Lately, I have been thinking about obstacles, or perhaps I should say re-thinking them. I am not sure if this has something to do with the fact that I signed up for both Battlefrog Pittsburgh and the wild Spartan Sprint this year, or because I recently received a memo from a friend about her own writing piece geared towards goal setting, achieving goals, and overcoming personal obstacles along the way. This may also be due to the fact that I am in some intensive coaching of my own now, geared towards not just overcoming my own personal obstacles, but ABOLISHING them.
Having just written all that, I think it is safe to say it is a combination of all of these things. My clients this past week have all come to me , one after the other after the other, to discuss their own obstacles in their lives. Some of them are stress related. Some of them are nutritional concerns. Some of them involve confusion about how to train well for optimal performance. Some of them involve deeper personal matters than require more introspection, the changing of habits, and the re-programming of thoughts. Across the board, I have come to realize that certain levels of anxiety surface when your own world seems to be surrounded by many enormous obstacles all at once. You may feel engulfed in your own flames, petrified of the heights you must climb, and running low on energy from the distance you continue to run day in and day out.
Sound familiar?
Trust me when I say I hear you. I feel you. I totally get it!
A Personal Reflection
From October 2015 through May of 2016, my own life seemed to be uprooted into a level of chaos that was just. . .for lack of a better term. . .chaotic. For a solid straight 7 months, I was surrounded by some of the toughest obstacles I believe I have ever faced in my existence. Some of them were personal hardships. Some of them involved making tough business decisions. Some of them involved family matters, the letting go of toxic relationships, and the realization that yours truly was far too overwhelmed to logically use her own brain. I found myself in my own shit storm, my plate filled with a lot of craziness to swallow, and for the first time ever, I began to wonder about my own life’s purpose. Worse yet, in the middle of all of this, I was working and working and working and working with no real sense of direction amid all that said working. My personal wake up call to searching for change in the middle of my obstacle course was realizing I had gotten lost from the very path I had set out to follow, and this eventually lead to me hiring a coach to re-think my own priorities.
The Epiphany That Abolished the Obstacles
“What if your life didn’t have to be so hard? ” my coach asked me. “What if you didn’t have to feel like you were running on empty all the time? What if you simply made your life priority number one?“
Mic drop.
Mind blown!
And there is certainly more to be said here.
Confession: I am not sure if I agree anymore with this “work hard” attitude towards achieving your goals, becoming successful, and living your dream lifestyle. By no means am I suggesting that life is always easy, and that things will NOT come your way that may shake you up a bit to the point of having to work and think outside the box. What I AM saying here is that “working hard” tends to imply a certain level of suffering, and that if we work too hard too often without putting on the brakes once in a while, we can find ourselves in a mental trap where we begin to believe that constant suffering is NORMAL, when in fact, it is NOT. Think of the entrepreneur that works the 80-90 hour work week. Successful? Perhaps. But I suspect that the sacrifices made for this level of success (not seeing family, stuck at the office for hours on end, too much travel to chill out) may NOT be worth the hours for said success (enter ye the 4 hour work week). The same rule applies with your fitness goals. Are you slaving away at the gym for hours on end each day and finding yourself too tired for the next training session? (enter ye the kettlebell, which I can help train you with when you click this link for a free consultation). Are you caught up in macro/micro nutrient confusion with your own meal plan to the point where you can’t seem to make sense of your own food? (I can help you with this too, and do be sure to check out Precision Nutrition in the meantime). Is the suffering worth the end result? What are you suffering for? Does your life have to be this complicated? Are you working waaaaayyyyyy toooooo hhhhaaaarrrrdddd and not achieving the goals you set out to achieve in the first place? What REALLY are your priorities?
Most importantly, are you happy?
Your Greatest Priority
The potential within you far exceeds that which you can conceive right now, and I suspect that if you are reading this post, the obstacles of your own life have made it ever more difficult for you to see the very potential within you. We have all been here at one point or another. The good news is that you CAN overcome the chaos of your life. In fact, you can ABOLISH the very challenges you are facing. The key, dear reader, to achieving your goals, to crossing off those items on your bucket-list, to becoming that which you wish to become is to make yourself priority number one. Taking care of yourself , making plans for your life, and executing that course of action is what will lead you to becoming fitter, faster, stronger, healthier, and more successful in the long run. Stay on target! Follow your path! Should you need some guidance to put an end to the madness and make your dreams a reality, I am just a point, click, and an email away.
You are your greatest priority.
Press On!
