I am feeling a bit a lot frustrated today. I find myself in a place that I have been before. A place that is the result of falling back into over-working and not taking care of myself for the last 3 months. A place I didn’t want to be again.

I tell myself it was out of necessity, setbacks at work that lead to this. As I told you earlier this year, I made some staff changes and so my story excuse goes like this…”I have no choice. There is no one else to take up the slack of a rapidly growing business than my very small staff and me. Even if it means sacrificing myself–I promise it will only be for a short while”

So here we stand 3 months later and the storm has passed (Thank God). It was painful but we have brought on new team members that are GREAT (Hallelujah!) and we can certainly see the light at the end of the tunnel. We are no longer carrying the weight of the world on our own. We can now get our lives back.

And this help should feel great, right? In fact in concept it does. It feels tremendous. It feels life-changing. And I know it WILL BE really soon. But I would be doing you (and me) a disservice to not show you “behind the curtain” of my journey and the aftermath of falling off the wagon (and being run over by it) for those few months. I have to tell you what I learned…AGAIN.

You see, when you have a BIG victory like I have had over the last two years in the form of getting healthy, losing 40 pounds and really changing the way I think, you feel like you are “fixed” once and for all. You feel like you have finally conquered this demon you have been battling for years. And the truth is I did conquer it.

But where I went wrong was thinking it is a one-time fix.  Thinking I was on the wagon permanently. It isn’t permanent. And even though in my head I know it is a life-long commitment to be healthy, I started ACTING like it was all nice and tidy and complete and I could just go back to “being me” with all my no exercising and poor eating choices and everything would stay perfectly “fixed”.

WRONG!! And I am really seeing what I did to myself on a daily basis right now with physical pain and body injury , 5 pounds that have crept back on the scale (ugh! and right before swimsuit season no less) and my body seems to be generally ticked off at me. It is not bouncing back quickly. It is digging in it’s heels. It is going to take some REAL work to lose these 5 pounds, get my low back fixed with yoga, get into a cardio habit again and start really feeling great once more. And I am trying like hell to not be down-right mad at myself because my head and my heart say that will only prolong the process. But I am VERY frustrated.

Thankfully, as this always seems to work, just this morning one of my daily email subscriptions popped into my inbox. It was like my mind had been read when I opened en*theos from Brian Johnson and saw this AMAZING post by Christine Hassler called “Feel like you are backtracking?”

I wanted to scream “Hell YES I do!” but I didn’t want to wake up my family at 6:00am. So I quietly read to myself these amazing words…

There is an expectation in the personal growth industry placed on consistently making positive changes. The promise is that over time as we do our work, we continuously “get better” (whatever “better” means). What often isn’t addressed is that our learning and growth isn’t linear. It’s not a straight shot from an “aha” moment to being totally transformed. Please don’t torture yourself by buying into the misunderstanding that your growth needs to be straight up. That’s a lot of pressure – and also not possible. Growth is more fluid. And over time the lows (or perceived backtracking) become shorter in duration and the time in between them becomes longer.

Sometimes the best way we learn is when we take a few steps that feel backwards. Often when we have a big “aha,” the Universe will then bring us a situation that feels similar to past experiences. Often people get frustrated and think, “This again? I thought I learned this already!” That may be accurate; you may have learned the lesson and now the Universe is bringing you an amazing opportunity to practice the learning so that you can fully integrate it.

BINGO! There it is. I am supposed to PRACTICE what I have learned so I can FULLY integrate it. TOTAL Clarity! The Answer. I had already told myself last week that I knew there was a reason I was in this place again. I knew it was a moment I was supposed to learn something BIG. And I was pretty sure the lesson was “You can’t stop taking care of yourself day and night for 3 months and not have major damage as a result and a lot of hard work to fix it!” And the question I was to ask myself was “Do you really want to be at the bottom of this hill again, needing to muster the energy to climb it once more?” and “Why do you make your life harder than it has to be, Tobi?”

But the great news is that I saw the light this time after only 3 months and 5 pounds, not a year and 40 pounds. I clued in before I had an insurmountable obstacle to climb. I got the message and can likely repair the damage in the next month or so. And that’s not so bad. A month is really short in the grand scheme of things and in fact this learning experience is another VICTORY for me! Will this be the last time I learn this lesson? I hope so, but probably not. But will I see my mistakes even sooner than 3 months next time? I’d like to think I will.

And have I REALLY learned what my unhealthy behavior meant for me this time? Well thanks to my health coach extraordinare, Julianne, I think I figured out that consciously making bad food choices because I am in a miserable few months and I “deserve” to eat what I want plus consciously deciding I am too tired or busy for exercise is a way of “withholding love” from myself. WOW! Another Lightbulb!

I now know I was punishing myself for making bad staffing decisions and bad scheduling decisions. And I was also feeding my emotions of misery, anger and frustration with food again. Self-sabatoge at its best. So just like any other kind of addict, emotional eating is a very slippery slope. But loving myself first…self love and self care, REALLY is the answer to fix this addiction. Love Myself First! Stop Withholding Love. Hello?…I have been preaching this message to all of you, but somewhere along the last few months I stopped listening to it.

So there you have it. Another transparent look at my journey in business and in life. Are you struggling with setbacks? Have you back-tracked and you’re having a hard time getting back on the wagon? Are there promises that you made to yourself that you are not keeping? Are you withholding love from yourself…love you really deserve?

Tell me your story in the comments below. I think the more we embrace our challenges with honesty and without shame, and we love ourself first, the less challenging these obstacles become and the less power they have over us.

Today is the day I get back on the wagon. It may be a bumpy ride, but at least I am back in the driver’s seat and I’m loving myself along the way. Giddy-up!

xo,

p.s. To find all these great quotes, check out my Health and Fitness Pinterest Board. It’s my source of inspiration for a healthy AND Happy body!