I had the intention of writing this blog post on taking steps sideways with a fitness focus as I’m going through a whole load of changes in that respect. But I feel like this is something that can be said for a whole bunch of other stuff.
Recently I felt a little bit like I was going backwards.
I felt like my mental health was being taken for a bit of a tipple and that things just didn’t seem to be moving forward. I was feeling easily overwhelmed, didn’t feel like I was ‘going anywhere’ in various aspects of life and was unsure of the direction life was taking me.
(Maybe good ol’ Rona had something to do with this, who knows?)
I took some time, sat down with myself and realised that I most definitely wasn’t moving backwards, instead I’ve decided that I’m moving sideways. I wasn’t necessarily taking a big U-turn, but rather a diversion of sorts.
& hell to the yes, that is ok.
Almost a month ago now, I made the decision to begin working with some Mindset coaches. The team at Mindset RX’d are fitness-focused, but teach a whole bunch of stuff that can be translated to everyday life.
For the past 5 weeks, I’ve been journalling every single day.
I’ve been delving deep into how I’m feeling, why I’m feeling that way, what I can do go in the right direction and celebrating every day wins, both big and small.
Doing so has made me realise a lot of things about myself and it’s been made clear that the one thing I really struggle with is change. But that really isn’t a shock to me.
I’ve been learning about the importance of living in both realms of chaos and order.
Your order is the comfortable things in life. It’s knowing you get up at a certain time because your alarm goes off, it’s everything you do in life that falls into the ‘known’. We know when we leave for work, what we’re going to eat for dinner and even our plans for the weekend.
If the world was perfect, we would know everything and live our lives in perfect order. But we know that really isn’t the case.
Your chaos is the realm of the unknown, it’s those things you don’t expect to happen. All of those spanners that get thrown into the works. It’s not knowing what’s going to happen when you make a decision.
Chaos is real life, but it’s about how we react and make our own version of order within it that builds us as a person.
Here comes the fitness side of things.
Recently, there was a bunch of chaos in my life and I’ve looked to start a new gym. I knew that this particular gym had a bunch of really fit people who were killing it, especially when it came to cardio – something I’m not so great at.
When it comes to training, over the past few years I have seen huge improvements. I’m stronger, fitter and more skilful but boy, do I have a long way still to go.
That’s the thing about functional fitness training, there are always ways you can be better. Whether it’s becoming stronger, fitter, faster, more efficient. You can constantly raise the bar for yourself and I absolutely love that.
I’ve been on personalised programming for two years, meaning that my coach (incidentally, my other half) has been tailoring workouts to me and my skill level to get the best out of me.
But joining this new gym, I wanted a kind of fresh start and have decided to start joining in with classes. As I said, they’re hella fit at this place and the class programming shows that.
I’ve only been going for a few days and I have had my butt handed to me on a plate. It has been hard.
(I’ve also been going at 6am when it’s quiet to not make an absolute tool of myself.)
For a moment I thought I was going backwards. I told myself that it felt like Day 1 all over again and that I hadn’t improved as much as I had thought etc.
But that’s not necessarily true, I’m just working on something different. I’m simply taking a step sideways to be able to move forward, not backward.
I’m working to try find new order in this new chaos but I’m excited for what’s ahead.
Although fitness if just one part of my life and it hugely saved my mental health, I’m trying to move this thought pattern around to other aspects of my life. Realising when it is ok to step sideways to get to the place you want to be.
No more going backwards, I’m going to be taking steps sideways.