Finding Strength In the Gray Areas: Revisiting Goals with Curiosity and Grace
Let’s talk about the importance of revisiting goals and how that plays into showing yourself grace.
Many of us who are high-functioning (as you are) can tend to fall into the trap of black and white thinking. It’s all or nothing. It’s on or it no longer exists. It’s demure or it’s brash. (I don’t know what the whole “demure” thing is about but I had to try.)
So let’s say your goal was to be able to squat a certain amount of weight but then, unrelated, you got a pinched nerve! And then you got Covid! (Let’s also imagine this is me because it is.)
So you’ve been knocked on your ass but you also have this aforementioned squat goal.
Do you:
Get back to the gym and right back to where you left off in your program, pinched nerve or altered energy be damned?
Sit on the couch and catch up on Bobby Flay’s Triple Threat and just say screw it to that squat goal since you’ve been derailed?
OR, do you find a lot of different colors in between the black and white and decide to revisit your goal given your current situation?
DING DING DING! Let’s pick that one!
In case you don’t remember what I said about grace a few weeks ago: It’s about bathing yourself in gratitude and honor wherever you happen to be. Here’s what that can look like in this example:
Be grateful you did the work that got you closer to your original goal before shit hit the fan.
Honor the time you dedicated to getting closer to it.
And then see if you can look at your goal with a different lense.
Here are a few questions you may ask yourself as you navigate a situation like this:
Does this original goal still align with what I value re: my overall fitness?
What is another way I could get to my original goal given where I am NOW?
Who could help me figure this out so I can get some support?
Answer those questions and see what comes up.
I asked myself the questions above to figure out how I still felt about my squat goal. Here’s how I answered:
Yes, my squat goal still aligns with my ultimate fitness goals so that I can continue to strengthen my bones and have hot legs ;)
Another way I can get to the goal is to stretch out the original timeline and go back to making sure my limbo-pelvic stability/thoracic posture/etc, are on point, that I can perform bilateral and unilateral exercises with out pain, reassess and begin to redraw my roadmap to get to my squat goal
I’m so grateful to know people to help me and I might reach out by I’m relying on what I’ve learned from Original Strength, Tony Gentilcore’s trainable menu, and, you know, psychotherapy. (Also my studio TruFit Evanston has physical therapists I can go to if I need something answered that’s outside of my scope of practice.)
In the meantime you might be wondering why the hell I’m sharing a video of me crawling. So glad you asked!
Crawling is amazing for so many reasons and here’s how it relates to my squat goal:
Being in the quadruped position, knees on or off the floor, makes your core work reflexively
Any time your shoulders and hips need to work together makes your whole body work more efficiently which is important for squatting
Crawling can be surprisingly challenging and it can feel really uncomfortable which is REALLY good practice for squatting because that ALSO feels uncomfortable. We can do hard things, it’s good to prove it to ourselves.
Also I really need to prove to my clients that I make myself do what I have them do, too.
My parting words to you are these: Learn to find those colors between the black and white. You might find yourself somewhere more exciting than you were expecting!
