As I went through my week, I was confronted with past items that were all-too-familiar with me. First off, I wound up overworking myself into absolute exhaustion by the time that Saturday rolled around. Silly me – I’ve learned that lesson a few times, but alas, I learn it again.
And as I contemplated while I rested, I recall some amazing points from a fantastic book that I read earlier this year, called The Big Leap, by Gay Hendricks. It’s a book that one of my mentors talked about and caught my fancy, and I’m one to look into anything that seems to stand out to me, and thus I downloaded the audiobook. I now own a few hard copies because of how much it has impacted me.
Two of the key questions that is asked in the beginning of the book shook me: “How much love and abundance am I willing to allow?” and, “How am I getting in my own way?”
I believe that these questions can reveal why so many of us yo-yo in various life areas: our health and fitness, our nutrition, our relationships, our work, etc. Why is it that we can get real focused, hunker down, and make amazing strides when we have to, but then have a tendency to fall back into old habits once we actually accomplish what we set out to do?
Well, I believe there can be many factors involved. However, I want to speculate that a major one is that we simply have not prepared to allow ourselves to accept and embrace the joy and accomplishment of the goals we set out to achieve.
Let’s take this into the realm of nutrition and fitness. Let’s say you’ve been eating healthfully to fuel your body and have been exercising well for the past 4 weeks. You’re feeling great and seeing results, and are excited about them! Then over the next two weeks, a few things happen – someone at the office brings in cake to celebrate a birthday, there’s an after-work happy hour that you feel compelled to attend and consequently have one too many craft beers and fries, and the spiral continues. Soon, a week passes, and you’re feeling terrible – like you’re back at the start line where you were now almost 6 weeks ago, and worse yet, you’ve got an internal judge beating you up for the “bad” decisions you’ve made.
Yet, can we speculate to wonder, did we create this scenario? Surely, we could have politely declined our co-worker’s birthday cake, and they could have understood (and even if not, it’s not their body you are taking care of, anyway, side note) .. we could have still attended the happy hour and ate a light appetizer with water instead of participating in the imbibing ..
Sometimes we can attribute this to simple need for more focus, and sometimes we need to take a deeper look and see what causes a lack of focus – why would we allow that?
You’re capable of so much! We are all capable of so much more than we even realize on a day-to-day basis. The question is, will we allow ourselves to accomplish what it is we truly feel we have within us? Will we embrace it?
It takes an amount of internal work to allow ourselves to experience greater happiness, wellness, and yes, fitness. I must say, it may be challenging at times, but the journey is definitely worth traversing and figuring out what specifically holds you back or causes you to yo-yo!
If I can help in any way, please reach out to me. I would love to have a conversation. I’m offering 2 free transformation sessions this week for a new program I have launched, an accountability coaching program for your fitness and overall wellness. A transformation session is a one-hour session where we go through everything from medical history to looking at your posture, to identifying a definite goal for you to set your focus on, and a plan to get you there! To apply for the free transformation session, click here.
I am always very happy to openly share my journey and experiences, and am here to help in any way that I can! I look forward to connecting!
Best to you always!
Aubrey