You Get To Choose Who You Will Be Today

“Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”

This morning I woke up and sprang out of bed. Well-rested and wanting to get to the gym before it got too busy.

For several weeks I’d been getting up at 4 am to get to the gym. There are a lot of early bird gym rats in my neighbourhood evidently and by 5 am it gets busy.

I tell myself I like the quiet and that is true but the real reason is because I like to spend time with the punching bag in a relatively quiet environment.

But I’ve found myself comletely shattered on the days I wake up at 4 am. So I decided to prioritize sleep for a bit.

I started waking up an hour later, fresher and ready to hit the gym but I didn’t bring my gloves with me. Because there would be more people in the gym. And I was anxious about what they might think.

Every day I told myself that’s not the mindset of a boxer. But in the war inside my head the anxiety and self-consciousness won. The other day my trainer told me I’d turned a corner in my training and looking more like a boxer.

But I wasn’t yet thinking like one. I kept telling myself that if I want to be a boxer, I need to BE a boxer.

And if I am assuming the identity of the boxer, then I need to get to the gym and get on the bag no matter what.

I’ve been telling myself this for weeks, though and still the gloves have stayed at home when I left for the gym.

But this morning as I woke up and got ready to the gym I told myself: You’re a boxer.

So I took my gloves to the gym and I got on the bag as soon as I got there.

After I got off the bag I started my workout as usual but as a different person. I felt different and the crazy thing is people treated me differently.

People I’d never spoken to said good morning to me. I felt respected. And I walked a little taller. I had become a boxer.

As I get on with my day I just have one more thing to say: who are you going to be today?