Showing up is sometimes hard to do. Showing up to a Showdown is even harder. So, what does it mean to ‘show up?’ It means you are present. It means you keep your commitments. It means you work through the resistance and you ‘do’ anyway. It means you do what you said you were going to do, either with someone else, or with yourself. It means you are present to yourself every day. You are committed to doing what you can each and every day. You stand up for yourself. You defend the right to make your own choices. Your energy feels ‘tall’ and ‘big.’ You take on each day for you. (And those you love will get care in the process.) You show up to the showdown.
Everyone is busy. Everyone. It is the easiest excuse to use. I hear it every day. I just talked about this with a family member two days ago. It would be so easy to say “I’m busy. I can’t come over and see you.” Too easy. We could both fill our days with ‘stuff’ and ‘busy-ness.’ However, we both know that we just decided to make “going over to see you” a very real and very big priority in our lives.
So we do it. No excuses. We just do it. It is a part of our schedules. We are each taking turns taking care of family. We do so because family is a top priority. And we are just as equally important. So we take care of ourselves, then our family, and then the rest of our lives. We have to make decisions every day about what is the most important thing in our lives. We have to be careful about making excuses (like being ‘too busy’ to take care of priorities). We can all, every day, fill our lives with ‘busy-ness’ and ‘stuff.’ If we stop and truly think about what is important, what or where we can let go, to what we can say ‘no,’ to what we can say ‘yes,’ then we can begin to take control over what is really important.
Why is it easy to sometimes make ‘other’ priorities more important when we have already made the commitment to keep our bodies healthy, strong and fit? This is sometimes not an easy commitment to keep. But we made it. If we are so busy with taking care of ‘others’ and neglect ourselves, what happens. You know. Our immune systems suffer. Our mental capacities suffer. Our emotions are tapped out. We start to eat crap. We get sick so easily.
When you are sick, to whom can you give care? If it makes no sense to take care of others and not ourselves. Our best option is to stop this habit. Stop it. How do you stop it? When you are in the midst of taking an action you know you want to stop, right in the middle of it, STOP IT. Yes, just stop it. Take control. Do something different. At that moment when in the midst of feeling/doing that habit, let your mind overtake your emotion and STOP the behavior by CHANGING it.
Whether you are making another appointment, setting another date, committing to another committee, volunteering once again because no one else does, pleasing children because they just “want’ something, submitting to your friends’ requests to do whatever, doing ‘whatever’ because nobody else will do it (in your own mind), it’s all a part of the same mindset. You are going beyond taking care of priorities. Sometimes we instantly make ‘new’ challenges a priority just because they are in front of us. Others can easily manipulate us into thinking that it is really important to do this one thing right now with/for them if we let them.
You can STOP, take a deep breath (maybe several deeps breaths), get your thinking clear, then make a better informed decision, based on what will work for you at that time. Get comfortable with saying NO. Get comfortable with being uncomfortable. It is often uncomfortable to make a change. We resist. Our bodies resist. Our minds resist. These are often driven by our emotions and current habits. Yes, it is work, however, what is your option: you will continue to ride the never-ending spinning wheel of that habit. Only when you can bite the bullet and just make the change (even though it is not yet permanent), you have begun the journey to change. This is the ‘work’ part. You just push through over and over, until it becomes your new habit. Then guess what…it becomes EASY. Yes, this does happen. The new habit becomes as easy was your old habit.
Get support if you need it to make a difficult change. Most often your friends and family are willing to help you when they know how committed you are to making the change. Talk to somebody about it. Get feedback. Get support.
Remember that when you make a ‘commitment’ to someone else, you do have the right to change your mind. You must communicate to them that you have changed your mind. It is not ok to just not show up. When you ‘just don’t show up,’ it lowers your own integrity. Yes, we know people do this all the time. That doesn’t make it ok. Tell someone you are not going to attend. You don’t need to tell them why. There is no reason you must justify your feelings or your situation to someone else. Only do this if it feels right for you (telling them why). And if you do this all the time (the habit of making the commitment in the first place, before thinking through it), then change this habit.
Here’s to your health, fitness, and joy! Give thanks for what you have, and work on getting what you need. See you in class.
Peace Up…