Re-inventing Your Life – Run With it !

We all need a change…whether it’s a new dress or a new paint color for our walls. Perhaps it’s booking a week in the warm Caribbean sun to inject some badly needed excitement and vitamin D into the drudgery of daily life. Sometimes on a really bad day we dream of trading in our husbands for a tête-à-tête with Brad Pitt. And… ohhh…what we would do to swap places even for just a few hours, with our ten year old ,so we can play video games and snack on ice-cream all day without the worry of waking up with our own postal code.
Change gives us that temporary boost that we need to feel new and fresh and inspired. But like most things in life, a pattern sets in and we begin to notice that these temporary solutions are just that…very fleeting .The feeling of newness fades along with that newly purchased pair of jeans after a few washes.
What if we could create change that lasted? My own solution to feeling inspired most of the time required a reinvention of sorts. At age forty something I wanted a more permanent solution to dealing with the tediousness of life. What I discovered was that I had to start from the inside out.
I began a journey of self discovery by facing my fears and challenging my misconceptions of myself. What did I do you ask? I signed up for a 5 km run and surprised myself. Having recited in my head for years that I was definitely not a runner, I decided to throw caution to the wind and try it on for size.
The first day of my running clinic I entertained my fellow runners with an audio track of embarrassing pants and groans. I couldn’t run more than 30 seconds without gasping for air. But as the days and weeks passed I was able to add to my total running time!
After three months of training I finished the race with my children and husband beaming with pride at the finish line. I had done it! I was a changed woman! Suddenly the new outfit and my desire for that beautiful red couch in my living room weren’t enough. I wanted to change me, become a better me, reinvent myself and perhaps inspire others to do the same! I changed my way of eating and lost 15 pounds and went down two sizes. I even reinvented myself as a wellness coach to help women improve their health and their finances. It all started with making that one small change to my mindset and signing up for a race.
Well…a couple of years have passed and I can proudly call myself “a runner” with a few races under my belt including a 10 km run. This month I will challenge myself with my first Duathlon .
For me re-inventing myself was choosing to turn off the tape recorder (okay-now you know how old I am) and make a conscious decision to playback something different, take a risk and see what lasting change came with it. What I ended up with was a somewhat smaller posterior , a radiant and more confident me, and a lasting change . Don’t get me wrong…I love the smell of a new book and how I feel when I put on a brand new pair of boots, but once I finish the novel and give away my boots to Goodwill, I am still left with me. The new and improved me that is. Gotta run!

Posted under Uncategorized by admin