You are not special

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2012, achievement, clara k.showalter, commencement, david mccullough jr, free, generation, graduation, growth, helicopter parents, kids, motivational, potential, range, speeches, you are not special

spe·cial

adjective

1. of a distinct or particular kind or character: a special kind of key.

2. being a particular one; particular, individual, or certain:

You’d better call the special number.

3. pertaining or peculiar to a particular person, thing,

instance,etc.; distinctive; unique: the special features of a plan.

4. having a specific or particular function, purpose, etc.: a special messenger.

5. distinguished or different from what is ordinary or usual: a special occasion; to fix something special.

We live in a time where kids are being taught that they are all special and remarkable. In sports leagues across the US, every kid receives a trophy. Schools hand out merit awards for just about anything. Parents go over the top to ensure that their child is treated with kid gloves, to the point of calling college professors to complain about grades, and even trying to sit in on job interviews.

We’ve created a generation of kids who don’t understand that special means just that. It is not an all inclusive category. When kids aren’t allowed to grow into their own potential through failure, we cut their legs out from under them.

High school teacher David McCullough Jr delivered a great commencement address on this very subject. The last lesson he tries to give his students is clear. You aren’t special if you aren’t reaching for your own potential.

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You have it easy

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body for life, clara k.showalter, fitness, life, motivational

“It’s easy for you.” 

That’s a refrain I’ve gotten a lot over the years. I’ve been told that I can’t understand the difficulty others face. It was obviously easy for me to drop weight and keep it off. What I did can’t possibly work for others, somehow I’m special. 

Really? It’s easy is it? I wish I’d known that at the time. At the time I had 60 pounds to drop it was anything but easy. Breaking a lifetime of habits doesn’t happen overnight. It happens one brutally difficult day at a time. Making a decision to walk past the comforting foods, and pick vegetables I didn’t like was not easy. Eating those vegetables and not leaving them to rot in the fridge wasn’t easy. Telling my friends “no thank you” when they offered me fresh kettle corn was not easy. 

Getting up an hour earlier every morning to workout was not easy. On more than one occasion I ended up in tears because I was so frustrated. All I wanted was a donut and a Pepsi to make all the stress go away. I didn’t want to eat spinach, or drink protein shakes. I didn’t want to eat salmon every time I went out to eat. 

What I really didn’t want was to go backwards. I didn’t want to go back to being fat. I didn’t want to split my pants again. I didn’t want to look at fit people with envy and mutter, “I could do that if I really wanted to.” So I kept fighting. Every single day I made decisions that took me forward, even when it was easier to go back. If it was a hard decision, odds were good it was the right one. 

Walk past a fast food place when hungry:

Easy way- go in and grab something “healthy”, which probably wasn’t actually healthy.

Hard way- keep walking past and get a protein bar out of my car. 

 

Go out to dinner with friends:

Easy way- go wherever they want and hope I could find something okay to eat.

Hard way- tell them “this is where we are going”, then bail on the event if they refused.

 

Miss a morning workout:

Easy way- call the day a miss and try to make it up the next day.

Hard way- turn off the tv, and do the workout at 11 at night knowing I needed to be up again at 5:30am.

Gradually it did get easier. By forcing myself to do hard things, day in and day out, they got less hard. I learned how to make those hard things easy. That’s how this process works. You force yourself to do hard things until they get easier. It takes time, and it’s not fun. 

The rewards at the end of the day? Having people look at you and say, “man you have it easy.” 

I smile and say, “yes, yes I do. I got there the hard way.”

Fitness- This week on the iPod

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cher, clara k.showalter, clara showalter, fitness, motivational, music, song for the lonely, things that move me

My featured workout song this week is Cher’s “This is a Song for the Lonely.”

Good beat, great lyrics, and a song that allows me to get lost in my cardio of choice.