Part Five: Bad Habits are Sneaky

Friday night 3.18.22 I received horrible news, my gym was changing hands and DK and I had no place to train. (Our gym changed ownership and DK’s new gym location was still under construction). This threw me into a needy tailspin. While trying to stay on track from that news, a week later during training I stood up from a 115-pound squat and threw my back out. Now I was hurt, no place to train and feeling desperate. Yikes!!

Feeling needy and desperate is never attractive, and for me, brings out behaviors my alter-ego Monica loves, but are really detrimental to (Esther) Marie’s growth. As this session (when I hurt my back) was finishing, I planned on letting Monica visit tonight. Well, as usual, letting Monica have her way does me no good and on Saturday morning I woke up with a huge hangover and a back that ached at every movement. However, I did manage to drive and get a big burger, fries and churros. As the weekend progressed, I hurt more and more and found myself in bed, eating junk food, taking the leftover meds from breaking my ribs and hating life. Could I be any closer to exercising old bad habits?

On top of it, one of my clients was out of town and I had to make an emergency trip to her house on Monday. I was afraid to drive, but did it anyway. Luckily, I was able to get an appointment that Monday with a chiropractor that was close to my client’s house. Dr. Reyes discovered my back problems were a combination of first a knee injury that went to the groin that I had not taken care of, that settled in the back. My body said ENOUGH!! After my exam, Dr. Reyes told me that I could not workout for a week. I really thought my life was over!!! In 4 days I had gone from positive body builder to complete screw up….this needed to change!!

On day 5 I finally got up and took an assessment of my surroundings. My apartment was a mess, my diet consisted of junk food and cocktails and I was mentally checked out. I could not workout and I was very negative. I reached out to my fabulous web designer, Courtney Wake, and told her I was done with it all. She gently but forcibly told me that I could not let it be okay to fail. In exercising my old behaviors, I was letting failure become my new standard. Her words resonated with me. I got a moment of clarity and after some soul searching, I decided that failure was not an option and I started pulling myself out of my rut. After reaching out to the other positive influences in my life, I took action. I cleaned my apartment, threw out the junk food, prepped my “clean” meals, and made a plan of what exercises I could do even with my back limitations. At this point I also needed to do the things that make me feel powerful and accomplished. The basics things that are key for me are:

1-Workout twice a day, once early morning to start my day off right and the 2nd after my

last client.

2-Eat and drink clean and keep current with my logs.

3-Look my best regardless!!! (Dress good, feel good)

4-Cook and prep my food the night before and have it ready for the next day.

5-Engage with my inner circle.

I guess by now you know that I am far from perfect and it is really easy to let old bad behaviors sneak back in no matter how successful you have been. One of the life lessons I continue to work on is resilience through adversity. Since I flunked the test of resilience in the last 5 days, I will need to take the test again (just like school). I put the top 5 basics for me into play and hopefully I will be stronger and wiser to do a better job at keeping on track no matter what situation comes into play. And yes….the lessons will keep coming so I will have plenty of opportunities to take the test again and again and again…..

While analyzing the last week’s behaviors DK advised me that nothing can be made out of perfection. What a positive spin on some negative behaviors. Sounds like something to discuss further…..maybe in the next blog!!!