10,000 Steps Day 18 | Movement Becomes Movement

I’ve never been one to fidget. I have always been content to sit still and quietly. And while I might twirl a strand of hair around my finger, I’m not really one to pace or shuffle or bounce or anything else. I never thought about it before.

But something happens when you start a 30 Day Challenge to take 10,000 Steps. I’ve learned that fidgeting is necessary to reaching my goals. I don’t just sink into the couch when my mom calls. Instead, I’m moving from kitchen into my living room, through the hall, maybe the den. I’m trying to keep moving. Yesterday waiting in line to buy plastic storage boxes for under Max’s bed, I was bouncing from foot to foot and back again. And I march in place. A lot.

This kind of conscious movement is helping me to be successful. It’s ensuring that my step count is high. It’s making me move.

And now that I am moving more, I can see very clearly that Movement Becomes Movement.

When my children were babies, and I was desperate for a good night’s sleep, desperate for them to sleep too, someone said to me “Sleep Begets Sleep.” In other words, when my kids start sleeping well, that sleep will turn into more sleep. Naps will become longer stretches at night. Longer stretches at night will actually get longer. Sleep becomes more sleep.

I find that movement is very much the same. The more I move and fidget and bounce, the more I want to move. And yes, a lot of it is mental, but some of it is also that my body expects to move. I find that I look forward to moving. And I know that I’m just restating Newton’s law of motion that a “body in motion tends to stay in motion,” but I’m living proof that it’s very much right.

The more I move, the more I move. The more I want to move. The more steps I get in. The more excited I am to get out of bed. The easier it is stay active. That is an important lesson to realize.