Motivational Monday: NEVER be Satisfied with Giving Up

Life is tough sometimes and it threatens to get in the way of achieving our goals. We don't become strong and successful because the road is paved in gold and bathed in sunshine. We get there by looking life's obstacles in the face and pushing back harder than they are pushing us. This is not to say that this is easy by any means. Life can really do a number on our resolves to succeed, but those are the moments when we pull together our resources. Who can we reach out to for help until we're back on our feet? What have we learned in our lives that could be applied to the current situation? What have we learned in our journeys so far that would be useful?

There is something that has been bothering me for a while but I did fairly well to ignore it. However, while I was distracting myself with exercise and visiting friends, it was creeping up on me and eventually showed its ugly self. Because I had ignored the problem I was unprepared and temporarily (key word, temporarily) crumbled. I stopped eating, didn't want to exercise and was sleeping far more than necessary.

I had no choice but to face it, so one teary morning I talked with a friend who helped me get to the heart of the matter. Another friend knew I was struggling (but wasn't exactly sure why) and invited me to join her for long outdoor walks. I admitted to her that I didn't even want to be there, that I only was because I knew I had to be. After two days of long walks, self-reflection and support, I was ready to attack the problem and took steps to fix what was broken. UPDATE: I'm still trying to fix it, but I WILL get past this.

While working through this, I was less strict with my diet (e.g. I'd have one of my daughter's fried cheese sticks, not an entire fried meal) and eased up the intensity of my workouts, but I never completely quit. I stopped focusing on weight loss and instead focused on weight maintenance so that I truly could just pick back up where I had left off when my heart was back on board again. I've had some challenges recently, but I never completely gave up and now I'm even stronger because of it.

  

When we say that something is just too hard, what we are really saying is that we are just too weak. NEVER be satisfied with giving up.