Tough As Nails

“Life is tough, but so are you.” I know I typically end the blog with a quote, but this week I am starting and possibly ending it with one, and it may be this one for both. This week was tough for multiple reasons. At times, I felt like my own worst enemy. Hey, it happens! There is no worse feeling than knowing you are the one impacting yourself negatively. It’s easy to get away from others that drain your energy, but when we are the ones doing it to ourselves, we cannot escape. Sometimes you really have to step up, and get out of your own way. What if you are the one causing your own pain or at least contributing to it? You must get sick of yourself, and your own bad habits if you do want to change.

This week I started to let a situation at work get to me, and before I knew it, I had convinced myself that the future looked bleak. To make a rather long, complicated story short I am now not going to be pulled in 800 directions every day, but possibly into a thousand directions. As many of you know I have zero schedule. For example, my schedule for Friday changed a total of six times on Thursday. That is six times for one day, and only given a notice of the day before. That can be rather mentally exhausting, and allows little room for much control, and as human beings, we long for control. I am usually a pretty flexible person; as long as you allow me my 5am workout, I can pretty much go with the flow… even when it is not ideal. In this new situation that has been proposed, I may have to give up my morning workouts. You may be thinking, “Wow that doesn’t seem very important.” Well to me it is one of three things I really do for myself. It is my time, therapy, and passion, and without it I simply do not feel the same. It’s really all I ask for when it comes to my five-day workweek. I already do not make plans Monday thru Friday because of the non-schedule that comes with my job. I took a half day on Friday simply because I had dinner guests, and guess what… if I hadn’t I would have been stuck in the operating room with Kim until 8:30pm. I love my job. I really do, but that does not mean that is always easy. In fact, it is extremely difficult to relinquish control for five days of your week, and sometimes weekends to someone else. When I heard the news that I may be needed in more territories outside of my own, I went down the dark hole of negativity. I started to panic about working out, and possibly not competing this year. I started complaining, and getting jealous of my newly promoted co-worker. Now it could have been the timing as I was sitting around waiting for a 1pm surgery that started at 5pm, or it could have been the “funk” I had already let seep into my pores from other areas of my messy life, but regardless, I let myself jump months ahead. You know I preach with great passion to live day by day. My ego was way too involved in my life these past few weeks. Being able to eliminate the ego is an ongoing challenge, and it is a sneaky little bastard. It can appear in many forms, and my guess is that it isn’t the same for everyone. Often it rears its ugly head as jealousy, envy, pride, anger, or hurt. Recently, my bruised ego has made me feel behind in life to some degree. I think we have all felt like this at one point or another. I will say this though, sometimes you will feel ahead, and sometimes you will feel behind, but either way, you must focus on where you are in life right now. You also do not know everyone’s story. You don’t necessarily know where they came from or where they are going. We each have our own life’s battles. The hardest moments in life will hit us all at different times. We may have the tendency to look around and assume people have it “easy.” Do not let yourself be fooled because everyone’s life is tough. We must decide to stay in our own lane, and compare ourselves to no one, but our previous selves. After I let myself have a night to sulk about my new situation, I decided that next day that I would look at it as a new challenge.

My situation may be less than ideal at this time, but I am determined to make the best of it. Some of my other co-workers are also feeling the pain, so I decided that I will be the light in this situation. I will do my very best to not complain and take it a step further and make myself more available to help where I can. I mean I belong to two gyms, and I should be grateful I can afford to do this in order to help my training along. I may be completely drained by the time I get to workout on certain days, but in the grand scheme of things should I really be complaining? I mean, is this not why God invented coffee?? LOL. I am proud to report back that after I started this blog I was pulled to cover cases in DC. That is a 300-mile ride each way, and I didn’t complain once. Let me stop here to pat myself on the back haha. Now don’t get me wrong, on my drive home I was completely exhausted, and spent only one short hour with my parents that night (they had come to stay the night at my house), but I had accepted that this was just how it is right now.  I often say to God I will go wherever you want me, and I guess he wanted me in DC. I originally had a conference on Saturday, but Kim said she would cover it, and that I should stay home. I spent the day with my parents, and it all worked out. The minute I decided to revert to staying in the moment, living for the twenty-four hours ahead of myself, and getting out of my own head, everything improved. This may sound a little strange, but I think it is important that when life gets tough you need to be able to identify strategies to take care of yourself. This will vary from person to person, as we are all so different. I know that I am someone that needs to sleep. You can starve me to death, but don’t take my coffee or sleep LOL. My sleep and my workouts allow my body, mind, and spirit to function at their optimal level. Because of this, I know that as my weeks become more chaotic, I will need to use my weekends to recover, and get my longer workouts in. This may seem less than ideal as I will not have as much time to socialize, but I prefer to put the best version of myself into my relationships, and therefore must take good care of myself. You may need time to read, meditate, or maybe being with others is how you take care of yourself. Whatever your needs are I suggest you identify them. Don’t go overboard, and identify too many, but pick your top three. Also, when we feel very pressed for time, we should take a long, hard, honest look at how much time we may be wasting. TV shows and social media should be pushed to the back burner whenever we feel under a heavy time constraint.  The devil is the masters of lies, and will try to tell you that life is too tough for you to handle. He is wrong. Whatever you are going through right now you can handle it. If you couldn’t handle it then it wouldn’t be your cross to carry.

This week I challenge us all to identify the top three ways we can take care of ourselves when life gets tough.

“When life gives you a hundred reasons to break down, and cry, show life that you have a million reasons to smile, and laugh.” Anonymous

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To Be Continued……

All My Love,

Reenie

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