Do more of what makes you happy.
Do you find yourself annoying your friends with your fitness dream? Dream pursuit can have a negative side effect of making you bad company. When you work on your fitness challenge with laser focus you may lose your ability to talk about anything else.
Annoying your friends takes time, and you may start noticing this as early as 3 months into your dream pursuit.
Good news. This isn’t the over-cocktails chatter that girlfriends will do to catch up on each others lives. Instead the struggle shows up when confronted with the basic question of “How are things?”
The easiest way to know if you have official annoyed your friends is that they no longer ask this question.
Try not to take it personally. This isn’t a bad thing, just a sign of where you are – focused on your dream. When you are deep into living and breathing your dream, day in, day out, it’s like wearing blinders.
Laser focus on our fitness dream is amazing. But is there a downside?
With a health and fitness dream this shows up in interesting ways. I get up super early in the morning. Even on weekends. During the week my day starts at 5:10 a.m. and I am out the door by 5:25 to teach a bootcamp session and motivate a group to kick butt with a 30 minute workout.
I’m typically back home by 6:45 and depending on the day, am quickly fitting in a run before I start my official work day. If I didn’t work out that morning, I’m at the gym at lunch or after work for training.
This usually means my late night pals really get amused when I start nodding off at 10 every night.
It also means that my fitness challenge “How are things?” conversations typically include:
- Information about my latest training (insert looks that indicate I am insane)
- The next race I’m signed up for
- Any current injury (lack of sympathy is typical)
- My lack of energy to do anything else
- There may even be the occasional update on my immediate family
Please don’t take this to mean I have no other interests.
Just a bit focused on the things that drives me, gives me energy, and makes me happy. Occasionally this means letting go of distractions and paring down my schedule in order to get to work on the dream details that will take me to the next level.
If you notice a decrease in communication from friends when you get your dream on track, give yourself a break. As with change in anything, time to adjust may be needed.
What changed in your life once you started working on your dream challenge? Share in in comments – here to help.
Go get your fit on – Heather
Heather Montgomery is a fitness writer, triathlete, and blogger who is devoted to sharing what she has learned about becoming a triathlete after age 40. She uses her Metabolic Training Certification to help other women struggling to get fit in mid-life. She lives and trains in Santa Rosa, California, the new home of the Ironman triathlon. You can find her biking the Sonoma County wine trails.
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