During an interview this week, I was asked a question that stopped me in my tracks.
“What derails you?”
It took me a couple minutes of thought before I could even get my head around this. It felt a little familiar – like maybe I once knew what it was like, but it was a dim memory.
I’ve been losing weight a long time. Like, if there’s an award for long-term change, I’m in line for it. But what happens when you keep going is that some things that seemed like BIG CONCEPTS and HUGE AH-HAs become…
well…
just life.
So I told the interviewer:
“Nothing derails me. I’m living a life, not a diet.”
- What seems like a struggle ceases to be hard. I found a way to make it EASY because I no longer needed to be a martyr or victim.
- In yoga, that pose that once felt like I was squeezing my liver out onto the floor feels awesome and, wow, there’s plenty of room for my liver!
- Where I once felt the need to quantify everything, judging whether it was good enough or not, today, I know exactly how “plenty” feels.
It’s like brushing my teeth. I would never consider NOT doing it.
Exercise has actually increased for me this year. Not because I’m pushing for a world record, but because I feel like it. I love it. Who woulda known? I was the slowest runner in every gym class throughout my childhood and I’m still the clumsiest yoga student in the room. Who cares?
I love it.
I need it.
I live a “no excuses” life.
I’ve faced the death of family members, the deployment of my husband to the war in Afganistan, being fired from a job I loved, and the challenges and frustrations of building my own business, but I refuse to go backwards.
Just this past weekend, I was on a road trip and missed a day of exercise. I got out at a rest stop and walked for 10 or 15 minutes, just to remind myself I had legs, but it didn’t feel like real “activity.” It wasn’t guilt that had me on the hotel treadmill the next morning… I needed movement. I felt like my son when he was three. He used to declare, dramatically, “But, mom, I want it badly!”
My “no excuses” life didn’t emerge dramatically, like a movie script would portray it. And I couldn’t have decided it with my mind and adopted it because I heard it somewhere. I had to grow into it. It had to come from inside of me.
So, if you are struggling, know that it won’t always be that way. Only you can let go of the struggle part (that’s the resistance in the mind).
If you think you’ll never get to “EASY”, think again.
It’s just down the street, or around the corner. EASY.
Find it. Embrace it.
