate guilt from shame. While I agree that shame is an incredibly dangerous unhealthy emotional state and an absolute motivation killer. Guilt can be a healthy motivator when we put it in its proper place and we are coming from a healthy place of self-acceptance.

Shame says I am not good enough whereas guilt says I am good enough but that behavior does not line up with who I am or where I want to be. Guilt can occur in a growth mindset whereas shame operates only in a fixed mindset. So it's totally ok to feel a little guilty to miss a day, let it drive you to not miss tomorrow, but you should feel ZERO shame about. So be kind to yourself but be sure to hold yourself accountable:).

Something along the lines of "Darn it I missed my Take Seven today, Oh well, I'll get at it tomorrow" would be a pretty healthy attitude. And then do the above to set your environment up for success for tomorrow.