I’ve been learning to take a different perspective recently…but I haven’t gone willingly..
This comes after 8 weeks of being out of the game with illness. 8 weeks, which felt like a lifetime, and in the thick of it felt like I would never get back to feeling like ‘myself’ ever again.
I have to say, I didn’t embrace the down-time. I didn’t retreat to my yoga mat to reflect, while drinking green smoothies and extolling the benefits of illness and perspective-taking. Nope, I raged, in a hold me back or I’ll rip the eyes out of the monster stopping me doing what I want to do kind of way. I was angry and frustrated at my body being barely able to run. I just couldn’t get my head around it, and frankly I didn’t want to! I’m on a schedule, there are races to race and goals to smash, I have no time to take time.
I was raging, crying, pondering how I would ever get back in time to achieve what I wanted to achieve!
In the midst of my despair I called my amazing therapist, and got on a call with her.
She told me I need to listen to my body…really listen, stop raging against it, trying to force it, hating on it for not doing what I wanted to do. She gave me some new questions and a new perspective:
đź’« Body, what do you need right now that will help us to return to physical peak performance? to be strong, healthy in balance?
đź’« What would it take for my body to return to peak physical performance?
These questions helped turn my rage into something more constructive and gave me the ability to approach the frustrations in a different way.
I’m not saying I took it all lightly. She told me what I didn’t want to hear, that my body needed time and wasn’t going to bend to my will just because I wanted it too!… and I might have responded to her probing in a foot-stamping, sullen, whining – ‘But I don’t want to!’ kind of way. But, I also knew she was right.
I started asking the questions and changed up some things and I’m feeling heaps better. I’m still slightly miffed at the time I lost, there’s still some ‘what if’ thinking. But, I’ll embrace the come-back queen narrative, take the learnings and hopefully come back stronger and bit wiser.
