IMPERCEPTIBLE

I’ve been having a rough time with my physical goals lately. I’ll get in a good rhythm, then fail. Good rhythm, fail. Good rhythm, fail. When you have behavior like that, what follows for me is a lot of bad self-talk, disgust, lack of motivation, feeling-like-a-failure binge eating, and other destructive-types of behaviors – thankfully not all at the same time.

On a particular morning, after I’d missed yet another workout before work, grumbling at my lack of discipline, I noticed my back in the mirror. And it’ll probably be mostly women here who will relate, but there’s always been a nice – did I just write nice? -- little bulge by the bra-line. Some call it bra bulge, back fat, bra fat, underarm flab or back bulge…you get the picture. What caught my eye this morning, was the lack of bulge. Lack, ladies. Not perfectly toned and honed, not the disappearance of, but the lack. Yes, it seems that over time I really have been making progress. I was so astonished I caught myself just staring…. Was this a trick of the light? How come I hadn’t noticed this before? Well, I know why. It’s not often I look over my shoulder in the mirror for a peek.

What followed was an Ah-Ha for me, as I realized that just because I get out of rhythm, doesn’t mean that it takes away every minute of work I’ve put into something. Sometimes it feels that way and the negative self-talk tries to convince me otherwise, but it’s not true. My hard work evidence is still there, and if I keep standing back up, getting back on the wagon, rolling out of bed in the morning, making best choices 80% of the time – those changes are going to come – even if imperceptibly.

That goes for other areas of our lives as well. We are not super-humans and do everything right all of the time. We are mortals who have weaknesses and shortcomings, up days and down days. But while working on those weaknesses, if we slip and digress, we don’t go back to Square One. As reminded in a blog post I read the other day called “Drops of Awesome,” when we are actively on a good path, we are building, not taking away. It’s such a better frame of mind to applaud your good choices, rather than guilt yourself for the failures. In our want-it-now world, exercise faith that imperceptible changes are happening over time.

One more piece of evidence – I’ve been ‘out of rhythm’ getting to the gym since April. This morning? Made it to cycling. And guess what? I blasted out 16.5 miles! That is not only a new threshold for me, but I beat my best more than a mile :0) Imperceptible changes are happening in my strength that I didn’t even recognize. I worked hard in the class, but I wasn’t expecting mileage like that. I just kept going. The instructor in her usual upbeat banter told us that there was strength in our legs that we didn’t know about. Guess what? She was right. Imperceptible…. but still there.