Day 10

Today’s Takeaway: Accountability is Key.

I used to be a pretty impressive athlete. Emphasis on the “used to be.”

I mostly played a lot of recreational sports and pickup games with my friends, but for organized sports, I was on the color guard in my high school marching band all 4 years. You might be thinking, “That’s not a sport!”

Well, you learn an 8min flag routine, then recall it by memory while simultaneously marching in a very specific way, hitting your marks at precisely the right time, in order to create giant pictures with 200 other people…then, and only then, can you come and tell me it’s not a sport. It’s a freaking sport! 😎🤓

My claim to fame though was being a very skilled aggressive rollerblader. You can laugh at that too, but that was a thing in the 90s and I was the shit then…Clearly. 😉😂

Anyway, lets just put it this way, if it was competitive, I was in.

I’m still bonkers competitive, like Monica Gellar on speed competitive, but 20 years later my body is noticeably older, energy levels are low and I STRUGGLE to eat correctly. Before this sabbatical, I did what the majority of us do, I rationalized, made excuses and kept saying, “I will start new on Monday!”

Monday would come and the cycle would continue - excuses - rationalizing -excuses - rationalizing - “Next Monday will be better it’s the first of month! You can’t start in the middle of the month!” 🤦‍♀️

Now that I’m on this sabbatical to LITERALLY better my health, I’m out of excuses. But what’s going to make this time different than the 100x before this? Then it dawned on me - accountability! 💡

I realized a key element I was missing from my athlete days was being held accountable for my failures. People were watching and relying on me to do well. There was pressure to succeed. Now, it’s just me holding me accountable and I can let me down. Sure, I go through a shame spiral, but I rebound, rationalize it away and no one’s the wiser.

BUT, if I confess my plans on this global forum I am no longer competing in secret. I’m igniting that competitive spirit in me and setting a very public goal. And if there’s one thing I don’t do, it’s fall short of my goals publicly. 😂

This doesn’t mean this blog will now be about my fitness journey. Don’t worry I’m not going to starting posting before/after pics and preaching about exercise. Honestly, send help if I ever write a post about what I had for breakfast.

This realization on accountability, or the lack thereof, was a real “ah-ha!” moment for me today. So it felt like a super relevant and relatable takeaway as we go into the new week. In a couple weeks I’ll let you know if it worked. Or I’ll write a post about how full of shit this theory was.

Stay tuned! 🤗