“Are We “There” Yet? …The Practice of Being “Here”.”

    “The Psychology of Growth is being in the process and taking it one moment at a time. A steady drip of water can erode a boulder over the course of many years. When you come into the now, you become present to one moment and make

    a tiny shift, and then the next, and then the next, and before you know it you have moved a mountain.”-Baron Baptiste, Journey Into Power

    I was sitting in front of my computer this morning with a cup of coffee in my hand blankly staring at the computer screen. I have all this awesome information I want to share with you guys, where do I begin??? Then a conversation I had with my dad last night kept popping up in my head. We were having a deep conversation about life, one of my favorite pass times 🙂 and he asked me “what’s the blog topic this week Mel?” Ahh the magic question, “what is my blog topic going to be for the week?!?!”. After I told him I was unsure, he said something that resonated with me, “Melanie speak from your heart. I have loved your blogs so far, but maybe what people want is something more personal…Personalize it.” He was right, how ironic it is that this week I am obsessing about writing “the perfect post” and here I am writing a blog on letting go of perfection. So here it goes a personalized blog entry coming right from the heart :).

    This week I was inspired by one of my clients. Her and I have been working together for over a year, and I have seen her grow not only physically but mentally within that period of time. In the middle of our session yesterday she was smiling, and noticing how different her left side felt from her right side in a particular exercise we were doing. She followed up her playful awareness with a question, “is there ever a point, if I keep training, where I will come into perfect balance on my right side and my left side of my body?” A huge smile came across my face, here was the theme of “perfection” again that has been coming up quite a bit for me in the last few weeks. I am a recovering perfectionist and at times can get so out of the moment trying to make a mountain out of a mole hill over night. So here my client was asking a question that I could see my own self asking, wanting to know if “there” exists and wondering exactly when I am going to get “there”?!

    I told her that I used to strive for creating “perfect” balance in my body; waiting, always waiting for the day when I would wake up and I would be “there,”! This prevented me from ever really being here. Thus I presented her with a theme that has inspired me and my practice of being here…”Create Harmony rather than Balance in your body”. Harmony allows for our right side to be slightly stronger than our left side, or our real shape/form to sing out (even if it doesn’t look like the model in the magazine). Harmony I told her is like a symphony of body parts working together as a whole unit.

    The idea of getting somewhere in our fitness goals is very common. In society and the media today we see ads all the time for quick ways and ideas to lose weight. I have tried these ways of being, and found out that it was when I let go of the need to get somewhere and be here that my body truly started to transform. It is important to have goals and intentions to work towards, yet once those goals are set, letting go of the way we think it is supposed to look and be is just as important in the process of achieving our goals. This is because often times life shows up very differently than we ever expected, better in fact that we could have ever dreamed or imagined, and if we are always looking for the “there” instead of the “here” we may miss the awesome experience that is right in front of us.

    So for those of us that are scared to start to

    embody and change the way we are currently incorporating fitness and healthy eating into our lives, let’s let go of this need to be “there” and be “here”. Moment by Moment, step by step, acknowledgment by acknowledgment, and day by day. What that looks like for each one of us is going to be different and guess what that is awesome. There is no “perfect Path” but rather what is “perfect” for you.

    I ended our session yesterday with a big smile and the last thing I reminded her of is that we are peeling an onion so to speak, layer by layer getting closer to a greater sense of harmony. We can do the quick fix, it is always a choice, no judgement; but peeling an onion layer by layer is a lot more pleasant than taking a butcher knife to it and cutting it in half :).

    Peeling the onion layer by layer with you.

    Melanie

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