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Cue the dramatic music here...

I know, a little melodramatic, right? But it's TRUE. Big steps have been taken, new adventures are on the horizon and I am...trying not to poop myself. (Just kidding, I haven't pooped myself in AGES. I'm sure it won't happen now.)

But seriously, friends. I quit my job. For me, this is hyooge. I am, by all accounts, a stay-er. I don't job hop. When it comes to relationships, if you disregard a 6 month period in 1998, I am a serial monogamist. Not in that I always need to be with someone but when I am, I'm in in to win it. And when it comes to my work, well, when you build your career around something that you're passionate about you're bound to feel tied to the place where that passion was founded.

I decided to become a certified personal trainer 5 years ago. I signed up through ACE, got my big box of books and study materials in the mail, buckled down and passed my exam. I was hired by the gym where I had already been teaching mat Pilates for years as a part-time trainer, a local YMCA. This YMCA in particular was the Y that I had grown up attending. In fact, I had gone to daycare there as a toddler, took gymnastic there as a school-age kid, etc, etc. See what I mean about being a stay-er? This girl doesn't like to stray far from home, clearly.

Annnnyway, I passed my test. I already had people waiting to work with me due to the relationships I had built there being an instructor. I assumed my new role with all the gusto and naivete of someone who is ready to make a postive impact and create real change in people's lives. I WAS GOING TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE, DAMMIT. But here's the truth:

I had no freaking idea what I was doing. I mean, you read a book, you pass a test and what does that even mean? Not a damn thing when it comes to working with individual people, each one with a different issue, each one with their own idea of what it meant to be fit. I had people coming to me who had just graduated from physcial therapy after a hip replacement. I had a very overweight client who had the goal of running the Twin Cites marathon in October - it was March. The majority of my clients were 60+ years old and I was 31; what the hell did I know about their lives? Nothing. Zip. So what did I do? I had to fake it till I made it...sort of.

I recently read a great blog post by Darrell Vesterfelt, titled "The Problem With "Fake It Till You Make It". (http://goinswriter.com/fake-it/) The post flips the script on the message: while the intent is good, i.e. you need to be confident in situations where confidence is called for, even if you feel you're hurtling down the road at 80 mph and your confidence is nothing but a speck in the rearview mirror, adapting that mindset CAN hurt us and the message we're trying to spread. And he's right; if you project one image of yourself to the world, one that is acting and behaving in a way that is not really true to who you are, you living a lie out loud. And for me personally, there is nothing I hate more than a liar. Especially if that person is me.

So. When I first started out, when I would be asked a question that I didn't know the answer to I didn't try to fake one. But I also couldn't just leave it at "I don't know", either. It was more like "I don't know, let's find out", instead. Because honestly, there is nothing out there that says that you have to keep learning after you pass your CPT exam and there a lot of trainers that look like they are walking the walk and talking the talk but don't know their asshole from their acetabulum. (See what I did there?) I saw this as an opportunity to learn an incredible amount about an incredible thing: the human body. We know more about it now than we ever have and all the classes, certifications and relationships I've built with people who know WAY more about personal training than I do were the building blocks that made it when I did say "Let's try this" when addressing a clients goals a legit answer.

Now when a client comes to me post-surgery or pre-marathon and I tell them I can help them, it's true. Because I took the time to learn. I spent the past 5 years helping my clients achieve their goals and making myself better at helping them do just that. My last day at the YMCA was last Friday and in true Minnesota style they sent me off with a morning potluck coffee chat full of baked goods (Danish! Coffee cake! Oh my!) and a few tears. I give all my thanks to my clients who let me cut my teeth on them and who, by the virtue that I saw then more regularly than I saw my own husband, became great friends. They have no idea how much they will be missed.

And now, a new journey! A new website that looks very barren because once again I have no idea what I'm doing and once again have to bug people that do to help me. A new business at a new gym full of coaches that know more than me about basically everything and once again I am the newbie just soaking it all in. A new, concentrated effort on honing my other beloved craft, writing... and then letting people read it (poop!).

But it feels good, it feels right. My attitude right now is Confidently Learning Because It's Only Going To Make Me Better. I'm wiggling into and settling into this new "thing" that I have taken on. I don't know how it's all going to play out but like I said, I'm a stay-er. I'm not going anywhere any time soon and as long as I keep asking questions I believe things are only going to get better.

How about you? Have you ever had to "fake it till you make it"? Comment below and tell me allllll about it.