Ambition...

September 8 - Ambition...

Sometimes you wonder how you got on this mountain. But sometimes you wonder, "How will I get off?" - Joan Manley

Ambition is a good thing to have. But if it is running your life, rather than you running towards it, it may be time to reassess.

I guess it is pretty obvious that the first thing that came to mind for me was my goal of reaching a certain weight and size; to lift a certain amount, run a certain distance. All these things are great within in their own right, but my drive and determination to reach them was controlling me and not the other way around - my ambition turned into obsession and it was more lethal than helpful to my health and well-being.  I refer to my eating disorder here; either starving myself, binge eating and purging or exercising extra to burn off what I ate and pushing through injury even though logically I knew better...but enough about thinking and talking about that because even doing that seems to get a train of thought going and I don't want that to happen!

How do you find a balance between being AMBITIOUS & OBSESSED?

The quote "Obsessed is the word lazy people use to describe the dedicated" has come to mind.  I know I'm not lazy, far from it actually but I do find that there is a very fine line between healthy and unhealthy obsession.  I feel like I have stopped and started on my journey so much because of this reason.  Every time I think OK, I know what the 'triggers' and the 'signs' are and I'm not going to allow it to get out of control, sure enough it does and I have to give up for fear of it overtaking my existence.

Perhaps it comes back to what the last blog was about and expecting too much off myself so pushing beyond the extreme...I do tend to do that in a lot of areas in my life, its not just my health/fitness journey.  One of the big problems is that I don't believe in half arsed efforts...I'm an all or nothing kind of girl.

Slow steady and gradual would at least see me reach an end point.  I need to learn how to accept doing things that way so that I can see long-term progress rather than go gungho and have to completely regress due to it being an unhealthy obsession which is working more against me than for me.

Hmmm....but how?