Are you listening?

(are you?)

This is for me.

This is for you.

Life is tough. It fucking sucks some days. We wake up day in and day out unhappy with who we see in the mirror. We scream inside for a change. Any change. We are desperate for the courage to draw that line and tell the universe (but really ourselves) that enough is enough. No more being obese. No more being depressed. No more sitting around watching life pass us by. No more wondering “what if” and “why can’t I”. No more “I’ll never” and “I wish I had”. No more relying on medication (whether it’s prescribed by a doctor or comes in the form of food) to suppress what we really want: To Feel Alive. We want to feel in the core of our being that we are who we are meant to be and above all we deserve to feel loved, wanted, important, strong, fast, happy, content, goal oriented, successful, triumphant. We deserve to continually move forward. We deserve to feel the frustrations, confusion, the mourning of the old self, the fear our own greatness, the anger of why we waited and the deep sighs of relief when we finally….finally begin making the choices, implementing the decisions, taking the steps forward…

Failure is not fatal.

It won’t be easy to do what we’re about to do; To live. To cast away the self of old and seek the self of new. Second guessing will become a regular occurence, emotions will get in the way, steps forward will take a back seat to steps taken in another direction. We’ll hang our head in frustration. Feel defeated. The old self will not let go so easily. It will battle the new self and at the end of the day, it might win. We may find comfort in old behaviors while the new self is screaming to not give up and we whisper “tomorrow, tomorrow I’ll try again”.

Success is not final.

There is no ending to this journey. That may be the root of all our fears. There is no end to this journey. We will never look in the mirror and think “This, this is the end of my story”. We can not use the successes of our Life Changing Journeys to finalize our travels in this world. The depression subsides, the weight comes down, the emotions get under control, the medication gets tossed aside and we feel more in control of our new self as the old self realizes it is no longer welcome. But that is not the end. Constant improvement. We become faster, stronger, happier. Our goals get a little farther out of our reach and think bigger, better and much more broad than we ever imagined.

It is the courage to continue that counts.

This is my life. Constantly looking forward as I am held back by feeling of failures. I think about my old self and wonder if I made the right decisions because someone else is hurting. I think about my new self and when I look in the mirror I don’t see just one pair of eyes looking back at me. I see two. Mine struggling to accept that I deserve to make the choices I’ve made. The other belonging to her, telling me that these are absolutely the right decisions.  The constant pull of old and new. The constant emotional ups and downs that comes from trying to be better (happier), trying to be stronger (mentally) and finding goals that are a little farther out of my comfort zone because I was meant to be great. I was meant to change the world. I was meant to stand up and take control because I’m not only giving myself the courage to continue, but giving the gift of change to those that are still deciding whether today is the day.

(failure is not fatal)

(success is not final)

but also

 (failure is not final)

(success is not fatal)

When I am at the end of my days, the only thing that will matter will be did I have the courage to continue? Did I have the courage to stop saying “What if” and go forth to seek the answers of “how will I get there”? Did I have the courage to believe in myself, to believe in others and instead of thinking “this is it”, standing tall and proclaiming “what’s next”? Are you listening? I’m talking to you (to me). I don’t care how many mistakes you think you’ve made. I don’t care if you lost only to gain it all back and then some. I don’t care if you struggle with the idea that you deserve to be happy, I don’t care if you look in the mirror and feel like this is it, this is the end of your story….

It’s not.

It’s the courage to continue the writes our stories.

And courage never ends.