Sounds pretty romantic. Adventurous. Alluring, even.
But in reality it was what I was legitimately doing today: searching for New Mexico... the puzzle piece. The missing piece. It was the only one gone from my nearly 3-year-old's map of the United States puzzle. Despite a fairly decent investigation in the vast sea of toys in the play/workout room, New Mexico remains missing.
How often does this happen? You can't find a piece to your kid's puzzle so what's the point of doing the puzzle anymore, despite the fact that she still loves it and continues to ask where New Mexico is? No, no... it's not going to be that banal. I'm going to get metaphoric on your ass.
How often does this happen when it comes to the health and fitness puzzle? Stuck on a plateau. At your breaking point. Lacking that missing piece that's going to make all the hours at the gym and adherence to your clean diet worth it.
That's how I've felt recently, like something is missing. I've had so many goals I've wanted to accomplish yet can't seem to find it within myself to just get 'em done. Something is missing.
Perhaps it's knowledge. Maybe I don't know enough about what I want to do to actually get it done. But there's a learning curve for everything, and with the right direction, things can be accomplished. It just takes a little more work and some understanding.
It could be passion, though, right? But knowing myself as only I do, I'd probably say not. Passion leads me to the gym four days a week for some pretty serious lifting--I don't screw around in the weight room. Passion takes me to the track once a week for sprints--the kind that leave you wishing you would just puke already. It's passion that makes me push a jogging stroller full of 60-plus pounds of children over the course of a 4, 5, 6 mile run twice a week. Passion flips the tire, slams the ropes, pushes the prowler and pulls the sled. Passion drives me.
For me, I think it all comes down to faith. I'm not going to get all Jesus-y on you; don't worry. When I talk about faith in this context, I'm talking about faith in one's self. I find it hard to believe in myself for some reason. When the going gets tough, more times than not I've simply just given up, because at least quitting isn't an all-out failure.
But in reality it is. You can never know how good you are if you don't try, if you don't hang in there and give it your all.
I often talk about the birth of my daughters as a turning point in my life. Hell yeah it tested my strength, endurance, passion and even faith in myself. If I didn't believe I could push those babies out of my body on my own, where would I have been? There was no way I could quit this one. It wasn't junior varsity basketball and I wasn't sitting the bench because I was too afraid to shoot the ball. So I did it, twice, without ever doubting myself. It was amazing.
Why is it then, that when it comes to achieving other physical goals I falter? There are many things I've wanted to do since the birth of my second daughter, but just haven't yet done. There was the 1/2 marathon last September that, after having been able to run 10 miles at a clip, I just gave up on. I've wanted to train for a figure competition, but looking at myself now feel there's no way I could stand up on stage in heels and a bikini and be confident.
But most recently I've been taken with the idea of powerlifting. I love being a strong-ass woman. I'm able to lift my kids with ease and push their 60-plus pound behinds around our hilly neighborhood in our jogger. Having a platform to display that strength would be amazing.
That being said I found a push/pull meet this October, about 30 minutes away from where I live. For those of you unfamiliar with push/pull, it means bench press and deadlift--two lifts I can f***ing handle. But for some reason, I haven't been able to bring myself to register. The looming threat of failure has left me paralyzed, and I know that if I don't just suck it up and commit, I'll never know how good I can be.
