L7/Day 61-64: Failure is an Illusion

So....it has been a little while since I posted a blog, and that's because it had been a little while since I worked out. Basically, I had more changes to my basic daily routine that threw me off of the comfortable groove I'd settled into. And yet, here I am still continuing on with level 7. My perfectionist mind did not get the better of me. Somewhere in my head a voice said, "you've lost too much muscle, I guess you should start over at level 1" in other words, "jump off the wall as fast as you can, and start allover climbing up from the very bottom; don't build on all the work you've already done"...hmmm....maybe if I had missed a month then yes Tracy recommends starting over at level 1, but that wasn't the case with me. Instead, another voice in my head said yet again..."just do your personal best, and keep moving forward." Oh? When did it become that easy to get back on track?

In my experience I've managed to pick up a lot of unhelpful information from society, parents, media, etc that says you have to be perfect, and maybe even more specifically failure is not an option. Yes, in life and death scenarios or situations that threaten your survival then yes failure is not an option. In my personal circumstances and specifically applied to the situation of me getting in shape, there really is no such thing as failure in my humble opinion. Failure isn't real in this case. It's something I made up in my head that said you can't lose weight because all you've ever known is being over weight. You can't stick with something, because you've never been able to do stick with anything consistently before. If you do try something and run into new challenges then you have failed, and if you've failed x-number of times then you're hopeless, you'll always be a failure. You are incapable because you've never proven yourself to be capable before. You have to be critical of yourself before other people can tear you down with their criticisms (beat them to the punch). Wow, sounds very vicious when it's all written together like that and yet these are the things I've told myself time and time agian. They were things my brain tricked me into believing were true, and as I had no other evidence to prove otherwise I believed them.

I can only share what I have learned from my personal experience, but what I want to share with myself for future reference and with anyone else who can relate to starting stopping and starting all the way over again in cycles that never end...failure isn't real. Give yourself credit for trying first of all! We are not in a competition with anyone else. We are not even in a competition with ourselves. So that means that any effort however small it may seem will amount to something if we allow ourselves to be proud of ourselves for what we have done. It is very easy to criticize ourselves for not doing as good as we think we should be. I think some people are motivated by that, it creates drive in them. But I am not that type of person. I am coming to learn that my motivation comes from being proud of myself for every small thing I do that is good. If I do toning without cardio, I am proud of myself. If I try to hold my body up in a plank move that is so hard I can hardly do any reps I am proud of myself. And today when I exercised for 3 days in a row again after taking a small hiatus I was utterly proud of myself!

We can be motivated by being proud of ourselves rather than critical. I find it frees up energy for me, and it free me up mentally to keep moving in a forward direction. When we criticize the past we keep ourselves stuck in the past. Ask youself, is that what you want? If not, then have enough compassion for yourself to move forward. The one important thing for you to know is that it will not be an overnight process. It does take time to begin to unlearn habits that don't serve us and replace them with ones that do. But suddenly you wake up one day and find how many days you've crossed off your Meta calendar, and maybe it's because you decided to be kind to yourself instead of critical.

Btw, level 7 is awesome. I certainly did have a drop in strength the first 3 days of this level since I had taken a break. But after just 3 days, I feel strong again. If you've never been fit before like me, you will come to discover that when you do have muscles, it actually feels really good to use them. Whereas moving my body used to feel utterly exhausting, it now kinda feels like I'm training to be in Cirque du Soleil with the grace and agility of a dancer/acrobat. It feels good.

As Dory from Finding Nemo said, "Just keep swimming, just keep swimming"...