The success obstacle

A lot of the stuff out there about goals talks about how to deal with the inevitable obstacles.  One “obstacle” that gets a little less press is success.

Some of us have people in our lives who are invested in us remaining as we are.  When we start to grow, they worry.  When we don’t act like we used to, when we pass on the cookies, when we unconsciously outpace them on the sidewalk, they fret.  In most cases, these tensions can be worked out, but that they exist at all explains why people who choose to get fit with their partners have more success:  everyone is changing together.  Even friends can feel threatened when we become more awesome.  We may find that one of our new workout skills is reassurance.  (Or, if we discover that our friends are less interested in what is good for us than we hoped, we work out our boundary-setting and our finding-new-friends skills.)

It can be even scarier when our success freaks us out all by ourselves.  We forget, sometimes, that we are amazing.  When we begin to get stronger, when we move faster and with more assurance, things change.  We become less willing to settle because we know we can achieve great things.  And sometimes that is downright terrifying.  We look around at our lives and realize how much power we have to change things.

Some of us find this to be too much pressure.  We choose to abandon our goals rather than learn to cope with success.  Let’s not go there.

Keep breathing.  Get used to the power before exercising it willy-nilly.  Then enjoy.

Mix!

I talk a fair amount about how we need to mix things up.  Bodies like change.  That’s the positive reason to do it.

There is also a negative reason.  When we always do the same thing, we put ourselves at risk for overuse injuries.  They even have names like Tennis Elbow or Yoga Butt (no, I did not make that up and it doesn’t refer to how a behind looks, but to a pain at the pelvic end of the hamstrings.).  Good form can help to prevent or improve some of those overuse issues, but our best plan really is to find a mix of things we love so our bodies don’t wear out any one part.

And no, substituting spin bike for regular bike doesn’t count.

Balance is one of my favorite words.

When it comes to working out, we need to balance patience and impatience.  Patience comes in useful often.  We have to rest between sets for better performance.  It takes more than one workout for the numbers on the dumbbells to go up or the numbers on the scale to go down.  Sometimes we even have to slow down and learn things to improve our form.

Impatience, however, is what pushes us along.  When we start working intervals in our cardio to amp things up, it is impatience at work.  Choosing short, intense, efficient workouts can be another symptom/benefit of impatience. 

As usual, I am in favor of both.  We need to take the time we need, but we don’t need to take extra.  We can do this.