By Suzi Fevens, from her blog Confessions of a Fitness Instructor
We all know people who continue to say they are going to do something, but never do it, and then complain because they haven’t seen the results they want to see. And then there are the people who refuse to let what they are (or have been) hold them back from what they want to be.
In my profession I’m lucky enough to see lots of those second kind of people fight against what card’s they’ve been dealt each and every day. I also get to see lots of the first kind of people too, the ones that might even go as far as to start something, but never see it through. We all have difficulties in life, and unless you know someone really well you don’t know what those difficulties might be. For some of us (myself included) those difficulties are hidden physical conditions that limit our ability to do physical activities but that nobody can see on the outside, it’s how we deal with those difficulties that set us apart.
It’s funny, as a blogger you are supposed to find your “niche” in the blogging world. I’ve always coupled myself as just another healthy living blog, nothing terribly special. I’ve written a couple of times about having fibromyalgia but never really made it a focus of the blog as it seemed a bit too “poor me” for my liking. By avoiding talking openly about what was one of my major driving forces to become a fitness professional, not only have I been holding back a lot of what being me is, and how hard it is to do what I do on a daily basis with my condition, I’ve been avoiding what should have been my niche all along. It’s not everyday you find a full-time fitness instructor with fibromyalgia! 
So while you won’t find my blog become a total fibromyalgia fest, you can certainly expect that it will come up more often and that I will write more freely about my struggles as a fitness professional with a illness causing chronic pain.
So back to the quote. The reason I chose to share that quote today is because it embodies my life. So many people with my condition are unable, or feel unable to live an active, strong life so they do nothing for fear of getting over tired, or the muscle and joint pain that follows especially when trying to get into a regular exercise routine. I’ve lived the life of not exercising because I hurt too much, was too tired and just couldn’t do it. I won’t do it again. So much of my life was robbed from me in those years, and while it is a struggle for me every day to get up and do what I do, I do it. I do it because I want to be able to do it. And if I don’t do it, if I stopped being a fitness instructor and stopped exercising in just a few short weeks I would go back to that place. That sad, dark, painful place where you feel like you’ll never have the energy to do anything again. Because I don’t want to go there I continue to push myself to get up and get out there and exercise. Sometimes it really hurts, some days I don’t know how I’m going to stay standing never mind teach a crazy Zumba class (or two, or three) but I somehow pull myself together and do it. And I do it because I want to be able to do it tomorrow. I want to be able to do it in a week, month, or year’s time. I want to be able to do it so I do it.
We become what we want to be by constantly being what we want to become each day.
Read more from Suzi at her blog, Confessions of a Fitness Instructor
“My blog is a place for me to share my struggles and accomplishments. A place to provide a voice for others living with chronic health conditions to show that we can still live an active life. That our quality of living can be improved by eating well and exercising” -Suzi Feven
