Read time: 4 minutes • A quiet moment for you

Hi Reader,

Welcome to my weekly newsletter, designed to help you Rise on Purpose.

Last week, I wrote about The Frustration Cycle. If you missed it, you can read that, and all previous articles, here.

And because a few good words can change the direction of your whole day, I wrote a FREE PDF guide: 7 Things to Tell Yourself Every Day. If you'd like to receive it, hit reply and I'll send it straight to your inbox.

Less Is Not Zero

Open your phone or turn on the radio (if you're analogue, like me) and you'll hear everyone talking about their 5am routine at the moment.

From an icy cold plunge, straight into their gratitude journal and ten thousand steps before breakfast.

The intention is a good one: prioritise your health.

But it can feel like a demand to optimise something you didn't know needed optimising. And then make you feel like you're falling behind if you're not meeting that standard.

I used to be a keen runner and brought a nordic cross trainer into my hospital room in the early days of protective isolation. I'd squeak out my reps to the rhythm of my favourite hits from 2012, mimicking the movement of running around my local park. This served me well, at the beginning.

As the weeks and months passed during my leukaemia treatment, my strength and muscle mass withered. Just sitting up in bed felt like a mighty struggle some days.

So I adapted, and on those days, my fitness regime was simply wiggling my toes in bed between the waves of nausea.

Most people think resilience looks like discipline stacked on discipline. Optimisation on top of optimisation.

But I learned that it's much softer than that. Some days you don't have it in you to do the park run, so just the smallest movement is enough.

What's important is to meet yourself where you actually are, without pressure or expectation.

You are allowed to take things at your own pace.

This week’s tool: The Energy Check

→ Ask before you act​
Before committing to a workout, ask: "Where am I on a scale of one to five right now?" Start with how you're really feeling, even if it means adjusting what you had planned.

→ Rate your energy​
1 is running on fumes. 5 is a full tank.

→ Match the movement to the number​
1: a few deep breaths counts. 2: a short walk. 3: your normal day. 4: a structured session. 5: your hardest effort of the week.

Movement doesn't have to be the 5am high performance version to be valuable and meaningful in your day.

→ Let the number move you​
I made this handy tool to help guide you towards movement that's available for today's number:

Why this works

Most movement advice assumes a baseline that is fixed: do this many steps, this many minutes, this often. But your energy doesn't work like that, it ebbs and flows from day to day, sometimes hour to hour.

While movement is brilliant at lifting your energy, there's a difference between the flatness of sitting still too long and the depletion of a body that's running on empty. The first responds well to moving. The second needs matching, not pushing through.

Matching movement to your capacity, rather than a fixed target (like the pre-dawn start), keeps you flexible and more likely to be consistent, rather than ditching movement completely (when you have a low energy day).

It's a simple way to stay connected to your body's signals instead of overriding them, which is what makes movement sustainable over a long stretch, not just when you have a full tank that week.

I hope this helps to keep things in perspective.

Keep rising,
Lauren

P.S. What's your number today, and what would meeting yourself there look like?

A Question For You

I love reading your replies to these newsletters and I've noticed similar questions crop up. So I'm creating a practical guide to help you tackle the biggest question you're facing right now.

If you had to pick one, which would it be?

Let me know in the poll below.

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