Show Up To Your Life

I completed the sixty-day INSANITY MAX:30 challenge today. When I decided, sixty days ago, that this was something I wanted to commit to, I couldn’t do a single push-up. I got winded walking up five flights of stairs to our rooftop sanctuary at work. Just six months ago I had been the girl who went running five days a week and craved hot yoga classes in peaks of stress, but somewhere along the way I got used to sitting on the couch after work waiting for a Dominos pizza to make its way to my door. Lethargy was a constant in my bones and I could press snooze for an hour and a half before finally getting out of bed at the last minute, disheveled and unprepared for the day ahead.  

The truth is, I had turned into someone who didn’t do the things she said she wanted to do. My philosophy has always been that you can’t complain about things you don’t have if you aren’t working toward getting them, but this year had me doing a lot of immobile complaining. I wanted to learn to cook and I wanted to finish my novel and I wanted to learn more about my faith and I wanted readers for my blog and I wanted to be fit—so badly, I would say. But I continued watching other people’s lives, coveting what they had, doing nothing for myself.

But sixty days ago I finally said enough. I was tired, so tired, of turning inward. Of feeling unconfident and worthless and helpless to change it. (And really, I noticed my jeans getting a little snug, which ended up being the real wake up call I needed.)

So I downloaded INSANITY MAX:30. The whole point of the program is to push yourself to your limits, to ‘max out’ of the workout, then jump right back in. The athletes on your screen can’t even make it the entire thirty minutes without taking a break, so on Day 1 when I maxed out four minutes in, I didn’t think, this program might be too much for me. I jumped back in on minute five.

These last sixty days haven’t been easy, and they haven’t looked the way the do on a fitness blogger’s Instagram. I’ve broken a toe and gone to work with sweaty hair. I’ve cried during a workout and had more than a few moments of thinking I was going to pass out, or throw up, or both. Sometimes I finished having maxed out so many times that by the end, I felt like a failure. Sometimes it took all I had in me to throw on my workout gear and press play.

But the hard moments have led me here, having finished something I really didn’t know if I’d be able to do. Having proven to myself that I can still set goals, and I can still see them through. That I’m capable of choosing the harder thing, even when it means getting out of bed at 5:30am to do it.

I’ve learned that I can choose the kind of life I want to live, instead of feeling defeated by the circumstances that make it difficult to do so.

Over the last sixty days, I’ve done more than burpees and X jumps. I’ve done more than plank squats and push-ups. I’ve started eating in more, learning how to cook instead of stopping by the McDonald’s drive-thru on my way home from work. I’ve planned a schedule to finish a novel I’ve been writing by the end of the year. I’ve limited the times I tell myself that someone else has it better, limited my time scrolling through social media. I went to church for the first time in years.

I’ve chosen myself, my health, my happiness, over and over again.

Normally I would try to brush it off, say this challenge was no big deal and move onto the next thing I want to do. But today, I’m saying I set a goal. I sweat and bled and pushed, harder than I have in a long time, to meet that goal. And today I achieved it.

Today I’m saying, do the things you want to do. Work your ass off to get them. Jump back into the game after you’ve maxed out trying.

You can do the challenge. It’s time to show up to your life.