The Other Foot
I was working out today and feeling great about my training. My nutrition has been good this summer, my workouts have been challenging, I’m feeling strong and when I look at myself in the mirror the woman smiling back is someone I am proud to be. And then, as I was finishing up my final set of back exercises, I realized I was waiting for the other foot to drop. I realized I have been anticipating that moment when something terribly wrong will happen to me, you know, to “even” out these good feelings.
Where in the world did I ever create this mentality. Was it something I was taught or did my trust in myself fail me somehow? When did my brain decide that I don’t deserve to feel great, that there is something wrong with being happy about my hard work? Why is it that when things are going great, I can’t just sit back and enjoy it? I can’t quite wrap my brain around this one. The more I think about it the more questions I have and the more questions I have the less answers I know.
All of this chatter is self sabotaging. If I don’t succeed at something I have already given myself an out, it’s the other foot, right? Isn’t failure the next step I should take? I’ve been waiting for it, expecting it to happen and when it does I’ve already prepared myself for failure. Or if I keep up with my success, maybe that drop is just going to be harder because I climbed higher. It gives me less enjoyment in the moment and more fear of how much more I could do or become.
I don’t want an easy out. I want to climb hard, climb high and enjoy the view. I want to take steps forward and learn how to grip the ground and just keep climbing up. So as I write this I have to ask, do I? If I really feel that way than shouldn’t I be looking at my summer training and owning it. Own the days that I killed it in the gym, own the days that I looked at candy and just said no, own the days that a beer would have given me the instant gratification that I so badly needed and I said no. Those were choices I made and if I don’t start taking ownership of them, I am risking forgetting that I did it. I am risking falling to the bottom, looking up back up to the top with unreasonable expectations and not being realistic with the path that took me there in the first place.
What I need to do is stop waiting for the other foot to drop. I need to enjoy the moment, enjoy the hard work, enjoy the accomplishments. If I can learn to let go of the self doubt, the self sabotaging and the insecurities, I will probably get to new peaks. It isn’t about deserving anything, not the good or the bad. It is about working hard and giving your all just to see where it will take you, where you will end up.
So this is what I asked myself today, and I did it looking eye to eye in the mirror. Why don’t you deserve this moment? And my thoughts ramble off, they rambled away from my successes, they kept getting further and further from my accomplishments. The fact is, I did work hard this summer, I wasn’t perfect because I am not perfect. I succeeded far more times than I didn’t. I do deserve this moment. I would deserve it even if I didn’t work as hard, but my accomplishments didn’t come easy, they didn’t come without motivation and self control. And instead of self doubt and undeserving thoughts, I should have pride and enjoyment.
I have a choice. This is my life and I get to choose what mood I am in. I get to choose the outcome to my accomplishments. I can down play it, I can replay all the things I could have done better with, I could even give my successes to some sort of luck. But in the end, it is wasting a lot of time making up a story that didn’t happen. There is no other shoe. I have climbed high this summer. I put one foot in front of the other and took my time, now I just need to take a deep breath, enjoy the view and find my way up the next peak.