On Friday nights in the 90s my brother and I were watching Moesha on UPN. I’ll never forget the episode when Moesha and her best friends Kim, Niecy, and Hakeem are talking about their upcoming visit to a prospective college and Kim says to the group, “I want to get my knowledge on, you know like that commercial say, ‘A mind is a terrible thing’” and Moesha responds by saying, “To waste, Kim. To waste.”

We laughed at the joke when the show aired but looking back I believe they were both right. The mind can be a terrible thing when you allow yourself to dwell on the things you fear. It can be a terrible thing when all you do is ponder your doubts. You can literally convince yourself a nightmare can and will be your reality.

The mind can also be a terrible thing to waste if you neglect its power to convince you that everything you want is possible. It’s a terrible thing to waste if you fail to use it to harness the powerful things inside you that you were called to do. Every choice, every decision, every action all started in the mind. This is why the Proverbial writer advised us to:

“Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.”

Proverbs 4:23

This advice proved to be true in motivating myself to be consistent during my fitness journey. It’s funny, when I began it I didn’t realize how much my thoughts and emotions influenced how hard I was willing to push myself. Going in I really thought it was going to solely be a physical process. Boy was I wrong.

Training Begins

At the conclusion of my trainer interviews I ultimately chose a gym that was 5 minutes from my house and offered semi-private training. I figured it being 5 minutes away would help with consistency on days I wasn’t feeling it, and that semi-private training would meet my needs because it would be a small group of people and I’d get a lot of feedback. I chose to go two times a week for 60 minute sessions.

Sidebar: If you’re new to fitness like I was semi-private training is when you work with a physical trainer and 1-4 other people. It’s more affordable than one on one training and there’s less pressure because you’re not in a large group. It’s also great because the trainer designs workouts based on patterns they see in the group. They accommodate each individual by adjusting workouts to meet where each person is in their fitness journey. It was perfect for me.

During my first month no one else signed up for my time slot with my trainer so I got to work with her solo. I really enjoyed it because I got a lot of feedback on my form and she created workouts just for me. This worked out well because I learned from my doctor that I had a common condition a lot of women deal with after pregnancy called abdominal diastasis. These are the muscles that form a six pack. These muscles are separated during pregnancy and cause a gap commonly called a pooch. I learned from my doctor that it’s important your trainer know you have this as you’ll need some core exercises modified to not exacerbate the problem. I loved that my trainer was open to this and adapted my core workouts to help me.

After a month of working out solo I started true semi-private training when someone else signed up for my time slot. I liked working out with her because she was not new to strength training and watching her move I realized I had a lot more progress to make with getting stronger physically.

Disappointment Begins

A month into working out and watching what I was eating (more on that in my next post!) I began to get impatient. It’s laughable now but in the moment that impatience was real. I was like, “Where these results at? I’m putting in work! Why doesn’t my body look different? I still got this pooch!“

And on top of the pooch, I was gaining weight y’all. Gaining weight! I was like, “What?!” I now know the increasing number on the scale was me building muscle but at the time I was like, “This don’t make no sense!”

I’m grateful I was listening to Atomic Habits by James Clear when I allowed these self-deprecating thoughts to creep in. His advice helped me keep going.

On days workouts felt brutal I would remind myself of the ice cube analogy in chapter 1. He describes an ice cube sitting on a table in a cold room where the temperature is 25 degrees. Here’s the direct quote:

What Progress is Really Like

Ever so slowly the room begins to heat up.

Twenty-six degrees.

Twenty-seven.

Twenty-eight.

The ice cube is still sitting on the table in front of you.

Twenty-nine degrees.

Thirty.

Thirty-one.

Still, nothing has happened.

Then, thirty-two degrees. The ice begins to melt. A one-degree shift, seemingly no different from the temperature increases before it, has unlocked a huge change.

Atomic Habits, James Clear

Even though I couldn’t see it, I was making progress. This quote helped me understand how progress works. In the gym and in life progress is slow. Real slow. This pace is counterintuitive to our society’s culture. Think about it. You post a picture on social media and instantly you get likes. You put food in the microwave and 30 seconds later it’s hot. You press a button on a remote control and within milliseconds your television comes on. You order a package from Amazon and it arrives 1-2 days later. We are programmed to receive what we want quickly.

And while society’s culture works that way, God doesn’t. The universe doesn’t. Beautiful things take time to grow. Anything that’s worth it in life is not obtained quickly.

But because we’re so used to our “microwave culture” we want what we want and we want it now. According to Clear this is what stops so many people from continuing to try pursuing what they want. They put in a little work, fail to see a tangible result and throw their hands in the air.

“I’m done!” and they’re returning back to their old ways. But in order to get to your breakthrough you have to persist. You have to push through what he calls the Plateau of Latent Potential.

I love the diagram above because it helps me train my mind to keep putting effort in by making small changes in my life. Keep showing up at the gym. Keep lifting weights. Keep doing push ups. Keep sprinting. Keep doing pull-ups. Results take time and my efforts are not being wasted.

I think God intentionally makes a wait for the desires of our hearts. If we immediately received them we wouldn’t appreciate them. We would toss the blessing to the side. I think he makes us wait because it’s during the valley of disappointment that you learn how to endure. When you’re in the valley you learn to tune out all the noise. You learn to focus on him. You learn to hear that little voice inside you we call our intuition. You learn to embrace it, let it guide you.

The best part of the valley of disappointment? If you choose to walk through it and not run? You become so much stronger. You have so much more resolve. And nothing and no one can convince you that you cannot have what you want. You’ve walked through the fire. Why would you not keep going?

I’m glad September me found this book and listened to it. It was what I needed to train my mind to keep going. Results in the gym did not come quickly. I’m just starting to notice the fruits of the work I’ve been putting in. Below are some highlights from my journey.

To connect back to my first post, my fitness journey has taught me a lot about the power of manifestation and the power of continuing to try every day. I know this is training ground for the obstacles I will face outside the gym pursuing my dream of becoming a published writer. I am thankful for the ups and downs of this journey. I am excited to see what happens when I continue to show up every day with my writing. It’s going to be big and it’s going to be beautiful.

Until next time,

Jeanine