sometimes its ok to say enough...

So today in Tucson was the dreaded 5k run day at my crossfit gym and if you follow the main site its up there too. Normally I don't mind running, I'm actually pretty descent at shorter distances. I will fully admit I suck at long distance running yet I was actually kinda excited to tackle this beast in the heat. Well I was completely humbled today by a 5k run something that seems so natural yet so hard for so many people. I was able to finish a mile of the run before I just quit. My body literally told me NO. After the first mile my calves and lower back were seizing up so bad that each step felt excruciating, there was no way I would be able to do it two more times.

It pained me to walk away from a work out, It pained me to write DNF next to my name. Mentally I wanted to keep going, I wanted to move forward... but physically I just couldn't do it and honestly I don't need to hurt myself anymore than I already am at this point. The thing is that sometimes its OK to say when enough is enough, it is OK to tap out.

This is something I really need to work on.  Today was a step forward in terms of listening to what my body was saying physiologically. Then again I more than likely shouldn't have started the workout to begin with. While crossfit is about not giving up, it is about doing your best, it is about putting so much effort forward that you leave it all on the floor at the end. However, there comes a point when you have to say how much more can my body handle? Today for me it was only a mile run which I guess I shouldn't be disappointed in given my recent state. But, at the same time its extremely frustrating to start something you just cant finish. Mentally it is hard as well thinking back to all the times I shouldn't have finished but I did.

I can say that the entire experience is entirely humbling, what it has shown me is that I cant take anything for granted, that on any given day circumstances change. There is a difference between pushing through pain and pushing through weakness and today I listened to the cues i needed to be safe in my workout and my own skin. I am not proud about not finishing a workout in fact it will bother me until I do a 5k again. I am proud of listening to myself and realizing the difference between pushing my body and protecting it.

more to come...

"Anyone can give up, it's the easiest thing in the world to do. But to hold it together when everyone else would understand if you fell apart, that's true strength."

It's Spring Time... No Really!

 Someone much wiser than I am once asked me why i was afraid to have it all, that person went on to assure me that it was okay to desire and have anything I wanted in life. At the time i just kinda swept that idea under the rug, like most things I'm not ready to hear or deal with, and i moved on ... back to my daily routine and didn't think about it again until today.

As of a few days ago it has been 6 months since Sean has been in my life.  This relationship had a profound impact on me. At the time I was shaken to the core, I literally was broken on the inside and it showed on the outside. Due to unforeseen events in the wake of this break up I suffered further. It got to the point where I desired nothing and no one. I just wanted him to suffer the same way I was suffering and feel the pain I felt on a daily basis. As time went on the pain lessened but the hurt was still there because I had never fully let myself feel it, instead it manifested inside me just waiting for an inappropriate moment to show it's self. 

I never really listened to the cues my body was giving me until a few months ago. I continued my routine post Sean because it was easy, it was just easy to hurt, and i beat myself up on the outside (over training, becoming highly obsessive about eating patterns, binging...etc.) to mask the real pain i felt on the inside. Yet nothing changed it was like I was a moment frozen in time, nothing got better, and nothing got worse life just was. 

In hindsight I can honestly say that this break-up was a gift. I have learned things about myself and who I truly am, I have been stronger than I ever thought I could be, and I have done things I never thought were possible. Most of all I have become closer to the most important person in my life... Myself. 

The past six months have become an interesting challenge to discover who I've always been. I learned the gift of loving someone else unconditionally from my relationship, but i had never put that into practice on myself. I am the kind of person who will consistently try to change to "fix" myself or become "better" because I've never really thought of myself as good enough. Self-esteem issues and self doubt have plagued me for most of my life. However an interesting concept that I have been thinking about lately is the idea that: I never needed to be fixed because I was never broken. Now this idea is something that I am still trying to wrap my head around and really understand.  Yet, I decided to dive deeper into this concept and I have since begun to learn and understand that truly loving one's self is a lot harder than it ever was to love someone else. The more I love and the more I try to listen to my body the more little epiphanies occur.  Its almost as if they are little rewards like the gold stars we used to get on our homework when we were younger. It has been these rewards that have been the most telling on this journey.

So back to the idea of having it all. Today feels like the first day of spring for me, its like the dormant flowers within me are blooming and bursting to get out. The past few days I have really felt my body, I have started to desire again, to actually want things and people in my life, to feel what its like to have those relationships. I think the most telling moment came today as I was driving home from the grocery store, I realized that my body never lied to me during my relationship. In fact I could take it one step further and say that my body is the one piece of this relationship that always told me the truth no matter how hard it was to listen.

Even though I always felt it was betraying me during my trips to see Sean, or his to see me, it was in actuality telling me he was wrong for me before I could mentally realize it for myself. So I tried to control it rather than listening to it taking massive amounts of hormones, including birth control to shift the balance back to what I thought normal should be. I thought for the longest time that this was some sort of betrayal i needed to change and fix, I cried and agonized over it. Yet since that time I have not had another occurrence of these issues. Being off all the medications i was pumping myself full of every time I was with him has been liberating. I know now that I was not broken that I was exactly who I always been, and that I have always been enough just the way I am.

In that moment I got it, I understood that I truly can have everything I desire in life. That the gifts of love may not be shown in the way I think they should manifest themselves but that they will always be there. I don't have to be anything more or less than who I am, and who I am is everything. Someone once told me that I already had all the answers I just needed to take the time to listen to them. While it hasn't always been easy -in fact i still doubt myself on a daily basis- and I haven't always gotten answers I wanted to hear and/ or listen to, this lesson of love has been the most rewarding journey I have ever taken ... and its only just begun.

This is real

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

So I have been thinking a lot about fear lately and how this word/ concept is so powerful to most of us. It blows my mind that so many people (myself included) use fear as a crutch to never truly experience life. Most of the time it is fear of the unknown that stops us from taking the plunge, all the what ifs lead to thoughts of failure, rejection, inadequacy, etc. so we never dare to venture to close to the edge of the proverbial cliff least we fall off and end up in an uncontrollable situation.

Even tasks that may seem simple to most can become a chore and a scary situation due to fear. For the longest time i was afraid of box jumps don't ask me why but moving up even an inch created this knot inside of me and made me so uncomfortable that i just couldn't make the jump without doing a step up or even without hesitating. In my head i had already given up before i even tried. I told myself i couldn't do it, because i was afraid of falling. The thing is that sometimes we need to let go of that control and let ourselves fall to experience something we never thought possible. Yes we might "fail", there is always a chance of that, but does the risk of failure outweigh never truly knowing what you could be capable of? Is it worth not experiencing all the possibilities?

In most cases I would say no, and even if "failure" occurs there is a lesson to be learned. I have become more educated from my failures in life than from my successes. That's not to say that I enjoyed the experience, or that it was an easy lesson to learn but it makes the successes in life all the more sweet. The moment your at the top and you know that you did it against your own best efforts to sabotage yourself is what continues to drive me on a daily basis.

At the end of the day fear and failure are two concepts that stop us from achieving the great things we were meant to take on in life. No matter how small or insignificant the action may seem from jumping on a box, lifting weight overhead, submitting that resume, or allowing yourself to love and be loved in return. It is the choice to go for it against the odds that enriches our lives. There is no "Can't" in this world only "Won't", but in reality you can and will do everything you put your mind to. It may not happen right away and it may not happen without tons of "failures" along the way but the moment your determination becomes reality is one of the sweetest feelings in the world, it is something that cannot be described... only experienced.

So the question I pose today is one of growth: Are you going to be the kind of person who faces fear and fights through it even if it means you fail? Or are you going to take the path of least resistance and back down to your own insecurities? Ill take the former please :)