Does anyone know what the title of this post means?
"The shadow proves the sunshine"Pretty deep title for a fitness blog, right? Not too surprising coming from me, you'll see that over time. I'm a bit of an artist at heart.
So let me get to the point. The Shadow Proves the Sunshine is the song title from one of the bands I grew up listening to and when I was contemplating what to write about today - this song came to mind.
When it comes to our goals, its easy to become discouraged. Things can often seem bad, dark, hopeless, etc. - because that's often the way we measure things. We focus on these dark moments and measure our progress by them. We look at how often we've tried to accomplish something and we see ourselves as failures. We hit a setback, and we feel like everything leading up that moment was a waste.
A very important lesson that I've learned is exactly what the title of this song says, "the shadow proves the sunshine." Because without light there could be no shadow. We only know our bad, dark, and discouraging times because we've experienced better times. And we will experience better times again if we hang in there and keep fighting. The bad times are what make the good times that much better, because we know what it took to get there. We can appreciate the sunshine because we remember the shadows.
Our fitness goals are no different.
We've all done it: we stick to the plan perfectly for a couple weeks. Flawless execution. We're excited, we're motivated, we make awesome progress and then suddenly somehow find ourselves slipping up and ending up exactly where we started. Only to start over again and again and again.
When this happens to me, the following quote often comes to mind:
I'm 50/50 about this. Some days reading this is all I need and I'm up and at it again. Fresh attitude, fresh perspective and determined never to fall behind again.
Other times, reading something like this is more discouraging then helpful. It becomes a reminder that yet again, here you are, back to were you started.
My challenge for you is that next time this happens to you - look at things differently. Change your perspective and start measuring yourself by the good moments and not the bad.
Instead of seeing yourself as a failure just because you have to "start over" again - see yourself as someone who is strong because you have persisted when you could have easily stopped trying. That even though you haven't made it yet, you haven't given up because you know you are capable of it.
And instead of seeing this all as a waste of time, see yourself for the determined, hardworking, beast-mode of a person that you are because you know you're not going to give up until you reach it. And you know this - that's why you're reading this. So get out there today. I hear it's supposed to be sunny. :)
