Divine Intervention

I had my weekly coaching call yesterday afternoon with my amazing life coach Nancy Carlstrom and we spent a pretty good chunk of our time talking about what's been going on with my body, the messages I'm sending to my body and how my body is responding to them. Basically, I've been pushing my body to extremes in "punishment" to try to get myself back to where I want to be. I definitely believe that the results we get from our bodies are in direct relation to the messages we send..."you are what you think/believe"...I believe that is true.

I've given this a lot of thought since I talked to Nancy yesterday. I'm going to be more mindful of what my body wants and doesn't want. For example, this morning at 4am I stood in my bathroom for about 10 minutes before I got dressed trying to determine if my body really wanted to go to the gym...or not. I was ready to crawl back in bed, but my body didn't feel tired and I knew that this would make me feel good all day. I wasn't going to kill myself on the step mill, it was just an easy ride on the eliptical. I had a scoop of chocolate whey with water and headed out to do a quick 30 minutes. It felt really good and it was a perfect morning to be up and at it early. I love summer mornings and today is beautiful.

As I was getting the kids their breakfasts and making lunches for day camp I took a quick look at the Facebook world. One of the pages I am a "fan" of is Heal Your Life. They always post daily inspirations and affirmations and cool, positive stuff like that. Today's read: "Your soul is constantly communicating with you through your body, but you're often too busy to really hear these messages." I also am of the belief that everything happens for a reason. Everything we do, every person we encounter, everything we read, etc has a reason for happening. The timing of this was not coincidental, I firmly believe that. After I read this quote and the article that followed I went and read my blog post from yesterday and I started to cry. (Been doing that enough lately)

I had my "ah ha". I did not want to compete last spring. My heart was not in it, my heart was telling me not to compete, but I did it anyway. Truth be told, a competition is always in the back of my mind. Saturday is 12 weeks from Ironman. But I'm not competing or anything. But it's in my head...."I might want to, I'll probably want to, so I ONLY have 12 weeks to get this body back in gear. What if I don't make it? What if I can't lean out? What is my purpose here on the planet if I can't step on stage?" Seriously, this is what goes on in my head. Fortunately, this morning I realized my body is talking and it's starting to get louder and louder and louder. I can't compete. My ego wants me to compete, but my heart is just not into it right now.

For 2 years now I have buried myself in extreme dieting and rigorous training. I've distracted myself from some challenging experiences. While I've been able to maintain great friendships through the course of this, I can't necessarily say that they have thrived like they would if I wasn't so consumed with the competition process. I have so much more of me to give to my kids when I'm not focused on competition. I want to grow my business and expand my writing and I simply cannot do everything...as much as my ego thinks I can. And so...thank you to divine intervention...a decision has been made and not with a heavy heart...

I will not compete again in 2010