Happy leap year!  How are you enjoying this extra day we get every 4 years?  Wanted to wish a happy birthday to a good friend who is turning 9 this year, you know who you are.  You know what a new month means, a new challenge.  I’m happy to say that I completed my February challenge of writing a love letter to those special people in my life.  I actually take that back as I still need to write the final one to myself.  I think we tend to take things and people for granted sometimes so by writing the letters it let’s those people know how much they mean to me.  March brings us a lot change: a change in season, March madness and the last month of the first quarter of the year.

This month’s challenge is to create a mantra to work on every day of the month.  It can be something you’ve been thinking about starting but haven’t gotten to, something you’re looking to improve upon or something you’re looking to finish.  In case you were wondering what a mantra is, it’s a statement or slogan repeated frequently.  It comes from Hinduism and Buddhism and is frequently used in meditation/yoga.  This idea actually came from one of my favorite yoga teachers in a class a few weeks ago when she said to set an intention for class and come up with a mantra/theme.  It really resonated with me because I felt I was just going through the motions without really thinking about the intention/meaning of what I was doing.

So my mantra for the March is going to be “finish what you started.”  I’m currently in the final stages of training for my first half Ironman on April 2ndl.  It’s a pretty long endurance event with a 1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike and finishing with a 13.1 mile run.  I started training back in the beginning of the year and have worked myself up to 50+ bike rides, 10+ mile runs and 1 mile swims.  It’s been a very long, arduous journey and there are many times I questioned why I even bother with the sport.  Then I think about the journey, waking up at 5:30 in the morning to swim, bike or run and it makes everything so worth it.  To put in all the hard work then see it all come together on race day is my “why.”  I think most triathletes can attest that the sport is extremely addicting because there is always room for improvement.  I tri because it makes me feel alive and helps me prove that the only limitation you have is in your mind and what you tell yourself you can or can’t do.

Here are a few examples of some mantras I could think of that I’m going to keep in mind.

I can do anything I put my mind to

Be the change/Embrace the change

Practice patience

Be kind to others and yourself

Quiet the mind

Count your blessings, not your problems

Go with the flow

Be a badass (boyfriend/girlfriend, friend, employee, etc)

Start strong, finish stronger

So what is your mantra for the month going to be?  Would love to hear some in the comments – don’t by shy.

QOTP: “The most successful people in life recognize, that in life they create their own love, they manufacture their own meaning, they generate their own motivation.” –Neal DeGrasse Tyson