Difficult situations challenge and change us

     "Wim Hof owns two dozen extreme sports world records. He has run a marathon above the Arctic Circle with no shirt on. He has hiked past the death zone on Mount Everest...He's isn't a daredevil. He's just dared to tap the potential we all have inside, by exposing his body to the resistance of extreme natural stressors, so that it - and he - may grow stronger as a result... We could be him if we made some of the same choices he has made. Instead, most of us have shied away from exposure to the acute stress of difficult conditions. We choose cozy over cold, automatic over intentional, and with nothing to harden us, we get soft." 

~ Aubrey Marcus, Own the Day, Own your Life

     While listening to the audiobook Own the Day, Own your Life by Aubrey Marcus, I came across this quote in the beginning chapters of the book. It stuck with me. I hadn't heard of Wim Hof before but he sounded like a person I would love to meet and even hear him speak about pushing the limits and going to extremes in order to grow.  Now, I haven't broken any extreme sports world records but I have pushed myself to the extreme and grown from it. In the last seven months I have pushed myself physically and have grown mentally, emotionally and spiritually. And as I look over the years of my life I realize just how much I have grown sometimes being pushed to the extreme not by choice but by circumstance. As I move forward, I keep striving for the challenge, trying to crush goals and put myself to the test, not choosing comfort over difficult conditions. Because let's be real. The adventure begins at the end of your comfort zone. Difficult or uncomfortable situations challenge and change us but as Aubrey Marcus says in his book, we often choose what is comfortable or in some cases what is convenient. And when we choose comfortable over challenging we don't grow. When I look back over my life there are three circumstances that have helped me grow as a person. First, my relationship with and marriage to my first husband. Second, my relationship with and marriage to my second husband. And third, my friendship and experience with my personal trainer. All three situations put me in uncomfortable or difficult situations in one way or another. And I have grown from each relationship.

     My relationship and marriage to my first husband spanned over twenty years. We met when we were both in our 20's. He was my first real boyfriend. The first guy to ask me if he could kiss me on our first date. He was a drummer and played in a band. I fell for him the first time we spoke. We dated for about a year before I realized his drinking was out of control but by that time I was hooked. I had convinced myself that we were both in our 20's and that it was normal to drink. I ended up pregnant a year later. His drinking persisted. We separated. Got back together. And separated again. What followed after the birth of our son was two decades of a vicious cycle of alcoholism, drug addiction, mental illness and abuse sprinkled with some good times. I stayed focus on raising our son and giving him a happy upbringing which was sometimes difficult to do. Over the years my emotional well being was pushed to the limits. By the end I was defeated, stripped of my self esteem and broken. I had asked myself when my happiness was going to matter because I had spent the better part of 20 years taking care of everybody else. When my husband was diagnosed with bipolar disorder early on in our relationship, I stood by his side while he went for treatment. I learned everything I could about the disorder, joined chat rooms looking for advise, spoke to friends who had similar experiences and went to every doctor appointment with my husband. In reality nothing I did was enough. It wasn't something that could be simply fixed with meds. It was finding the right combination of meds that worked, knowing that once his body got used to them we would need to change it up and the vicious cycle would start again. It was mood swings, binge drinking, ups and downs, hope when things were going good and crushing disappointment when they suddenly went bad again. In the moment I didn't realize the extremes I was being pushed to emotionally and mentally. But when I look back at that part of my life I realize that I have grown from it. I have learned to be a more caring person. I learned that I cannot fix everyone and that sometimes just being there is enough and other times it doesn't make a difference. I learned that sometimes the best thing you can do is leave. And when I realized how all this affected my son, I learned that love is stronger than we think sometimes.

     When my first marriage ended I met my now second husband. Actually, we had met when we were in our 20's and had dated briefly prior to my meeting my first husband. So it is ironic that he reconnected with me after I left my first husband. In the beginning, our relationship was strained. When we were together and the rest of the world didn't matter I was the happiest I had been in years. He made me feel like I mattered (still does) and it was the little things that made me the happiest like on my birthday when he made dinner and we drank wine and danced in the living room until it was the music stopped. Everything was right with the world. But amidst all the happiness I was dealing with an ugly divorce, jaded ex-husband and an angry teenage son. My decision to leave had turned everyone's world upside down. I dealt with guilt and depression and was pushed to a different kind of emotional extreme. In the beginning my new life was in stark contrast with my old and they were constantly overlapping. The extreme of the situation was coming to terms with how my son felt and realizing that my now second husband didn't understand the unconditional love I felt for my son. It put me in a position I did not like between two people I cared so much about. But I have learned from this extreme situation and have grown as a person from it. I have found that sometimes you need to depend on yourself and stand up for yourself although my emotional growth took a while. It was three and a half years ago when my now husband proposed to me on the Eiffel Tower in Paris and then gave me the fairy tale wedding of my dreams. It was then that my son realized how happy I am. And I am happiest when everyone I care about gets along and when I don't feel like I am in the middle. After seven and a half years I am finally at a point where I feel this way most of the time. Having gone through the difficult, uncomfortable situation helped me grown and learn to speak what I was thinking and how I felt, something I never did in my first marriage.

     In the two and a half years I have been married to my second husband I have learned to focus more on me. It was with this in mind that I joined Muscle Inc last year and then signed up for a personal trainer in June. And working with a personal trainer has given me new focus on what I want to do for me. I had told my husband that 'if I did this (work with a personal trainer) then I was all in. Whatever the trainer suggests, I'm there. Whatever he wants me to do, I'm doing it. Whatever I have to start doing or give up, I was going to start or stop. I wanted to make a lifestyle change and take better care of myself. After 20 + years of putting everyone else first it was my turn. And as my sister said, 'I took the ball and ran with it.' I pushed myself to the limits (and still do), try new things that I never have done before and never in a million years imagined I would do,