Tolstoy's Warriors Guide your Inner Warrior
The other day a friend of mine sent me a Leo Tolstoy quote: ( I love Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, a haunting favorite of mine); "The two most powerful warriors are patience and time".
I love this quote on so many levels, mostly because if I've set out to do nothing else, I have set out to build and predicate this brand, Train Your Inner Warrior, on these very pillars, to live by them and to teach them to you. Time + Patience+ consistency+ execution= Change/Payoff/Bliss, if you will.
These are virtues and practices which must be adhered to daily.
Tolstoy personifies patience and time as #Warriors, and also by calling them warriors, suggests they are virtuous, strong, relentless, all the things which define a warrior.
I would love to give you a literary breakdown of this quote based on Tolstoy, his work, his life, and what the words themselves mean, and as it happens, I am qualified to do so, as this was my major in school, I will bypass this, and discuss the Warrior attributes of Patience and Time as it actively pertains to you and your ability to provoke change in your body, mind, and spirit.
So let's start with time, I wrote about time last week, personified it myself as a the male partner in the Time/Execution relationship.
Here's how I think of it: Most days we work towards our goal, with not too much to show for it, or so it seems, we workout, we eat properly (if you need notes on this please use my 45 minute consultation, just press the button on the front page of the website to schedule a consult), and mostly, things look, well, about the same. Yet, time CHANGES all things. If we do not continue to work toward our goals regularly we nullify the Warrior: Time. We do not allow him his due course, he is a resource, an aide, even a comfort, in creating our change.
In other words, If we allow the minimal, visual or tactical results we see daily to discourage us, we will never make progress.
Here's an example:
Years ago, when I was managing the New York Sports Club (the flagship place on East 86th Street), there was a bodybuilder working with one of my trainers. She was competing in the figure division (also my division), in the National Physique Committee league (amateur league of the International Federation of Body Building, of which she now belongs), she had been working so hard with minimal results, building and cutting, one day she stopped me on the cardio floor, I looked her, she looked awesome, she said "I lost 6lbs, since last week"...basically, her hard work for 8 weeks had finally yielded the result she had been working so hard to attain. Had she stopped, or given in any step of the way, simply because she didn't see the BIG result right away, she would not have seen that drop.
Years later, when I was training for my first show, I thought of her, and sure enough, my 11th week, the same EXACT thing happened to me.
These are merely examples, we must always keep our overall goal (big goal or super goal), in sight, rather than micro-managing small daily results.
The mirror or the scale, the mirror and scale will change with... yep, the appropriate amount of TIME.
How much time depends on what The National Academy of Sports Medicine calls Variables. How much fat do you need to lose, where is your mindset, what is your training regime, etc. Once again, sign up for a free consult, I'm happy to help you evaluate your individual variables.
This, I hope, aptly illustrates our Warrior - Time.
On to patience:
Our Warrior, Patience, is slightly more illusive. Patience is a less fact based situation than time, and more changeable like our moods, our emotions, dare I say, as a warrior, she certainly represents the feminine in this relationship. (Time is always the masculine component).
Patience is whimsical and delicate, and we can lose her in an instant. However, when we master her, she allows us to be anything and everything we ever wanted.
Where patience is concerned, I highly recommend keeping a journal. Writing a daily log or account of your progress and always relating it back to your bigger goal.
Keeping calm is one of the best ways we can aid our patience and keep her ... well, constant. Meditation is a very handy tool in the pursuit of mastering patience. Using creative visualization, as I mentioned in the last blog, helps patience greatly, as we always have access to our future selves, the way we want our lives to look and feel.
Once again, if you've never meditated sign up on the sight to chat with me, or if you are looking for a guides for creative visualization I am happily grateful to point you in the right direction. Meditation is an outstanding tool for a lifetime of patience and endurance.
In closing, with another magnificent Tolstoy quote, "Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself", if we apply our Warrior's, Time and Patience, we will, in fact, change ourselves for the better, and in doing so, change our part of the world for better.
As always, sending peace and love,
Anna