My Life as an Actor & Beachbody Coach.
I first started as a Beachbody coach in June. I had a slow start, but I knew it would take time to build my business. I continued to talk to people about the products that worked for me. Little by little people were saying, “okay, now I’m ready!” The handful of people who have been sticking to the programs and Shakeology have been getting amazing results. People finally reaching their goals.. you simply cannot put a price tag on that.
I live in New York, and I’ve just completed my first semester at an acting conservatory… and it has changed me as a person completely. I believe Stella Adler had it right when she said, “Growth as an actor and as a human being are synonymous.” So I want to give you something that reflects the amazing growth that I have had as a person over the past 4 months.
Merging My Two Worlds.
I believe and I’m sure you would agree, the better you feel about yourself, the better mother, father, sister, son, friend, Coach you can become.
So, let’s start the new year off with some self reflection…
The other day my coach posted a quote, “You can’t start the next chapter of your life… If You keep re-reading the last one.”
For so many people the New Year is that new chapter. It’s a reset button, and they get to wipe the slate clean and start over. So let’s start over, and stop living in the old chapters, let’s stop living in the past. Let’s exist in the present.
If you’re thinking about the past you’re not in the present. If you’re thinking about the future, that’s also part of the past. When I *snap*, that was in the present, and now it’s the past.
I’m sure everyone knows that one person who is always obsessing over the things they haven’t done, and talking about the things they should have done differently and all they do is complain and find fault absolutely everything. I’m sure someone specific has just come to mind. And sure we all do this to varying degrees. I find this happens a lot to people who are having difficulty losing weight. “If ONLY they had started working out two months ago!”— “If ONLY they hadn’t eaten that extra cupcake!” The vicious cycle of “if only’s” and “what if’s” only leads to regret, guilt, and sadness. Especially for emotional eaters, this is a bad cycle to fall into.
So how do you stop??? How do you snap out of it?
First by becoming aware of your behavior. Then you can learn live the present. The present moment. Learning to slow down, take in, and appreciate the things around you.
Look. The guilt, the regret, chronic complaining, the over-eating… they’re all only symptoms to a much larger issue that is very personal to each and every individual.
So, we will do some awareness work in order to peel back the layers and uncover the source of the guilt, unhappiness, over-eating, etc.
Awareness without judgment.
We all have specific relationships to everything we come into contact with. And we have a specific feeling towards things. I’m talking everything: objects, places, people, ideas.
I challenge you to start a list of things that you like and things that you don’t like. It can relate to fitness, business, family, anything and everything. You’ll be surprised how much you learn about yourself. It can be as simple as I don’t like cracks on the sidewalk because I like things that are orderly and neat. Or I like cracks in the sidewalk because I think they are beautifully random.
This might seem a bit abstract to some of you. BUT- Once you can define the things around you, you’re on the road to more understanding.
It’s similar in the way you would define “why” you want to be in this business, or when you ask your clients “why” they want to try one of the beachbody programs.
The more you understand about yourself, the more you can reflect and become a better person. The better mother, brother, daughter, friend, coach you will become. And the more efficiently you can then help others.
You’ll be surprised also how present you will become when you begin to look at trees, door nobs, your child’s sippy cup, morning coffee, sit ups, push ups — and you place it on your list. You’ll be in the present moment, taking in the little things around you. And also when you do this, appreciate the history of these things. FORKS. How simple, but how efficient! It has history.
You’ll also find that the things on your Don’t Like list, may instead become a list of things that you understand. Maybe you dislike taking out the garbage. BUT- when you place it on your “don’t like” list, and you think about the history of sanitation, you make actually learn to appreciate it.
Another exercise I really love is this…
*Everyday I write down one thing I’ve learned.
It can be something as simple as I’ve learned that today I am wearing one blue and one black sock.
Or it can be something bigger- like, I’ve learned that resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.
Or it can be something leaning more towards the fitness and business. Something that I learned recently from Chalene’s PUSH book,… I learned that if there is no opportunity presenting itself, I must create one.
In the New Year let’s learn to slow down and appreciate all that we have, bring more understanding to ourselves and to those we reach out to, and continue to better ourselves so we can better help others.
Now, I want to ask… what have you learned?
