What’s the one area of your life you would love to transform? Is it your love life, your home and family life, your work, your friendships, your finances?
None of these are easy things to fix or work on. In fact, they’re often elusive and tricky. Climbing the career ladder is often based on so many factors, and finding a mate you can love and trust isn’t something you can engineer.
Fitness may be elusive as far as motivation or strategy, but how it works is simple. Your body works hard to do something to the point of not being able to do it anymore. During this process, you sweat, you work, you curse, you breath hard and your heart beats faster. You stop, your muscles repair, and the next time you do those exercises, you’re a little bit better.
Facing struggle is a given with fitness. Why not in other areas?
The wonderful thing about fitness is that being out of your comfort zone is a built-in concept. There is no fitness without it. And the joy of having a great workout includes this work and this struggle. The best part is that the struggle doesn’t last that long. Work out with good form and intensity and you can get amazing gains in only 20 minutes a day.
No other area of life seems to embrace struggle this openly. We struggle with work, but so few people love their jobs that the struggle isn’t transmuted to joy. It stays as struggle, frustration, maybe boredom. Our love lives would like to be easy and free in an ideal world, and we often don’t have the bandwidth to get through hard times, let alone understand them. Friendships we have even less time and capability for any challenges. Family life is one where we might push through and understand the joy through the pain, at least if its our own family, but it’s all a very messy concept.
But what if we thought about fitness as a metaphor for all other areas? What if we understood that progress in any form only comes after a sacrifice? And that sacrifice doesn’t need to be a dirty word? It can be liberating and, dare I say, fun? Like a “hurts so good” fun?
I believe the passion and energy we bring to our workouts is more than superficial. I believe it has the power to not only transform our bodies, but also transform our lives—in all areas.
From climbing the silk to climbing new career opportunities.
About 10 years ago, I found myself entranced with something called aerial silk. It’s become more popular in the last 10-15 years as circus arts have become more of a thing. If you’re not familiar with it, check out this video. I saw Teatro Zinzanni in a tent on the San Francisco waterfront, and I was utterly entranced. I started watching aerial videos on YouTube, then attending classes nearby. My life was becoming enveloped with this new art and fitness form, which mesmerized and challenged both my body and mind. Even the most basic moves eluded me until I gained strength, so I got a pull-up bar at home and went to work.
I got better. Every week, sometimes twice or more, I went to class and learned the falls, climbs, poses and moves. It was exciting to do what was actually a tough workout every week, disguised by an art form with specific, tangible skills.
And then a funny thing happened: my dearth of acting work turned into a heap. I got too busy to go to class. I got hired for one show, then another right on top of that, and another after those. Once I had a break, I got a call for another job right away. After scrambling to make time for aerial classes, I had to eventually give it up, since it wasn’t a once-in-a-while thing. It had to be consistent.
My curiosity, passion and wonder for one subject led me to invite the universe in to transform other areas of my life.
Fitness as visualization and transmutation.
You don’t have to accept this as a law or believe that the universe works this way, by the way. The most practical application is in using this drive and focusing it into other areas of your life.
Set a non-fitness intention before your workout, and use the workout as though you are building towards that intention. This works well with running or anything distance-related, as you can run towards your goals rather than running pointlessly in a loop.
Here are six ideas for using the power of fitness to transform your life:
- If you want a better social life, use the pain of lifting weights as the pain of working through your own shyness and insecurity.
- Maybe you want to develop better habits. If you’re a runner, imagine a more evolved you at the end or at the pinnacle of the workout. You can run towards this new you, and you merge with her once you reach that point.
- To set events in motion, you could set a quick, silent intention before any workout that the energy you expend will help move along whatever area you need movement in.
- If you want to find a partner, use the workout to feel your own self-love. Feel the confidence inside yourself when you finish that rep, or do that last burpee. Remember that fitness is an act of loving and appreciation for your body and soul. When you appreciate yourself, you’ll draw others who appreciate you as well.
- If you want to attract a new business or career opportunity, see the workout as climbing that mountain of experience and struggle. See the workout struggle as though it’s a career struggle, and a great opportunity is waiting at the end.
- If you need money and you have a hard time imagining that you can get it without a struggle, then use the workout as your struggle. Then you can be free to accept it.
This is a mind trick, yes. It’s designed to make you more comfortable facing your fears and insecurities, with the bonus of powering you through the workout. It also helps you to visualize, a powerful tool that we often ignore. However, doing so will help you give your mind (and, I would argue, the universe) the blueprint for a future you.