Resolutions that Keep You Young (Mine is Guerilla Cartwheeling)

A couple years ago, my kids asked me: “Mommy, what’s the difference between a cartwheel and a round-off?” As any good parent would, I thought it best to demonstrate the difference…so I did a cartwheel and then I did a round-off.  After my demonstration, my son and daughter tried and I showed them again.

After I had done about six cartwheels and round-offs altogether I felt like I was going to fall over.  My arms were burning with lactic acid and I felt exhausted.  I thought to myself: “This is so pathetic that I can’t even do six cartwheels without feeling like I’m going to fall over!” The most disappointing part was that I would have liked to demonstrate a round-off to the kids a couple more times but physically I. WAS. SPENT.

The next week at work, every time I found myself walking down an empty hallway or the sidewalk on my way home, I thought: “There’s probably enough room for me to do a cartwheel here.” I also thought that it would be a very odd thing for me to be doing if someone else were to see me.  Sometimes these types of experiences plant the seeds for the most unusual ideas.

New Year’s Resolutions Are Usually Not For Me

When this cartwheel/roundoff question came up, it was just before New Years.  Leading up to that time, I hadn’t made any New Year’s resolutions. Instead of making new commitments each year, I had been focusing on finishing off other things that are still outstanding on my list.  In addition, because of my fatigue, I have been focusing on increasing my stores of energy to be able to fully function in my life.  This means that I spend between 9 to 11 hours sleeping each night for sometimes months at a time.  It also means that I’m try to stay disciplined about what I eat and be diligent about taking a very well tested cocktail of supplements to boost my energy and get my body working.  With so much focus on trying to rebuild my daily energy stores, taking on something new each January just hasn’t been a priority. (If you don’t know about my physical crash in July 2013 that I’m still recovering from, you can read out about it in this post.)

This year though I’m happy to report that I’m finally starting to feel like I can start to incorporate regular exercise into my life, which is such an amazing feeling!  So I thought I would revive my new year’s resolution from two years ago related to exercise.  Since I have just tentatively started incorporating regular exercise into my weekend routine, I wanted to make sure it would be something manageable, both in terms of my time and my ability to actually succeed.  I also wanted to make sure I chose something relatively small, that wouldn’t take too much time, and that wouldn’t be too physically demanding.

The Big Reveal

So following up on my frustration two years ago at not being able to demonstrate as many round-offs as I would have liked to, I created the following new year’s resolution:

I am going to do at least 40 guerilla cartwheels before the end of February. 

Closely related to guerilla gardening (which is planting a garden in a public space at night when no one sees you), guerilla cartwheeling is doing a cartwheel in the presence of other people without them seeing you.

The great thing about this resolution is that it’s really funny…and even thinking about how I’m going to pull it off makes me feel like a kid again!

Although this a hilarious and awesome resolution, I was a little reluctant to revive it because I think it is going to much harder to pull off this year.  Two years ago, I pulled it off relatively easily, mostly by completing my guerilla cartwheels in the hallways at work and near the elevator bay, where hardly any people used the elevators to our floor.  Now, I am working in a new building that is much busier and has way more people around all the time.  It’s going to a be a really big challenge to pull this off with no one catching me!

New Guidelines for New Year’s Resolutions

So here are some new guidelines for making new year’s resolutions…. design your resolutions to be simple and to keep you young.  I would love to catch a glimpse of others trying to guerilla cartwheel on their way to work as I am trying to do mine!

But just in case you’re not keen on cartwheels, here are some other simple and young ideas for New Year’s resolutions:

• Set aside time each week to color, play play-doh with your kids, or sketch in your sketchbook
• Whistle, hum or sing out loud as you walk to work (or in the shower if you’re too shy to belt out a song in public)
• Have a dance party in your living room every day to a song that makes you boogie
• Write poetry, song lyrics, or a short story
• Do guerilla jumping jacks or walking lunges as you walk down the hallways at work

Post a comment below and let us know whether you think this is a good or crazy idea (or maybe a bit of both)!  And if you want to, add a video in the comments showing off your guerilla resolution!  I promise to post a video of me doing my best to cartwheel while trying not to get spotted…

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