Self-discipline
autovatic
Posts: 99 Member
I was going to post this on my blog, but I'd actually love to hear all your thoughts about it!
Have you ever felt ambushed by circumstance? Like, you sleep through your alarm on a day that you are supposed to be in work earlier than normal, scramble together to get in on time, and stay later than usual, anyway. You come home to find out your significant other has made plans with friends, BBQ take out, and hard cider, and by the time that's finished, you have to get in bed to get up early again the next day!
It feels like everything is conspiring to make sure that you don't do the one thing you really don't want to do - in my case, spending twenty minutes with Sadist Supreme, Jillian Michaels. Right when I'm at my weakest, I think, 'You've been really good lately - you probably just need a recovery day.' That seductive siren song from the organ residing in my headspace is tough to resist - when my brain is telling me I am being rational, where else am I going to look for evidence to the contrary? The truth is, on Thursday night, I wasn't right - the evidence lay in my body, in the fact that after hours of wrestling with myself, I finally just did it. And, I didn't collapse, or suffer any injury, or really come out of the experience with any detriment to my person. Unfortunately, I lost that same battle on Friday. It wasn't fate or circumstance that led to me skipping out - it was, plain and simple, me.
This, the mental game, is what really attracts and repulses me about fitness. Obviously, the abs are a nice side perk, but unlike some, I'm not in this for major weight loss. What I really want, more than a hot body or smaller pant size, is the ability to tell my body what to do without my brain getting in the way and mucking things up. In the face of discomfort and boredom and pain, I want to be able to say, 'I can keep going, I am still breathing, my limbs are still moving - it's not time to throw in the towel yet.'
Self-discipline of body really translates to self-discipline of mind, and that transcends fitness into all aspects of life, whether it is food, work, or studies. The tricky piece of this business is, how does one achieve that? How do you train your mind to go along with your body when you are trying to push the envelope? For me, it's nothing innate - I can see how much more flexible my boundaries have become since I started running a year ago, and that is purely practice. I ran, even though it hurt, even though I was tired, and after months, I felt like I broke through a very real barrier and I was suddenly exponentially capable of so much more. I want that same kind of epiphany with strength training, but I am struggling a lot more to get there. Maybe it is more outside my experience, or I want it less; it's hard to say. All I know is that I am going to keep telling myself to not believe everything I think, and not give up.
What do YOU do to train your mind? How do you stick with it?
Have you ever felt ambushed by circumstance? Like, you sleep through your alarm on a day that you are supposed to be in work earlier than normal, scramble together to get in on time, and stay later than usual, anyway. You come home to find out your significant other has made plans with friends, BBQ take out, and hard cider, and by the time that's finished, you have to get in bed to get up early again the next day!
It feels like everything is conspiring to make sure that you don't do the one thing you really don't want to do - in my case, spending twenty minutes with Sadist Supreme, Jillian Michaels. Right when I'm at my weakest, I think, 'You've been really good lately - you probably just need a recovery day.' That seductive siren song from the organ residing in my headspace is tough to resist - when my brain is telling me I am being rational, where else am I going to look for evidence to the contrary? The truth is, on Thursday night, I wasn't right - the evidence lay in my body, in the fact that after hours of wrestling with myself, I finally just did it. And, I didn't collapse, or suffer any injury, or really come out of the experience with any detriment to my person. Unfortunately, I lost that same battle on Friday. It wasn't fate or circumstance that led to me skipping out - it was, plain and simple, me.
This, the mental game, is what really attracts and repulses me about fitness. Obviously, the abs are a nice side perk, but unlike some, I'm not in this for major weight loss. What I really want, more than a hot body or smaller pant size, is the ability to tell my body what to do without my brain getting in the way and mucking things up. In the face of discomfort and boredom and pain, I want to be able to say, 'I can keep going, I am still breathing, my limbs are still moving - it's not time to throw in the towel yet.'
Self-discipline of body really translates to self-discipline of mind, and that transcends fitness into all aspects of life, whether it is food, work, or studies. The tricky piece of this business is, how does one achieve that? How do you train your mind to go along with your body when you are trying to push the envelope? For me, it's nothing innate - I can see how much more flexible my boundaries have become since I started running a year ago, and that is purely practice. I ran, even though it hurt, even though I was tired, and after months, I felt like I broke through a very real barrier and I was suddenly exponentially capable of so much more. I want that same kind of epiphany with strength training, but I am struggling a lot more to get there. Maybe it is more outside my experience, or I want it less; it's hard to say. All I know is that I am going to keep telling myself to not believe everything I think, and not give up.
What do YOU do to train your mind? How do you stick with it?
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