Thoughts around movement

My relationship to movement has improved a lot, I now exercise in ways that I enjoy, to make myself feel good and care for my health. This year I have been trying to sustainably build up the amount of aerobic exercise I do to meet the weekly guidelines but I have had some setbacks with covid and the flu that have meant I have had to start from scratch again and I feel like I’m never going to meet the recommended amount and get disheartened each time I have to start from just some gentle movement. I feel a sense of pressure to meet the guidelines and when I’m there I will be doing the “right” amount and the “good” amount and there is a pressure to get there fast but it is taking longer than I expected. I also used to suffer from a fatigue condition and I have this thought that I can only exercise when I feel great and full of energy and that if I don’t feel on top form it wouldn’t be safe or good to exercise when that is not true. I know that any movement is better than none (for my body anyway) but I’m frustrated by how slow my progress is and worried I’m not “healthy” if I’m not doing that amount of exercise per week. I wondering how to address this in a way that is more compassionate to myself and is also focused on increasing the movement, perhaps with less pressure.

 

Answer:

I’d love to highlight the words that you put in quotations here: right, good, and healthy. I know that I’m preaching to the choir here when I say that these words are so loaded, and when used this way, they can put us into a mental black-and-white state of thinking. If it’s not right, it’s wrong. If it’s not good, it’s bad. If we’re not healthy, we’re unfit.
When we only give ourselves two options, we don’t give ourselves opportunity to meet ourselves where we truly are (which is likely somewhere on the spectrum between healthy and unfit, good and bad, and right and wrong),  One way to invite more compassion in is to allow yourself to experience this journey exactly as you’re experiencing it…going back to gentle movement after you had COVID and again after you had the flu feels frustrating because you think you’re not meeting your goals in the way and in the time you’d hoped to. It makes so much sense. Where on the spectrum between right and wrong or good and bad does this approach land?
Another way to invite compassion in is to define what the minimum baseline for being healthy is for you no matter what and assess in what ways you’ve been able to be successful in meeting that. Give yourself some wins. Let the other side of the story (the ways you’ve been a huge success) get some equal air time in your head. Come back for more coaching on how these invitations work for you with part 2 of this submission.