"Quitting is for Rookies"

If any of you have children or grandchildren, you know that once a child is stuck on a movie, you are too. You will watch the same movie dozens of times, until you know every word. My son is now six years old and luckily prefers legos and robots to movies (for the moment). This wasn’t always the case. In fact, I remember watching Hercules every single day together for 3 months straight.

After watching this movie an insufferable amount of times, you start to feel more deeply about the characters and about the story-line. Disney’s Hercules is funny, heart wrenching, action-packed, and full of powerful life lessons.

In the Disney movie, Hercules has an epic battle with Cyclops. At one point during their fight, Hercules looks defeated and about to give up when Philoctetes shows up to encourage Hercules. Hercules says, “You were right Phil, dreams are for rookies.”. There’s this heart stopping moment in the movie where you relate to Hercules. I mean, obviously we haven’t fought Cyclops before, but we have all been on the ground, defeated, and so close to quitting.

Philoctetes responds to Hercules, “No, no, no. Quitting is for rookies. I came back because I'm not giving up on you. I'm willing to go the distance. How 'bout you?”. No matter how many times I have seen this movie, this part always warms my heart. If you remember the beginning of the movie, Hercules was clumsy, uncoordinated, and awkward. He continues to work and train and, above all else, he KEEPS TRYING over and over. The rest is history.

As February begins, a large percentage of those who had a resolution have given up (statistically speaking). I think about this every year. Why do we always set goals that we can’t keep? Why do we always stop a month into our “New Year, New Me” routine? I think we set ourselves up for failure when we look at success in terms of absolutes. Just because we didn’t stay away from all refined sugar, doesn’t mean we didn’t lower our intake. Just because we didn’t go to the gym every single day, doesn’t mean we didn’t go 3 days more a week than usual. Just because we are still scrolling Facebook before bed each night, doesn’t mean that we aren’t doing it much less. Why do we base success and failure on absolutes? Is it not relative? As long as we don’t quit our goals, aren’t we succeeding?

This month is American Heart Month and focuses on raising awareness about heart disease and prevention. Rebel Herbs takes heart health seriously. Every Tuesday, we have a yoga instructor come to our office and all the employees do yoga together. It is a great time to exercise, learn practices to take home and utilize, and bond with one another. I’d like to say that we look graceful and beautifully elegant, but that’s not our truth. None of us have mastered Yoga, we all have terrible balance, and we can’t do a side plank to save our lives. But, you know what we do well? We try. Every week we are back at it, trying our best, and even attempting a butterfly pose. It may not be pretty. It may not be graceful. It may not feel great at the moment. But we try. Heart health is important, so we are going to keep trying each and every single week, because, “quitting is for rookies”.