Rock piles, cathedrals and self-worth

Hi, I'm that guy, it's nice to meet you. Today's 'that guy' is the guy who I occasionally want to punch in the face, the one who always lives his/her life through quotes, through others, etc. (I love quotes, but not to the extreme.) Today, I become that guy for a fleeting moment as I offer you one of my recently found and now most favorite quotes. 

A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, 

bearing within him the image of a cathedral.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Think about this for a moment, seriously sit back in your chair, pause the treadmill, stop pacing back and forth trying to burn those few extra calories and just think about this. What are we as people?  A lot of us are broken inside, or feel like we must be broken because we haven't got it all figured out, or because we momentarily fail.  We're "rock piles" in the proverbial sense. 

Antoine de Saint-Exupery is the incredible author of 'Le Petit Prince', or 'The Little Prince.'  This was a book that I remember from young childhood, and from senior year of High School, where my teacher had us read it.  I loved it.  

Whoops, I digress.  

The point of this quote to me is this: Along with myself, a lot of people I follow on twitter are partaking in weight loss measures: pant-based food diets, Couch to 5K, Weight Watchers, Biggest Loser Club, you name it. A lot of us have days where we struggle. What I feel like many of us are missing is the ability to see the end result within ourselves already. We already ARE the champions, we just haven't necessarily honed all of our skills to prove this to ourselves and to the world. 

I posted a little while ago about the Iron & Wine song that I love, where I spoke about secretly wishing that I was already 140 pounds, not wanting the scab (to do the work), just wanting the scar (to have already done the work). We all want that. The thing is, we have to try see the end result within ourselves in our current state (maybe, our sense of worthiness) before just we rush after a number.  If we don't, we'll never know what we were looking for, we'll keep running and it'll never be enough. 

But you know what? We all slip up, we have temporary set-backs, we beat ourselves up all day long. Yesterday, I snacked like all day.  Today, I've eaten healthily and am doing great. 

But YOU have to find, within yourself, the image of the proverbial 'cathedral', the person who deserves to be 140 pounds (or whatever your goal is), the person who should be loved today and not in a year from now. Watching the Biggest Loser it looks pretty easy to see others find the 'cathedral' each season, because we see an hour or two of their weeks, they have amazing support. It's easy to pity ourselves or feel self-doubt because we didn't find ourselves in what felt like the instant that these folks did. 

So, I post a challenge to you: Concentrate on small wins every hour, every day. Post your wins, on here, on twitter, in your own blogs. A win is as simple as taking the stairs when you really wanted to take the elevator, turning off the TV to go do fifteen minutes of yard work or walk the dog. Eating a piece of fruit instead of a candy bar. Stop waiting for life to find you. Concentrate on the positive, because you deserve it NOW.