My work has taken me on the road this past year, so I’ve had to take a hiatus from my regular teaching schedule. I really missed my ladies.
So when I got to town, I invited a bunch of them out for tea and desert. I thought for a minute the desert part was a bad idea when a couple of them wouldn’t eat a piece of cake in front of me. But when I dug in, moderately of course, the party got started in earnest.
Ever the moderator, I asked them each to share things that were important in their lives over the past year.
As we went around the circle, they spoke of getting pregnant, daughters’ weddings, losing your job, becoming a gym rat, outliving heart disease, surviving menopause, the joy of grandchildren and a trip to China.
Maybe because I was their host, the conversation drifted toward how getting fit had changed their lives.
They shared stories about feeling invisible, not sexy, not pretty, having no energy and feeling like a lump. One remembered showing up in my office, tearing her hair out.
She said, “My doctor told me I need to do something, I’ve got serious health issues, but I hate to exercise. What do I do?”
“I’m going to give you exercise you can look forward to instead of dread,” I said.
Most of my work is done with women who haven’t been active in a while. My coaching style is to start people wherever they may be physically and emotionally and get them moving, gently and pleasantly.
If the first experience is pleasant, you’ll want a second and a third and so on. Sustainability is the key to fitness success. And that’s what happened with these ladies. But something else remarkable happened too.
They told me getting fit had given them the self-confidence to pursue things they would never have dared to try, that the change in their bodies had kindled a change in the way they saw themselves. Instead of feeling invisible, they felt fabulous and that “fabulosity” had spilled over into the rest of their lives. As much as I would love to take all the credit for this transformation, I think that it boils down to healthy body, healthy mind.
Getting fit was the key that unlocked the door to their potential.
Pretty cool, huh?
