There’s really nothing wrong with my physical therapy exercises. They’re a bit inconvenient. None are painful. Some are boring. Most involve effort I just don’t want to expend. Still, even when I have nothing else pressing to do, for some reason I try to avoid PT. I’m sure there’s some great psychological reason for this, but I’ll ignore it for now. The point is, I suck at doing my exercises.
I stopped doing my exercises a few months ago when I was feeling especially fatigued. I know this was legitimate, but it still meant that 
I suffered a backslide and I now have to make up for it. I am attending PT again, and am supposed to do my exercises at home. I decided that for me, the best motivation was to track it. I might feel a little bad if I thought I’d missed a day or two recently, but I’d feel really guilty if I knew I’d missed 2 days out of the last 4. So I went online and printed out a little calendar. I bought some start stickers and I give myself a star every day that I do my exercises. This is working great! I felt much more guilt today than I normally would, since I knew I’d missed Friday, so I did the exercises at 9pm. Normally I’d have decided it was too late to bother by that point, but I did them!
I should have started tracking a few weeks ago, but better late than never, right? So in the last 9 days of tracking, I’ve done my exercises 8 times! 2 of those times were at the physical therapist’s office with her, but still, I did the exercises 8 out of 9 days!!
This may not seem huge to some people, but I’m guessing many others understand. I’m going to do my best to keep it up, because I know these exercises really will help. It’s time to aim for the stars!
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If you can relate to this, please pass it along and share the camaraderie! Thanks!
Chronic Rants 
Yay! That’s a great accomplishment and a wonderful way to track and motivate yourself. 🙂 I can relate to this post because it seems that sometimes, even when I don’t dread doing something, I just don’t seem to get it done. There’s not usually an understandable explanation – that’s just how it is! My husband was the same way last year with his PT. He had surgery on his knee and had PT a couple of times a week. There were several exercises he was supposed to do at home that would probably be helpful, but he just wasn’t ever motivated to do them. He’s having problems again and I think I’m going to try this approach with him and see if it will help keep things on track. 🙂
I hope it helps! I’m thinking I might give myself a treat of some sort if I get, for example, 90% of the stickers for a month. I just don’t know yet what the treat will be 🙂