This, in my opinion, is a truly horrendous photo. Sweat, wrinkles, dark circles under the eyes, grey hairs, a much overdue colour. It also says, "This is me". And it's me, this morning, doing what I tell my clients to do - just get out there and do it.
Ever since I hurt my ankle, I've had a fear of damaging it again, so I've been super apprehensive about getting back to exercising properly. There was a while there when I could barely even lift a weight to do upper body exercise, because the weight of holding a dumbell put more pressure on my ankle and my leg hurt too much to push through the pain.
Life puts us in interesting circumstances sometimes. For a long time now, all I've been saying is I wish I could do hill sprints. It's crazy the things you wish for when you can't do the basics you've always done. Apparently, the Universe was keeping notes, because lo and behold, there's a walking path right next to the house I moved into two weeks ago - with a nasty incline!
The white wall is my house. Yes, it's that close.
I'm like everyone else. I can make excuses like the best of them! In fact, I'm sure some of mine are 'better'. 😉 Silly, huh? Thanks to pesky auto-immune issues, I'm energetic for 2.5-3 hours at a time. After that, if I don't sleep, I just tend to go through the motions a bit, unless I a) take drugs, b) am really interested in something and am concentrating hard. The majority of how I get through most days is based on mental will - I do it coz I have to do it. I have no choice. (Perhaps another blog post in that - removing choices mean you have to take action...)
A couple of days ago, I ran this path a couple of times, just to see how my ankle coped, and the result was pleasing. I felt I could have done more, but I thought I'd quit while I was ahead.
This morning, I was determined to do more. I ran that bitch path 7 times up and back, in less than ten minutes. I'd had my heart set on ten and I wanted to stop at 5, so 7 was a compromise I could mentally handle. I won't beat myself up because I didn't do ten. Where I'm at now is miles ahead of where I was a month ago. And there's a lesson in that for everyone!
I reminded myself that it's a good feeling to have; knowing you've achieved something you couldn't see yourself doing even a short time earlier. I'm not scared to exercise and to put pressure on my ankle. I trust myself enough to know that I can get the results I want and I'm not kidding myself into thinking it's all going to happen overnight.
Too often, we don't allow ourselves to simply trust ourselves and trust the process - and it is a process.
It took a while getting you to where you are and sometimes it takes a while getting to where you want to be. What matters is that you keep going. Educate your mind, move your body. You don't always get the results you want, you get the results you work to achieve.
For the sake of even more disclosure, this is me in all my sweaty glory this morning. This is also the kind of 'during' photo I want to see from my clients. But I don't expect anything from you that I won't do myself, so this is me showing you what I want you to show me.
Just wait till we're doing the workouts! Nobody ever said the 5 minutes would be easy! 😉
