Jenn
One of the biggest changes that happened to me over the course of becoming Jenn 2.0 has been how well I know myself. Before I made the change, I was in excuse-making mode. In my head, I was always doing as well as I could, trying as hard as I could try, but obviously I just wasn’t capable of doing what it takes to change my life and lifestyle the way I needed to. How I came to realize that wasn’t the case might make you laugh.
I realized it from watching an episode of Dr. Phil.
You may commence laughing now.
I know, he’s full of pithy homespun wisdom and y’alls. But it’s funny, what he was saying that time happened to be something that made sense to me.
He said to a woman, “You’re not expecting enough from yourself.” When he said that, I realized he was absolutely right, and that it applied to me. I was living my life in cruising gear. I had conditioned myself to accept mediocrity without question.
I thought about being 90 someday. I thought, if I don’t change anything, when I’m 90 and I look back on my life, what will I think of it? And I realized that I would feel regret. I would think about 37 year old Jenn, and wonder why I gave up. At 90, looking at Jenn at 37, and 40, and 45, and 50, I would wonder what I could have looked like, what I could have done. I would wonder why I thought 37 was too late, why I thought I was too old to change (at 37!!), why I figured my best days were behind me, and why I spent my life only half alive. And at 90, I couldn’t change it. At 90, I would feel regret.
And then I thought, I’m not 90 years old. I’m 37.
I have time now.
I have time to live my life at 100% effort. I have time to see how strong I can be. I have time to see what I look like in a bikini, to dance, to run and bike and climb and do whatever I want to do. To live my life in a way that I will look back and think “Well done, Jenn. Well done.”
I decided that I won’t live the rest of my life at half-effort, and regret it at the end when it’s too late.
Today, most times I don’t leave the gym until I’m lying on the floor soaked in sweat and barely moving. If I have anything left, I do more. I give everything. If I’m sick or injured, I give myself some slack and treat myself with kindness, but won’t use it as an excuse. That’s the difference between Now Me and Before Me. I give everything I have, and not only at the gym, but in the rest of my life too.
I won’t die someday never knowing what I could have been if I’d only really tried. I won’t live, or die, with regret. I’m 41 years old. And I’m the most kick-ass 41 year old I can possibly be. I’m the me I want to be.
Are you?
2 responses to “Do, or Do Not. There Is No Try. -Yoda”
[…] “I don’t want to feel bad about myself”. I’ve heard this argument a lot over the years, from some of the same people who have taken offense to our use of ‘Fattie” (That’s another post entirely & one I think we’ll all write together). Two months into our little blog I think it’s becoming clear that some ‘tough love’ is an essential part of the process in getting from Fattie to Former Fattie. Already I’ve been told I’m too ‘hardcore’ by a few readers and I’m too hardlined on some of my positions on fat loss. There’s a reason for my feelings on this subject and it comes from years of helping people lose the weight more than my own weight loss experience. Sometimes you just need someone to expect more from you than you do. Jennifer wrote an excellent post about it recently too, well worth a read! […]
No I’m not!! But I’m gonna be DAMNIT!!