Everything else comes first - exercise last. We say that the other activities must be completed - we owe that time to someone or something else - and exercise is - well - hard. This is me for sure! So many irons in the fire, so much other responsibility. However, I am trying diligently to change my mindset. To realize that exercise is hard, but it is worth the difficulty. This is the only body I will ever have, and it is my responsibility to take care of it or face the consequences - and those consequences are not pretty - and dealing with them will be a whole other kind of hard.
Yet knowing what needs to be done and actually doing it are much different. So I had to find a way to make it work for me. Some people just go for it. Some people even enjoy the exercise (I do once it is done - and not because it is over, but because I feel so good). But I tend to put it off to another time, then another, then another - eating as well - oh, I don't put off eating - I put off eating meals that will fuel my body with needed nutrients. If bread and chocolate had all of our daily vitamins - I would be Hercules - well maybe Xena.
My dilemma, then, became how to motivate myself to act in a manner that would build me up both physically and mentally - that would keep me on track - not perfectly - but heading daily in the right direction. Challenge groups and coaching groups! For me, the answer.
I began with the challenge groups - and even then I struggled - but I trudged on. I finally realized that is isn't about not struggling, it is about perseverance - not giving up. That every step I took in the right direction would eventually lead me to a healthier and happier place. The real beauty of these groups (which is the main reason I became a coach - lifetime accountability) is that my struggle affirms someone else's struggle and together with many others we journey, building one another up with encouragement and understanding along the way. We stumble - we fall - one challenger put it well when when she commented about not only falling off the horse, but tumblig down the hill as well.
We are better together - and I am better because I am not only looking out for myself but others. And if we stroll together day by day and pound by pound - we will eventually find ourselves running and wondering at which point the actual change took place.
In his book
The Compound Effect, Darren Hardy states, "The Compound Effect is the principle of reaping huge rewards from a series of small, smart choices. What's most interesting about this process to me is that, even though the results are massive, the steps, in the moment, don't feel significant....What most people don't realize is that these small seemingly insignificant steps completed consistently over time will create a radical difference."
It is the small steps, the consistent steps, the turtle steps that will eventually allow for finishing the race. And those of us working together may not all cross the finish line at the same time, but we will cross, while continuing to cheer one another on along the way.
