A few months ago two of my friends and I sat outside a local boba shop talking through a vision of helping others change. I heard of my friend's group that he lead at his church for people who had goals to accomplish and just needed others around them that would support and challenge them. He developed an intentional and successful program for people to follow. From that group people got promotions, lost weight, went back to school, and more! To this day I have friends who where in that group that talk about how much long-term impact the program had on their lives.
In the conversation with my friends outside the boba shop, I learned that the one who started this group also earned his life coaching certificate. I was able to hear his heart and passion for motivating people to make pivotal transformations in their lives that they both deeply desired and yet believed impossible or unlikely at best. His strategy was honest, realistic, and nonthreatening. His passion was so contagious it fueled my passion to see change in others also. I was right there with him. I was on the edge of my seat with excitement over every thought, perspective, and idea. He spoke to my heart for the city and my heart for allowing others to see beyond their obstacles. There was a genuine joy and delight in his eyes from the vision of being a part of a life transformed. I was ready, right then and there, to jump on board with this vision!
But then there would be moments where I would pause in being engaged and began thinking about what areas in my life needed change. Where was I having a hard time moving beyond the "I cant's" or "it's just too hard?" Where could I use support and encouragement to step into a new way of living...a better way of living? I realized, as passionate as I was about seeing others achieve their goals, I needed to be that passionate and even more so on seeking change in my own life! It was in that conversation that I even started to think about seriously inviting someone who I knew would take me seriously and my struggle towards good health. I have people at home who are at that level, but they are back home. Those around me are great, but I really needed someone to be on me about taking steps forward and encouraging me to not give up when I took a step or four backwards. It was just a thought at the time, but it was then that I knew I would one day ask my friend for his help in this painful and discouraging journey of my physical health in hopes to find victory, better health, and a more balanced rhythm of life.
It wasn't until a couple of months later when I finally took that step of inviting him to walk alongside me in seeking better and consistent health. If you read my previous post, the very last paragraph spoke to a night where I had intense shooting pains run from my back to my hips to my knee. All I wanted to do was sleep, cry, or something! That was my tipping point. That was the moment that I knew I couldn't live like this forever! I had to see if there was anything I could do to help relieve this pain. Again, I have peace with the possibility that God may not take away all my pain, but I also am confident that God has given me this body to take care of while walking in it. So in absolute and utter desperation, I texted my friend. I said something very simple like, "I have goals. You know how to achieve them. Please help me, amigo!" As you would expect from a good friend, he simply asked me a couple of questions and then agreed to meet.
Before we would meet he wanted me to do some pre-work. This was partly for him to see where I was at on a few things, but it was mainly for me to process what I wanted, needed, and why. I sent that back to him fairly quickly as I was eager to start...perhaps it was flashbacks of the stabbing pains the night before. We met just a couple of days later, and that is where the momentum of change truly began!
I told him I had three goals:
1. Have more consistent health (be able to work out regularly and have less to no pain)
2. Increase finances (in order to seek better health, I needed to make space for things I wasn't used to purchasing.
3. Have more balance (stress, busyness, etc plays a role into my health and sleep. There are places of basic organization, layin low, etc that I could do to help better my physical health).
Skipping for a minute to number 2. I asked my roommate who is a finance wiz to help me figure some things out balancing finances. She and I met just the day before my friend and I to discuss what my new budget would look like. We came up with a plan, and we are going to meet weekly for accountability to this new and very tight budget! For now, my other friend and I did not discuss this or number 3.
So my friend and I sat outside a delightful little Korean church's coffee shop and began digging into what would be my very own steps in life transformation! We agreed to a timeline of three weeks to start. We will go from there when the time comes. For now, these three weeks are designed to train my body, mind, and heart towards better health! I hope that throughout this time you receive encouragement and strength to reach out for help from those around you to challenge you in areas you need change and renewal.
For this entry I'll leave you with an awakening thought during my drive home. I was visiting some friends this evening and on the way home I decided I would try to hit the health food store. I thought it closed early, but when I checked online it said I still had an hour. I actually tried two stores, but at both the security guard sent me the other direction. Initially I was disappointed and didn't see the point of why I had even tried. Then on the way home I was in dead stop traffic. I checked my phone to see what was ahead. Based on my traffic app, it appears that there was an accident at the exact time I was most likely going to drive in that location. When I approached the cars, they looked utterly tragic! Naturally, this had me thinking about how you never know what the next moment holds. But then an even deeper and new perspective came to mind. Here I was disappointed and not seeing a point of running those failed errands. Had I decided to give up on the idea of the errands and go straight home I may have been in a potentially devastating accident! That's like this journey. I won't always see the benefits right away, and I will most likely have moments of feeling like "what's the point," but at the end of the day I'm making these small decisions to take routes that lead me away from destruction and ultimately death. So all that to say, making those small pivotal changes now could result in an extended and more full life in the long-run. The shortcuts and expected way to do things, may actually be the thing that destroys us.
So what's it gonna be? A shortcut now that gets you to where you're going now (with the risk of a major destruction and potential death) or a route of chances where you may have to try more than once to get it right (which may also bring you the kind of full life and longevity you long for)?
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