Acceptance

Gratitude [noun] ~ /ˈɡratɪtjuːd/

"A strong feeling of appreciation for someone or something for what that person or circumstance has done to help you."

I am writing this deep from my heart. Pure and simple.

For a very long time, I thought acceptance meant giving up. I assumed that if I could not do something, it only meant I had to work harder for it. It is only now, through a different lens shaped by my life experiences, that I am beginning to understand the consequences of my actions. My experience may not be extensive, but it has been enough to make me reflect deeply on where certain choices have led me.

It is very difficult to accept when something is coming to an end. To realize that you may have started this journey a bit too late, and all those years you had in your adult life may have been put to a better use, for a better purpose. I don't regret the way I have lived my life. I just wish that perhaps I had certain goals kick in a bit earlier than they did.

My life as an amateur athlete has taught me so many things about myself. I have endured pain I never thought possible. I have lived through the good and the bad. I lost my parents and I made new friendships. I embraced a better tomorrow and I focused on making things happen; all whilst raising two kids and having a home to look after. These have truly been wonderful years, ever since I started riding my bike again back in 2011, to completing two middle-distance Ironman races in Portugal.

Part of the journey is to accept when things change, and when your willingness to do something is superseded by those demons that have always chased you, bringing you down and making you doubt if you are really made for those things. But you keep grinding, because that is how you learned to live your life, and that is how success is obtained.

Or at least that is what I thought.

My problem right now is not the desire to do something, nor the willingness to do it. My problem right now is that I refuse to accept that I am not capable of reaching that monster of a goal in the way my brain is telling me I should. And this is a huge setback for me, because never in my life have I not done something because I was not able to, I only did not do it because I did not want to.

But now, my body is telling me that I can't. And I need to listen.

The past two years have been the worst years of my life physically. Not from a place of not being aware of what was happening, but from a place where one simple thing became something else until eventually I ended up in a place all too familiar, from which I have escaped so many times before by simply grinding my way out of it.

But this time I cannot grind anymore. I don't have it in me. Not in my head, but in my body.

Acceptance is worse than my biggest disappointment, but it is where progress begins. And while I don't want to say "never again", I can say with the utmost certainty that for now I need to take care of atomic habits to even start to feel like myself again. Because right now I don't recognize the man in the mirror. I am defeated, and my body reminds me of this fact all day, every day. Constantly.

I always carry this cross on my back. The cross of those no longer with us. And I make it my life purpose to do things for them, to honor them, to never forget them, and I do it with pride; because they paid the ultimate price, and I am still here, living, trying, doing things I never thought possible.

But everything has a price, and I have paid mine. How can I do things for them if I cannot even do simple things for me?

I always train in the way my brain feels, not the way my body is; and this cannot continue, because the output I want is not the output I get. Reality hits you hard; and lately it has hit me harder than I ever thought possible. I cannot keep setting impossible goals, training like I feel I should train, or how I think I deserve to, because I am not there, and I have not been there for a very long time.

I have to accept that.

This is reality and fact. Acceptance is a part of solving this problem, because I cannot for the life of me continue to think I am up there, pushing hard and doing difficult things.

Because the reality is simple. I am not.

Nothing inspires me more than the thought of what once was, and the great accomplishments I achieved over those 15 years. But I cannot live my life thinking I have the ability right now to keep up with those things in the way I feel I deserve, I simply can't. I need to live my today as it is and embrace it.

Accept it. And be grateful for what once was.

Because I had it. I enjoyed it. And it was great.

And yes, I want to feel like that again.

Thank you for reading,