Tuesdays With Mark: A Master Ninja, A New Ninja, and a Unicorn’s Greatest Lesson

Ladies and gentlemen, get ready to be gentle lubed and prodded by a guest post from our newest MFF Fitness Ninja, Matt Wilson.

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Dear readers,

Or perhaps,

Gentle Readers (I read Dear Abby columns at a very impressionable age).

No—YO! Bad-Ass Readers!

Yes!

YO! Dearest Bad Ass Unicorn Riding Ninjas of Glory, #Readers:

When Mark asked if I’d write a piece for the MFF blog about my 3, 4, or 5 biggest lessons learned during my first month as an MFF Fitness Ninja, I was so stoked! YES! Huzzah!  Now it’s MY turn to drop pithy knowledge bombs of wisdom, and nuclear cum shots that mind fuck you into manifesting your every dream, wish, and desire. BLEEDAT!

Things like this – posted on Facebook Oct. 25:

And this – posted on Facebook Nov. 28th (stolen from MFF-er Amy Jo Jackson):

But you know what?  I feel like this (lifted from a website on stress):

WTF.

(Warning: Full Transparency Alert.  Matt is getting real.  As in MTV’s The Real World, confessional cam, the first 4 Seasons).

I started teaching at MFF 5 months post-Snatched.  Mark talked about living post-snatched in his last post.  And those words ring SOOOO true. When you do something like Snatched, it’s a challenge, and a battle of will, schedules, and smelly Vibrams, but it’s a self-contained 6 week experiment.  Once you leave the Snatched petri dish, and begin implementing your newfound knowledge (or rediscovered knowledge) in real time, it can feel like a real shitshow. Dearest Badass Unicorn Riding Ninjas of Glory, #Readers, I am living that shitshow.

In accepting my new role of Fitness Ninja, Unicorn Tamer, Maker of Pretty Little Noises and Belgian Unicorn Man, I accepted that I would be entering a period of time where I would be overextending myself in the name of Glory.  And you know what? That’s exactly what happened.  Since I started, I’ve logged more hours teaching and training and learning the Way of the Unicorn, spending more time in the clubhouse than ever before…and clocking fewer workouts than any month prior.

Things have have definitely slipped by the wayside: my workouts have dwindled, my meal-prep is non-existent, and my nutrition leaves much room for improvement (Shock! Horror! How can you call yourself an MFF Ninja?!?!).  Believe me, I’m riding the roller-coaster of self-doubt and shame.  The same one I rode before Snatched, and the same one I’ve ridden most of my life.

Now, I’m a big ‘planner’.  Because we all know that saying: if you fail to plan, then you plan to fail.

But isn’t that a little harsh?

I like mantras and phrases, and pithy sayings that I can share on Facebook, but sometimes the inspirational quotes start to make me feel guilty.

So what have I learned in my first month as a MFF Fitness Ninja? Well, Dearest B.A.U.R.N.G. #Readers:

Just cuz you’re not nailing it, doesn’t mean you’re failing it.

(feel free to design a snappy graphic and post that shizzle)

For realz.  You can only nail it when you set yourself up to nail it. And if you don’t have the time to nail it, you really shouldn’t beat yourself up over it.  Instead, investigate what it would take to make the time necessary to nail it.

My next step is to revisit a couple favorite books of mine, The Other 8 Hours by Robert Pagliarini and The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron and gently review a few personal inventory techniques in the areas of time-management and self-care.

I’ve nailed it in the past, and I’ll nail it in the future, but right now, I need to take a few steps back, and revisit the reality of my schedule.  I’ve found it useful in the past to look at my week, look at my regular commitments and actually write everything down on graph paper (I like graph paper…all those little squares…grrrrowwlllll).  It’s easier for me to make connections between what I’m trying to do, what I’m actually doing, and why it’s not working, when I see those little filled in blocks of time—-and I mean every block of time. I write down 24 hours, and fill in the 8 hours for sleep (yeah right), the 8 hours for work (give or take) and the OTHER 8 hours (nudge, nudge, sounds like a book title) left over for everything else.  Hygiene, commuting, meal-planning, eating, working out—-we all have a lot of living to do in those 8 hours, and there’s no point in beating yourself up if you don’t even have those hours to begin with.

So that’s all I’ve got (for now).  I’m going to do my best (like a naughty, naughty Boy Scout) to set myself up for success by:

1)  reviewing my schedule

2)  revisiting my needs

3)  reclaiming my time

And I challenge you, oh Dearest Bad Ass Unicorn Riding Ninjas, #Readers, to do the same.

See you at the Clubhouse!

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