Okay, so this blog is a day late (again). Hey! I was busy!
So a couple of nights ago, after blogging about "making decisions", I was doing alot of thinking and taking inventory of my decisions in life. I have made LOTS of decisions in life.. some amazing.. some that leave me thinking, "What the......" But no matter what decisions I make there is ALWAYS something valuable to be gleaned. "Yes! That was an amazing experience, I can't wait to do that again!" or "Ouch! That one hurt! Maybe I should try to avoid that one next time." (Easier said than done sometimes.. sometimes we have to keep making the "bad" decisions in order to really learn the lesson. And sometimes we had to make the decisions to see if we have learned enough from the previous times to react differently. Maybe it's not the actual choice that was "bad" but instead it is our own reaction that needed to be changed.)
Anyway, the changing of reactions is what I have come up against most recently. I would like to not have the pain of a decision; however my own reaction showed great growth on my part, and for that I am very grateful.. not just for the growth, but the opportunity given to me in order to see such growth.
So there. One decision made and learned from. Yay! But I still feel as though bigger things need to change in my life. Well maybe not bigger. But I have things I am not happy about. (Aside from Nick not being here.) My health is a big one. I have found myself really wanting to just curl up on the couch under the comfy blanket and binge on really yummy bad for me foods and equally bad for me TV. Basically I just kinda wanted to stop living my life. I wanted to stop being present. I wanted to just let life happen. Which of course would mean, my health would deteriorate. I would gain more weight. I would become a sloth. And I would be miserable. I have been down this road before. It's not a fun road, and it's one I swore I would never go down again. Yet, here I was sinking deeper and deeper into the comfort of my amazing couch and warm blankets.
When my friend Angie came to town, we went on a 27 mile bike ride and I totally felt completely out of shape. Then we went for a 9 mile hike 4 1/2 up and then 4 1/2 down the mountain. As we made the climbs, I was reminded of how I used to RUN these trails and now I can barely crawl up them. However, more importantly, I remembered that I LOVE this stuff!!!!
So what is keeping me from doing these things? What is keeping me from eating better? What is keeping me from exercising? Well I have lots of excuses....
1) I'm a mourning mom, I'm allowed to stuff my emotions with food.
3) I'm a mourning mom, I can do whatever the hell I want, including sitting on the couch and doing nothing. This is acceptable behavior.
4) I have to play taxi driver for my entire family, I don't have time to change my eating habits or get the exercise in or read the books or work on me. All I have time for is crying and taxing and binge watching TV and facebook.
5) Since I can't run anymore, anything I do to lose weight just won't compare to last time..so what's the point?
Ya.. I was full of excuses. But these weren't just excuses, they were every day decisions that I made about how I would live my life.
I got mad at a young woman at Nick's school for using Nick's death as a weapon against one of their mutual friends. She was saying.. "Well, if Nick were here, he would do this!" I was so angry with her. How dare she use my dead son's name and memory as a weapon. But then I stopped and thought about this. Wasn't that EXACTLY what I have been doing? I have been using his death as a weapon against myself. Nick would be soooo pissed at me! He would kick my ass and tell me to get moving!
So, finally, a couple of nights ago, I made a decision. Of course, I wanted to see how I felt the next morning. Would I (like every other time) give up on that decision and make a different one? Then I saw a video on Facebook and at the very end it mentioned something about life beginning at the end of our comfort zone. Ah yes..... My comfort zone...on the couch with a warm fuzzy blanket and yummy bad for me foods. This wasn't really living. And it would take me leaving that comfort zone to begin living my life again. So, thank you facebook video; I stuck to my decision. I opened up a new tab on my browser and typed in the URL for Weight Watchers and I rejoined. I gathered my things for the gym. I gathered my book. I took it all out to the car and headed out to take Nate to work.
Nate works right next door to the gym. I dropped him off and went to the gym. I decided to just do the 30 minute circuit. It has been a while since I had been to the gym, and right now I just needed to START. I finished my circuit and then looked around. It had been a while since I had been in this particular gym, and the one I had been going to with my mom had a cool station that this gym didn't have previously. As I looked around the gym, I found that system.. the one where I get to throw medicine balls at the rebounder! Yes!!! So on top of the circuit, I threw the ball 50 times. Yay!!!
My next big hurdle for the day... getting to a Weight Watchers meeting. There is a meeting facility less than a mile from my house. But noooooooo... I want to go back to my old group which is way over on Federal Way. But since I'm already half way there for Nate's work, it was no big deal to get there. I did get there very early, though. I sat in my car and began reading my book The Five Major Pieces of the Life Puzzle by Jim Rohn. Interestingly enough, the first part of this book is all about personal philosophies. These personal philosophies are what guide us in our decision making. (Good timing, eh?) "To get more, we have to become more." How do we become more? We change our thoughts. We change our thinking. When we change those things our actions change and of course with a change in action, you have a change in results. So here I sat, reading this book at the perfect time in my life. I made a decision to take back my life and live it! I was tired of letting my life live me. I was tired of "getting through it"; I wanted more for my life. Then I got the phone call from Nate. I was 5 minutes from walking into this Weight Watcher's meeting room (a place I really didn't want to walk into.... not because I didn't want to change, but because I knew what I would face) and Nate calls to ask if I can pick him up. The power had gone out in his office.
Talk about a pivot point in this decision making process. It would have been so easy to say, "Sure, I'll be right there." and then bail out of my WW meeting. But no. Somewhere deep inside of me I found the strength to say, I am in a a meeting till 1. You will need to wait. Whew! Go me!
I walked into the meeting room. The leader (who has been my leader since I joined in 2011) is also my friend on facebook. She knows what has been going on in my life (or at least about Nick). She was also a motorcycle rider (on the back of her hubby's bike). They had a horrible accident in 2011/12 when she broke her back. She has not ridden since. As soon as she saw me, she opened her arms wide and gave me a huge hug and cried with me. "Welcome back. So glad you are here." I was not convinced I was happy to be there, but this decision is one that I made out of necessity. "Fake it till you make it, Martha!"
Yes, life is all about the choices we make. It would be so easy to stay on my couch and curl up in a little ball and forget about life and get lost in my grief. (And that is exactly the road I had started taking.) But that is NOT who I am. I am not the kind of person that let's life live them. I live my life, and it's time I start acting like it!
What about you? Are you happy with your life? If there are parts that you are unhappy with, what decisions can you make that will alter the course of your life and change the result and make you happy? And why aren't you making those decisions????
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