Positive Results by Sabrina

When you’re looking at your goals, and the desires that you have for your life, how do you decide where to aim your focus? Are your goals based on achievements that you’ve seen other people accomplish? Are you focused on achieving more than you have seen those around you achieve? Do yourself a favor, please don’t say you want to get back to the person you were. You can’t get back to the old person, the older days, the time before tragedy struck or you gained the extra weight and pain that you’re carrying around. You may want to return to that body type, that financial comfort, that freedom. But your phrasing and mentality needs to be forward focused. 

If your current motivation to workout is an older picture of how you used to look, or a pile of old clothes that used to fit, how is that working for you? The thinking that you want to get back to a previous version of yourself can feel like an immovable weight all on its own. It holds you back and can prevent you from moving forward. The last thing most of us need are more obstacles and roadblocks. You need fuel in your tank to propel you forward. 

I am not throwing shade. I’ve been there. While working on a guest blog post, I looked at an older picture of myself recently and had a similar thought. But I was quickly reminded that I don’t like that thinking. Hearing someone say they want to ‘get back to the way things were before’ is like nails on a chalkboard to me. (It’s way up on the list with “the new normal.”) I do not currently own a time machine so there is no going back for me. More importantly, the person I am today is 180 degrees different from the person I was in that picture so going back to her might mean giving up a lot of what I’ve achieved and that is not a risk I’m willing to take. I’ve invested countless hours into growing as a mother, partner, friend and business woman. 

What I do know is that for me, focusing forward on my Goals, Dreams and Desires, fuels me to conquer each day. When I remember what I’m working for, it’s easier to design my daily activities and tasks. When I have a low mental health day or get stuck in my thoughts, weighing my options, I question whether these options are getting me closer to my goals. When I look at my circle of friends and influencers, when I examine the accounts that I follow on social media, I try to make sure they are aligned with where I want to go. I actively strive to make sure that I am feeding myself the same positive materials that I want my children and athletes to consume. Too often, I hear people complaining about how unhappy or unsettled they are in their lives but I don’t see them looking for solutions to fix it. Conversely, I know people who have suffered tremendously personally or who are dealing with serious health conditions, and they are some of the happiest people I know. Because they are forward focused and know that carrying extra stress, sadness and fear is of no benefit to them. 

I focus everyday on improving the world around me. I work consciously on helping add to the inspiration, positivity and motivation of my circle of influence. My hope is that I can touch the life of someone each day and move them closer to their goals through forward focused intention and purpose. My mission as an endurance coach is to motivate mother runners and women to improve their lives through movement and dedicated attention to their endurance and fitness. With age comes experience, wisdom and awareness. We can use this to propel us each day. We can hold onto the memories of our accomplishments, and the pride we feel in overcoming the things we thought would break us, as we hold our heads high and focus on what we’d like to achieve next. We can honor the person of our past for bringing us to today and reminding us of the things we can achieve with focus, determination and dedication. We should honor the person we are today, accepting the changes in our body, metabolism, lives, family and financial situations at a minimum, and make our goals forward focused and based on the person we are today.

If this speaks to you, I invite you to spend some time analyzing your goals. Are they forward focused or looking in the rearview mirror? Feel free to share some of what you’re thinking in the comments.