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Overcoming Resistance with Champion Weightlifter, Kim Rahir
Episode 228th December 2024 • The Second Chapter • Slackline Productions
00:00:00 00:55:06

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Kim Rahir has a pretty incredible story - after an exciting career as an international journalist, she faced not one, but two devastating and frightening health scares. She fought back through resistance - literal resistance - and became a champion weightlifter.

Kim now helps other midlife women to get stronger, both physically and mentally.

You can access a free assessment tool about your health and strength at https://kimrahir.com 

And you can find Kim on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/kim.rahir/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kim-rahir/

https://www.facebook.com/kim.rahir/

If you want to get in touch directly, you can email Kim at

kim@kimrahir.com

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#womenover35 #wearebadass

On The Second Chapter, serial careerist and founder of Slackline Productions, Kristin Duffy, chats with women who started the second (or third… or fifth!) chapter in their careers and lives, after 35. You’ll find inspiring stories, have a few laughs, and maybe even be motivated to turn the page on your own second chapter!

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Transcripts

TSC Kim Rahir

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in with you. So I'm a little bit jealous, I have to say. You're not originally from Spain. I would love to kind of chat about how you got there. But first I have a question about when you were growing up, since we talk about career change, were, were there careers that you envisioned?

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And that desire went away pretty quickly. Not because of any experience I had, it was just, like a crazy idea. And then later on I was I wasn't sure for a very long time, even before I started working. I wanted to be a journalist very much, and I became one, but I also thought about working in continuing education, teaching adults doing things like that.

And I just decided right after I finished university and then because I got a job offer from a newswire, from a news agency, if somebody else had offered, maybe I would have become someone else.

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So I got into those circles. And I felt that it really fit me because I'm a very curious person. I love to find out about things. I like to study. I like to learn. And I like to tell a story. It felt like it fit me very well.

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And I thought that would be the right thing for me. And I picked that, and I'm very grateful to my parents that they just let me pick whatever I wanted to do. Which is, I had friends who like girlfriends who had stricter parents that said, Oh no, first you do an apprenticeship. I want you to have something solid, a job, something, then maybe you can go to uni.

No, I could just go and pick whatever I wanted. And I'm really grateful for that.

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It was like you could either as a woman have a career or a family. never have both. That was like totally clear. When I was a teenager, a career woman, that was an insult. Do you want to be a career woman? That's disgusting. And I never really bought into that. I always wanted to have both, but it's really, it was very conservative.

I was born in:

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Agence France Presse is like a global news agency, just like AP and Reuters. And they had a German desk, and they were looking for people to treat the international news for the German market. So you had to pick and choose. Because, a global news agency produces news 24 7, and not everything is interesting for German readers.

So you had to have, a certain sort of insight and perspective to know what would be interesting for the Germans. Then you had to transfer it into German in readable in a readable way. Language, and then you had to also redo the dispatch very often because it wouldn't be focused on a general market and you wanted to make it targeted to your readers.

So you had to be quite profound, but you also had to be really quick and I love that combination. Yeah, that was really perfect for me.

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somewhere on the field, on the terrain, and sends in stuff regularly, you feel very connected. You feel very close to what's happening. Very in on the action, even though you are, just sitting at a desk at that point in time. But there's this, connection that makes you feel that you're really living the events and and be, you feel you're out there with your colleague actually and, waiting for things to, to unfold. It's super exciting, high adrenaline in certain situations. And it's quite exhausting also, cause it's shift work and, you have to Cool down when you come off your shift. You need good self care too.

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And so it sounds at least to me, that sounds like an ideal position to be in.

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On the other hand, and because I was writing in German, I could cover a lot more stories than my husband who worked still for the newswire because his story written in French would be translated into Arabic and it would be seen by the authorities. And, if you just write one wrong word or something, we had like the police or the, the interior services call our home, asking my husband to reveal a source and threatening him to bring him in if he didn't.

And I was totally protected from that because they'd never read anything I, I wrote. They didn't know what I was doing. So that was much easier. So you don't have the official standing, which makes stuff a bit more difficult, but on the other hand, you have so much more freedom to actually do it.

Go for stories and then write them and have them published. And I was lucky enough even to go to Saudi Arabia. We went together with my husband after a bomb attack on U. S. troops. The Americans told the Saudis, you have to let journalists in. And there was like a 24 hour window. We threw stuff in a suitcase, just jumped on a plane and flew to Riyadh.

I nearly didn't get in, but we did. And, to go to Saudi as a woman is great. Close to impossible. And then as a woman journalist, it's like never happens and happened for me. So yeah, it was great.

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So it was not super frightening. What was frightening was when I was covering the war in Yugoslavia and we went to a town to report on it. And when we wanted to go out there was shell fire and we couldn't go out, we had to spend the night there. I don't think I've ever been as scared. Has that in my entire life.

I was so scared that I thought I might pass out. It was really, that was really super scary. And yes, my life was in danger. I was lucky and helps you also understand. It's so easy to look at wars on the TV screen and think, oh yeah, it's going on. It's going on. But when you have felt the fear in your own fibers, then you know what the people are going through.

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And. It doesn't work like that anymore. I did, towards the end of my journalistic career, I worked for TV also quite a bit. And TV is even worse than the written word because, the chunks of information are even smaller and you always need a picture to go with it. If the information or the accuracy of the information suffers a bit because this picture goes better with this story you just have to accept that.

And that got me very frustrated, actually.

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So I'd been thinking about leaving journalism for a few years when I finally made the choice. It was not like, Oh, one morning I got up and said, Oh, I'm going to do something else. It's a process and I think most of us need this kind of process. I know there's people who wake up one day and say, I'm going to do this, but I think most of us, we keep on weighing things, stuff that's holding us back, old habits fear.

of the unknown and the better the devil, all these things that always go through our mind. So for me, it was like over two, three years until I made the decision. And then yes, my personal story with my health and what I did about that helped me then at, when I reached a milestone with that one, I said, okay, now this is where I draw the line.

Now I'm going to do something else.

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If we were totally clear most of all what we need and what we want, then the decision is, would be much easier, but it's that clarity that takes so much time to find. Because we don't spend much time like intro, introspecting and thinking, Oh, is that right for me? How am I feeling? We don't pay much attention actually to our own needs and and desires, not in a deep way.

And when we take the time to do so and get clarity on what we need and what we want, it becomes so much easier. But it's not easy to find out. It's hard work.

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So that's why all, you have all the meal plans in the world. Everything is out there. You can, you can at the tip of a finger, you can get, I don't know, Hollywood celebrities eating plan and their training, but you can have everything. But it's not happening for most people because they We forget that before we decide to do something, we need to know why we want to do it.

What is our motivator? And what do we really want? And, that's something so many people are unaware of. And they think there's something wrong with their personality. They have a character flaw. Why can I not get this done? When actually the foundation is missing.

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I have done it. I have a great job. I have three kids. I've made it. And then from one day to the next, I fell ill, had a very scary thing. Nobody knew exactly what was going on. I was seeing double, I was being paralyzed from getting paralyzed from the hips downward while I was in hospital and turned out after six weeks there.

that it was a one off autoimmune condition. It comes and goes. It was super scary. My kids were small. It changed my perspective a lot already at the time, about what's important in life when you've been in a hospital, unable to walk. and totally powerless. You start appreciating stuff that you used to dislike, like doing dishes or doing homework with your kids.

It's all of a sudden that's a treat. I got over that. I learned to walk again and everything. And then two years later, I felt my left hand going numb, more examinations and tests and it turns out I had MS. And I thought Now, That's a very low blow. I just got over this other one thing and I felt that I had changed and now I had to deal with this.

And those were the first weeks after the diagnosis. I always remember them as being quite dark and not only because it was winter.

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It was so much milder. Nothing like this numb left hand that was like not impossible to ignore. It was actually so discreet that I thought Yeah, okay, it was a relapse, but it was so much less and so much milder that maybe I was getting better. And the part where I had I had to, when I fought with the doctor was when he said I needed lifelong treatment because I didn't want that.

I didn't want that. It was like losing my power all over again after this time in the hospital and everything. But I didn't win that fight because, they scare the living daylights out of you saying, no, if you get more relapses, you can have so much damage to your nervous system.

You could be in a wheelchair, you could go blind. So many things can happen. So I had to accept that. But until this day I'm actually proud that I fought with him because he was just writing the prescription, sending me on my way. He was not going to say anything else. And I said, hang on, can we please talk about this?

And he was, Patient for the first half hour, then he got a little bit impatient and I had to give in. But that was also a first sign that I was not going to just let myself be declared a patient, a sick person and take everything as prescribed because I really had no, no desire to lose my power completely again.

The completion of grant for better outcomes without public interference.

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And what does what you're taking do exactly? They don't know. They don't know. Because we still have this, many still have this idea that, the doctor is the authority that you cannot question, that you don't want to question. Maybe it's comforting also to think that this person knows and will take care of everything.

You don't have to think about it. You don't have to worry about it. But I always urge everybody to, to keep asking. You want to be in on, what's, happening in your body. You want to be in on, how your body is treated. You want to understand, you want to know what's going on.

Because that gives you a certain power in the decisions. And even if at the end you cannot take the doctor's place, you can be a partner for them actually. And I think they need that too. that you stand up for yourself, that you tell them about you, about what you need, what you feel, how your body functions, what your experience is.

They need to know that. They can do their job better if you are more positive and in your approach.

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I could walk, which I, was grateful for, I could move normally. And I just said, no, I have to become like really strong. I think that was also looking for some kind of security. And then this Wanting to trust your body again, I think, because an autoimmune disease is a bit a betrayal of trust because what's your body doing?

Attacking itself? What the hell? So I think that was the driver that I wanted to be independent and confident. And I started lifting with a book, looked out for good form, started lifting heavy. It was one of the first books that said women should lift heavy. I think it came out at the end of the nineties.

And I did that and the crazy thing, and it happens with my clients now all the time, and you don't believe how fast it goes, it takes a few weeks for you to feel different. Yes, building muscle, especially for a woman, takes a lot of time. But the effect on your quality of life and the quality of your mind is close to immediate.

You start moving against resistance of whatever type, could be your own body weight, could be heavy iron in the gym you become so much more confident. I, I know now that there's actually physical. mechanisms at work for this. For the longest time, I thought we don't know how this works, but we do know people who go for strength training have improved mental health.

Now, it seems that you actually create neural pathways that you stimulate a molecule that will build neurons in your brain, so it's great for cognitive health. And I always tell myself, when you do strength training, you overcome resistance. That's what it is. And I think this is also something that you then know in your fibers, that you can overcome resistance.

It's not something in theory, we all know, oh yeah, resistance, and then we are resilient and we fight it. But when you have actually done it and lived it, I think that makes a difference and it carries over. into other aspects of your life. and this is the one effect from strength trading that, you can, that 100 percent occurs.

You do this and you feel better about yourself very quickly.

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But I was hooked because it's something It's so challenging that you need full focus on the moment, on this present moment. So when you're lifting, you cannot think about, what did this person say to me like just now, or what am I going to cook for dinner tonight? No, you have to be present. And I loved it so much that I then joined a pure weightlifting club, left the commercial gym, and after two weeks of training with them, they said, Kim, do you want to compete?

I was 55 at the time, and I stupidly said, don't you know how old I am? And they said, we don't care. We don't care everybody competes these days as masters competitions. And so I started and I realized that I was actually strong enough to compete on an international level. And then I, because I was so hooked at that, Oh, let's do this, let's go.

And that's how this came to pass and competing. It's just one of the best things I ever decided to do because it makes you feel so alive. It's, it's scary. It's exciting. It's exhilarating. You have to learn how to fail also, because, you're out there on this platform, everybody looks at you and you fail, you have to get over this.

And sometimes you get three attempts in every one of the two movements and sometimes you fail the first two. So then, there's just one attempt left or you're totally out of the competition and you learn how to refocus, how to really forget everything that happened before. Do not imagine what happens if you just focus on this one thing that you do.

And I think that's, has carry over of course to your life as well. And it makes you feel very alive.

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So you have to have, you need a total of around, yeah, also 140 pounds. Which is

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60 percent of that, and I lift 60 percent of my personal best so we're working at the same intensity, relative intensity for what we can do. And that's why there's also always this understanding, this mutual understanding, when somebody goes into the 90s, 95 percentages, then everybody's encouraging them because they know how it feels.

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You know that you should eat certain foods, but you just can't make it happen because you're so stressed out or, your environment is just not very conducive. Most of my Clients are in that kind of situation and we will start with a five minute daily action. That's it. I'm saying this just to show how small sometimes you have to start in order to make change happen.

Because Our brain hates change. It's the same thing with, the devil you know. That's how our

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That's such a massive overhaul, if you have never done anything like this before, that your brain is going to sabotage you wherever it can because it just, it's terrified. Your brain is going to be terrified. Hang on, we were safe and sound here on the sofa, and now you want me to do all these crazy things.

How's that, what's going to happen? And the resistance is not only from your brain, it's, you also have to be aware of what's in your environment. Your partner might think, Oh my God, it was so nice to sit with her on the sofa every night and now what, she's walking around the block? What, does she not love me anymore?

So that's why we start super small. So we're lulling your brain into acceptance. It doesn't really notice that change is going on, but you can tell If you've been able to do a five minute action every day and you get total liberty, you can do whatever you want. It could be just taking a vitamin supplement, it could be journaling, it could be breathing, it could be going for a five minute walk, anything.

But if you've proven to yourself that you can do something, stick with it for an entire week, get confidence. Your confidence grows. You think, Oh, if I can do that, maybe I can do it just a little bit more. And that's how we start. That's how we get the ball rolling. And as for the training we start training quite early on too, and it's just 15 minutes a day.

Same reason. It must be doable. First thing in the morning in your pajamas so you don't have to go out of your way to do it. And it will also be tailored to you so you can do it. This might be just a little bit challenging, not overwhelming, not boring, just, the right Goldilocks serving of exercise for you.

And that's how we start. So very small. I know so many women still think you have to just, go through a lot of pain and misery for three months, then you get to the body of your dreams and then you go back to normal. It doesn't work like this. Yeah, you have to have a change in lifestyle and that will only work if you do it like really very gently.

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not doing that I should be doing. So I went to the gym recently and they had a free trial with a personal trainer the questions she asked me, and I couldn't believe this still existed in the world. So what are your goals? Okay, great. I'm ready to discuss my goals. As you said, a long conversation or, lots of questions. And before I could say anything, she said, do you want to lose weight? or get toned, I think she said. Now, nothing wrong with either of those things. However, I was there to get strong. I was there, my sisters and I are now talking about like old lady proofing, we're training for our old lady bodies.

We want to be able to do the things we love to do, no matter how old we get, all these things. And here's this, a woman with this old school notion of the only reason I would come to the gym is to lose weight, to, have this bikini body or whatever that is. I think more and more I realize it is more about functionality in the long term, it really is so much more important about these little habits that continue to keep us healthy and strong throughout our lives.

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But, maybe it was, she very young.

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And I was like,

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Most women, and what you call it, like old woman, what did you say? Old woman proof or something? Old woman proofing. I love that. What, what do you want? It's a great question, but not, do you want to lose weight or do you want to get toned? Or what about, what do you want your life to look like when you're 75?

Do you want to roll on the floor with your grandkids? Do you want to be able to go on a hike with your entire family or with your friends? And this is the whole thing that we don't understand also about longevity. I think longevity is about being able to participate. That keeps you alive when you stay connected with people, when you can do activities, when you can participate, and when you can open your own pickle jars.

And. That's like the, that's like a real goal to be, to be a functioning, healthy adult until your last day. And then you can ask yourself, how are we going to reach that? What do we need to do to make that happen? And then we can start going into training and strength, strengthening, building muscle, all these things.

But if we do not go,

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you know,

Get you to take that walk when you don't feel like it really. And then the habit coaching. helps you with that because many of these things that you need to do and that when you start out are hard and you have to overcome inner resistance,

you can automate those at some point. Summer was very hot here and I had to go for my daily walks at 6. 30 in the morning, otherwise it would be too hot. And I'm not going to lie, every other day I would wake up at 6. 30 and say, no, today I'm not walking. It's I'm tired, I don't want to get up, I don't want to go out there, no.

And then half an hour later, I was outside without even knowing, because it's so ingrained. And that's such a, you save so much energy, so much unnecessary inner negotiation by just starting with these habits that you keep doing. And before you know it, you are the person who's fit and living a healthy life.

And this is something also. I hear often from my clients when they reach weight goals and they feel better and everything. And then they say, I didn't really remember changing that much, because it's so discreet and so sneaky that it, it feels natural.

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Just this day have a great time, spend time with my kids, do what I can today. Nothing else. So I totally forget about the future. You cannot totally forget about the future, but I try for my mind not to travel too much in time. Tried, I'm trying my mind to get out of that time machine, come here, come back here to the present moment.

And that works very well. And the interesting thing is, that it's seven years ago now that my Spanish neurologist took me off my treatment because I was doing so well that he said you're okay. And I've been without everything ever since. Nonetheless, I know, and not only because of MIMS, anything, anyone, all of us, there's no given tomorrow.

This all can stop tomorrow. My weightlifting, I love it. It's wonderful. I know it can be over tomorrow. Everything can be over tomorrow. And I know that on a rational level, we're all, we all know this, but because especially with my first brush with illness, I was really out from one day to the next. I know that I know in my heart that this can be over tomorrow and guess what?

It doesn't scare me. It makes today even better when you can get to that mindset where, if you only have today, or you act as if you only have today, that doesn't mean that you have to go bungee jumping every day. That's totally crazy. But be appreciative of everything that you have.

And I know it sounds so cheesy, but it really is absolutely, it's the trick that does it. It helps you not to get, if I were to sit down now and think, where am I going to be in 20 years? I'd be scared. I don't. That situation is inexistent, although I know that I'm here with you, talking, having a good time, and I'm just going to enjoy that and do whatever I can do today.

And that's also something we, so many people feel that there's nothing they can do because they have this big picture. Like they see themselves in, like on a timeline or in a bigger context. And when you bring it back and down to what can I do right now, that's very empowering because there's always a small thing that you can do right now.

And just do that and observe how it makes you feel. And maybe you want to do something else after that.

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The rain and the sun came out unexpectedly. It turned into hiking and a wonderful lunch and all these things that we didn't expect. And I think because it was something that we were so forced to be in the moment, There was no plan. It just made, it made it so much more, it just felt really wonderful to not worry about, other than the fact that we finally had a flight later that night, we didn't have to think about what the plan for the day was. just was like a gift, a little gift,

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So every four years you have to move. And that's what we did. Three kids in tow. And we were, went from Dubai to Paris, to Vienna, to Paris, to Berlin. And then at some point we ended up in Madrid. And that was when I don't know how my husband managed to get six years instead of four, which was really great because we loved it here.

And then he retired and the question was, where are we going to go? Do we want to live in Germany? No, says the German. Do we want to live in France? No. We want to live here. The quality of life is just fantastic. The people are so kind. Everything is actually well organized. Nobody believes this, but I think in many areas, they're better organized than the Germans, the Spaniards .

And then the climate, of course.

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you want to make me look into the future here? Yeah, no. When I go to weightlifting competitions, international ones, there's always some guys there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think the last time I saw someone who was like 88 or 89 showed up. I want to be that person. I want to still be lifting as long as I can.

I want to be the 88 year old lady showing up to the competitions and everybody saying she can hardly walk. Oh my God. She, what's she going to do? Can she step on the podium when she wins? And I want to be that person. That's for sure.

I don't know. This is not very glamorous. It's, I'd love to just keep, be able to keep doing what I'm doing. That would be just so great. And it's interesting. It's interesting and makes me think now because you're asking this. I am, I'm thinking about how so many people are looking for the next thrill, the next Awesome thing to do.

The next, Oh, I've never done this before. And that could be for some people, it's just, let's try another restaurant and have another super fancy meal. Let's take another trip to a very exotic destination. Always looking for for a bigger thrill or a better kick. And I have learned something and actually quite recently, like over the last three, four years that I'm now striving to keep that amplitude of the highs and lows rather flat.

Because the higher you go, and I know this sounds like ancient wisdom, but everything in the body and the mind has a seesaw function. So if you go very high, you're going to crash very low. And I'm trying to keep my highs a bit lower because that way the lows will be higher. And some people might find that boring, but I think it makes for really great quality of life.

And it's this thing. One point where I found out about this was when my kids asked me, why are these, these rock stars? Why do they all have drug problems? And it's because they have these incredible highs and. then they crash low and they need something to recreate another high. Do you want to, you need this state of being so totally excited and aroused and full of adrenaline.

So you're looking for this next thing and on a maybe less harmful, but from the principle, similar level humans are doing this a lot now. Because we have everything, we see everything that's possible. So we,

we want, things to be better, more exciting, more this, more that, and I don't think it leads to happiness.

So I, I don't honestly don't have a bucket list.

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And I think that can be very helpful.

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And if you focus on just this next thing that you can do right now, And I really mean right now, so do not think, oh yeah, maybe tomorrow I could go for a walk and then I'll be better. No. Think about something that you can do right now, in this moment, and if that's just Having a glass of water or getting out the front door, whatever it is, something right now in this moment, because this will get you started.

Action is, comes before motivation always. And if you can do something right now, then you will be able to do more, but you cannot sit there, Pondering and planning and scheming, you need to do something right now. And think of something that's possible for you. There will be something, no matter, how low or tired or old or limited you feel, there's always something.

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