Stronger Than....

There's a major national gym that has an ad campaign based on a pretty simple series of statements. (Okay, it's Gold's Gym, which happens to be my new home base for working out.) You may have seen it on billboards, or my t-shirts.

Stronger than yesterday
Stronger than excuses
Stronger than ordinary

How much do I love that? A ton! Why? Because I can personally identify strongly with every one of those statements.

Stronger than ordinary? You better believe it. I'm not talking about brute strength. I'm talking about mental strength. Yes, I will admit (and it's pretty obvious by now, isn't it?) that I have some mental obstacles. But what makes me stronger than ordinary? I won't just give up because of them. It reminds of me something my friend said about his daughter a couple of days ago. She's just over one. He was laughing about how if something was in her way, she just found a way to climb over it. It didn't occur to her to stop the direction she was going because something was in between where she was and where she wanted to be. (I hope you never lose that drive, MollyMad!) I'm not giving up or giving in just because of an obstacle or two. Or five. Maybe I can't go straight over or through the obstacle. Maybe I have to go around. Or maybe I need a push from below. And it may not be right away that I figure out how to deal with the obstacle. But I will. And as far as sticking with losing weight and becoming healthy? You better believe that makes me stronger than ordinary.

Stronger than excuses? Not on my watch. From the very beginning I made a deal with myself--no BS excuses. It's too easy to find excuses. I figured out what my "go-to" excuses were pretty early on and figured out how to eliminate them from having an opportunity to be a problem, at least for the most part. And I think excuses tend to give the power of ownership of our choices away. Actually my difficulty these days is giving myself grace to skip a workout once in a while!

Stronger than yesterday? Yes. Stronger than yesterday, last week, last year, ten years ago. But not as strong as tomorrow. Every day is a chance to be stronger. Every challenge is a chance to learn about myself, how resilient I am, how much I'm willing to work for what I want. I'm up for the task.

So thanks, Gold's. Not just for giving me a new comfort zone for my workouts, but for a brilliant ad campaign. I approve!