Choosing Differently for 2024

If you want something you’ve never had, you must be willing to do something you’ve never done.

-Thomas Jefferson

Hey, Lovelies.

It’s a funny time of year, here in Australia – that week between Christmas and New Year. All the retail shops are buzzing with holiday crowds and sales. The beaches and the bars are busy. But other places? Not so much. Most businesses try and grab this week as a holiday – a chance to catch their breath before the new year begins. That’s why I was grateful that the gym run by my exercise physiologists is open this week. After a long stint of hospitalisations in the middle of this year, one of my doctors recommended I see an exercise physiologist to ‘work out my baseline of function and to note any specific deficits or declines’. No-one specifically recommended that I keep going. In fact, they told me that it was up to me, and probably wouldn’t make much difference. All I needed to do was go back to the exercise physiologist every so often to see how much more function I may have lost. That seemed a bit pointless so I thought I’d give my trainer a few months. I’ve never been a sportsy or a gym person. I’m more of a book reader.

But then something changed in me. Since November I’ve made a choice to become a sportsy person, so yesterday I turned up to the gym on a week where most of Australia is taking a holiday.

My usual trainer is away, so I worked with her boss, and I’ll work with him again tomorrow. He’s an older guy. My age maybe. He’s fit and experienced, with that air of practical kindness and understanding honed by years of working to rehab and support people whose bodies have been injured or weakened in some way.

We were the only ones in the building, and as he worked alongside me he asked me questions about my goals for the coming year, and noted my recent dedication to my training.

I want to improve my mobility, my flexibility and my strength, I told him. I want better balance, and less pain. I seek greater fitness, and better overall heath. I want the kind of year training-wise that sets me up for a stronger, more functional body as I age.

We talked about how much your quality of life is impacted by your health, mobility and fitness levels, and I shared with him my defining moment – that day when I knew I needed to make different choices.

When I stayed in Adelaide in October to work on my book, I deliberately chose a hotel room that had a large separate bathtub. My plan was to write hard, and then relax at the end of each day with a long soak in the tub while I read a book or listened to a podcast or some music. Good plan, right?

But hotel baths can be odd beasts. Many’s the time I have lowered myself into one, only to realise that the water wasn’t deep enough for a good soak and that bits of me remained exposed, cold, and uncomfortable. On the first full day of my stay it seemed logical to quickly jump into the bath fully dressed to check its suitability before I walked into town to buy supplies.

The bath was good. Long and deep and…

I couldn’t get out.

No matter how I positioned my arms, no matter how I pushed or pulled, I couldn’t get myself out. After fifteen furious panicking minutes as the reality of my situation sunk in (I was in a corner room on an otherwise empty floor, the housekeeping staff wouldn’t be back until tomorrow and my phone was in the main room) and I became more and more exhausted, I discovered I could push my feet in my grippy trainers against the textured strips in the bath and slowly I was able to push myself backwards with my legs and up onto the lip of the bath.

When I was free I collapsed into a chair in the bedroom, deeply sobered by the whole experience. I wasn’t freaked out. Instead this hard truth sank in. The degenerative genetic condition I’d been diagnosed with back in December 2021 and promptly dismissed and ignored as ‘just another thing’ had become something I could no longer deny. Somewhere in the past year I had become profoundly weakened. I knew my life would never be the same.

This situation with the bathtub was so profound, so distressing for me that I didn’t speak about it for days. I didn’t tell Ben, I didn’t tell my family or closest friends. I sat on the knowledge and let it firm up inside me.

It changed everything.

So, finally, in response to that, I am changing.

My goal is to become as strong as I possibly can. If I have a condition that causes muscle weakness surely it’s better to make those muscles fight back. Sure, I may be staving off the inevitable, but I would rather keep bailing water from a sinking ship and stay dodgely afloat than just sit back, do nothing, and go to the bottom all the faster.

For the first time in my life, 2024 is the year where my health will take priority over everything else. I have no idea what the outcome of such a focus will bring, but I know it’s going to be better than the alternative. To be honest, I’m feeling positive and a little bit excited about going all in. Who knows what might happen?

Dear reader, I have to ask you that same question.

2024 is a year where we will get success by our own actions.

Knowing that, what will you choose? What one thing could you do that will make a fundamental shift in your life, moving you in a direction that works better for you, or that could have you create, begin or complete something important to you?

Share it in the comments here or on Facebook if you feel like it. Maybe you’ll inspire someone else with your ideas. Speaking it aloud and putting it down in words makes it real.

I am cheering you on. We’ve got this!
Love, kettlebells, resistance bands and eighties music, Nicole xx