The Journey Begins Again

I don't think that pain is necessary in anything that we do. -Kagiso Alicia Paynter (my best friend)
When I say pain, and when she says pain we mean both physical and emotional pains we go through.

When I first started out on dieting again, it was painless. It was painless because my perception of dieting and what I felt I could get away with in not being 100 percent had increased. So, the first month I wasn't even 90% on my diet and it didn't pay off. I looked almost the same as I did before I began dieting. But with the added protein and more frequent meals, my body started to get tighter and take more of an aesthetically pleasing form (as a friend put it). Quite honestly, the greater issue wasn't with food itself, it was with how I was feeling unsure about my new goal that had been an old goal from three years prior. I had fears of trying to do a show that I might not be able to afford (monetarily and mentally) and telling everyone I was doing a show and never getting onstage for the sixth time (or something like that) scared me.And part of me not wanting to follow through was the pain that I had felt so strongly the first time (after not winning) that i felt i had gone through a bad breakup that I laid in bed for two days after the show. I contemplated not going to the gym again. It almost broke me. And being so obsessively into it the first time scared me about the outcome the second time and how I would mentally feel. I don't know of many people in the sport with this story. Perhaps they don't share it because I believe people only will show what they are comfortable with as we all have our battles. I'd like to share mine because I want that fellow imperfect person out there who is just as imperfect as me to feel at home. To feel like themselves. To feel whole while other physical, emotional and mental things are headed towards empty...like the fridge, the gas tank, or a bank account..support, acceptance, love. The battle with getting onstage was not really with my body. It has always been with my mind. Actually grasping the concept of doing something I'd only dreamt of doing over and over again but never quite accomplishing it because I was giving fear the power which fueled other physical battles of feeling incompetent due to financial stresses just drove me towards quitting.

I will admit I have had two battles. 1. Not following through with this particular goal because I was fueling my fears. 2. Not following through because of issues with constantly employing myself, a job transition, gaining or losing clients repeatedly and unexpected bills have always gotten in the way for the last 3 years of trying to begin again on this journey. I had something to blame my shortcomings on. Money. We all have excuses, explanations, hurdles, bumps in the road and perhaps its part of the journey is to humble oneself and to ask for help. Its been the one thing I don't ever like to do but as I get older, it seems to be that i become more humbled after being proudly independent that I have to now ask for help. After trying to get there by myself for so long I had become proud in doing almost everything by myself. I have learned, that this battle started with my body and it can end with my mind. Because everything starts and ends in the mind and spirit. We have so much power. But we have more effective power when joining forces with another. I've always prided myself in being strong and standing alone, and fighting that good fight when no one is around to root me on, or support me or have my back. Its been the way I've grown up. I learned to stop seeking approval and start being my own approval at an early age based on the kind of people I grew up with; my family. But, God puts different hurdles in our lives so we can be greater and do greater things and validate ourselves and perhaps someone along the way challenges the idea that you must do everything by yourself and they become your family. I am so grateful for the friends I have (my best friends, soulmates, surrogate family members) you know who you are. They were the ones that kept me positive, that kept the visions there like they had already happened. They helped to create this reality for me. I told them my dreams and they pushed me to the finish line. But most of all, I believed it first. You see, the only thing that really has power over you are the things you believe in. If you don't believe, even the things you want to believe in have no power and become useless. They have no effect. So when you truly believe that you want and deserve the thing you want, it finds its way to you. Your belief is really that powerful. There were many days I felt haunted by this dream and saw many others going on and getting their pro cards, winning many shows and made it look so easy. And I know it wasn't. So I continued living and dreaming and doing those things passionately until my time. And, there were many days I just lived and tried to forget I had ever had the dream to begin with. But everytime I did that, there I was at the gym working out next to mirrors trying to ignore my passion that was staring me in my face. Or someone would come up and tell me "You have great potential for bodybuilding!" Or "Do you compete?" I would smile and shake my head. I was never going to be able to let it go. And I knew and felt and heard that this was the right time to do it and truly push through hardships that were there, that were coming that were outside of me.

So much of life's hardships are outside of us. And how are we to know which ones are truly real or illusions? What are you giving power to? So, with that mindset, I set up a vision board a year ago. I didn't obsess over any of the dreams on paper cut outs that I had. I just posted them on my board and let them be after obsessing the first time a year before. lol So much of life is about balance. So much of life is about love. So much of life is about giving to each other and sharing our gifts, our words, our talents and most of all, our love. Its been that part of it thats helped me to believe that I deserve the things I think I deserve. If you are always giving what you bring to the table and doing so lovingly, why should you not get the things you are giving. However, I truly enjoy giving for the sake of giving anyway, it has not been about the outcome. Its just something I have noticed after being more insecure than I ever needed to be. Being loving has raised my consciousness to knowing that this journey is not my own. That I am taking people with me who are learning things with me about life, love, passion and growth. That in itself is far greater than winning any trophy at a show which is why i believe strongly in the cliche that "Its not the destination, its the journey."

If any of you had seen me years ago when I first started out "Discipline" could have been my middle name. I was dieting so hard and so extremely down to the calorie I had to come home from work and lay down and eat bowls and bowls and bowls of cereal to feel like I wasn't about to faint. Crazy part was, I was writing my own diet at the time that my coach just ok'd. I thought about winning all the time and took pictures of myself nonstop. Although I was proud then and am typically a modest person, I was quickly becoming really into myself and I started to notice it after I had gotten 3rd and 4th places in the shows that I did and worked extremely hard at to the point of exhaustion and starvation. Life has a way of humbling us until we get the lesson. Truth was, this dream haunted me. Every time I got a new coach and the diet didnt work or I ran out of money or I messed up on the diet or mentally i just didn't believe the diet would work and then it didn't I had lost again in my eyes. And, this happened at least 5 times in two years before I would get back onstage the third year. I guess it goes to show one that you truly don't fail when you keep trying. And when you truly want something, the universe conspires to make it happen...when its your time and you've already learned the lesson life is trying to teach you then your dream becomes a reality.

Life is moment by moment. Few things are permanent. We should all be present in the time that we are actually living in because it is truly all we have. I am grateful for the accomplishment that i had been dreaming of completing, but on the drive back I realized that once you've gotten to your destination you must find a new journey in order to propel yourself forward instead of stagnant and we all aren't headed to just one place on our journeys. There are plenty of stops in life and the life after this one is continuous. So be enlightened that wherever you are headed there is always another place to go after arriving. The journey only stops when you stop and you only really fail when you stop working towards a goal and that you can be failing one moment and winning in another. Winning is just a choice away. And truthfully, we win everyday when we wake up.

I just wanted to leave all of you with this, to only put power in the things you really want to happen. To meditate on it, to visualize it, to sleep with it in your head, to wake up with it in your head but do all that while you continue living, loving, breathing, giving and sharing because whatever you think you're doing on your own, you are taking others that are involved on the journey with you. So make sure you leave a positive legacy and that the dream doesn't end with you...but perhaps it begins with you breathing life--giving birth to someone else's dream. Because that my friends, is true winning.