Day 2 When I... Then I......

One of the things I enjoy about Mount Olive Church is that Pastor Barry, without fail, gives me something that not only helps me in my walk of faithfulness, but also tidbits that help in life generally. Perfect example was Friday night. The staff at Mount Olive wanted to give the volunteers a special night where it was all about us. There were top hats and bow ties and tieras and boas aplenty! it was a hoot of a time, and I got to see someone tap dance in real life!! So after the entertainment, and after the awards were handed out, Pastor Barry took a moment to do some vision casting about the direction of Mount Olive. One of the things he said was that people generally have this issue with "when I do X, then I will do Y" which means once you meet some checkpoint that you have set up, you will then go do something you want to do but are too scared to do right now. We have all done it. I am the victim of that phrase right now. I decided when I noticed all my progress slipping away that I did not have the resources to deal with it head on at the moment since my first year of law school was kicking my rear all over the place. So i said "when I finish my first year of law school, then I will jump back on the path of good eating, plenty of exercise, and get back to where I was in March of 2011." So my first year of law school has passed, I have put on 50+ pounds from my low weight, and I am currently spinning my wheels. why is that? My guess is the putting it off for a little bit made it easier to put it off a little longer, and longer and longer, till I am now worse off than I was when I decided I needed to get my rear going again, and so then that further loss of ground made it easier to retreat again. My "then I" never came to fruition. Addendum: As I stated, I think this blog helped me a ton in being successful before. I was not sure why before this morning. While I was getting the walk I talked about in, I didn't listen to music as usual, but I took that time to think and reflect. And I think I know why the blog helps me so much.... because it makes me think and reflect! But rather than it being abstract thoughts that go away fleetingly, I am giving my thoughts life and making them real and relevant. Rather than inspiring or guiding me for 10 minutes, they are there for me to look at and think about for extended periods of time. It occurred to me that maybe one of the reasons I am not able to recreate the fire that was there when I was achieving phenomenal weight loss and gaining great health was that I was on top of the world at that time. I was about to be done with undergrad, I was still making straight A's, I was making more money after switching jobs, long story short, I was on top of the world. So adding one more accomplishment made sense. I had quite the great image of myself, I was able to do anything! Skip to the second half of 2011 and all of 2012 and what do I have going on now? I am not making the A's in law school, I am not even working at a crummy job, and now it makes sense that with all that "bad" stuff going on, why not lose all my progress I made in weight loss and health? Long story short, I started feeling bad about myself generally and with that attitude, I began to just not achieve any longer. I just did not have the motivation to try. See where I am going with this? I lost my achiever identity and my self worth. In order to succeed, the first thing that has to be true, you have to believe you are worthy of succeeding. Here is what I have come up with moving forward. I am probably not about to start catching fire and making the A's in law school, and I probably won't have even a crummy job anytime soon. But that stuff is not what makes me who I am and does not represent my worth to this world. Quite frankly, my family, my faith and my friends are what gives me my value. I have the best family a person could ever ask for, Mount Olive Church has provided me with the groundwork to begin a wonderful spiritual journey that has proven to be such a blessing in my life that I just can't begin to express it well enough in words, and I have such a diverse and awesome group of friends that span from friends I have acquired from chance meetings, to a phenomenal bunch of people that I am blessed to be in a life group with, to people I have met at church and finally a great group of guys and gals I know from law school. Each of those people add something to my life and inspire me to adopt certain characteristics I admire in them. Long story short, I am worthy of being more than I am right now. I do deserve to be lighter and healthier, and my self worth is not dictated by my job or my grades. Thank you Lord for imparting the wisdom I prayed for on me and getting me back to blogging.