Faith

I’m not a religious person. I’ll get that out of the way right now. Faith is often associated with religion, but that’s or what I mean here. I’m thinking of the other meanings, more specifically that to have faith is to have trust.

Confidence in a person or thing

The obligation of loyalty or fidelity to a person, promise, engagement, etc.

The observance of this obligation, fidelity to one’s promise, oath, allegiance, etc.

Dictionary.com

How does this fit into health and fitness? In lots of ways. Wellbeing encompasses both the body and the mind. When the mind and the body are in alignment there is health. Mind and body working together. There is trust in the process, that what you’re doing is for your greater good. 

Conversely when mind and body are at odds you have an internal struggle: “I want to lose weight so I’ll stop eating. Or I’ll make myself throw up”. That’s an extreme example. For me it is much more subtle: “I want to lose weight. But I want that beer and that ice cream. And I want to sit on the couch and watch Netflix”. 

That’s where I am right now. I’m on my second week of school vacation and I’ve gotten out to run once. I’ve spent a lot of time doing other things, so I haven’t been a total sloth, but I have been doing a lot of relaxing. And thinking that I should be working out and eating better. 

And then this morning this word popped into my head. Faith. Trust yourself. Have confidence in your abilities. 

This is not easy for me. I lean more towards “no” than “yes”. But I’m finding comfort in putting faith into something bigger than just me. I mean trusting that things will work out even when we can’t predict the outcome. We don’t know what’s going to happen, but we do our best anyway. We put our trust in ourselves and each other. We learn to open up instead of close off. We move past fear and realize our goals for ourselves. 

I signed up for a race this fall. I’m looking forward to it because it’s right in my own backyard and my cousin is running it too. She’s faster than I am, which is fine. I’m not interested in competing with her time-wise. What I do want for this race is to do the best I can. And that means the work starts now. Time to put my faith in the process. Overcome my fear (and couch potato tendencies). 

I’m in a time of transition. From a school year full of stress-filled work weeks to 8 weeks with a whole lot of not much planned. It can be a recipe for laziness and wasted time. And yes every vacation should have a little bit of that. But it’s also a wonderful opportunity that I don’t intend to squander. 

There are a lot of unknowns out there. Plenty of reason to be afraid. Change is difficult (and it doesn’t get easier the older you get). But it’s not impossible. Have some faith in yourself, the process, a Higher Power if that’s your thing, but don’t let fear hold you back. If not now, when?

ROTH