I was becoming disheartened with it all so I sought out a life coach. After two months of "oh yeah, I should probably call her", I finally did. Eye-opening. She asked, "on a scale of one to ten, with ten being the most urgent that you think you need coaching, where are you?" I said without hesitation--"ten". She sounded surprised. I suppose it was because there was a calmness in my voice and I wasn't coming apart at the seams. She asked, "why do you think you're at ten?" I explained, "even though I spend a lot of attention on details, I like to see the big picture. And the big picture shows that there is a huge cliff ahead and if I don't change course now, I'm going over that cliff." There's an urgency for me to make changes, yet the urgency of maintaining where I am can't be ignored. Cognitive dissonance. Until I verbalized where I am, I was pretty much unaware of how I actually arrived there.
Small tangents have separated what I value from what I practice. I was a personal trainer once upon a time. I played rugby. I spent four to five days a week taking tae kwon do. I worked out all the time. Then life changed. I went to grad school, studied all the time, ate all the time, worked full-time. I drowned out fitness altogether for what I thought were urgent matters. Here I am now--fifty pounds overweight. It's not like I don't KNOW what to do to fix this. It's that the knowledge never really made it down into my heart to PRACTICE what I know to do. I was in the gym practically 24/7 so I never had to think about working out. I was just surrounded by it. So when I surrounded myself with books, I just adapted to that environment. I valued fitness, but I no longer practiced it. How does that happen? The subtlety of not knowing where you are over a period of time.
I often think about how long Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden before they shared that apple. That sneaky snake was subtle. It probably only took a slight glance away from the value of the entire garden to eventually partake of something so small in comparison. Who knows how many years Adam and Eve just succumbed to the beautiful garden environment without internalizing the value of their existence there? As soon as they turned, God said, "Adam, where are you?" I venture to say that it wasn't a sing-song "Aaaadam...where arrrrre yoooooou?" It was probably more like, "Adam. Where are YOU? Because I didn't move." Adam had to come to terms with the fact that he separated himself from what he valued most. Was it overnight? I dare say it wasn't.
The good news is that there's redemption. We can turn back to what we value. We can ensure that every step we take is toward what we treasure most. It's not going to matter what you do or how you do it. Just be certain that in that moment you know where you are.
