It’s ok.

That’s your permission slip for the day. That’s your golden ticket to Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. Your tiny piece of paper that says you have permission to do what you need to do to take care of yourself today.

Sometimes it’s ok to take a break. 

It’s ok to break down.

It’s ok.

I can’t think of anything more powerful in terms of permission than those two words. So I’m using them carefully and thoughtfully and with as much meaning as I can pour into them this morning.  

It's ok.

You spend so much of your time taking care of everyone else. People at work, spouses and children and parents at home. Friends and family and people in your church. 

Today I’m giving you the permission slip that says it’s ok to take care of you. 

I see so many fitness posts about rising and grinding, and that’s ok if that’s what works for you. 

But I don’t really want my days to be filled with long arduous tasks that I endure. My dad lost his job in the steel mills when I was a kid and spent the rest of his working days as a corrections officer in a maximum security prison. He did enough enduring of his days for the both of us. 

Life is too short to constantly rise and grind. 

Yes sometimes you have to push yourself through a workout, but the only thing I want to grind in the morning is my coffee beans. 

I would argue that when workouts and life and long runs begin to feel like they are a grind - when work and relationships and life begins to feel that hard, day in and day out, then it might be time to take a break.

Take inventory today, right now. What do you need right now? What do you need today? How will you take care of yourself today? Sure we all probably need more sleep and a vacation and more sunny days like yesterday. We have some degree of control over the sleep, but often very little over vacations and the weather.

What do you have control over?

Maybe you need to take a day off from the gym and walk outside. Maybe you need to get back in to the gym because you know you feel better when you show up. Maybe you need to eat lunch away from your desk. Make yourself a priority.

I don’t know what you need today. But whatever that need might be, here’s your permission slip.

It’s ok. 

Ok?

Good talk. :)

If you follow me on social media, you know that I started a challenge for the month of April, entitled “Bail on the Scale.”

I promoted said challenge with the following video.

Yes, I have feelings about the scale.

I have feelings about our obsession with the scale. 

So I took it out of the bathroom at work. 

And I ran one over with my car. 

For many of us, and women especially, the scale becomes the central ingredient to failure and success. This device is so defining and confirms what writer Annie Lamott refers to as our inner sense of disfigurement.

Our inner sense of disfigurement. There's a loaded phrase. 

I know that there is something so wrong and so broken in me that if other people truly saw what I see, they wouldn’t want to spend time with me. They wouldn’t be my friend. They wouldn’t love me. We have this sense that we are flawed beyond measure but that no one sees it but us. We walk around waiting for someone to discover this hidden secret within us, knowing that the moment our horrible true selves become visible, we will be appropriately banished from their lives. 

We feel so strongly about this disfigurement that when people acknowledge us with something so daring as a compliment, we don't even know what to do with ourselves. 

We deflect kind words. 

“You look fantastic!”

“Oh well, I found this dress on sale for 20 bucks and it fits me alright I guess. I mean at least it hides my love handles.”

Responses like these are so second nature we probably don't even know that we do it.

"You did a terrific job with that presentation today."

"Well I tripped over a few words and that middle slide sucked so I'm surprised anyone knew what I was talking about."

I couldn't be more guilty of this one. Yesterday a friend paid me a compliment about my blog. And my first response?

"I wish I was doing a better job."

We bring our best Eyore to someone else's Tigger when it comes to a compliment. 

I also started this scale challenge because we need to stop chasing good enough. Forget chasing happiness. There is a cultural obsession that once we reach a certain number on the scale, a certain pant size, a certain waist size, we will finally be good enough. 

It's a tremendous burden to walk around with that kind of shame. And yet many of us, men and women alike, do it day in and day out. We all have our measuring sticks and qualities that we're trying to develop and goals we want to achieve. Goal weight is a big one - but we're also trying to measure success in our careers, as parents, as spouses, as humanitarians - but when can we rest in the arm chair of good enough? 

I can't answer that question. I'm pretty obsessed with figuring out what it means to be a good enough coach and writer. But I'm trying to ask. I'm trying to pay attention. That's what I've got for now. 

I don't know what will come of the four week bail on the scale challenge. 

But in the first week, people are supporting one another, a women posted an early morning selfie with her two beautiful children, and one woman has taken to flipping off the scale every time she walks by. 

Maybe, just maybe, we can begin the conversation of realizing that while it is important to establish goals and work towards them, it's equally important to delight in today, and to learn to appreciate that we are good enough right now, here, in this moment. 

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.