I don’t know about you, but exercise for the sake of healthy living wasn’t on the list when I was growing up. At age 38, I decided to get in shape, make an exercise plan and work it! Well, that was the first of several attempts to jumpstart an exercise program—from jazzercise classes, to a body kinetics program, to aerobics classes, ultimately to running and finally to strength training.
I have been dumbfounded to figure out it’s a process. Of course, it all started with that first step from no exercise plan to something, but what I didn’t mention above were all the months inbetween when there was NO exercise let alone an exercise plan!
After all these years, it has become clear that what was working in me was a VERY slow evolution from intellectual acknowledgement to fully embracing regular exercise in my life.
This foreign activity, not part of my existence until mid life, stands as a great example of what we hold onto most fiercely when it’s unknown, not experienced and at the outset, not connected to us–psychologically or emotionally.
As we think about the “new normal” of this decade—all the fast paced changes in our work and our personal lives, be kind to yourself and remember it’s a process.
June 30, 2010
Lee A. Nold-Lewis
