Accepting your past

You wake up everyday and everything is the same as it was the day before. You look in the mirror and you see the same person that  you've seen day after day, month after month, year after year. Except when you take a minute to look back on everything that's happened in your life you realize that everything is different.

There are some things you look back on and smile because you remember them as the best moments of your life. The ones that you wish you could just go back and live over and over again without any of the bad things in between.
Then there are some that you look back on and try to forget. You continue to try and forget that they were ever a part of your life. It could be one thing or it could be several.. It could be an entire year or even longer. There are always going to be those things that we wish didn't happen and that we didn't do.

The thing about your past is that no matter how many times you sit and think about it, you can't change it. You can't change the choices that you made or the things that came of them. You can't change the words you said and you can't take back anything. We all have skeletons in our closet that we try to hide from the world. Skeletons that linger in the back of our minds when we meet someone new because we're scared that they won't be able to accept our past.

But how do you expect someone else to accept your past when you can't accept it yourself? I've slowly been starting to realize that the things that i said and the things that i did in the past are simply that.. in the past. I can't change what I did yesterday and I sure as hell can't change what I did 6 years ago, but I can control what I do tomorrow and what i do right now.

Everyone you meet is going to have a past. Everyone you meet isn't going to b the same person that they were before. Just like you, they change. Just like you they regret things and wish that they would have done something differently. When you learn to accept that your past is your past and it doesn't make you a bad person you understand that someone else's past doesn't make them any more or less of a good person either.

I've realized that I need to accept my past, and understand that it is my past. That i have no control over what I did before and what choices I made before. I've realized that no matter how many mistakes i've made in my past, i've learned something from every one. I've taken something away from every mistake, and from that have started turning into the person that I want to be.

The more you dwell on your past mistakes, the longer it takes to become the person you want to be.

But the thing about accepting your past... is that you can't judge everyone else on theirs. You can't expect people to be judgement free about your past mistakes when you sit and point fingers at theirs. You have no say in someone else's decisions whether they are the past, present, or future. You don't know what they've taken away from their past, all you can do is accept them for everything that they are.

I get asked on a constant basis what keeps me motivated. How I can wake up early and go to the gym before work or go directly after work before I do anything else. It's hard to explain to people that don't know the whole story. People that don't know why I started going regularly and when this became more than just for a sport but a lifestyle.

Somedays it's a lot easier to get up and go to the gym than others. Some mornings I wake up and want to hit the snooze button 20 times and just call it quits. But then I remember why I started. I go back to where I was when I decided that my health was more important than anything else.

What keeps me motivated isn't a bunch of fitness models. It isn't being able to wear a bikini on a beach or fit into a certain pair of shorts. I don't do fitness competitions and I probably never will. What keeps me motivated and what keeps me going is going to be different than anyone else's... because it's my journey.

It's hard to explain to people that it's not just one thing that keeps me motivated but several. It's the feeling you get after a workout. It's the feeling you get when you walk into the gym or when you hit a new best. It's the feeling of being strong, stronger than you've ever been before. It's being able to do things that you couldn't do a year ago or even a week ago. It's being able to look in the mirror and not break down into tears. It's being able to eat cookies without freaking out. It's about not being the person that I was just over 3 years ago.
Sometimes it's not even about goals or bests... sometimes it's just straight therapy. The burn you feel in your muscles. The mental escape you get when you step up to the bar and turn your music up as your pre workout kicks in and sends goosebumps throughout your entire body.

Motivation can be found anywhere through out the day. It's hard to give an exact answer when people ask me. When people ask me what keeps me motivated so that they can use the same... when the truth is, You need to be your own motivation.

I look back on what got me started, and what I used for motivation when I first started... it was me. I needed someone to save me, so I saved myself.