“Have you woken up 2 days in a row uninspired? If so, Change your life! “- Lululemon
“Roger that”- Dr. T
This a phrase in the Lululemon manifesto! So simple but very profound. Simply put, get after it in a way that resonates with you and is life giving. Like Jack Canfield said in his book, The Success Principles, “The one lesson and most important principle of all is that the only person responsible for the quality of your life, is YOU. If you want to be successful in your terms, you have to take 100% responsibility for everything that you experience in your life.”
In the past, I have woken up countless times uninspired and blaming the world or others for my misery. Waking up feeling uninspired was so draining on me that others started to take notice. I know one thing I needed and searched for was encouragement and inspiration. Truthfully I had it within, but often times forgot to look within. This is why we need to surround ourselves with quality relationships.
One day, I randomly went into a Lululemon store in downtown San Diego and found myself shopping for some new clothes to wear to a job I was not proud of and found myself talking about life with the store manager. She was a super bubbly, down to earth young woman heading in the direction of being a high school teacher. Her eyes burned bright when she spoke of her goals and where she was headed. Plus she seemed super content in the moment simply folding clothes and talking to me. She was present! She asked me what I did for work and I chose to kind of talk around the fact that I didn’t like talking about my job, but it was obvious I was not pleased with it. I rationalized that I made ok money (not really) and that I loved the people (sort of), and that I was lucky to be in San Diego (I would be here anyway). The store manager I remember looked at me and said “the cool thing about life, is you have the power to change it,” BOOM! This lovely lady went back to folding clothes, smiling and talking about what I was up to in terms of training.
I sat with her words and realized that I was rationalizing so much and more importantly, I did have the POWER to change. I needed those encouraging words and a reminder. And so my SWEAT LIFE obsession began. I felt inspired to go visit my now mentor, friend, and someone I look up to so much, Dr. Kelly Starrett who challenged me to start my own business right away and get out of the “pump and dump” world of traditional physical therapy. He told me,” stop kidding yourself.”
“Your outlook on life is a direct reflection of how much you like yourself.”- Lululemon
When I made the decision to make a change, the first thing I realized was that change had to start with me. I had control over my reactions to the work I did. I had to start being more gentle with myself during this process of creating a change. Everything was not going to happen all at once, and the first decision needed to be with me being honest about what I wanted and needed. I needed to shoot straight with myself!
Flash forward 2 more years, I had started my own business, Movement Rx and started teaching with MobilityWOD, which is owned and run by Dr. Kelly Starrett and his beautiful wife Juliet. I also started coaching a wounded warrior Crossfit class, writing a book, freaking meditating to help change my mindset and enjoying the heck out of the things that matter most: freedom to create and flexibility with my family. With the encouragement from the lovely people at the Lululemon store, my husband, and Dr. Starrett, I felt empowered to start all of this. When I walked into the store, my glow shone brighter and brighter and could not help but want to give back to these lovely people who were so incredibly encouraging. I also kept buying their clothes because I resonated with the culture and wanted to support it. My company’s attire is basically Lululemon due to the rigor of our work and workouts.
Throughout this transition, Lululemon was a constant support. The manager I initially spoke with moved to pursue her dream of teaching in high school and I made new friends with some of the new staff members. Being asked to be the new store Fashion Valley Ambassador was a no brainer decision and I felt so honored! I love representing a brand/company and community that walks their talk, takes care of their own and exudes what being unfiltered and present is all about.
One of my favorite phrases on the Lululemon manifesto is, “this is not the practice life, this is all there is!” Get after it, and get after it now in the present. You do not have a second life, so wake up and be inspired to start to make a change.
Vulnerability breeds strength. Not PR-a-deadlift strength, although this is possible, but the courage, practical wisdom, and inner fortitude to keep pushing, moving on, fighting the good fight, keeping perspective, and living LIFE strength. That’s what I’m talking about.
I believe that true glory in life is rising every time you fall. Life is a gift and a battle too. Through this Warrior Movement, I want everyone to know they have the capacity to be SO strong, SO resilient, SO fearless, SO powerful, if they allow themselves to be engaged in the battle of life.
Our battlegrounds are our life. How engaged are you in your own life? How in tune with yourself are you? Are you so busy you don’t really know left from right, Monday from Tuesday? Are your battlegrounds empty and filled with self pity, or are they filled with tools of resilience like people who build you up, good food, a healthy training community, people you can talk to, self-care tools, and quiet?
I ask myself the same questions. My battleground has been mucked with self doubt, regrets, fear of failure, loneliness, loss, but also filled with love, good people, family, education, change, and tools that are helping me get to where I am today.
Every week I coach an adaptive strength class, which is really all about bringing veterans and civilians with invisible and visible wounds together. This class gives me a huge boost of serotonin that fuels my own resilience. I get to learn their stories and see their growth and determination. I get to witness firsthand the sense of feeling normal again and completeness that comes from being pushed and driving towards a mental and physical goal. It honestly reminds me why I keep battling, why I enjoy what I do as a movement/ strength coach and physical therapist, why I am so thankful for my own life and the decisions I made to get here. The road here has not always been smooth and I know many of you can relate.
Let me paint you a picture. My adaptive strength class has many characters with battlegrounds I am slowly beginning to understand. In attendance we have a lovely lady who is a mother of two, a former Marine, a member of Team Red White & Blue who is also suffering from stage 4 adrenal cancer. We have a young man who lost his leg above the knee in Afghanistan, a veteran who used to have alcoholism, a Naval chief who was sexually assaulted by her own peer, a soldier who suffered a mild traumatic brain injury, a Naval Officer who lost part of his leg while serving overseas … the list goes on. All these individuals have been through enough where giving up seemed like an easier option. But they all chose to be on the path to growth. They all chose to enter the arena and work to normalize, heal, share their story, be vulnerable, share their sweat, and share a piece of themselves with me. For this I am grateful.
During the class all you hear is encouragement, some choice swear words, my usual weird jokes, and of course, laughter. At the end we medicate with lacrosse balls, mashing into our soft tissues to help bring blood to our stiff and stressed tissue. At this point in our lives, we do this instead of medicating other ways.
To me and many of the athletes who come to the adaptive strength class, the gym or training ground is what Theodore Roosevelt called the arena. As adaptive athletes we are facing our fears, building ourselves to be engaged in life, and supporting ourselves and others to be stronger in mind and body, and ultimately more resilient. And we are doing it together as a team.
In Brene Brown’s book Daring Greatly she quotes Theodore Roosevelt’s “The Man in the Arena” speech.
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better.
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust, sweat, and blood; who strives valiantly, who errs, who comes short again and again,
because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasm, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause;
Who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.”
Everyone in this adaptive strength class has stepped into the arena. Everyone who has stepped into the arena has shown vulnerability. You don’t have to be an adaptive athlete, or even an athlete; you have to be a human being who wants to engage in life and live your life to the fullest. You have to be all in and all present!!
Brene Brown writes in her book, “The willingness to own and engage with our vulnerability determines the depth of our courage and clarity of our purpose, the level to which we protect ourselves from being vulnerable is a measure of our fear and disconnection.”
When we search for the perfect time to walk into the arena, it is often too late. We may have ruined friendships, relationships, and wasted precious time.
“Rather than sitting on the sidelines and hurling judgment and advice, we must dare greatly and show up and let ourselves be seen!” Brown wrote.
Allow yourself to fully engage in your life’s battle. Enter the arena, whether it is in the form of a gym or a playing field or something else. The battle doesn’t have to be alone; it can be fought and won daily with your loved ones around you. Searching for perfect and second-guessing your abilities will only take you down a path of sitting on the sidelines.
All you have to be is all in, present, and engaged in your battle arena.
This is Dr T in a short interview after telling her story to students at California State University of North Ridge during National Eating Disorder Awareness Week on Feb 24th 2015. The organization that interviewed her was http://proud2bme.org.
“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” – Maya Angelou
I cannot help but notice that despite having the opportunity to know a good number of successful entrepreneurs, healers, life coaches, yoga masters, fitness coaches, meditation coaches and medical doctors, unfortunately only a FEW have left a mark on me thus far. I think we can all tell in the first few minutes of meeting someone if they are interested in the other side of their conversations, or if they are fully present. With our hands full of social media, emails, and data, and our bodies full of caffeine or sugar, it seems like attention deficit disorder is rampant.
Growing up, I had a great coach who taught me how to discern if someone is genuine or fake. In today’s world, our filtered online lives often shine brighter than our real, unfiltered lives. Our devices are distractions to our present, and our presence. Thankfully my coach didn’t even know what social media was, and in my opinion was better for it. For my coach, time and being present most definitely equalled love.
This time + presence = love lesson is something I’ve tried not to forget and is absolutely refreshing when I am on the receiving end. I find poignant examples of this lesson in my life in the following:
While spending time at my Mothers bedside at age 10, singing songs to her and reading her stories while she was slowly passing away (me being present to her, but I suspect she was being even more present to me);
When attending my young pitchers’ softball games;
A good friend traveling cross-country to see me when I was confused and struggling to figure out my life after leaving the Marine Corps;
When searching for a more meaningful path in physical therapy, I went to visit a physio ninja up San Francisco, who took time out of his very busy schedule to help me with my direction.
But I digress a bit.
From this particular coach – whom some call the Wizard – I learned a number of deep and precious life lessons. This man was someone who served his country as a US Army Officer during Vietnam, worked on an oil platform in Alaska, made some serious money as a commodity broker, married a beautiful German woman, had three children, and gave up everything so he could be home to care for his wife who eventually passed away from breast cancer. This wizard built a log cabin with one of his friends, started his own business which he eventually sold, and then became a Catholic priest. As a priest, he turned his parish’s finances around, he visited the sick no matter what time of day or night, he fished with friends and family any opportunity he could, he rode his bike hundreds and hundreds of miles not for himself but as dedication to a cause, and he donated his meager income to causes that were about changing the world.
What he did, however, is not nearly as important or touching as how he made his fellow humans feel. This Wizard of a man inspired a long trail of funny and heart-warming stories being told about him, memorials dedicated to him, masses said for him, and donations being made on his behalf. I know he made me feel like a million bucks. He was my biggest fan, someone I trusted, someone who loved me unconditionally, someone who made me feel like I was good enough.
This Wizard was my Dad, Father Joseph Hornick. He passed away in Fall 2014, while cycling a 100 mile route, having dedicated it to a friend with terminal cancer. His accomplishments are amazing and are talked about to this day amongst the thousands of people he has inspired. But the tears of gratitude and sadness swell when conversations turn to how he made people feel. Accepted, warm, loved by God, fully capable, and listened too. From the man who confessed about beating his wife to the 98 year old in the hospital whose family had neglected her, my Father would be fully present without judgement. I am hoping I can do the same.
Has anyone ever commented on how they feel in your presence? If not, then ask someone close to you. You will make the most impact if you are present, genuine, and show your ability to listen to the person on the other side of the conversation. Be the Wizard in your sphere of influence.
I was recently going through both my mother’s and father’s boxes in our garage. My mother’s stuff has been collecting dust for many years, however my father’s boxes are still pretty fresh as his passing was recent. In many of the boxes are letters I had written to my Dad, letters he had written me, pictures of our family and voice recordings of messages my brothers and I left him while he was in the seminary (my father was a ‘second vocation’ priest). I always shed tears when starting this process, but as I go through these things I am also able to smile because the pictures are priceless.
When I think about both of my parents physically being gone and having to rummage through their things, it is very EASY to focus on the negative thoughts: both my parents will not be around when I have a child, my father will not be able to baptize my children, I cannot call my dad anymore on my long drives and share recent adventures, I cannot tell my father physically how proud I am of him nor I will not have a mother to help me with my children or give me advice on what motherhood is all about. All of these thoughts when I say them aloud bring me sad, however I can choose to look at this situation differently and find HAPPINESS.
I am able to look at all the letters my father and I wrote because he kept every single one…it meant so much to him. I had wonderful parents in my life, the pictures make me smile at the memories we had and I will get to raise my children from beautiful examples of parents I had who were 100% committed to one another and their children. Now, I get to think about and write about what my Dad would say to me while on my long drives. I get the quiet time I so badly need every day to help me maintain balance in my life.
In Rick Hansens’s article, Taking in the Good, he advises against suppressing negative experiences in your life- rather let them happen. I let myself grieve my father and my mother. Rick mentioned to foster positive experiences, take them and have them become part of you; savor them. Another thing he mentioned was that you have the ability to literally re-wire your brain. For example when a strong memory is activated, you can CHOOSE to add something more positive to your mind. Your amygdala and hippocampus – important parts of your brain for feeling and memory – will start to activate and associate with a new neural pattern. That is pretty freaking cool!
A habit I have developed after meditating is writing in my dedication of the day in my journal.
I have recently started to write down all the positive things I can think about in my day and about my life-whatever comes to mind really. Through the actual process of writing them down, I smile, and the re-wiring happens. Going down my usual rabbit hole of self pity or self destruction happens less and less now as my brain goes to what is good. It doesn’t necessarily make me any happier in the moment, however it does allow me to ground myself and stay away from the dreaded rabbit hole of self-destruction.
Perhaps this article is mostly about perspective designed to help cultivate our inner warrior, which is a daily process for me. I am ok with my parents being gone because I smile every time I think of them and the fact that they taught me so much. They passed the torch to my brothers and I, as we choose to live life to the fullest- through the happy times and unhappy times. I am creating a habit of taking in the good in every situation I can, so join me on this journey! If you loved this article, be sure to sign up for our Warrior Newsletter!
