Checking in with Yourself on your Journey and Building Resilience

Reframing your setbacks and struggles as evidence of growth and progress

So, how’s it going for you lately? 🤔 It’s been a little over a year since the COVID-19 pandemic swept the globe and changed daily life in areas big and small, for better or worse.

In some ways, a year later, as a society, we are both further than I thought we’d be by this point and not yet as far as I’d hoped.

Further — wow! we actually developed vaccines within a year and they are pretty effective! Shots are going into arms, and the hope that is accompanying them is hard to deny.

Not as far as I’d hoped — the news is full of stories of our continued violence and intolerance towards one another. We continue to struggle politically, economically, enironmentally, and socially. Some of the world’s problems feel even more intractable than ever a year later.

Now, I’m going to take those global considerations down to the personal.

My own journey over the past year, like a lot of people, has had many ups and downs, turns and transitions, and false starts and stops.

About a year ago, a good friend asked me to create a workout for her. It was a simple request, but diving into this task and all it ended up involving for me to complete it in a high fidelity way that I trusted would truly bring her value (everything from thinking about exercise selection and order, to progressive overload, to how to deliver the programming — visually through video and in supplemental, interactive hyperdocs, plus the mindset that goes into encouraging a start to sustainable, healthy lifestyle and all it entails) unlocked for me a deep interest and passion for personal training and mindset work!

It was the gentle, supportive nudge I needed to explore an active area of interest and it launched a prolific stretch of about 2 months during the beginning of the pandemic in which I created at least 20 videos of content ranging from structured workouts, to mobility and stretching routines, to mindset tips to support a sustainable health journey.

Then, I had one of those destabilizing moments that makes you feel intense shame and want to hide your light. At the time, we were living in Japan, and I was teaching English in the countryside. I had been creating my videos on the side, for fun, during a time when students weren’t coming to school in person. While there was absolutely nothing inappropriate about this, and, looking back, it was actually an amazing way to cope during a really stressful time to have such a creative outlet, I got it into my head at some point that a student either had found or would stumble across my youtube channel and I would be “found out” and get in some kind of trouble.

Looking at that thought now, I wonder what I thought they’d find out? 🤔 I’m sure I had concerns about the culturally conservative nature of inaka Japan and any potential judgment that may result if someone saw or shared my workout videos (after all, I was wearing tank tops in my videos! tank tops show your arms!!) But honestly, I think they’d probably have been more impressed to know their assistant English language teacher was a prolific exerciser, videographer, and Youtuber on the side. 🤣

If I could see then what I see now, I could have prevented a painful shame spiral and extended culture shock episode that stretched for multiple weeks.

Of course, if we could all see in each moment what our future, more experienced and resourced selves could see a year from now, we’d all be some form of Buddha and none of us would need or benefit from mindfulness or meditation! 😆

Instead, my shame drove me to make all of my videos private, and then I proceeded to stop making them.

I did have some “good reasons” for hiding my light at the time (or so I told myself). First, students came back to school and life got busy for our last few months in Japan. Then, there was the transition home to Ohio and reverse culture shock, heightened by learning how to do life in a pandemic in a highly individualistic, western society after the collectivist approach in Japan. After that, we put our Ohio house on the market, sold it, and prepared to move to sunny Florida because we’d decided if we were going to be in a pandemic for the next year or so staying home, we may as well do it with more warmth and sunshine in our lives. Between selling the Ohio house and moving to Florida, I had a hernia repair done and while it has been very good in many ways, it turned out to be a larger hernia than expected and the recovery was extended and complicated (and in many ways, is still underway even 4 months later). Then there was the actual physical move to Florida (2 weeks post-op). We started out in a long term vacation rental neighborhood that was mostly empty from vacationers during COVID (with the exception of very loud, large drunken parties each weekend 😬), and proceeded to aggressively house hunt until we found our current house. Closing on our house kicked off about 4–5 weeks of intense remodeling and finally, this past week, moving in!

Not as far as I’d hoped — So, here we are, a year later. In some ways I feel like I’m exactly where I was a year ago: unsure about the future, trying to cope with uncertainty, and still wanting to pursue personal training but feeling stuck.

Further — In other ways, I am so damn proud of myself and how far I’ve come in one year. I am now more experienced and have more resources to be able to reframe the laundry list of delays and setbacks above into empowering data:

• I am now more inter-culturally competent and can understand a wide variety of topics with far more nuance and curiosity after a year spent living abroad and returning home in the midst of a pandemic and having experienced both culture shock and reverse culture shock.
• Despite the many disruptions and transitions to my daily life from moving 3 times in the space of 8 months (first back home from Japan, then to Florida, initially to a rental, and then to our new house this past week), I have established and maintained a daily and weekly fitness routine, learned more about my relationship with food and my body, and explored mindfulness as a way to manage anxiety. All of these provide me with comfort and joy during a time of massive change and stress. I managed to mindfully manage a surgery, acute post-op rehab phase, and extended recovery including 2 moves without re-injuring myself and while being kind to my healing body.
• Throughout it all, I continued to take the steps that felt doable towards my dream of becoming a personal trainer and mindset coach. I continue to study for and am getting closer to taking my NSCA CPT certification exam. I also signed up for and look forward to starting a mindfulness-based behavior change facilitator training in the next couple of weeks!
• Somewhat unrelated, but equally valuable to me, is that I’ve done all of these things while cultivating and maintaining meaningful relationships — with good friends, with my partner, and with myself.

So, what if instead of feeling like roadblock after roadblock has held you back, instead you choose to see how much you managed to accomplish in the face of all of of life’s challenges and setbacks? And to then imagine how much more you’re capable of accomplishing if you just keep going!

As always, I encourage you to remember that growth is rarely linear and that 2 steps forward and 1 step back is still 1 step forward. Let’s push back on that sneaky fixed mindset that likes to whisper in our ear that this is all we’ll ever be or do, and instead apply a growth mindset to say that we haven’t achieved all we hoped to yet.

Not yet can be what helps us crawl out of those areas where we feel stuck. Not yet can lift the shadow of shame. Not yet can help us see how far we’ve already come and appreciate the journey, knowing that we’ll never enjoy the destination unless we love the path to get there.And, not yet can propel us forward to get further than we ever thought possible. ❤️

Where are you feeling stuck in your life? What, if any, areas have you feeling like you’re not as far along as you would have hoped? Can you reframe any of those critical thoughts and choose to see the very same situations as evidence of how much further you’ve actually come than you may have realized? I challenge you to check in with yourself on your journey and reframe a setback or challenge that’s been bugging you! Just because you may not be there yet, doesn’t mean you aren’t well on your way.