How To Stay In The Game

Unless you are Forrest Gump, you are not likely going to get up one day, start running, and keep running, and running, and running --- alone and without any support to keep you motivated --- for weeks, months or years at a time.

No, most of us need some sort of support system to help keep us in the game.Sports teams have their coaches, boxers have their trainers in their corner, and some of us are building a system of friends who want us to reach our goals and are willing to gently nudge us in the right direction when they see us veering off course.

My life is like a pinball machine. I am that steel ball up on the table and I bounce all around from one goal to another, from one life activity or crisis to another, collecting points every time I make it through another one, and trying, of course, to avoid falling down the drain. Overall I do a pretty good job, but now and then I forget where I am on the table and I am headed right for a ramp that could lead down the hole.

That's where my flipper friends come in. They smack me back up onto the table and keep me in the game. They may gently tap me up there, or when I'm really headed for disaster they might throw their whole body into the table and tilt it to keep me up there. And I'm generally pretty grateful for it, too! Trusted friends can sometimes see what I cannot and their support can make all the difference.

I highly encourage you to build a team of friends who either share your same fitness goals and you can keep each other motivated and "in the game", or confide in a few close friends who can keep tabs and know you well enough to help you avoid going into the gutter by flipping you back up on the table.

Stay in the game.It's a lot more fun racking up those life points (even when you're hitting all the bumpers!) than it is down that dark lonely hole!

Carly