Consistency Over Intensity

To claim that my journey to today has been unique, would be shortsighted. While I have been quite open about my life experiences, I have, in no way, convinced myself that my experiences have been more important, impactful, or meaningful than anyone else’s. 

I’ve struggled with self-doubt, low confidence, self-loathing, fear, and expectations, just like everyone else. When I stood at my dying mother’s bedside, one of the last things I asked her was, “Are you proud of me?” Forty-five years later, and my biggest fear was that my mother wouldn’t be proud of what I had accomplished or where I was headed. Think about that? On her deathbed, my mother had to, yet again, confirm her approval of me. 

Now there are a lot of nuances to every relationship; good, bad, ugly, indifferent. My mother and I’s relationship had its fair share of those, and then some. But at the core of every interaction we have with someone else, no matter who that person is in relation to us, is acceptance and respect. We want everyone to think highly of us. But have we ever thought about the relationship we have with ourselves rather than everyone else?

It was this very question that led me to this moment. Two years ago, I was laid off as a successful, impactful, and respected high school administrator. It was the second time in my career as a public school educator that I had succumbed to small town politics and big egos.
 
I needed a job and badly. While I was offered a new job as a school administrator, I was also offered a corporate gig with a higher salary. I chose the latter, following the money but staying within the educational sector (at least I was still using the degree I paid for). 

I went into that six figure corporate job believing it was temporary; I never imagined my public school career was over. But less than a year later, I was no happier than I had been while employed in brick and mortar schools and I was looking for yet another job, most likely back in administration. But I came to realize something; something I had never been able to put into words before:
             
​        The only reason I was looking to go back into schools was because I had to get my full pension, right?

At the age of 45, for the first time, I was able to express that the only thing keeping me in schools was my pension, but at what cost? With ten years left, I had no idea where I would be at 55. I was gambling on my future by risking the present. I simply couldn’t do it anymore. I had spent so many years worrying about what others would think of me, I hadn’t even thought about what I thought of myself. I had spent 45 years prioritizing my relationships with everyone else, never putting the relationship I had with myself first. 

I had become a martyr. I was doing what I thought I was supposed to; angry, frustrated, miserable, and bitter. Age plus years of service must equal 90. It was all I had been saying to myself for decades. But the only 90 I was seeing were my feet 90% of the way out of the educational door; pension be damned. 

So I decided to do something I never had before, put myself first. I wanted to make ME proud. I wanted to make ME approve. I wanted, you could say, to do something I could live with. If I couldn’t prioritize my own well-being, what made me think someone else would? 

And you see, that’s just it; no one prioritizes themself anymore. We either do what we think we’re supposed to, or we put everyone else first and are left with nothing for ourselves. 
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I retired from teaching and began my own business as a fitness trainer, not because it was the financially wise thing to do for my future, but because that’s what I needed to do for myself. And much like working out and training, the rewards of such a career change don’t come right away. Training is not like teaching. You don’t deliver a curriculum, connect with the students, and in a few weeks or, at most, a couple of months, see the qualitative and quantitative results of your efforts. Rather, you build programs, teach clients, correct form, make regressions and progressions on the fly, encourage effort, extrinsically motivate, provide nutritional guidelines, explain physiology, build trust, and all the while, it can take months or even years for clients, and you, to see the results. 

But just like I tell people when they’re training, it isn’t about intensity, it’s about consistency. It’s about showing up everyday for myself. Some days it’ll feel like everything is clicking, and other days it’ll feel like an uphill climb. But the pride is in the process. The happiness is in the little accomplishments. And the drive is in knowing if it was easy, everyone would be doing it. But they’re not. They’re still fighting for 90. I’m fighting for 100. Today, tomorrow, and everyday after. 

-Christine Ravesi-Weinstein, NASM-CPT