I Want To Do Everything

This year I’m having a really hard time deciding my Birthday Scare.  For those of you new to my blog, every year for my birthday I decide to do something that scares the living hell out of me.  It’s kind of like having a bucket list only instead of coming up with 100 things and then dying I do 1-3 things and then eat cake.

Birthday Scares of the past included entering a bodybuilding bikini competition, firing a gun for the first time, starting a blog (what you’re reading now), jumping out of a perfectly good plane, doing a Spartan Run, entering a pole dance competition (2nd place, who knew?), being a competitor on a reality TV show (“American Grit”) and doing five minutes of stand up comedy.

Those closest to me feel the need to remind me that I tend to overextend myself and if I just focused on one or two goals, instead of twenty things, chances are greater that I’d get better results and have more fun.  There is a lot of merit to this.

My “problem” is that I want to do EVERYTHING.  Right.  Now.

The world offers so many diverse and interesting opportunities and I’m willing to follow anything that’s shiny and new down the path for at least a little while.

I thought I had my birthday scare all figured out when I went to my very first WWE show with my friend Serena last fall.  Watching the Divas wrestle I thought, “How cool would it be to audition to be a WWE wrestler!?!”  Ask me if I ever wrestled before.  Or watch WWE.

No.

Then another friend, Shannon, sent me an invite to the 30th anniversary showing of the movie “Dirty Dancing” which is like one of my all-time favorite movies ever.  (“I carried the watermelon.”)  Like most 12 and 13 year old girls at the time, we all felt like this movie was for us – for all ugly ducklings who could eventually be the beautiful swan with a lot of effort and a little help from Patrick Swayze.  So then I began to think, “I’m going to learn the Dirty Dancing dance with the lift at the end and wear that pretty flowy skirt and video the whole thing!”  I asked my husband if he would learn the Patrick Swayze part and he was like, “Do I have to?”

So I guess with that one I have to find both a choreographer and a dance partner.  And I need to learn how to do lifts.

Also along the lines of dancing, I wish I could learn some hip hop moves and bust them out nonchalantly at a wedding reception.  But since most of my friends are already married, I’m not sure where or when I’d be able to do this routine.

I want to learn how to speak Spanish fluently and write a romance novel and finish my second memoir “Chasing Arnold” too.

Boxing seems like a lot of fun, until someone punches me in the face and then I wouldn’t like it.  As Mike Tyson said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.”

I could be a motivational speaker, or at least give it a try this year.  I also want to be able to break a piece of wood with a karate kick. (Ask me if I ever took karate.  No.)  I want to learn more pole dance moves and how to do a back flip and make a documentary movie, well several, on various topics.

That’s a lot to pack into 11 months when I’m already committed to running a half marathon, training for a bodybuilding competition that is held in Costa Rica and homeschooling my daughter.  Plus we just got a puppy.

There is a saying that you can have anything you want but you can’t have everything you want.  But I want to test that theory.  I think you can have everything you want over the course of time.  People tend to focus on short term goals, and get discouraged if they don’t do everything in a year, but if you look at your goals through the lens of what’s possible in three, five or ten years you can probably achieve a lot.

I think I know what I’m leaning towards for my Birthday Scare, but I’m curious about your thoughts.  Do you focus on lots of goals at once or just one at a time?

Lisa 🙂

If you’re serious about getting healthy, but need help getting started, try my S.L.I. Method on my website ShesLosingIt.com.  Only YOU can do the work, but I can give you the tools that I’ve learned over the past five years about nutrition, exercise and overcoming excuses.

Lisa Traugott is a Mom’s Choice Award winning writer, fitness blogger, wife and mom of two….and Original Cast Member of AMERICAN GRIT, starring John Cena, on FOX!!!

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