Three Words

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Resistance…Is…Futile…
When uttered by the fictional Borg of the famed Star Trek movie series, those three words were meant to conjure submission, hopelessness and resignation upon the unfortunate individuals to be assimilated into the collective Borg consciousness. Those three words declared power and superiority upon them who would hear and believe.

All of us skirmish against our internal Borg voices, especially when we struggle to reach new health and fitness goals. This is the voice which comes to us as reason, and it so often sounds reasonable to our tired mind. It says: Don’t be so hard on yourself. You set your sights to high. Lower your standard. Reduce your expectations. You are older now, you should slow down, sit down, recuperate. Perhaps a new hobby is in order for you, the Borg voice says: take up knitting, painting, reading, writing, there is nothing to gain by your constant striving to be fit, to be strong. You deserve to rest, relax, retire!

Don’t let your attitude toward change or your own predisposition to avoid it create detrimental hindrances to your own personal success. John C Maxwell

In rebuttal, I say this: THOSE ARE FIGHTING WORDS! Now let me be clear. I am not suggesting that resistance is always right. There is a time to resist and there is a time to rest from doing. But what I am proposing is this: Be attentive to your inner Borg voice. Consider the goal of the Borg: to conquer and assimilate!

Resistance is the first step towards change. Louise Hay

Rather than acquiesce when your journey towards wellness becomes a thing of work for you, instead do this: Remind yourself often and always of the beauty of that goal you have set before yourself. Fight for it! Rest if you must, but do not be your own worst enemy and stop trying. Never give up on yourself…ever!

You are worth the effort. Thank you, thank you for believing in yourself! We, the world, your country, your community, your family, all of us need you to become the very best you. That is what you deserve…to be the very best version of you…today and all the days which follow!

Now let me give you three words to move you onward and upward: JUST…DO…IT!

Faith Wears Combat Boots?

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What is faith? Dictionary.com defines faith as 1)confidence or trust in a person or thing; 2)belief that is not based on proof; 3)a belief in anything: God, a religious system, a code of ethics, etc. So faith does not require scientific proof to make it true for a believer; either one has faith or belief or confidence or trust or not.

To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible. Thomas Aquinas

How do I get faith? In order to exist or be real for us, faith requires something from us; it is not something that happens to us in passivity; faith does not descend upon us like an ethereal mist; Faith requires action and input from our conscious mind and heart to believe that something is true. We get faith and we empower faith by our continued belief. Faith is very personal; it is a knowing belief which we, the believer, hold and possess as our own. For most of us, we must have some initial life circumstance or experience to help us decide whether or not something is worth believing or trusting. Instincts alone do not help us have faith; we are not born with a slab of faith, but we are born with the capacity to test, choose and adopt beliefs which seem right and trustworthy to us. So to get faith, we practice believing. But wait, PRACTICE implies work! And this is where the combat boots come into focus. If we want evidence that a belief or faith is REAL, then we would expect our faith to work its way out of us…a REAL FAITH has LEGS and FEET and ARMS and SHOULDERS. It must be put to work to be of any real value to us and others.

A body that doesn’t breathe is dead. In the same way faith that does nothing is dead. James 2:26 (from GOD’S WORD Copyright 1995)

 

The Hard Work of Recovery – Part 2 – Believe

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A week ago I tackled this topic from the perspective that a period of rest is foundational to one’s physical recovery from the exertion of exercise training. After mulling about this idea for the last few days, some additional perspectives came through and I want to further discuss ‘recovery’ from the perspective of our belief system. When I thought about the word ‘recovery’ I realized that the term usually infers to some sort of trauma or breakdown (in the body or in the psyche); that something has been lost or taken away. And in fact, when we exercise hard, there occurs micro-traumas to muscle tissue. The repair or recovery process of these tissues can only occur when we allow those muscles to rest. This happens when we sleep at night or when we take an active ‘recovery’ day of exercise which does not engage the previously worked muscles with intensity and force. Either way, whether we sleep or move restfully, we allow our body to do the work of muscle repair. What makes recovery hard work? Our belief system! If we think (believe) that a period of rest is going to take something away from us (strength, stamina, athleticism) or that we will be diminished or reduced in body or spirit, then we find it very difficult to allow ourselves adequate recovery time. It is what we BELIEVE about rest and recovery that makes recovery hard work. Our beliefs are powerful; they have the ability to hinder our recovery and our peace of mind. If you can change your  beliefs about the value of your ‘recovery’ periods, then you can and should expect your periods of rest to rejuvenate you in body, mind and spirit.

It’ may look like I’m doing nothing, but at the cellular level I’m really quite busy. ~Roger Ramjet