Your Imaginary Trainer

Hey everyone! This week’s [optional] #DishTheFit theme (hosted by Jill Conyers @ JillConyers.com, & Jessica Joy @ TheFitSwitch.org) is…

What would your imaginary trainer say to motivate you?

Unless you count my ex from about half a decade ago, I’ve never actually had an ~*official*~ trainer. He’s the one who started me on my fitness journey, so although things didn’t work out between us, I will always be grateful for everything he taught me, because he’s a big reason for why I wasn’t a disgrace to be Exercise Biology major. :P

I’ve never actually been sedentary, but halfway through my junior year, my dean gave me the green light to change my original major, double major, and take all the classes I wanted. He was an avid runner and also lifted weights and was super-interested in nutrition and healthy living, so I asked him to teach me, and before I knew it, he’d taught me how to lift weights and how to eat healthy (complete with grocery store runs for active learning), and was dragging me on his longass runs (yes, I really used to run back in the day :o ),

I guess I’m kinda cheating on the theme since he’s not imaginary, but there were a lot of encouraging things he used to email me for inspiration/motivation/support. (The emails are because we were both disgustingly busy pretty much all hours of the day. More on that later in this post.) One of the things he sent me that stuck with me the most was this:

This is a fake text graphic I made from Recite, har har. But this is probably where my I-don’t-give-a-shit-what-you-think attitude evolved from.

(He found that quote while I was battling out my future career decisions with my family and with myself, and reading that really helped.)

I’ve always responded much more favorably to kindness and positivity. My piano teacher actually used to get me to practice not by yelling at me for sucking at life and making me feel like a failure in life, but by sounding really disappointed in me after a particularly abysmal lesson. (I’m sorry! :'( )

One such lesson actually caused me to shut myself in a practice room for 4 hours straight the next day. I hate disappointing or making people I really look up to sad, and I function best when I’m making the people I care about happy, so it was incredibly effective.

Tangents aside, I also really appreciated support and encouragement, especially whilst suffering through the death runs he talked me into doing with him:

It’s really cool that your running and working out are going well though and that you’re sticking with it; you should be proud of yourself! :)

If we weren’t working out together, he’d periodically check in and ask how things were going. It kept me accountable, and the progress I made fueled my dreams of badassery. :D

But aside from kindness, positivity, support and encouragement, he was also good about helping me to find a balance of sorts in my super-hectic life. Or putttin’ me in my place, as I liked to term it. I had a real problem with trying to do everything in the world. (…I may or may not have stuffed almost 7 years’ worth of education into 4. >_>)

 This is what he told me after I told him I was seriously considering tacking on a third major. lawl.

“By the way, I would totally support you if you wanted to do the ethnomusicology track after all, but it seems like you never give yourself a break!  I’ve gone through the same thing too, where I feel like I always should be doing something- always doing something to challenge yourself, or always trying to achieve something.  I think that’s really good…and well, you don’t have to agree with this, but I really think there’s a limit to it.  And we don’t really always HAVE to be doing something.  Maybe it’d be good to finally take some time and just be…just to give yourself to enjoy life for a while, instead of being controlled by a schedule all the time.  I seriously bet you’d really appreciate and enjoy- just being to do the things you want to do for yourself to relax for a while.  Just because you’d choose not to do, that doesn’t mean you’re a quitter, or that you don’t have ambition, trust me.  I mean, really, you don’t have anything to prove, so don’t let anyone else talk you into that, or tell you that you’re quitting.“

• What would your trainer tell you? (Real or imaginary!)
• What’s something someone has told you that’s really stuck with you?