Karma

Karma is a term "you get back what you give".  That speaks volumes for most of what happens to us in life.  We all have our wants and desires, but to turn our dreams into reality we have to be proactive.  There is an old saying, "If wishes were fishes, we could all have lunch".  Wishing will not get us closer to our goals, we have to go after them.

Never is that more true than when we are referring to self improvement.  In all the animal kingdom we are blessed with the amazing power to reason and control our own future paths. We can seek the wisdom of those who have walked the path, we have chosen, before us. We can read what those same people have written or we can proceed alone with trial and error.  Sometimes that trial and error path is the only one, because no one has gone where we are going before.  But for most of us getting some advice and listening to others who have been successful is certainly worth our time.

Amazingly when we hear the knowledge of others, we decide that we are different and we can ignore the teachings of those who have made the mistakes. We adult athletes are probably the worst offenders.  If we hear from every available source that we shouldn't try to increase more than 10% per week, we think, well we are tougher than that.  We hear that a hard workout should be followed by an easy day, a rest day, or at least a day of working different muscle groups. But no, we think, "Wow I had a super time today, can't wait till tomorrow to do better".

Those are examples of how we break the laws of nature.  We are all built the same way and respond to effort the same way. Now having said all that, there are those who are today's  heroes in our chosen sports.  There are courageous athletes that are rewriting the fitness laws and the record books.  There are heroes that have lost a lot of weight and gone on, through unstoppable determination, to become champions.  There are those that will always be blazing new trails.  Were that not true, then records would no longer be broken.

We must learn from the trial and error of others and we can learn from our own.  Somewhere there is a path, individual for each of us, that will allow us to accomplish our goals.  But our goals should be ever changing, set obtainable goals and then when you reach them, set higher but still obtainable goals.  This cycle can continue throughout our lives, sometimes the best goal is a step down due to age or injury, but the same principle still applies.

Thanks for reading.