I want to share Carol’s story with you. Find out how she went from not being able to make time for her self care to reliably experiencing the exercise high on demand using simple strategies. All that, while making no sacrifices.
Backstory
Carol is a 42-year-old senior manager for a popular distribution company in California. Over the last 15 years, her hard work at the company has paid off! She has received promotion after promotion, and has worked herself up into her current position.
Carol is happy that her generous income is so helpful to herself and her little family. Because besides having a successful career, Carol is also grateful to have a wonderful husband, Dave, and to be the mother of a 14-year-old boy.
The Problem
But despite everything seemingly going well with her career and family, Carol often felt like a big part of her life was missing. After she assumed her current position at work, she found herself having less time to care for her personal development and general well-being. She used to love the feelings associated with the runner’s high that she would experience during great runs.
This lack of time for self-care is something she always valued so much. She began to negatively affect her relationships with her family, co-workers, and, eventually, even herself. Her co-workers had been giving her grief about a few missed deadlines, and her appearing to be mentally absent during their meetings.
Carol noticed this pattern herself, and was confused as to why these things were happening to her. For whatever reason, she found that she is just not able to give as much as she used to. And for the first time in her life, she was avoiding hard work. Rather than working off her daily to-do list, she was instead spending time on her phone watching videos reels and scrolling through social media.
The problem was affecting her personal life, too. Carol was even struggling to find enough time for the weekly date nights she and her husband enjoyed. It is what contributed to keeping their relationship thriving for all these years.
The New Opportunity
This strange, negative downward spiral continued. Carol found herself feeling emptier than ever. She simply lacked the drive that she used to have when it came to work, personal development, and family.
Finally, she grew so frustrated with the deterioration of her life that she was ready to take whatever action was needed to get herself out of this rut. She knew that a big part of the problem was that she had been neglecting exercise, telling herself there wasn’t enough time. She needed the guidance of a personal coach, so she reached out to me.
Carol filled me in about what had been happening, and how she wanted her old life back. She wanted to go back to how she felt when she was in her early to mid-twenties. This was a period when she had the time and energy to commit to hour-long workouts and sports practices. All that while still being able to study and socialize later that night.
I explained to Carol that effective exercise did not have to be complicated. We worked together and developed a plan to incorporate exercise into her life while consuming less than two hours of her free time each week. This was fewer hours than what she would spend working out at her university gym during her college days.
After implementing her new exercise regimen, she soon found she was more productive, focused, and energized at work. Devoting time to exercise resulted in her overall saving more time!
Her Results
Only three weeks after beginning her work with me, Carol was seeing real, measurable changes in how she looked and felt, and she was doing it without having to commit hours per day to working out. “I could do this for the rest of my life,” she told me. That was a few months ago from the day of this writing, and Carol has not stopped. She has come realize that her workouts build more than muscle—they help to build character: They teach us to…
- have the courage to commit to our goals.
- stop making excuses and finding reasons to fail.
- create purpose and meaning.
- stop being a victim and take responsibility for ourselves.
- stop chasing quick fixes and embrace the process.
Achievement and Transformation
Carol is now 44 years old and her marriage is better than ever before. Her company is thriving, she has been sleeping more restfully, eating a significantly healthier diet, and life’s stressors no longer take such a significant toll on her mental or physical health. All of these benefits were achieved through small tweaks in her nutrition and sleep habits, finding new ways to cope with stress, and most importantly, her new approach to staying active.
As you can tell from Carol’s story, exercise can be a very powerful tool with the potential to reignite your drive and redirect you toward chasing your mission and goals, as well as help you rediscover the importance of self care and personal development in order to flourish as a human being. Exercise can not only optimize your mental health, but also help you rediscover who you are as a person.
Dave
I really appreciate the vulnerability Carol shares here, as I feel we have all been in her “shoes” at some point in our lives. As a busy, up and coming – industrial engineer, I find that having a work/life bakence and prioritizing myself can be challenging… as the guilt and pressure for external stressors seem to take priory. Will definitely be reading more of your articles and taking the next step of my health journey by booking my free – consultation with you! Pleased to say I stumbled across this website today!
Cheers!
Dave