Now, there a lot of things that you shouldn’t let your two-year-old take the reins on. But, when it comes to exercise and health, there is actually a lot of wisdom that they have to offer! My two year old helped me revolutionize the way I look at exercise.  

There were some points in my life when I really hated exercise. I mean, I REALLY hated it. I’m talking about hiding from gym class, pretending that I’m on my period, etc. When we had to run a mile in P.E., I was routinely one of the last people to cross the finish line, walking, gasping for air, and jealous of all of the so-called “natural athletes” who enjoyed it. One year, I even fell in a puddle of mud! So, the trauma still runs deep.

I started to get better with working out in high school. I started getting spurts of energy and going to the gym. I realized that I liked the elliptical machine, but after a while I would get bored and stop going.

After years of being in this kind of off-and-on pattern with working out, I finally realized what the problem was. I wasn’t really enjoying it. I’d grown up believing 3 ideas about exercise, and it made it feel out of my reach:

1. That some people are just “natural athletes”, and I wasn’t one of them.
2. That exercise had to look a certain way. It had to be intense, sweaty, and you had to do it in a gym.
3. That you worked out so you could look good and have an attractive body.

And then, one day while playing with my two year-old daughter and watching her play, I had an epiphany. In my health coaching training, we had discussed the importance of really enjoying exercise, but now I finally got to see what this actually looked like in my child. She was trying to see how many jumping jacks she could do… for FUN. She had done at least 100, and she was actually LAUGHING! She was EXERCISING and she was actually ENJOYING it! She was PLAYING.

WHAT?!?

And therein lies the wisdom of children, and the lesson we should all learn from them, when it comes to exercise. She wasn’t exercising because she was worried about how she looks. She wasn’t worried about fitting into her Minnie Mouse sweatshirt or that her stomach was too fat. She didn’t spend time or energy worrying about whether or not she could actually be the best jumper in the room. She didn’t worry about how far she got with her jumping jacks, nor did she obsess over all of the kids on the planet who could do more than she could. She just did it; she just jumped; she just played. She did it purely for the love of jumping jacks, purely for the love of being active, purely for the love of being healthy and alive. She jumped until she literally fell on the floor in laughter. It was astounding.

And then I realized that we are all “natural athletes”. We are all born on this earth with the passion for movement; our bodies want to move and are built for movement.

Many of us get this joy beaten out of us in this society, as we grow up. At a certain age, we start to get self-conscious and many of us stop having fun with exercise. Our society has drilled into our minds what a “perfect” female and male bodies look like, and for many of us exercise has become a chore to achieve this ridiculous ideal. For many years now, I have had a love-hate relationship with my body depending on how it looked. So, when I worked out, it was always just a vehicle to get the “right” look, and manage my insecurities.

Toddlers and little kids haven’t been corrupted by the world or adult insecurities. They haven’t been taught to hate their bodies or starve themselves. So they are running around purely for the fun of it. They are just enjoying all of the glorious ways their bodies can move!  

Working out also doesn’t have to look a certain way. It can be whatever kind of movement makes you happy. Your thing may not be jumping jacks, like my daughter. But, you get to experiment and figure out what type of movement you’re really going to love! If you don’t LOVE to run, don’t run! If you don’t like the gym, don’t go! Don’t feel like you have to lift weights, do crazy P90X stuff, if that’s not what you want to do.  

It’s that simple.

There is an exercise and a movement for everyone. Find the type of movement that YOU love and do that. If you love to walk, walk! If you love to dance, dance! If you love water aerobics, or pole dancing, or yoga, then do it!

Make your Healthy Habits align to what you LOVE to do. Just like a two year old.

Now–shockingly–I work out every day because I’ve challenged my limiting beliefs about exercise. I have fun now! I’ve actually grown to love running, but not every day. I do it when I feel like it, and work out in a variety of different ways. But it took a major mentality shift on my part. I had to stop working out purely for external validation, or to compare myself with others, or with a restrictive set of rules. Once I just started just moving for the fun of it, I discovered that it actually feeds my soul!

What are some of your FAVORITE, FUN ways to workout?

This MONTH’s FREEBIE:

The Top Things WE do that Sabotages Exercise! (Click here!)

Originally published: June 17, 2017