Take Ownership, And Have Understanding

My Mom and Dad were in the front seat of the car, we were in a hospital parking lot.  My mom was sobbing.  They just found out my brother had diabetes, type-1.  He was 3 years old.  It’s my earliest childhood memory, and I can still picture the scene.

I grew up fat.  No, check that.  Obese.  Or obese-ish.  Breakfast every morning was Captain Crunch, or Fruity Pebbles.   A shovel-full of sugar dumped in milk.  My parents didn’t know any better.  We were super active kids, but enough franken-foods can cancel out any good physical activity.  Throw in the dawn of the video game era with the invention of Atari, and it only got worse.

At age 11 I was six feet tall and weighed about 210 pounds.  All fat.  I stayed overweight all the way through college and into my late twenties, peaking out at about 230lbs at age 26.  I partied a lot, I drank a lot, and I ate garbage food.

Today, I’m 6′ 4″, 162 lbs.  In modern American society, I’m skinny.  Super skinny.  As a semi-competitive weekend-hack runner and cyclist, skinny is a must.  Every additional pound is a penalty when I’m racing the 23 year old punks up a hill on my bike.

While talking to a colleague last week at work the conversation drifted to exercise.  I told her about my weekend activities, and she said “You’re so lucky that you’re skinny”.

Lucky.

This isn’t the first time I’ve had someone say this to me.  Yeah.  Lucky.

Sure.

So what happened?  How’d I lose all that weight?  Was it luck?

 

Own It

I took ownership, that’s what happened.  I did what it took, I cultivated discipline.  Through my 30’s I lost 60 pounds.  It was gradual, and it was hard.  There were many ups, and brutal downs.  I had to completely change my diet and my destructive habits. 

There were long days on the bike or running trail, suffering in the heat.  Suffering in the cold.  I owned it.  It wasn’t luck.  I moved.

I read about and studied nutrition, and still do.  I learned how to filter the facts from the sensational nonsense.

Then I stopped eating toxic fast-foods and lived what I learned.  

I took it by force.  For the hardest things in life, if you don’t take them by force, you probably won’t take them at all.

There’s no glossing over the hard facts, it was work.  More importantly for fitness, it was suffering.

And it still is, every day.  It’s a constant struggle.  If I relent, I risk getting fat again.  I’m still a fat kid inside, and that’s what drives me.

When I don’t want to go running, I go running.  When I dread lifting weights, I still lift weights.  Even if my heart isn’t in it I follow through.  I at least try.

In a world that desires instant gratification and “life hacks” more than ever, I’m here to tell you there’s no magic pill.

I have no choice the way I see it.  My brother was cursed with type-1 diabetes and I was blessed with perfect health.  In that way, being disease-free, I am indeed lucky.   How irresponsible would it be to squander that gift?

 

You Can’t Lie To The Person In The Mirror

In the end, I’m like you.  I like pizza.  And ice cream.  When I feel sad or depressed, I want to eat more too.  It’s human.

And Lord knows I don’t like 5 mile runs when it’s 25 degrees outside.

But I do them.  Why?  Because I’m the owner of my physical condition.  The buck stops with me.  My 230 pound self woke up one day and said “I’m going to get diabetes when I’m older unless I change”.  

It took me a while to get to the point of realization that if I don’t own it, nothing will change. 

I was the fat guy in the mirror.

What does this have to do with your financial life?  You’re probably reading personal finance blogs because there’s something you’d like to fix, improve, or change. 

Maybe you want a higher paying job, or to stop overspending.  Maybe you’re afraid of investing, or you just got divorced and are starting over.  Whatever it is, take ownership of it.  Look in the mirror, accept what is, and own it.  You’re the one who’s going to change it.  Pssst… here’s the shortcut:

There are no shortcuts.

 

Everyone Has A Struggle

I used to get angry when someone told me I was lucky to be skinny.  I’ve learned to look at it differently now.

I’ve learned that in saying “you’re lucky to be skinny”, they’re just absolving themselves of responsibility to achieve the same thing.  They’re projecting their own unfulfilled promises and failures on me.    

But it doesn’t make me angry anymore, because I get it.  I’m human too.  I’ve got more failures than anyone should have, and heaven knows I’ve projected them on other people before.

We’re all struggling with something many things.  We’re all working on improving something, or want to.  And we fail, we all do. 

So when we see someone accomplish what we’ve been unable to do, thinking or wishing or saying “it was luck” is a natural human way to dismiss it while simultaneously blocking uncomfortable feelings of inadequacy or failure. 

I’d be a blatant liar if I said I’ve never done that.  So I’d also be a hypocrite if I got mad at the colleague who told me I was lucky to be skinny. 

What I’d rather do is understand where she’s coming from, have some empathy, and help her take ownership of it.