Sometimes just ‘showing up’ is enough (particularly at 6am)

It’s easy to find excuses not to put in effort and show up. But to create the rewarding life you want, you have to commit to showing up and pressing on, even when you don’t feel like it, even when it’s cold outside, even when you aren’t making the progress you want, and even when the bandwagon you’ve fallen off  seems to be moving on without you. 

After a month of pressing my alarm snooze button, I finally hauled my weary self out of bed this morning to a 6am exercise class. As I yawned my way through the various exercises I had to remind myself that sometimes just showing up is more important than anything else.

I’m not sure when I fell off the exercise bandwagon. But in between numerous trips away, jet lag, late nights, insomnia and early morning kids sports drop offs, I dropped fell out of routine and have had a hard time getting back into it.

As you probably know yourself, it happens.But whether it’s trying to fit in a regular workout or do anything that requires a consistent effort, what is more important than how fast you are making progress, is your refusal to give up when the going gets tough, to permanently succumb to resignation or to sell out to the many excuses and justifications that you can all too easily find if you want to.

[pullquote]It’s easy to make excuses not to show up, and put in effort toward those endeavours that require a lot of it.  Particularly at 5.30am. But the path to mediocrity, is paved with them.[/pullquote]

What I know for sure is this is: life rewards people who bother to show up. For you and me to do the things we really want to do in our lives, to experience the sense of wellbeing we want, and to become the person we most aspire to be, we have to rise above the justifications and excuses that can drag us into inertia, resignation and mediocrity.  Sure we all have ‘off days’ (and weeks, and sometimes months), but we  have to commit to showing up and pressing on, even when we don’t feel like it, even when its cold outside, even when we aren’t making the progress we want, and even when the bandwagon we’ve fallen off  seems to be moving on without us.

If the were easy to accomplish great things (like staying fit) everyone would.  But in the end, what matters so much more than whether you achieve the goals you set for yourself, is who you get to become as a human being by showing up when the going is tough, by refusing to play safe, and by working hard toward ambitions and goals worth pursuing.

So, let me ask you – what is it that you’d like to do (or do more of) that you’ve been making excuses about? What areas of your life are calling on you to show up – more often or more fully? What’s stopping you from starting today? Life rewards action. Always has, always will.

As Woody Allen once said, “Eighty percent of success comes from showing up.”