The Power of Setting Intentions -Walking Challenge Day 3

Power Up Your Walk with Intentions

Ready to turn your daily stroll into a superpower walking workout session? Slip on your walking shoes for Day 3 of the Walking Challenge, where we're all about setting intentions for a walk that rocks.

Before you lace up: Blast "Don't Stop Me Now" by Queen (seriously, it works!) to get you motivated to walk. Get that pep in your step and feel the rhythm ignite your walking vibe.

Visualization magic:

• Visualize your ideal walk: Want a walk that makes you feel strong, calm, accomplished? Picture it. See yourself conquering that hill, soaking in the sunshine, or simply enjoying the peaceful rhythm of your steps.
• Craft powerful affirmations: "With every breath, I welcome calm," "My steps lead me to happiness," "I'm creating ripples of positivity with each stride." Repeat these mantras as you walk, fueling your mind and body.

Goals for motivation:

• Baby steps are your best friends! Set daily milestones like 15-minute walks. Consistency is key, even if it's just five or 10 minutes a day.
• Milestone magic: Think long-term. Where do you want to be at the end of this challenge? Stronger, fitter, stress-free? Break it down into weekly achievements and watch your progress snowball.

Community:

• Build it and they will come. Don't be shy! Use the hashtag #walktalkwithhelen to share your goals, experiences, and tips with fellow walkers. We're in this together.
• Check-ins: Reflect on your progress. Adjust your goals, celebrate wins, and get inspired by others. Did you walk somewhere new? Find a hidden park gem? Share it with the world.

Be accountable but realistic:

• Create a back-up plan: Even if weather throws a curveball, have a backup plan. Get on the treadmill, spin bike, or even dancing around your living room counts.
• Remember, progress, not perfection. This is your journey, your pace. Every step is a victory, so celebrate them all.

Join in on our walking challenge wherever you fancy – outside, at home, strolling through the mall, or hitting the gym.

If you're walking outside, there's a bell at the halfway mark, so when it rings, you'll know it's time to turn around.

This walking challenge is for all levels:

Whether you're just starting out or a seasoned pro, this walking challenge is here for you.

Take a peek at:

Day 1 - The perks and benefits of walking
Day 2 - Get tips on keeping it zen with mindful walking

Resources:

To get motivated before your walk: Boost your mood with the jam "Don’t Stop Me Now" by Queen.

P.S. Don't keep the fun to yourself – share it with your fam and friends.

Transcript

Day 3: Ready – set – intentions

Day three, setting intentions. But before I get started yippity yappity, head on out for your walk or start marching around your house wherever you're doing this today. And I'm going to share with you one of my favorite motivating songs. You might not actually think of this, but it is “Don't Stop Me Now” by Queen.

I just want to dance to this song. If you don't feel like exercising or getting out there doing anything, just throw the song on and the beat is so great.

Welcome to day three. I am so glad that you made it and hopefully you caught day one and day two.

You can do this anytime and if you miss a day, just catch up whenever you can. There are no rules here. You can do what you want.

While you're walking, you're going to be feeling for the power in your legs. You're going to want to see how your feet feel when they hit the pavement. Get into a zone. Get into a rhythm. Get your good walking vibes going.

And yesterday we talked about mindful movement and mindful walking. So you can catch that and kind of like figure out how every day you can incorporate that into your walks. Going to have a great walk today. That, oh, I just set the intention. See? That was completely accidental. I set the intention. Okay, so now we're going to get into the topic at hand.

Whatever you want your walking intention to be, and you want to visualize that ideal walking experience, imagine like the feelings of accomplishment that you're going to feel after today's walk.

Visualize, “This is I'm going to do. I'm going to go out for my walk. I'm going to breathe. I'm going to relax. I'm going to feel stronger. I'm going to go up this hill.” You set your intention and then you visualize that walking experience. “I'm going to feel the sun, I'm going to see the ocean, I'm going to go past this park.”

Then create some personal walking affirmations: “With every breath, I welcome calm. I'm getting stronger and healthier with each step. My mood lifts up with each step, or each step makes me happier. Each step relaxes me. I'm creating a positive ripple effect in my life with every step that I take.” Say those affirmations to yourself when you're getting started. So you set your intention, you do some visualization. And then you put in some of those affirmations. You get into that more mindful state of walking.
So first of all, if you like this challenge, I would love for you to share it with someone. It is totally free. I'm not selling you anything.I have nothing to sell to you. I do have a donation page if you want to donate (https://ko-fi.com/walkandtalk.

They can jump in any day they want. They don't have to start at day one. The more people who try this challenge out the better. I just want to help people get motivated and get started because that is my passion, to help people.

Part of our setting intentions is also goal setting. Let's set milestones that we want for the walking challenge. Now think about what is it that you want to accomplish and how do you want to accomplish that. You're going to break it down by daily milestones or weekly achievements or an end goal. 

Where do you want to see yourself at the end of this challenge? And what do you want to do to get there? If you know me, you know I'm a big fan of baby steps. I'm a big fan of doing something every day. It doesn't even matter what it is, as long as you do something towards your goal, even five minutes.

So maybe your goal setting for this first is that you want to walk every day. And now, even if you miss a day, it's okay because you can resume.  If you miss, let's say episode three, this one, if you miss episode three, then tomorrow you do episode three. You don't have to skip to four.

You can just tack on to the end. You just keep going and you just try to. Do what you can. If you can only do 10 minutes, just do 10 minutes. If you can only do 15, you do 15. You can break it up seven minutes in the morning, seven minutes in the evening, whatever you need to do for you. But your daily milestone should be maybe to walk for 15 or 20 minutes every day of the challenge if that's possible for you. 

When you accomplish your daily milestone, it builds momentum. And I like to call this, well, in my business, I talk about the snowball effect.

So you're going to start walking 15 minutes a day. And then that builds. Like you have a little snowball and then every day you roll it and gets a little bit bigger, a little bit bigger, a little bit bigger, a little bit bigger, a little bit bigger, and the snowball grows.

So your daily milestones grow into this much bigger, more amazing thing that you can ever imagine. Instead of you setting out to walk two hours a day, you're just setting a small goal, but that snowball is growing. It's getting bigger, and you're getting stronger, and you're becoming more confident, and you believe in yourself more.

You can also set up weekly achievements like check in with yourself at the end of the week. Or we can also do that with the mysterious hashtag that I can't remember (#walktalkwithhelen).

You can put Instagram, stories, Facebook, TikTok, videos, pictures. It doesn't have to be of you. If you don't want to be in the picture, take a picture of your environment. Take a picture of your shoes, your water bottle, your dog. I love dogs. Take a picture of your dog. I'm good. 

So let's say you start on a Monday. That's a natural thing for a lot of us, but you can start on Sunday too. And then Sunday, you check in with yourself and you say, “Did I do this? I did this. How did I feel? How did that make me feel? Did I feel strong? Did it make me feel good? Do I feel less stressed?”

And then you can adjust your goals. Look at your week when you're doing that culmination, look at your week and say, “What could I change? Did I feel like I could work harder? Okay. Then I'm going to walk faster. Did I feel like, maybe I was working too hard?” You walk slower. You can get a backpack, fill it with little sandbags or fill it with a kettlebell would be good.

You could put weights in there. You just want to make sure that they're balanced. You could do that if you're not getting a hard enough workout. Or plan a route that includes hills. 

What can you do every week to adjust? So you have to give yourself a check in, take this challenge seriously for you. You're going to do this every day. Every week, you're going to check in. If Sunday's a bad day to check in, check in on Saturday, but make a plan for yourself to do that.

And then think about what could I change? Could I walk somewhere else? And then think about the goal that you have for the end. So what is the end goal of this? 
What do you want to accomplish? Maybe your accomplishment, which is actually the best accomplishment, is that you've created a new habit of walking every day. Even if it's snowing or raining outside, you walk in your house, 15 minutes. You can do that. Put on some music, put on a movie, put on a show. Back when I was first starting to get in shape, I would put on a TV show or a movie that was really exciting, but I could only watch it on the elliptical machine. If I wanted to know what happened, I had to get on the elliptical machine. 

So sometimes you really have to fake yourself out in order to create a habit that then becomes something you do every day in your life. It doesn't matter what you do. You just have to do something to keep your body moving, you know, to get that habit ingrained in your brain.

So what do you want to see at the end of this challenge for your goal? What is it at the end that will make you feel accomplished? That will make you believe in yourself just a little bit more that will help you use this as a springboard to go on to bigger and better things? 

It's like the power of the small win. The small wins mean so much to us and we don't think about the little wins along the way is what we have to celebrate. Not the giant win. I didn't celebrate my loss of 80 some pounds. I celebrated when I could walk the kids to school. I celebrated the fact that I got a smaller pair of pants every two sizes I went down.

So I celebrated the fact that I could fit into these pants. A little bit tight, but that's okay. And so those were my little celebrations along the way, or when I made it through my first spin class as a student. And I thought I was going to die, but I was also incredibly happy.

Share your intention with your family and friends. You invite people because this is not something that is undoable. Like sometimes we don't want to share it with family and friends because we think they're going to laugh at us.
But if you're doing a walking challenge for a 10 or 15 or 20 minute walk a day, they're going to support you in that. Share that intention with them. Go on your Facebook, go on your Instagram, go on your stories. Use that hashtag that will be in the description for this episode. And tomorrow I will remember it. Find that sense of community and support.

And that's what I'd like to build here with us right now is for us to share with each other. And that's where the hashtags come in, share with each other how we're doing. When you share the hashtag for the post, you can write about what you saw, what you're experiencing, any tips or tricks that you can share that got you to get out and walk today.

Share that with the people who are also part of this challenge because we can all learn from each other. Slow it down a little bit more now. Relax those shoulders again. Shake out your hands. It's kind of like positive peer pressure. They call it community engagement. I call it positive peer pressure. Put those intentions out there and get other people to walk with you.

Even if they can't walk in the same location as you, you could text your friend and say, “Hey, we're walking tomorrow morning at 8. We're going to listen to the challenge. We're going to walk at the same time. And then we're going to talk about it when we're done.” 

And then when you publicly declare those intentions, again, these are small, doable intentions. You know, it creates that sense of accountability and it motivates you to stay committed to it. It really works.

And it works for me, too. I think I just don't like, you know, accountability. I think that's the thing. And I don't get things done when I'm not accountable. So that's why we're doing this together as a virtual community of people starting to make small steps in changing our lives. 

Remember that when you set your goals, you want them to be adaptable. If there is a big storm coming for three days, like last year in California, there was a blizzard. Yes, in California, and not the Dairy Queen kind. There was a blizzard and you wouldn't have been able to walk outside. So, get a backup plan. If your plan is to walk outside, maybe you're going to walk inside. Maybe you're going to go on the treadmill. Maybe you're going to go on the spin bike and just cycle along with us.

You don't have to go really fast. You just get on there and you do your thing. Or maybe you dance around. You're more apt to stick with it if you have a backup plan and come up with a strategy.

Think ahead and plan ahead and plan for the worst case scenarios. That way, you can make it through the challenge. And you know what? If something happens and you can't make it through the challenge, it's okay.

If you don't do it this time, you can do it in two weeks. 

Check in with yourself too after every walk and I will see you tomorrow.