Getting Inspired

I am so excited! I can finally do this…tucking the tummy in!!!

Have you ever been around people that inspire you? I am sure everyone has. Certain people inspire me in different ways. My life is filled with these type of people. I know a smorgasbord of people reaching beyond what life has given them. My Dad once told me that I should find someone smarter than me and then follow them around. I think this is probably true about everything. I feel it is important that I always challenge myself because I need that or I will get bored and depressed.

I hang out with great minds who are constantly reading and talking about literature. We have meetings over coffee or breakfast and talk for hours about the books they’ve read and the social implications. I have friends who are politically charged, keeping up on the latest news, and love discussing their views. Some of them are activists and writers for a cause. I read and research to keep up with all of these people. They are most of the time smarter and more focused than I am and I love that. Their intensity infuses me and that stimulates me to strive to be smarter and go deeper in creativity. I can’t possibly explain how much I love it. It gets me so excited.

I don’t think I have ever had a health inspiration. I know that sounds horrible but it would be like having a pole vaulting inspiration but I have never pole vaulted before. How can you be inspired if you haven’t really done something before? Before when my lady friends got together and talked about stuff they were eating, or exercising they were doing I would simply ignore the conversation or change it. The avoidance was both out of embarrassment and because I didn’t want to do anything about it.

I know now that is a real sign that change will never come. If I don’t want to talk about how I plan to eat healthier, or how someone else has changed their eating habits, I am surely not going to actually put those changes into practice. That is a dangerous way to be. I have found it to be detrimental in my life to avoid my inspirational friends in any way, because if I am doing that I am ashamed of something…

Because I have avoided the topic for years I had to go back to grade school level knowledge for fitness and health. I had to relearn everything. I now feel like I am at a high school level on those topics. I am starting to really want influences in my life who are striving to be better at fitness and health. I am just now getting to the point where I don’t feel bad when someone else is an expert. I realize I am becoming pretty good at the eating healthy and doing my yoga. I am very excited about that. My husband and I are actually becoming a little snotty about our food, saying variations of that meal needed vegetables, I wonder if this has anything resembling food it in it, and is this organic?

I am in no way saying we are experts, but I feel we are ready to sit at the table and discuss exercise and food without being embarrassed and that is something I am proud of. When people brought up these issues before I would do everything in my power to avoid the conversation. Now I can at least sit in the room without avoidance or embarrassment.

So now I am looking up to my brother Patrick who walks about an hour every night. My best friend Christine walks in the mornings, sometimes does yoga, and quit drinking which she enjoyed. My other brother Matthew and my sister-in-law Lori are taking their health in their own hands. They both have lost weight by exercising, gardening, and cooking healthy meals. My brothers grew up in the same home I did, and they are reaching for better. That is inspiration. My mom even helped me finally figure out the tree pose I’ve been working on. (She has been telling me for years to suck in my abs, I finally listened. I was finally able to listen.) Talking about the best foods to heal the body, recipes to make good food, the best form for yoga poses and the best way to get energy: this is starting to make me happy, and I think that’s a good sign.