“How did I get here?” I asked myself. And who the hell was that person I was seeing in the mirror?
“That can’t be me.”
But it was me. After a very active early adulthood, exercise had given way to grad school, running a business, family priorities, terrible nutrition, and sleep deprivation. I seemed to be specializing in doing all of the wrong things for my body and my Health.
When I looked around my world, I had an epiphany that no one else was going to rescue me. If I wanted a change, it was going to have to come from me.
“How was I going to do that?”
“By starting with the basics.” I answered.
As an accomplished problem solver, I could jump in to start building. But building what? That’s how I started working with my Attitude.
Everything begins with your Attitude. If it starts to rain on your way to work, a negative attitude can morph that meteorological event into the reason why your day will go so poorly and probably why you are so unhappy in Life. But it’s just rain.
The positive attitude can appreciate the refreshingly different start to your day or even just enjoy the change in weather. What we experience in Life is, in part, how we choose to respond to events that come our way. The events are no different for different people but how they respond to them is.
Getting back to basics took me to my early days when I was a twenty-something. I found that I needed to engage my mind and spirit if my body was to cooperate. My mind to work out a training regimen my body could accommodate (the mind is always ahead of the body by thinking the body can do way more than it can – always) and a spiritual focus (aka Attitude) that would take me through the developmental phases to my athletic goals.
So I started dragging my (lumpy in all the wrong places) body out to some exercises that it used to know. This quickly became a lesson in humility. Riding a bike a full 3 miles turned out to be a big deal at the time, though I kept in check that part of me that remembered riding 75 miles in a day and thinking nothing of it. That was then, this is now.
Then a funny thing started to happen.
Workouts sometimes felt a little easier to finish. More importantly, finishing workouts sometimes made me feel great! The awakening of that old athlete inside my body’s memory was starting to happen.
Which brings me to you the reader. One common thread I have found in all people is that we share the same biology and have access to personal strength. How we use these resources is up to us but use them we can.
Now I’m sure you can hear your self-doubt speaking to you at this point but this is where I employ a phrase I learned many years ago and that is, “Thank you for sharing”. When your internal conversation inevitably hits some negative thoughts, a quick acknowledgement and continue on is a wonderfully healthy response. Negative thoughts are normal but are not necessarily ones to act upon. The choice is always there but following constructive ideas get so much more done and that’s why you’re doing this. Right?
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Since I probably have few elite athletes following this blog (well, none really), I figure I’m safe in speaking to you like we’re all a bunch of normal folks working at getting back into shape when our whole lives seem to conspire against that. Step one is saying that you can do this lifestyle change and we do it one step at a time. We understand that there will be challenges but there will also be some wonderfully graceful moments (feeling really great about yourself). You can read more about our love affair with endorphins in the links below.
So start considering stepping away from your computer and get out to move in the world. There is an athlete lurking inside of everyone. Yes, everyone. And you get to compete at your own level, so don’t worry about comparing yourself with the athletes you see on television. (Well, maybe you can with some of the bowlers and golfers out there. See! Anything is possible!)
Accept the progress you make and above all else, enjoy the adventure. Being active and cultivating your positive thinking will pay off in so many other parts of your Life. Honest.
“What is the difference between an obstacle and an opportunity? Our attitude toward it. Every opportunity has a difficulty, and every difficulty has an opportunity.”
― J. Sidlow Baxter
http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-living/stress-management/in-depth/exercise-and-stress/art-20044469
http://www.livestrong.com/article/197569-seratonin-endorphins-exercise/
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