It's Hard Work to Stand Up Straight

I had an epiphany teaching Pilates that I wanted to share with you. The physical training I do as a trainer is EXACTLY like the emotional training I do as a coach. WOW!!!!

I work with people one-on-one they come in with a variety of different problems. Some people just want to work on their posture. Some people really want to work on core strength. A lot of people in there have had some kind of injury and they've developed a compensation pattern and a lot of people have had pain and are deconditioned and haven't been able to do move well.

Every single person is so totally different and what they come in with and what they need is so unique to them.  Imagine someone coming in with really bad posture. They stand up with their hips pushed forward tucked under and their shoulders are slumped forward and I teach them how to stand up straight and I get them to pull their hips back and then lengthen up through their torso with their shoulders up and use those muscles that are under your shoulder blades and I also get them to lengthen up through the back of their legs.

And when they stand in tall posture, they say, “This is really hard” and I agree with them. Why do we default to slumped shoulders when we're not thinking about using our muscles? The answer is because your body looks for the path of least resistance. Your body doesn't care about standing tall and engaging all of your sleepy muscles. It just cares about being able to move. It really doesn't care about the quality of your movement.

It's exactly the same in our emotional lives. We choose the path of least resistance subconsciously, by default and we develop some very dysfunctional, sometimes painful compensation patterns in our emotional life as well. And when we make the decision to really straighten ourselves out and to really stand up tall and to use the muscles that have been sleeping for a while and to make these daily conscious choices, it's really hard. It's going against the grain, against the easy way. It's so much harder because and it doesn't care about growth and evolution and living a life of purpose.

Clarity, contribution, constantly learning and growing and developing skills take a lot of work and you have to condition yourself every single day to do it a different way. I hope that makes sense. Personally, I feel like a freaking genius to realize that the physical work that I'm doing is the same as the emotional work!