It takes what it takes

When I turned 35 years old and was still struggling to find my place in this world, I’d go looking for stories of people who came to their careers later in life.  

Grandma Moses was one of my favorites.

For anyone unfamiliar, Grandma Moses was Anna Mary Robertson Moses, a renowned American folk artist who began painting at the age of 78.

78. 

Occasionally I took comfort in her story - feeling as though I had time to figure out what I wanted to be - and occasionally I freaked out - because I didn’t particularly want to wait 45 years to find my career, and who says I’m going to live that long?

(I do harbor hope that my musical skills will take off somewhere in my late 60’s and I’ll go on tour singing folk songs about my love of Girl Scout Cookies). 

I was in my mid-thirties and didn’t know what it was going to take to find my place in this world. And I was running out of patience with the process.

Yesterday I was listening to a podcast and heard the phrase “it takes what it takes.”

And I thought well, that about sums it up. 

We’re always looking for specifics. 

We want a formula for achieving our goals. If I go on this diet and do the "Insanity" workouts every day for a month I will achieve this result.

Sometimes that works out. But sometimes not.

I thought my formula for finding a career was pretty simple. Go to college, get a degree (don’t party too much..), graduate, get a job….

I wasn’t sure what happened after the getting a job part, but I thought the formula was pretty straight forward. Until it wasn’t. 

I couldn’t anticipate that I would suffer from depression. 

I couldn’t anticipate a crisis of faith and confidence. 

I couldn’t anticipate a personal identity crisis. 

We see stories of change and transformation every day in our industry, and I’m grateful to work with the amazing men and women who come in every day and put one foot in front of the other as they try to achieve their goals. The health and fitness journey can be a frustrating process. 

“I’ve been eating better and coming to the gym three times a week and I’ve only lost three pounds in this first month when I thought I'd lose 10.”

Frustrating I know. 

But no two people are alike. We have a basic formula that helps with the fat loss process - just like I had a formula for finding a career - but it’s just a building block. 

What takes one person three months to achieve might take another six months. 

The journey to better health takes patience and persistence and consistency and a kindness to yourself. 

And it takes what it takes.