All tagged grit
Honing our crafts takes reps under the bar, after all. To learn where we thrive under the pressure and where we cower in fear, we need to set out on the path.
When looking into some research on perseverence and change, I found that the highest performers work on their weaknesses the most. Seems obvious, no?
But it's the last thing most of us want to do.
We want to avoid them, find ways around them, out-muscle our weaknesses with our strengths.
I once had a client who had yo-yoed through a few different numbers (weights, sizes, however you like to measure your physical progress).
Before I continue, I’d like to point out that most of us have done this. It’s totally normal. Expected, even. Different seasons of our lives require different levels of commitment to our goals, or even different goals altogether. It’s all okay. You (and your body) are still deserving of love, care, and respect, no matter the size, shape, or degrees of bending to your will it is doing. Moving on.
She was going home to spend time with her high school friends, who had known her at her heaviest, and had also seen pictures of her at her leanest, and she was somewhere in between, at that moment. She was distraught at the prospect of being seen in a bathing suit around people who hadn’t seen her in years, for the first time without a shirt over her swimsuit.
When she got home from her trip and I asked how it went, she was still in mild shock to report that the only comments people had to make about her body were…positive.
If you've been around here for a while, you know I'm big into exploration.
Experimentation.
Using fitness as a means of empowerment: for getting honest about who you are, for getting clear on what you want, and, ultimately, for getting to know yourself.
We’re urged toward dogma. Ads and commercials and authority figures scream that there is one path to success and one best way to go about it, and theirs reigns supreme. We believe what we’re told, constructing a timeline, molding our lives around it, rubbing our noses raw on the grindstone.
When was the last time you looked up?
When I was much younger than I am now, I was lamenting being a decidedly mediocre swimmer. I was decent, to be sure, and won a state gold medal once, but never succeeded in larger competitions, despite training with those who did and being able to keep up in practice.
I was frustrated and consulted my dad, the beacon of all wisdom at the time (to be clear, now that I'm almost 30, I'm back in the stage where I find him pretty smart. Hey, Dave!). He told me that as a coach, he'd take the person who worked hard over the person with natural talent any day of the week. His words were meant to encourage (and, to an extent, I agree), but they sent up an interesting dichotomy in my head: if you have natural talent, you don't have to work hard, and, if you work hard, you must not have much natural talent. You can't have both.
Why?
What I DO want to discuss today, is that the "it" - YOUR "IT" - the thing your subconscious won't let you drop - is not just a looming, unreachable, would-be-nice goal, but a thing toward which we can take steps. Every day. All the time.
Not just when we're "ready," but also now.
More than anything, success and achievement are the result of developing a passion and seeing it through. Fitness, like many things in life, but contrary to societal messages, presents boundless opportunities for expansion. We get to choose to push our limits, to realize we can set goals and smash them, to develop the competence and confidence to push through the hard, ride the waves, and come out where we set out to be. (Chatting new commitments on the biz page! Hop over.)
