Quotes are everywhere these days, all over Facebook, all over Pinterest, on calendars, on t-shirts, on cute wood plaques hanging in everyone’s house. So it can be easy for them to lose their power or become trite. But quotes are quoted become someone said something good enough to remember. Good enough for other people to want to hear it again or say it again or hang it in their house even.
Some quotes hit you right away and you just love them. Some quotes you don’t get and then one day you might all of a sudden get it. (The Eleanor Roosevelt quote, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent,” is one of those for me. But that’s a post for another day!)
But I’m a big believer in the power of our thinking and how it can affect everything. I like quotes. I know they can be silly, I know they can be overdone, but they can also be really good. Sometimes they inspire me. Sometimes they set the tone for the day. Sometimes they sum up what I’m thinking in a nice little sentence. Or express what I’m feeling more eloquently than I would.
I’ve decided to start a quote of the week on here because sometimes I post quotes on my Facebook page and it makes me want to write a long post but I don’t have the time because it’s 6 something in the morning and I have kids to get ready. Because sometimes a particular quote will get stuck in my head and rattle around in there all week. I’ll think about it a lot and it will lead me to some deeper thinking about something that is going on in my life at the moment. But then it’s gone.
So the first quote of the week is….You can do hard things.
Why this quote?
- Because we can do hard things. We might not want to do hard things. We might pick and choose which hard things are worth doing at the moment. But ultimately we can do hard things. We can do things we didn’t think we could do.
- Doing hard things makes us stronger.
- We’re stronger than we think.
- We often limit ourselves, define ourselves.
- We can finish a hard workout. A workout program. A 5K. A half-marathon. A marathon. A college degree.
What do I take from this quote?
- Pride. Because I just did a really hard thing. I finished a very challenging 80-day exercise and nutrition program. I did every single workout and every single rep. And I got better and stronger and I can do things now I couldn’t do 80 days ago.
- Inspiration. I want to tell other people they can do hard things too! I think sometimes we hold ourselves back, we doubt our abilities, we take it too easy on ourselves. Maybe sometimes some inner part of us wants to do something really hard, wants to be pushed.
- Perspective. My husband is a crazy runner guy and he’s done several marathons, including Boston. One of his biggest lessons from all his marathons is that he doesn’t look at other things the same way anymore. Daunting tasks no longer seem so daunting to him. For example when you’re training for a marathon maybe you break those miles up in your mind. Maybe you think of it as a series of 5Ks. When you finish the first 5K, you tackle the second and so on until you’ve run the marathon. A mountain of papers to grade, a yard full of leaves, it’s manageable; you can do it.
- Perspective Part II. You look at things differently because you’ve done something hard. Because you ran a freaking marathon. If you ran a freaking marathon you can certainly do this (whatever this is).
- Fighting Back. Have you ever been told you couldn’t do something? You can do it. Has someone doubted you or made you feel inferior? You can do hard things. You can do anything.
- Awe. Look around you and appreciate something that someone you love has done. What’s hard for us might not be hard for someone else and vice versa. So look at someone who’s done something that you think is really hard and realize how cool it is that they did it. Even if it’s something you have no desire to do.
- Motivation. Sometimes we go through the motions in life without ever pushing ourselves, without doing something out of our comfort zone. There’s value to pushing ourselves. A sense of achievement, pride, self-esteem, confidence, learning….all things that can serve us in all areas of our lives.
I used to be afraid to do hard things. But now I love it. It started when I started exercising. And while finishing physical workouts isn’t the same as other challenges you face in life, it can make you feel more equipped to meet those challenges. More confident. More willing.
Go do something hard. Think about something you’ve done before that challenged you….a class you took, a training you completed, a 5K you ran, a project that took a lot of work. Think of that and acknowledge that you did something hard and that’s awesome. And remember how good it felt to do it….And pick a new hard thing to do 🙂
Mary
P.S. I’m getting ready for another fitness challenge starting soon. Want to join me? Click the “Contact” tab and I’ll reach out to you!
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