The Struggle Bus has been rolling hard starting 2023. So shortly after my girls got over their terrible cold, I ended up with vertigo. I hate vertigo, with a passion. I don’t get nauseous but I do get really dizzy. It basically lays me out until it calms down. It’s happened about three times and tends to be due to an ear infection which I’ve been getting due to using earbuds so much for work. It doesn’t matter how careful I am about cleaning them, it just happens sometimes.

I was dealing with vertigo for about 2 weeks. The first 9 days I couldn’t even work because I’m just so disoriented. I feel like a useless human when it happens. What’s really tough is that I leave everyone to pick up the slack around me. I’m lucky in that regard because Elsa is a great mom and my team at work couldn’t be any more solid, but it eats at me.

The other thing is the fallout, when I’m gone people fall off the wagon. It’s just one of those natural occurrences when you are a personal trainer or coach. It doesn’t have to do with laziness or lack of effort. It has everything to do with routine. When someone is used to seeing you at the same time on a certain day and that falls off, it throws you off. You can roll with it and adapt but the unexpected has a way of slowing down progress, at least for a short time.

This setback is putting more pressure on me when it comes to my commitment to be the fittest I’ve ever been by 40. As of now I have about 5 months to drop the weight I want off, lean out to the body fat % I’m working towards, and make it so my hip doesn’t hurt anymore. Urgency is important here because 5 months might sound like a lot but we are already in February of 2023.  It was just January 2023 a couple of days ago. It goes by quickly.

In the past there have been times where I’ve given up on big goals. And there was a time when the setbacks that have happened this year would have completely derailed me and I would have given up. In life, failure in itself is not a failure if you learn a valuable lesson, pivot to ensure you don’t make the mistake and attempt it again with the new data. Failure is only failure if you quit.  

I’ve failed many times and, despite not really wanting to share this, several of those failures were because I gave up. I know for a fact that you pay a higher price for quitting than you do for failing. I’m sharing this not because I’m talking myself out of quitting because that’s not happening; I don’t live that life anymore. I’m sharing this because I know there are people out there, especially at this time of year, who are feeling like they can’t do something. They can’t get in better shape, they don’t have time to be healthy or they’re just too tired. It seems hopeless sometimes.

I’m reminding you that you are worth the effort and that you CAN see success. Just keep moving forward. Figure out three small things you can fix today and fix them. Worry about what you can do today, not what you are not going to do tomorrow. Get after it…