Keep Tugging the Rope
I'm gonna keep it real with y'all. Changing your BODY, BELIEFS, and IDENTITY is HARD. (At first.)
It's just this constant tug-of-war.
With my body, it was "I want to run so I'm not heavy, but I'm heavy so it's so hard to run."
I used to get hurt because I was heavy, and my musculoskeletal system hadn't adapted to the pressure I was putting on it... I would have to take breaks, and supplement cycling, which I hated. Lots of crying and defeat.
I used to have to do all of these exercises to build up my quads and glutes that now, psh, fuck you. I'll never do that. I don't have to. But I also have the fitness to run 7 miles a day. Easily. That's the payoff of five years of work.
And that's why people are always thinking things like "I'll have to give up ice cream forever!"
It's like no... you don't have to. But in the beginning you can't move your body enough to use ENOUGH FUEL to where you can consume a pint's worth of sugar and not gain weight. You're just not burning through it.
Everything is working against you. Everything.
And what's worse is that likely, nobody you know can help you, because I'll put money on the fact that every friend you have is like you.
Because we build walls lined with the people who are exactly like us, and then we tell identity stories that we're like that. And then we don't reach out to new people because we're so damn embarrassed.
This is why people stay in poverty.
I know people in real poverty, and they stay in this real poverty because they don't know enough PEOPLE outside of those structures to pull themselves out. They look at their housing authority walls and their EBT cards and their friends who are in the exact same situations as they are. They mistake that reality for actual reality.
However, it isn't.
No matter how poor I get in my life, I have a solid foundation of brilliant, educated, successful people in my circle who are here to remind me that the universe is expansive. If I ever fell into poverty, it would be elected poverty.
People in real poverty? They have nobody to call but other people who have the beliefs to keep them in real poverty.
Tug-of-war. They start moving in a positive direction and every person they know who barely can hold a job or is in active addiction, or people suffering from heavy, unresolved trauma from things like rape and assault... they all come around and remind them that life is hopeless.
And they believe them. Tug-of-war.
Even me, with starting a business, it was "I can't create from a state of survival, but I can't survive if I'm not creating."
So I'd supplement with garbage jobs I hated at first, and they'd rob my energy, so I'd have to meditate extra, and put blinders on to block my focus to only live in thoughts I wanted to have.
Because that's how it is, right?
I wasn't even working a corporate 9-5. However I hear stories all the time. I heard the founder of an app I use give a talk about how she wanted to work on her startup but by the time she commuted to work, worked all day, focused on her demanding tasks there, commuted home, did the arduous task of making dinner... what was left for her? She had the money but not the energy or the focus.
Tug-of-war.
EVERY NEW THING IS A TUG-OF-WAR. Every new thing. I don't give a fuck who you are.
NOBODY GETS TO SKIP THE TUG.
But you just have to keep tugging the rope.
You just keep tugging.
You do a little bit and get knocked back a few pegs, and you need to be the most stubborn fucking whack-a-mole in the whole damn arcade... Because eventually, the rope is gonna break, and nobody can touch you. Nobody.
You visualize the person you want to be, which is the highest version of you, and then you are UNLIMITED POWER.
Knowing THAT, that beautiful speck of power... that's ✨gold✨ to live with inside of you.
Everyone is unlimited power. It's just a question of when they realize it.
Tug the fucking rope.
Tug. the. fucking. rope.
