motivation, or something like it

 Been think about motivation this week, how it can make or break me. How its not something you wait around for to fall into your lap, but something you take with your shaky hands and bruised knees. I’ve spent the last year and a half trying to take back my physical health. No one really prepares you for just how responsible you are for your own health out here in the wild we call adulthood. 

I could sit here and list the ailments and discomforts that pushed me into making a change, but the important part is that I’m just trying my best to eat a little better and move around a little more. So I’ve ate more broccoli in the last two years than the whole of my life combined. And I’ve tried every type of physical movement to try and stick with some sort of physical activity. I’m not convinced that I’ve found the exact formula that works for me, because when I get sick, or busy, or just happens to be that time of the month, I tend to fall down on the job. 

But this thing called life is a very long marathon, not even close to a sprint. And there are seasons that come and go beyond just the changing of weather. So I’ve been putting in the work to create sustainable habits and a life I can continue to live wholeheartedly without faltering so often. 

So back to motivation. I can eat better than ever before because I see and feel very quick honest changes in how my body feels. Just simply eating more vegetables than I used to makes my stomach feel better, so in that way its most if not all the motivation I need to keep up with that side of the coin. The “exercise” side however is a bit more complicated for me. I played softball in high school, and long before that I was a dancer for many years, I guess you could say I have more emotions tied up in exercise. 

Exercise is not something I’ve consider fun, or really enjoyed since I was a child and wasn’t thinking too hard about it. Didn’t have to think too hard about it. But here I am at 23 and I can’t pretend it away, or put it off till I feel like it. I’ll never feel like it, because as someone who is considered “out of shape” excising feels crappy, and not just emotionally. And often in the beginning of this process I’d think to myself, how can something that feels this bad possibly be healthy for me? 

But I can remember back to this one random afternoon where I had this burning passion to run really really fast. I believe it was February this year. And I was consumed by this childlike desire to run so fast I’d break my legs if I stopped to quickly. The kind of fast where you feel like you’re flying. And I thought, if I take this desire, this childlike drive, and make in my sounding board and motivation, maybe just maybe I might be able to stick with it. 

I can be honest enough to say it hasn’t always worked. But I can be equally honest and say it hasn’t exactly ever failed me either. Saying I’m going to exercise to be healthier is too vague and there’s no goal I can see. But making it about weight or a certain look is just as unhealthy as doing nothing. But, saying I’m going to get some movement into my day-to-day so I can run really fast some time, that I can get behind. That I can stick with. 

Motivation is a fickle thing. Slippery and hard to hold onto when you need it most. But if you’re willing to put the fire behind you’re drive and throw in a heaping pile of perseverance to boot, you might just make it out of here. At least that’s what I keep telling myself. Because I hate that saying, “one day or day one,” because it punches me with a conviction I can hardly handle. 

So maybe this post is about motivation, or maybe its really perseverance again, or maybe something different altogether. I don’t know, what I do know however is that I am better off this side of the year than I was last year. Its not something I could really quantify in any kind of measurement but just looking at my own mental landscape is proof enough for me.