Finding Alternatives

Recently I had my treadmill worked on and found out that the motor was dying. The repairman suggested that I do not use the treadmill to prevent any injuries until it could be fixed. I love to walk on the treadmill early in the morning before my husband wakes up because once we get busy with our daily errands and routines, my exercise is not a high priority. So, I started watching YouTube videos called Leslie Sansone’s Walk at Home. I am pleasantly surprised at what a great work out I’m getting! I’m able to get my 10,000 + steps each day even without my treadmill. I may even try to continue some of the workouts after my treadmill gets repaired.

This had me realizing that it is important to find alternatives when our routine is interrupted or derailed. It is so easy to come up with excuses or rationales for why I can’t do something. I could have just stopped exercising with the excuse that my treadmill is broken. No one would notice or care that I’m not exercising other than me. I would care and I don’t want to fall back into bad habits.

So, I looked for alternatives and found one. Luckily, I hit the jackpot on the first videos I watched and I’m quite happy with the variety and pace of the exercises. If these didn’t work, I would look for others.

I need to teach my students that they need to do the same in their lives. This applies to not only exercise but about any aspect of life they are dealing with. It is easy to find excuses, but it takes much more energy and effort to look for alternatives. A lot of it depends on how bad you want to really find a solution.

Sometimes by searching for alternatives, you can learn new things and even find things you want to do more research about. You might even learn that the solution is something that you have to create yourself because what you need hasn’t been discovered yet.

When something becomes an obstacle, don’t give up. Look for ways to overcome this obstacle. If you aren’t interested in overcoming the obstacle, then it probably isn’t a real obstacle. It is just an excuse.

When have you had to find alternatives? Please share.

Photo by Jason Wong on Unsplash