Siddeeq Shabazz
CFL.ca
Now that you know a little more than you wanted to about my personal life, I’d like to use last week’s blog as the background story to those lessons I described in my fourth blog. Now I will expand on each lesson individually so as to paint a clearer picture as to what it meant in my life and maybe give more clarity to someone reading this that may be on a similar search for meaning in their life.
Lesson 1 – You are not your past, you get to define yourself in every present moment.
This first lesson is something that I use as a sort of mantra that helps me move my focus away from past blunders or shortcomings and gives me the strength to keep pushing forward. A lot of times when someone does us wrong we try to label them and make their mistakes a part of who they are – I know I’ve been guilty of it quite a few times. It wasn’t until I found the power of this lesson, that I was able to start working toward redefining myself, and continue to do so everyday. I am able to use this same concept when I’m on the football field as well, throughout my career I’ve heard plenty of things about myself that if I believed or kept in mind, could have ruined my career a long time ago. Instead, by looking at every moment as a new chance to define myself, it becomes easy to shake that kind of stuff on and just keep moving forward. There are still plenty of times to this day I’ll be on the field after making a mistake, and a coach will be yelling at me from the sideline and I have to wave them off as if to say “let it go, I have it” not in disrespect – but I’ve got another play to prepare for. Besides that you can always holler at me on the sideline or during film the next day which will all be too late to affect the past play anyway.
Lesson 2 – You are only as healthy as you understand yourself to be.
Health is something that continues to evolve in my life. If you would have asked me in college if I was healthy, the answer would have been unequivocally yes. Though my eating and lifestyle habits have undergone dramatic changes in a positive direction, the answer today would still be yes – but without such conviction. The reason being that I know now that I am only scratching the surface, as eating and physical appearance are only the tip of the iceberg of true health. That’s the main concept behind our business in Atlanta; at YourDay ETC we approach health through a more holistic approach which can be described in our trademarked term BodyVehicle. If we look at a vehicle having five wheels, the steering wheel and four tires, we look at the Body Vehicle as having those same five wheels where the steering wheel that guides the rest of your health is the mental wheel, and the other four wheels that are constantly being adjusted, rotated, and inflated are the physical, social, emotional, and spiritual wheels.
When I was younger, football provided me with everything I needed to be healthy. I could eat whatever, however, and whenever but the running and lifting gave me the conditioning and core strength that I needed for success. Today that same game takes a lot more away from my feeling of well being than it lends, as far as the health of my body is concerned and the amount of time it takes away from working on all those other areas in my life. It’s a challenge I welcome because I love this game and I love being in real life situations where I am tested daily on my ability to overcome negativity, criticism, accolades, and most importantly my own emotions as it relates to this game that has impacted my life in so many different ways.
I will continue with these lessons next blog, till then I wish you the best of health and happiness.
Siddeeq Shabazz is a second-year linebacker with the Edmonton Eskimos. He led the team in defensive tackles as a rookie in 2007. He is also a lifestyle coach for www.yourdayetc.com.
