Make Peace With the Body You Actually Live In

A new season of life becomes much easier to enter when you stop treating your body like the problem that must be overcome before life can begin.

In the first three articles this month, we have been building toward this.

First, we talked about the way people wait for the perfect beginning, when real beginnings are usually much smaller and less polished than they hoped. Then we talked about the fact that something old often has to loosen or end before something new has room to grow. Last week, we looked at the energy cost of renewal, and the fact that even good changes ask something of you. If you missed any of those pieces, this one will make even more sense after you read them, because this article is where all of that becomes deeply personal.

Sooner or later, every conversation about renewal runs into the same reality.

You are trying to begin again in a body that does not always do what you want.

It may be slower than it used to be. Less steady. More easily tired. More easily hurt. More demanding of planning, recovery, rest, timing, quiet, and care than you would ever have chosen for yourself.

That changes how life feels.

It chang…