Steps for the past few days
June 30: 13.861
July 1: 23.015
July 2: 28.353 (new record for me!)
July 3: 7.130
Hello Shape Shifters! My mom went home yesterday, so I get to enjoy being alone again. I slept a solid 10 hours and I finally feel rested enough to write in the group today. I will try to keep it somewhat short and to the point. But feel free to skip to the pictures under the spoiler if you don't feel like reading.
Thursday ~ My cat got another problem, now his backside seemed weak. When jumping down from chairs etc he would collapse a bit, sometimes just when walking as well. Called vet again and made an appointment for Friday. I got the last groceries in the morning before my mom arrived. It was a hot day, around 28 degrees. There is a swimmingpool here at the edge of the forest and my mom really wanted to go. I hate swimming, so she went alone. I dropped her off there and had some time to relax at home. We didn't do much the rest of the day. In the evening we got a lot of rain and thunder which pushed our bedtime back a bit. I was already laying in bed when I saw I was missing some steps in order to hit my 14k goal, but I was too tired/lazy to bother getting up for it.
Friday ~ Took the bus at 6:50 to go to the national park for a 6 kilometer walk. It was not cold, but pretty cloudy so we both had very few nice pictures. Shortly into the walk, we heard two golden orioles singing so we stood around for quite a while trying to spot them. We did see them fly twice, but getting a picture was pretty impossible. I only have one when the bird flew off, so it's basically a yellow smudge. We were home again around 10. In the afternoon I went to the vet and I decided to get some blood tests done. The other option was to muddle along with painkillers over the weekend, but I wanted some answers. Thankfully they could run the tests in their own building and they were done pretty fast. So at the end of the day I got a phonecall and everything they checked looked perfectly fine. It did reassure me quite a bit, but I still find it very weird that he goes from one issue to the next in a pretty short time period. I feel like there is nothing left to do but wait and hope he will start walking normal again. In the evening we went out for dinner. My food was really disappointing. I got a vegetable curry. The curry was very bland, the veggies in it were boring and had zero protein (no lentils, chickpeas, beans or something) so it wasn't filling at all. The rice seemed like the storebought microwave kind. Very chewy and not fresh. I was pretty annoyed by it, because I rarely go out to eat so when I do, it is more a special occasion. So it really sucks when the food lets you down. I was really tired and my headache was bad, so we went to bed on time.
Saturday ~ We started the day with another walk and left home around 7. We just walked around the fields here and along the forest edge. It was pretty nice with some caterpillars and butterflies along the way. In the afternoon we walked into town to check out the gift shop and we had some lunch. This time the food was fine, but it was so annoying to eat that it just pissed me off and I wanted to give up halfway through, lol. I had two massive slices of bread with a thick crust with cheese, lettuce, cucumber, tomatoes and egg. It was impossible to eat with your hands and I basically had to disassemble the whole mountain of food and eat with fork and knife. I was so not a fan. I had a short nap in the afternoon to recharge a bit. In the evening we played some Rummikub and after that my mom wanted to go out to photograph the sunset. It was still pretty warm and the weather was nice enough. We walked a route similar to that of the morning walk. I really needed a bathroom around the halfway point, and luckily there is a campsite on the forest edge. It was starting to become a bit of an emergency so I decided to cut through a corn field along a treeline because it would save quite a bit of walking. In the process, we startled a mother deer with two fawns. If I had known they were there, I wouldn't have done it of course and I felt really bad about it! Thankfully the babies weren't really small anymore and they went back into the treeline after we had passed. I made it to the toilet without further 'accidents' and the rest of the walk was much more relaxing. We made it home around 22:45 when it was almost dark. It was pretty much off to bed right after.
Sunday ~ My mom got picked up around 13:00. I was bloody dead after Saturday and that amount of steps. I had the laziest day ever and I really couldn't be bothered to step, or move for that matter. My body wasn't feeling too bad after all the walking; I was only a little sore on the sides of my knees. It was a struggle to stay awake and I eventually went to bed at 19:00. I had a good time with my mom and I managed to avoid a migraine this time so I consider that a win. Happy to be alone again as well though! If you read this far, thank you and good job, enjoy the pictures! Happy Monday everyone

What motivates Shape Shifter Members? Is there any typical approach to motivation that team members don’t like?

Now that we have a full Shape Shifter team for July - and we are at the beginning of a new week - it's probably a good time to report the findings of my informal poll about motivation. Ten Shape Shifters responded out of approximately 28 members participating at the end of June — or 39%. I’m using your responses to guide some next steps.

Here are the top five "motivators" that came from participating members:

(1) Peer support (e.g., checking in with someone to help prevent straying; one-on-one support; validating statements and shared experiences; and discussing challenges) was noted by five people.

(2) Positive comments/ reinforcement/ validating statements from other Shape Shifters were highlighted by four people.

(3) Celebrating our own personal milestones, reflecting on steady progress (e.g., increased energy, improved sleep and wellbeing, etc.) and seeing other people's success - which gives us hope that we can have success, too - was mentioned by four members.

(4) Motivational quotes are helpful to at least two members.

(5) Routine/ momentum when things are going well motivates two people and we also heard that it can be especially difficult to get back on track when we feel as though our routine is "off the rails."

A couple people who feel unsupported within the group, emphasized how important it is to them when other members respond to their posts. Even using the simple icons (e.g., like 👍, heart ❤️, insightful, inspiring) available on the site can feel more meaningful than no reaction at all. A few people noted that the Shape Shifters group will only be as motivating as we make it.

Members offered tips to increase the likelihood that other Shape Shifters will react to your comments:

• Tag other members, by using the @ symbol and user name, to direct specific questions or comments to a person who you would like to hear a response.
• Send friend requests to other Shape Shifters who are interested in similar topics or share some of the same goals or experiences that are important to you.
• Participate in the weekly challenges that attract people from all the various F2F groups.

The monthly habit tracker is a more personal way to track progress. It helps some Shape Shifters reflect on how well they are doing and identify areas where they need to focus continuous improvement efforts. One member recommended writing goals in a journal, and creating a space to keep positive mantras and inspiration boards to visit when additional motivation is needed.

Action Steps

(1) I reached out with a friend request to all Shape Shifter members so I can use my daily "activity feed" highlighting news and updates from friends as a way to provide more one-on-one support. This is an area I need to improve so please be patient with me! I encourage others to send invitations to fellow Shape Shifters if this helps you.

(2) Let's respond to comments posted in the group whenever possible. I'll continue to comment whenever I check in, and I hope other Shape Shifters will recognize the important role we each play in supporting our team members this way.

(3) My idea for celebrating milestones is to initiate Feel Good Fridays when we can motivate one another by sharing our success.

(4) On a similar note, I encourage everyone to share their inspirational quotes and other uplifting mantras on Motivatiional Monday. Of course, you can still do this anytime but it will be good to build momentum. Everyone can be a leader and a learner! So, feel free to share your leadership skills in an area that interests you.

(5) We'll try to support routines and habits that improve our health by focusing on tracking nutrition, exercise, water intake, and other common goals we set in our monthly habit tracker Excel sheets. Maybe Tracking Tuesdays, Wellness Wednesdays, [Don't be] Thirsty Thursdays, Study [those habits] Saturdays, and Steady Sundays will help us build positive and consistent routines!?

Let me know what you think --

In a future post, I'll list all the other helpful responses we received, along with some suggestions for actions to avoid when trying to motivate fellow team members. In some cases, well-intended comments can invalidate another Shape Shifter's feelings and inhibit success. Stay tuned for more crowd sourcing support from your team -- and thank you so much for all the motivating contributions submitted by the 10 Shape Shifters who responded already. I'm looking forward to continuing to learn and improve with you all. My apologies for the long post!

@PatriceFitnessPal I LOVE ALL OF YOUR SUGGESTIONS!!! I am inspired just from reading the results of your survey. THANK YOU for all that you do for our team! I think all of us can find at least one thing from your survey to help all of us succeed.



Jessica

Steps July 4: 15.650
Good morning Shape Shifters. I had a fairly quiet day and only did some laundry. At least my steps are back to normal. When my mom was here, we talked about how my nature book doesn't have a lot of butterfly and sometimes doesn't have pictures from the side, or show the difference between males/females. So I looked online for a proper butterfly book and decided to buy that in the future. Well, my mom gave me no chance! She ordered the book for me and I got it as a surprise in the mail on Monday. It's a really useful book that also includes the caterpillars and it has an entire section on host plants as well. I am really happy with it. I also adopted a new indoor plant. Someone on my street put free cuttings outside of a pancake plant, so I picked one up. I only had a pretty big pot left, so it has a lot of room to grow. Happy Tuesday everyone