That retreat I went to two weeks ago? The leader gave everyone two things to do for 30 days: write and exercise outside daily. The writing is easy; the exercising daily, that’s easy too. It’s the exercising outside that is a big push for me.
I’m willing to put up with the discomfort because I’m ready for change even though I really don’t know what that change will look like. More like: ‘Surprise Me, Universe!’ And if I get up every morning and eat the same food, take the dogs on the same walk, do the same exercise, talk to the same people, then it just isn’t logical that things would change with so much same-ness.
Turns out that I wasn’t alone in my sentiment to ‘stop the same-ness’. I have had three new clients come to me in the last week not to get fit but to catalyze change. Two clients want to come four times a week and one wants to come once a week.
The first is a professional woman who absolutely insists that we not ‘beat up on her’. She said: ‘I know being stronger, more toned will be a side-effect, but I’m coming everyday because I want to do things differently and I know that making the appointments will keep me committed to ‘doing things differently.’
The second client wants to be able to commit more time to his young family and to a profession in which he excels on a national level. He is curious to see how far he can take his profession if he has the stamina to pursue it.
The third client simply wants to be able to go through range of motion exercises so that he regains range of motion throughout his whole body and then never loses that ability again.
Not one of these three clients grabbed their guts and said: ‘I need you to get rid of this’. Not one said: ‘I need to lift my sagging derriere’ or ‘I want to look 10 years, 15 or 20 years younger’ or ‘I have a wedding in 6 weeks’. It was much more personal than that. Much broader than that. They were all looking for change, yes, but they were interested in using exercise as the catalyst not as ‘the change’ itself. Cool, huh?