Now that I’m vaccinated, I’m, ever-so-slowly, getting back into the swing of things. The first thing to put back into my routine? Exercise! While I continued my daily walks throughout the pandemic, my daily Barre class had to go. Believe me, I feel it.
So, when I discovered that my little housing community in Costa Rica has weekly Zumba classes, it felt like destiny.
Now, I had never taken Zumba before, so I really had no idea what to expect. Oh good God…
Zumba, in case you’re not familiar with it, is kind of a Latin Jazzercise. It is high energy, non-stop, move your body-in-ways-that-it-never-thought-it-could kind of thing. Taking your first Zumba class in Latin America is a bit like learning to swim at the Olympics with Michael Phelps as your teacher. While I was likely the only person under 65 in the room, I was way out of my league.
While I can barely walk this morning, it was exactly the reminder I needed.
I think Zumba is a good analogy for life. I was telling my son just the other day that life doesn’t get easier, we just have to get better.
We have to get better at putting ourselves in situations that grow us and staying in the game when it’s hard.
I know that today my muscles will ache and that I will feel like I don’t know what the heck I’m doing for quite some time, but if I stick with it, I will grow stronger and it will get easier. Someday, imagine, it might even be fun!
So it is with everything.
Starting something new, growing in a new direction, making ourselves better, isn’t easy. But it’s always worth it.
Building strength requires that we fatigue the muscle, so it’s forced to equip itself to handle more weight. If we want to become stronger as individuals, we have to put ourselves in situations that push us past our current limitations. Or, like muscle, we stagnate.
It may hurt. We will certainly not be very good when we start. But over time and with consistency, we grow strong.
We are more powerful than we know. We just have to participate in realizing it.
©A Thoughtful Company, LLC, 2021
Great analogy. Just as many of us have resistance to exercise, we have resistance to stepping out of our proverbial comfort zone. I know that many days I have to drag myself to the Bowflex stationary bike, a COVID-induced addition to the corner of our living room (Hey, we live in a NYC apartment!), but I always feel better after having ridden through the Cotswolds, along the canals of Amsterdam, or throughout Barcelona. The same is true for me and stepping out to do something really challenging. I can often summon the will to do it…but don’t sign me up for a TED Talk just yet.
Thanks for the Zumba warning label!
What is it Melissa Hughes says? Awful, awkward, awesome… something like that.
I am sure you will have fun before you know it – at least if the people are nice and don’t ridicule you. We both need and deserve safe spaces to grow.
That Melissa Hughes always knows the right thing to say (and you do too!). If they ridicule me it would be in Spanish. I guess that’s the plus to not being proficient yet! Ha! (But they’re all far too nice to do that!)
Thank you so much, Dennis!