Woo-hoooooo!

I was invited to join a networking group two years ago. It sounded like a great idea, until I found out that the group meets once a week at seven o’clock in the morning. Which meant I had to get up at five o’clock. It took two full years to wrap my head around the thought of being fully dressed and socially functional at that time of day.

I finally decided to go, but I needed reinforcements for moral support, so I recruited my chiropractor to come with me. After all, there is safety in numbers, and at least there would be one person there that the other one knew, just in case we didn’t fit in with the group.

As painful as it was to get up at five AM, I was doing pretty well until the featured speaker was introduced. He jumped up on the stage to blaring music, waving his arms and dancing like a lunatic. The physical therapist in me admired his agility. The Feldenkrais practitioner in me appreciated his flexibility. The non-conformist in me loved his tenacity. The sleepy head in me just wanted to go home and back to bed, but it was hard to stay sleepy with all that energy exploding in front of me.

After an action packed presentation, he instructed us to pick a partner, and told us to share a highly charged, positive and successful story about ourselves to our partner in the time frame of one minute. Before we started talking we had to jump up and down, wave our arms in the air and yell, “Woo-hooo” as loud as we possible could. That’s when I started looking for the back door. How do I get myself into these things?

As I was looking for the nearest escape route, my chiropractor caught my eye. I recognized the look. “Oh no,” I told him. “I cannot possibly do this with you!” He replied, “Well, I’m not going to do it with anyone else. Let’s go. But, of course, you have to go first!” Of course I did.

Since I lost my window of opportunity to make a quick exit, I shrugged my shoulders and decided to throw myself wholeheartedly and unabashedly into the experience. The speaker gave us our cue, and I was off and running, jumping around, waving my arms, and screaming like a banshee. The flow of positive words came pouring out of me like they would never stop. Where was this coming from?

Then it was my chiropractor’s turn. I never knew he could move like that. He jumped around, waved his arms, and told me a fantastic story of personal success. Woo-hoooo! We really got into the spirit of the exercise, including high fives, fist bumps and chest bumps. Even though we missed most of the time, it didn’t matter. We had a lot of fun, and we learned a lot about ourselves and each other.

The networking group didn’t quite fit either one of us, and after about a month we stopped going. But, that’s not the point. The point is that sometimes you need to get out of your comfort zone, even if it means getting up at five o’clock in the morning. You might be surprised at how much fun you can have at that time of day. You might discover that you have a lot more positive energy inside of you than you realized. Most of all, you may learn  a lot about yourself. And your chiropractor. Isn’t that what life is all about? Woo-hoooo!