Solcana blog

FINISHING STRONG

By: Lauren Anderson

So… I’m scrolling through Instagram the other day, and I stumble across a post from my friend Brittany. She is talking about the idea of “Finishing Strong”.

She gives and example in terms of the holidays and what we eat, and how by the end of the year we are ready for some resolutions because we have basically eaten and drank ourselves into a different state of being with our bodies than we’d prefer.

Or something like that. I’m clearly paraphrasing here, but give me a break–it was an Insta-story!

But the IDEA! The idea my friends…

She then purposed, “What if instead of dwindling down into the end, we reinvigorated ourselves and accomplished “one more task” or reached “one more goal” to honor the year and time passing?”

In other words… what if we FINISHED STRONG?

And that idea has really stuck with me for the last week. Now, full disclosure, I am a sucker for this kind of stuff. I have great passionate love for characters in stories with tenacity and an indomitable spirit. The people that keep fighting. That get up and keep going.

(*Spoiler alert!) You know this, cause I talk about it all the time… but I cry every single time I see Boromir die in the LOTR: Fellowship of the Ring. But I can’t help it!

Photo of a photo!

 

I friggin love Sean Bean as an actor– and Boromir keeps getting shot with arrows and what-not, and keeps getting back up to fight more Orcs.  Bean has even said that this was his favorite death scene he’s ever done (and there have been a few…) because it’s so dang heroic!

(According to Wiki-Geek– he kills 16 orcs before he finally falls. Talk about finishing strong!)

So what does that look like for me? A mortal in a mortal world, despite my efforts to be otherwise. I don’t have a ring I need to protect, but I do have a kingdom. We all do. And that’s our bodies. And the life we shape using our bodies to do so.

My body has many ebbs and flows, and I know from experience that this is natural on anyone’s path. But I definitely think I’m in a weird spot with my body right now. I’m in completely new territory. Because of my recent injury, I ache more than I ever have before.

In some ways it feels like I should start over? And yet, that also doesn’t quite feel right. I know too much. I’ve seen too many truths come to light. Starting over is not the right or accurate mindset for me.

My therapist talks about this all the time. I often lament at how long change takes, and how long I take to “get over stuff”, or “let go”. (read TENACIOUS) She is always very patient with me, and it is her belief that “therapy takes time”. And I am inclined to agree.

That doesn’t make me any less impatient though, ya know?

The truth is, even though it feels like I am stalled out sometimes, I really have moved forward. And it’s not really on a linear line like that anyway. It’s more about circle. Or a spiral.

We are constantly looping ever outward, into the next version of ourselves. Especially if you are making a concentrated effort to discover the “whys” of what you do.

And because often I can’t help but compare my spiral to another’s… I end up feeling stuck.

But then I will be faced with something from my past, or a new challenge, and I will deal with it in a totally new and healthy way, and then suddenly I realize I am LEAPS AND BOUNDS from where I used to be.

I have changed. I am still changing. There is no “starting over” there is only moving on.

So, with that mindset, what does it look like to finish out this year strong?

Well, let’s break it down:

  • I recently suffered a significant injury (falling down the stairs)
  • I recently got eye surgery. (Although that’s healing nicely)
  • I haven’t been working out as often… I have not made time the way I used to
  • I have been eating food with more emotional benefits than nutritional.

Okay. Good assessment! So what do I do with this?

Hmmm, well, I haven’t been working out as often because I took on some other projects that took over that space in my timeline. Projects that didn’t grow/benefit my body necessarily, but were absolutely crucial in my growth as an artist and performer.

In other words, if I believe that everything has a cost (and I do), then I chose to spend my time recently “growing my my art”. Time and energy well spent IMHO. But now that the time is cleared up again, I can reallocate it back to my body. BOOM.

My injury has me reluctant to move my body AT ALL. And while this makes sense, I know from when I tweaked my back years ago that my coaches at Solcana can modify anything for me. AND there might just be a special workout they can prep to ease the pain of my new aches, like they did for my lower back.

(I haven’t had back problems since btw… GODSEND!)

Now that I have time to think about my eating again, I can concentrate on what works well for me, and I think that is the 80/20 mindset. Meaning, I can curve my eating back to 80% nutrition-based, and 20% emotional/soul-based. It got off-kilter in the last months because of time, and instead of spending brain energy on food, I spent it elsewhere.

Everything has a cost, and I chose to spend my time and energy elsewhere. I do not regret that decision. And now, I can choose to spend it back on my body again. And right now in my life, that feels like the right choice for me!

WOO! Wow. Thanks for letting me break that down with all of you. It was really good practice for me to interrogate some of the “suspects” of why I’m feeling weirdness in my body, and talking through why they might have affected me so.

And now that I know some of the key factors, I can make adjustments as I see fit.

I’m not going to wait the arbitrary 2 months, and just ride out the year feeling weird. I’m going to adjust now, and see if I can, indeed “finish strong” — and start the year off with my body in a way that feels better than I do now.

If that sounds, “Too Damn Easy”, it’s because I’m making it sound really DAMN EASY. But I assure you dear readers, that I know it’s not.

That’s why I’m going to listen to my therapist and remember that things take time. And even if I can implement just one of these ideas into the last two months of the year, I will be finishing stronger in my body than I would if I had done nothing.

And that seems do-able. And it seems like EXACTLY where I want to be spending my time and energy in the next two months.

How about you? What’s something you want to do to “Boromir” yourself to the finish line of 2019?

My therapist says, that “the real work is in the ending”. Meaning that you don’t know truly how far you’ve come until it’s time to say goodbye.

And I don’t know about you, but I’d like to say I FINISHED STRONG.

Share it on social!  

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *