We’ve all been there before. You work so hard, giving all of your time and effort into achieving a goal. Then out of nowhere life happens, you get an injury or just simply lose motivation. You’ve hit a setback and you find yourself doubting your own abilities and self-worth. You may even feel like you’ve failed. Don’t. Setbacks aren’t presented to keep you from your goals. They are presented to allow yourself time to re-evaluate your positioning and your effort.

I really believed I could bounce right back after I had my daughter. Man, was I ever so wrong. I stayed active throughout my pregnancy, even deadlifting 185 pounds until eight months pregnant. I ate right and did everything by the book. Somehow I still managed to gain 60 pounds. The day I delivered my little girl by emergency c-section, I weighed 181 pounds! If you don’t know, I’m only 5’0.”

At three months post partum, I was hitting the gym every day and running as much as I could.

“You’ll lose it right away!” Everyone kept telling me that, but it just didn’t happen as I planned. When my daughter turned 1, I was still 160 pounds. With everything happening in my life, I wanted to give up so bad. It was a struggle to get motivated and stay motivated. I even sold all of my favorite workout clothes because I figured I’d never fit into them again anyway.

My story of “getting my body back” isn’t uncommon. It’s a huge obstacle for most moms. It takes a toll mentally, and physically, too. When you set out to reach a goal in a certain amount of time and don’t reach it, you start to doubt your self-worth. And when you doubt your self-worth, you lose all motivation for yourself and slowly start to drown in negative energy.

At this point, you have two choices; give up and move onto something else or reflect on your goals and accept the setback as just an obstacle to overcome. I think setbacks present themselves for a purpose. A setback can become an opportunity to look deeper into the reasons for why you work at certain things in life. Be it fitness, health, or just life, it can actually make you much stronger than you’ve ever believed before, especially when you overcome and begin to thrive again.

Reflect. Re-evaluate. Refocus. Make your comeback stronger than your setback. We all have it in us to champion through all of life’s obstacles.

Namaste.

 

Viviane Vallance is a personal trainer, health coach and yoga instructor working in Lawrence County.