Going All-In

If you’re ambitious like me, it’s easy to put off your health as you push yourself to expand and achieve through the mind. After all, that feels important – the mind tells you so every day.

But what could be more valuable than embodied awareness? Than setting your sights and combining the powers of your senses and gifts into a stream-lined missile of focus and passion?

We sit at the computer day after day, using our bodies like slaves instead of honored vessels and cherished companions, without which we would not be able to experience this moment, at least not in this way.

But all of your achievements are literally for nothing without the gift the body gives you to experience and enjoy them.

Yet we push and ignore and neglect it to the point of disease and dysfunction. We pretend to have mastered our lives when we have not even mastered the most basic relationship between mind and body – between decider and implementer, between you and you.

Tony Robbins’ clients spend months getting in the best physical shape of their lives before beginning to work with him on other areas of their life and business. Because without this coming home – without this first hand awareness of what it takes to bring the mind and body together – to test each other’s limits and learn to grow and trust together, we are only ever flirting with our true capabilities.

So choose today – this week – how you want to show up for yourself. Because all your excuses of why you don’t have time and can’t be bothered to work out, eat better, sleep more, rest deeply, are just that – excuses.

They’re reasons to function below your genius. But you either want it or you don’t. And if you want it, then it’s time to go all-in.

A prayer of thanks

Thank you body…
For supporting me.
For playing, for laughing, for tolerating the swing of caffeine and alcohol.
For wanting to jump and run and flip but settling for the belief that it’s not possible and you’re tired.
For going without ease or softness for years on end and yet still showing up – working harder than ever – to make me a safe, healthy place to be.
For all the times I’ve called on you without warning then left you idle for months on end.
For the times you spoke loudly about what would nourish and nurture you, but I pretended I couldn’t hear and kept eating anyway.
For the years you’ve been my best friend even when haven’t been the same for you. Today I will do better, though I won’t promise I’ll choose love again tomorrow and yet somehow, you accept that.
For slowly unveiling the consequences of my choices, so like all things that age, I will grow to cherish and respect you more.
For letting me love and hate you – both for the promise you hold and the reminder of how I’ve let you – me – down. For forgiving me as I want to forgive you, though sometimes I don’t want to dance with you in the slow unfolding of trust; I give to you, you soften to me.
For safe passage in this life.
For bearing the brunt of my war between loving the inside and wanting to be loved for the outside.
For being the playground upon which my life is tested. You are not the bully nor the leader, but rather a bystander – a pawn – the muscle by which my trials are held.
For the times you’ve been the only line between me and other because I did not know how to consider you or me or them. Because I did not understand you to be the gate-keeper yet somehow undefended on your own.
For the times you’ve forced me to stop and pause and rest.
For the times this mind of mine believed you and for a few beautiful moments you were joyously in harmony.
For the breathe you’ll take this day and every one you’ve taken before.
Thank you.

Love,
Alexis