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Saturday, July 30, 2011

Mowing for 3 hours is Good for the Soul.

Amazing clarity can be attained while mowing the lawn on a hot summer day for 3 hours. After your body has become numb from the heat and strain, your mind is free to think of something besides the pain in your muscles and the sweat in your eyes. I started thinking about what the most valuable lesson I've learned in my life from my parents was. I played around with the usual things like 'hard work' and 'honesty' and 'commitment' and quickly decided that wasn't working for me. I moved to things like 'how to fish' and 'how to garden' and 'how to cook' and relative to the moment, 'how to mow'. I quickly realized that wasn't really going to work for me either. Then I thought of everything I couldn't stand as a child and realized the answer was probably pretty simple for me. I learned at a young age that when you start something...you following it through to the end. If I were to pick one largely valuable lesson from my life, this would be it. Finish what you start. Always. No excuses. Just do it. Even if it fails, FINISH IT! With the exception of maybe one or two things in my life, I do believe this is something I enjoy doing. I look around my house and I know that whatever I have set out to do, I have finished. I hope that this screams out loud and clear to my children. I hope that subconsciously they take my one great skill and can magnify it into something beautiful in their own lives. The only real reason this came to me while I was mowing was because at the moment, I was 2 hours into the job, completely miserable doing a job that someone else was suppose to finish a few weeks ago. I would have been done at the 2 hour mark. I could have called it quits and said I did my part but I looked at those tall tall weeds hovering over my head and said...Screw it. I'm going to finish what was started. So many times in the last 4 years, I whine and moan and scream and cry over all the things that never get finished. I cannot change that the worse part of him happens to be the best part of me. I also cannot change the fact that I only finish what I start...Oh, wait! Why can't I change this? So many of my daily stressers happen to be seeing all these small projects that never get completed...examples being the door trim that is partly painted with painters tape still around it from well over a year ago, the door that was primed but never painted, the rug that sits on my porch waiting to be taken to the basement since being put there over a month ago. I complain about them not being done and never do anything about it. Part of this is programming. I didn't start it, why should I finish it? Dad always said finish what YOU start. In doing just that, I actual thrive on accomplishments. I will literally paint a picture in a day because I love the feeling of the end. I love a good ending. Movies. Books. Crafts. Dinner. A good ending is one of my necessities. The thought of finishing what someone else started seems just...wrong. Why would I want to steal someone else's sense of accomplishment? Why would I want to take over someone else's 'job well done'? I guess at some point in our lives we do need to take charge. We just do. These things have been pissing me off for far too long. So in hour 3 of mowing the lawn, I fought over myself whether I should be doing what I was doing. After I was done, I knew I did what was right for me. It's one less thing to evoke negative feelings plus it's one big thing I can say that I I I I MEE MEEE MEE I I I finished. I did it. I am woman, hear me roar, hiss, and purr. I feel great having done something from start to finish. He doesn't get to go to bed feeling like I do. He doesn't get to feel accomplished. He doesn't get to feel his muscles ache and burn and know that they will be stronger because of the work they did. I really really mentally was struggling tho. I don't like to be the enabling type. I don't like being the over achiever. I don't want anyone thinking they can half-ass their way around me because they think I will pick up the slack. I would rather have others learn the importance of finishing what they start. Sometime the hard work, the sweat, the pain, it's part of the process to get to where we ultimately want to be. Sometimes we got to get uncomfortable to be happy. I love this about me. I love that my daughters are going to grow up with a mother who is capable. I feel like if it wasn't for this one lesson in my life I would not be where I am in my journey to get fit and healthy. I reached my original goal weight a few weeks ago and even contemplated the thought of getting comfortable with that but have since determined that my body is capable of becoming even more powerful and even more healthy. I want to be around a long time. I want to comfortably see my daughters grow up and become wives, mothers, grandmothers. I want to finish this life all the way to the end. I don't need the easy way out. I don't need someone to do it for me. I just need to power through. Push the limits and the limits will soon stop pushing back and we get to feel the greater sense of accomplishment. Right? Hope so! 

So the lesson here is this...take the thunder from someone today. Show them how freaking bad ass you are and let them feel inadequate. And just when you think once is enough, do it again and again and again and again. You hopefully soon will teach someone that feeling accomplished is way better than feeling weak. Seriously. Finish everything you start. Teach your children the same. Engrave it on them because someday they will be someone else's spouse, parent, grandparent... 
You really want someone else stealing your children's accomplishments?

Probably. Not.

Also, take this lesson and apply it to your health, your own weight loss goals, and/or athletic goals. It might feel terrible to start something that you feel you already lost. You are only sabotaging yourself with negativity. Tell yourself you can. Fill your mind with the sense of accomplishment. Take on something challenging and finish it and tell me that you don't feel great. Hold on to that feeling and apply it to your everyday life. Pick an exercise and everyday go that extra distance. Pick your favorite bad food or habit and eliminate it completely and think of the money, the fat, the calories that you are saving yourself from. When you look in the mirror and you see less and less of that old person and more and more of the new person, you will know you are winning. You will know you are accomplishing something. You will know that your not just talking, your changing, and your children and family and friends are going to take notice and they are going to want to do the same and feel the same. 

FINISH WHAT YOU START!!!
or I'm going to show up and steal that 'feel good' moment.
(after I finish everything else in my life that he started first.)

You deserve a happy ending.

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