Sometimes DIY Is More Expensive Than Any Other Way
The pain I was causing without realizing it.
Awhile back, I hired an IFBB professional bodybuilder with 30 years of experience as my personal trainer. (For all the gory details you can read the full story here).
Fifteen minutes into the first workout, as my biceps were crying for help and I had almost fainted (embarrassing), she quickly corrected several subtle but significant things I had been doing wrong forever without realizing it.
I had been going to the gym since I was a teenager.
Not only were those habits preventing me from getting results, they were all causing pain I wasn’t even specifically aware of.
At the end of the session, as we were joking about me doing all these things wrong, she said, “this is what happens when you try and do everything yourself.”
She didn’t know me all that well yet.
But doing it myself has probably been my number one struggle. And source of secret pride. Otherwise I wouldn’t keep doing things that way.
It was pain that made me get help with trying to save my marriage.
At the time, on the edge of divorce and basically broke, I felt like I was giving my marriage counselor my firstborn.
But it was the best thing I’ve ever done.
Knowing things and doing the right thing are not the same. Even if you’re a professional at whatever it is.
If you already know what to do but you’re having trouble doing it, what then?!
Get a second opinion that isn’t you (or your AI chat bot that maintains endless enthusiasm for your most half-baked ideas).
It’s for the same reason therapists get their own therapists and doctors have their own doctors.
What we don’t see about any given situation usually moves the needle-- not an imaginary laundry list of “things we would do if we had infinite time and energy.”
In the case of BOTH the trainer and the marriage counselor, I showed up thinking I already knew what to do and was just having trouble doing it.
Both times were lessons in humility. It took someone outside of the situation to see what I didn’t.
I was reminded these kinds of struggles don’t just affect us alone, in a vacuum. They attach to everyone we try to imperfectly love.
Sometimes you don’t know what you’re doing wrong until someone looks at you and tells you, in that profoundly correct tone, exactly where you’re weak.
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