Sunday, April 14, 2013

Jillian Michaels is pretty awesome

Last weekend I had the privilege of seeing Jillian Michaels on her Maximize Your Life tour with some of my boot camp ladies.  My impression (as a die-hard people-pleaser) is that she is someone that you would want to make proud - she has an unshakeable faith in people and their abilities, and she just wants everybody to be healthy.  Jillian also has a huge wealth of knowledge; you can tell she could talk for days and feel like she's barely scratched the surface.  
As a JM fan, I had heard a lot of her talk before from her other media forms.  I've read chunks of her various books (Master Your Metabolism and Slim for Life are my favorites to date), and I've devoted a stalkerish level of time to listening to her podcasts. Seriously, I've choked up on jogs listening to her play Mama Bear to some of the callers.  If you don't have time to read one of her books, her podcasts are pretty fantastic.  Anyways, she had a couple little nuggets in her talk that I really held onto.  I'm not even going to take the time to PhotoPaint them onto an artfully blurred photo of a girl jogging or a sunset - I'm just going to lay them out there for you.

1. "We become strongest where we are most broken."
 What an interesting way of putting things.  This has been sticking with me for a while - the things that I was having the most trouble with - food, self-esteem, body image, exercise (I was a veritable hot mess) - have become some of my greatest sources of strength and pride because I've had to work so damn hard at them.  Am I an expert? No. But I'd like to think I have a few pieces of wisdom to share at opportune times so people think I know what I'm talking about.  (Which is also the secret to teaching, in some ways!)

2. "If you have a 'why,' you can tolerate any 'how.'"
People have been complimenting me on my "willpower" a lot lately.  To be perfectly honest, I don't think I have a lot of willpower.  If there were a plate of my mom's chocolate chip cookies kicking around my kitchen, I would have a really hard to time keeping my face out of them.  I just play the "Is it worth it?" game with myself: 

 Think about this.  You have been phoning it in for a long time in your life.  Is this cookie really going to solve anything? Is it really going to make you happier?  You know what you want - you love to be right and you love to win.  You've had that dress sitting in your closet and those skinny jeans on the shelf for way too effing long.  It is not worth it to blow fitting in them.  Now go clean something or look at Pinterest.

Does it always work? No.  That's why the 80-20 rule is pretty fantastic.  No one is perfect, but you can be pretty good 80% of the time.  The other 20% is where you cut yourself the slack to say "Is this cookie going to be my entire undoing? No? Then it is in serious peril." And then you slay it like a dragon and move on with your life. 

So yes, Jillian Michaels.  Look into her if you are needing some inspiration.  She put this up on Twitter recently, which makes me like her even more.

Damn it feels good to be a gangsta.

 
 
 

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