Fear, self-pity, and despair in todays events.
Fear, self-pity, and despair.
What does this bring up in you?
What do they have in common?
Fear, self-pity, and despair are all felt experiences.
However, letting them lead will never allow growth or happiness.
But why?
An idea... because it positions us in the role of the victim.
Victim to circumstance.
Circumstances are also very felt experiences. They often are out of our control. What is in our control is what we do with that circumstance. How we position ourselves with it.
Being a victim to circumstance means we are powerless.
Check this out for some context:
I don't know about you, but... I don't want to feel powerless when it comes to how I feel about my life.
If the way we navigate through and/or fix, change, transform circumstances comes from SOMEONE or SOMETHING else doing something for us or giving something to us, can we ever end up on the other side of the victim role?
Fear, self-pity, and despair will always find their way back in if our way through them come from something outside of ourselves.
We must cultivate our path within...FIRST.
It's how we position ourselves when those things arise that matters most. THEN... we can decide how to move.
If our fears lead us, do we ever learn to move towards them, with them, or through them?
If our self-pity leads us, through its ideas of "it's them, it's this thing, it's something else outside of me keeping me from getting where I want to go" do we ever walk the path of the life we want to live?
If our despair causes a loss of hope internally, can we create something new?
Here's the paradox.
As humans, I would argue we all need others in some capacity.
The trick is this... we must not fall victim to circumstance, or else we are never the creator in our story. We can never walk through the hero's journey and be our own hero.
To me this means we don't figure out how to seek out the help we may need and if we do, we don't change in the long run.
It comes from within. It comes from YOU, and it always has.
AND... that is the best part of this.
It's on you, it always has been.
Victor Frankil... Austrian neurologist, psychologist, philosopher, and holocaust survivor spoke about in his book "Man's search for meaning" about the ones who made it through.
He mentioned the ones who could imagine a future of hope, who had a purpose in their life, a reason to live... be that love, goals, or responsibility... were the ones who maintained resilience through the suffering.
We can take this idea into the gym, into our own path of health and fitness. We can use a movement practice as one small way we end up proving to ourselves we aren't a victim, and we are capable.
I have seen countless people begin there and let this whole idea I'm speaking of bleed into their entire life.
SO... where will you begin again?
See you out there,
Coach D.