Today, I’m sharing another crazy story from my life – all for the purpose of demonstrating an unusual tool to help you find your fire for wellness! Love those wellness hacks. It’s probably something you’ve never thought of… and I’m excited to see if it helps you.
Disclaimer: This podcast does not constitute medical advice. You should always speak to your doctor before changing your nutrition or exercise habits.
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BE A LIGHT FOR OTHERS – EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Okay, friends, it’s storytime again. And today the story that I’m going to tell you is called beat a light for others. And this is actually a really, I don’t want to say top secret, but it’s a tool that is not leveraged enough for making progress on your own journey. I’m going to talk about that. Now. This story starts with a moving truck full of four bedrooms of stuff getting moved into a two bedroom temporary apartment in Virginia.
You do the math, four bedrooms into two bedrooms, things run not going so well. We’d had our second child a few months before and with excellent timing, only the military can pull off my husband had orders to a new location for just seven months. Of course, there was no housing available on base that would make life too easy. So we had to make do with a temporary apartment at a complex that would allow us to have a six month lease. I was okay with it. It was clean. There was a playground next to our building and a basically nice gym inside the clubhouse. However, it was also extremely small compared to what we were used to living in. In fact, it was tiny.
We had come from a 2100 square foot historic loft that took up the entire top floor of an old brownstone. And now we were squishing into this cookie cutter two bedroom apartment with a mini washer and dryer. Although we had thought we had gotten rid of enough stuff to fit, we had not the walls were packed from side to side with boxes and furniture. It took us a full week to dig ourselves out and figure out exactly how to put our furniture so we could walk and access our clothes. The baby’s crib was in our bedroom, so I had to slide into bed at night without whacking my ankle on the crib which would wake her up or hitting my head on the dresser because both were slid right next to the edge of my bed. Also in true military fashion. I wouldn’t be in this teeny tiny cookie cutter apartment by myself. For 90% of the time for seven months.
My husband would be sleeping in the barracks on base for most of us while I lived in that little apartment with my two kids. And friends. I gotta tell you, it was a strange time in my life. At the same time, I was thrilled to be supporting my husband and his purpose. I had no friends there, no opportunity to get a job because our stay was so short and my baby was so young. And so I had no purpose, no husband to vent to no one to get support from. I was lonely. I was tired. I was having way too much fun discovering the joy that is a Wegmans grocery store. Anybody who knows Wegmans knows exactly what I mean. Hallelujah. They’re prepared food is delicious. But still, somehow I would get myself up every day, I would get my baby girl ready. And I would head up to the little gym in the complex clubhouse. Our baby girl was still small enough that I could lay her on a blanket or put her in the stroller and she wouldn’t wiggle away while it worked out. Every day.
That was my one piece of structure, my one piece of sanity that held things together. But I gotta tell you, my heart wasn’t in it. It felt empty. I didn’t have the same joy I was used to having when I worked out. I couldn’t find the fire that I craved. One day, I met another woman who inspired me to start a fitness business. This was a long time ago. So at that time, I never really had my own business. In fact, I had sworn off having my own business. I dabbled in personal training on my own a little bit just before I got pregnant with my first child, but I didn’t really get very far.
So this was really new territory. And I’ve got to tell you, I was really nervous about the idea. I lacked confidence, I lacked direction. My husband wasn’t around to get his seal of approval, which is always difficult. But still I jumped and I did it. It was nowhere close to perfect. It was very messy, in fact, and I had so much to learn. But it was the spark that led to this amazing business right now. But something really magical happened when I started leading other women in fitness and I want to share this with you. That spark that I was missing in the gym. I found it again, that fire came back.
It wasn’t really because of the business. It was because of the women, because many of us including me, and very likely you will fight the death to help out others and oftentimes we will fight harder for them than we would ever fight for ourselves. I know some of you are saying huh or yes, that’s totally me right now. Now, scientific researchers on behavior change both within the health and wellness fields and outside of it have identified similar trends in their research. We call it the quest for social support.
And the importance of social support is well known in the wellness field. We know it’s related to fundamental human psychology, and the fact that we’re a naturally social species. However, people often think that social support means the flow of supportive energy from others to you, the person trying to meet the goal. In other words, you’re on the receiving end of the goodness, I’ve seen lots of variations on this in my time as a coach everything from join our super fun Facebook group for workout accountability, or make sure your husband is on board before you start this cleanse, to cut out the people in your life who don’t support you, and lots of different attempts to utilize this knowledge of social support in a beneficial way.
However, focusing on the type of social support where the energy flows from others towards you, is giving up your power and control. You see, you can’t control other people’s actions, you can’t control how they treat you. You can’t control how your spouse, your grandma or your circle of friends feels about your mom in schools, you can’t demand that people cheerlead you. And if you do, you can’t be sure what kind of consistency you’re gonna get from that. What I discovered in that cookie cutter apartment was the power of supportive energy flowing in the other direction from you to others.
When you support others who are having similar goals to you, you feel that magical boost, but in a completely different way, an even better, it’s in a way that you have the control over. Instead of being a victim to the people who are in your life, you become the epicenter of a movement, a movement that makes it more likely that you’re going to reach your goals at the same time that you bring other people along with you. It is beautiful friend, if you’re somebody who has had troubled cheerleading for yourself, if you’re somebody who has had trouble getting to your goals, if you feel like you’re constantly quitting, or lacking motivation, maybe it’s time to try pushing your energy in the other direction.
Become an encourager for other people, the common cheerleader, because for some of us, that’s our personality type. And that’s something that can bring fire back to our lives in a way that nothing else can. You might just have a heart for serving others and in serving others, you may have the opportunity to be served yourself on your wellness journey. Give it a try. Let me know how it goes.