Commitment to ourselves. It’s the most important and the first thing to go when life gets a little bit chaotic or overwhelming. When we find ourselves in a scenario with a commitment to another person the follow through is non-negotiable, but if the commitment is to ourselves we check out, give in, or give up. We don’t make our goals and commitments to ourselves mandatory; it’s much easier to compromise our own integrity than to compromise our integrity with another human being.

The question becomes what is the cause for it being so effortless to let ourselves down?

I have a friend who in the midst of teaching the one portion of her yoga class would state “turn to the person next to you and tell them they’ve got this” followed by “tell yourself that you’ve got this” The foundation and message in this was that you would never look to someone and tell them that they were not capable of what they’re trying to achieve or who they’re trying to become but somehow we drop the ball when it comes to what we tell ourselves.

The commitment dissipates and the connection to our goals gets lost when things start to seem unattainable in the midst of struggle or setback. There’s a tendency to shift how we talk to ourselves when these circumstances arises. We become a product of our circumstances and can allow them to define who we are, to check us out of what’s possible and into the default mindset of selling ourselves short of what we are capable of.

This past weekend I competed for the first time in six months. Throughout my time of training and competition I’ve endured a handful of cuts to fulfill some concept of needing to be in a specific weight class. It was previously decided that I would compete up a weight class where my body had naturally been sitting to create an enjoyable experience and opportunity to exceed my previous performances.

I stepped on the scale every morning throughout the week and was sitting above the required number to make weight. Thursday morning when I woke up seeing an increase I had a dramatic shift in mindset. I feel into a state of demeaning myself, my body, my ability to be the athlete I striving to be.

My self-talk took a turn from feeling confident and more than prepared to step on the platform and compete to over analyzing my worth and abilities based on the number produced on a scale. I let my mind spiral thoughts of how inadequate I was for moving up a weight class to train and compete to the best of my abilities and then coming up against a struggle of not being able to maintain that weight class number.

When you come against resistance in pursuit of everything you want to have happen what do you choose to do?

You could take the path of least resistance. You could check out. You could run. You could fight it. You could give up.

OR

You could define who you want to be, who you are looking to become, and how you achieve what is more the obtainable by not allowing the circumstance to define you.

The thoughts ran through my head of refusing to compete or how I would shame myself if taking part in competition required me to move up another weight class.

There is where I was presented with a choice. Be defined by the circumstances, in turn letting myself down or move through the circumstances and define my goals and what I’m capable of.

Nothing changed. There was nothing different about the results I had produced over months of training, nothing was lost in how prepared I was in my movements, in the weights I could pull of the ground. Nothing changed except what I was saying.

Those moments are a choice to define who you are, who you want to be, and what you want to have happen. It’s when you choose to be undefined by the circumstances and that you create space for the possibilities of what could happen when you are not defined by anything but your own word.

The moment I put a halt to resisting the circumstances dropped the negative self-talk, and choose to define my fight was the moment I received my power back to define myself and take control of being in creation of exactly what I wanted to have happen.

I left my competition, not only making weight, but experiencing the best performance of my lifting career thus far.

The circumstances you’ll endure won’t change the abilities and possibilities available to you. They can’t rob you of the work you’ve put in, they can’t alter what you’ve achieved, and they can’t stop you from moving forward on the path to everything you want to create.

You can keep talking yourself out of the thing you are hoping for or you can decide that your dream is more powerful than your excuse.

It’s about disrupting the habits, even in the moments of wanting to quit, especially in those moments, not easy buttoning your way out, but proving to yourself that you can keep your word.

Today, choose who you want to be, choose commitment to who you are and who you can be, and be open to all of what’s possible when you do.