Dealing With Adversity

I read All The Weigh pretty often, and this post here made me wonder at the time if I was glad I started my blog after I was done losing weight.  Simply because if I blogged during the time I was losing I would have had to mull around and address these types of self doubt and self-worth feelings of is it worth it?  Is it ever going to get better?  Why should I even care? in my head.  Instead, I had a glass of water and went to sleep exhausted.

I think that the people around me looked on at what I was doing and figured, there is no self doubt there, just drive.  Believe me there were moments where I wondered why I was practically starving myself and working like a dog!

I was noticing in myself, through, reading that post, that Kenlie and I have very different ways of dealing with adversity, or self doubt or whatever you want to call it.  Kenlie was there addressing it, in her own mind and then out in the public as well.  I hid it, I just tucked it away and gave it the finger.  I do that a lot, with a whole bunch of things, why air things out when you can just squirrel it away until it's fixed, and then work like an insane person to fix it.

Kenlie’s is probably a much healthier way to deal with things like that.

Part of my comment to the post is “To the point though, I wonder if you look at the whole thing not as dieting, not as making yourself workout, but as an integral change.  When I was on the losing weight route, I made the gym the #1 thing to do for the day.  Not that I did it first, but that I sacrificed whatever it took to get there, sorry can't do this other thing, I need and hour and a bit for the gym.  Once that became ingrained in me after a couple weeks, it wasn't even an effort anymore, it was just what I did.  I was a crappy friend and a non-existent fiancée for the whole time I was dropping the pounds because the gym was first, screw everything else.”

Just this week we have had to switch from oil to natural gas for heating the house, it’ll be a process that costs about $4000.  Problem is we don’t have that cash and like so many other people we live pretty much to the dollar.  Or Did, would be more accurate I guess.  Amber is the one that generally looks after the budgeting in our house and I just like a general idea of where I am at.  But the other night we sat down together and simply had to apply my thinking above to our budget.  It was not my idea in the start of it all.  I like the very comfortable lifestyle we have had for the last few years, but if this furnace is going to get paid for, and other things are going to get better money-wise then, it’s got to be ‘Manage money well and screw everything else!’

One of the things that means for me is no more gym membership, which in the non-winter months is not an issue anymore, I have weights here at home, I have roads to run and bike on.  From November to March it might be tricky, but it has to be done.  And if I have learned anything about myself in the last three years, it’s that if something really has to get done, I (or we in this case) will make it happen.

The point of the matter is, whether it’s about training or money, or something else, I think everyone from time to time feels like 'What is the point?'  or  'Why am I not getting where I want?' or 'How do I make this work?' It's how you respond to those personal questions that decides if you will succeed.  Are you making a band-aide repair to treat the symptoms , or changing things at a more basic level to solve the cause of the problem?