No alcohol means broken sleep... I have accepted that but my acceptance has done dick for my worn out mind and exhausted body. Today was rough. I didn’t make it out of bed until 6:00 AM, 30 minutes past my target time. My back hurt, eyes burning, headache, sick, tired and hating myself for my commitment to this 90 day life change challenge. I’m not one to complain much after my initial grievance but today was one of those days that I struggled to put on a happy face…
Now
you might ask me why I have this multi-faceted goal to improve my life with
exercise, diet, etc, etc etc… and I have so far failed to meet my own
expectations and haven’t given up…
Analogy
time… (A comparison between two things, typically for the purpose of
explanation or clarification…)
Let’s
compare this little experiment of mine to being the coach of a football team… It’s
the big game and like my Life Change Challenge, there are many parts of a team
that make up the whole. Offense, defense, special teams, kicker, coaching,
field… You get the point. My challenge has getting up early, eating right,
exercise, etc… Now let’s just say that the offense isn’t working in the first
quarter. The quarterback is having issues, the front line is struggling and no
one can catch a pass. Kinda like me right now, struggling to get up at the
right time, exercise is non-existent unless you count that eight minutes of
Pilates I did this week… However, on our imaginary team, the defense is kicking
ass… Good pass rush, tackling, etc… Again, like me, my diet is stellar, I haven’t
missed a blog and one lesson per day on the guitar…
So,
if this imaginary team isn’t doing well offensively, should the coach just
throw in the towel? Tell his team to go to the locker room and forfeit the
game? Fuck no, he will make adjustments, motivate some people and get his team
firing on all cylinders… Jesus, now the team is an engine? What the fuck? These
overlapping analogies are getting need to stop…
Anyway…
Just
because 3 or 4 out the twelve categories of my Mega Challenge aren’t working is
no reason to quit… In fact, tomorrow I
have already decided to get up at 5:30, do a ½ Murph, plank and meditate before
work… My only failure, and yes, not doing what I intend is a failure, not “unfinished
success”, it’s a fucking failure… Period… I know, I know, lots of people out
there cannot face the fact that sometimes we fail. If you said that you are
going to, say, quit smoking and three days later you’re hiding behind the tree
out back smoking and spraying yourself with cologne and chewing gum before you
go inside, ya fucking failed and now, because you’re hiding your failure, you’re
a liar… Failure isn’t the end for me, it’s a motivator… I hate to fail. I
despise it. It took me two years and a ½ dozen tries to beat P90X3 the first
time. I cried every time I quit and I would just heal up and go right back to
week one, day one and curse the name of Tony Horton every time.
Wait,
before I go on… I needed to say this about myself… Winning is anticlimactic for
me… When I finish something I am proud of myself, but my only thought is “What’s
next, because if I can do what I just did, how much further can I go?” I tried
at least six times to beat P90X3 and the day I beat it, I started the over
again the following Monday with a 5,000 squats in a month challenge, which by
the way, I failed at for a couple of months before I made it…
So
look, go ahead and fail, kick yourself and get back up… Keep going… The game doesn’t
end when the other team kicks your ass on a set of downs… You have to lose
sometimes… That’s what gives you character.
Just
know this, you committed yourself and now people are watching you. Unless of
course you didn’t tell anyone that you’re making changes, but that’s pretty
unlikely because the inspired human always opens their mouth but only the
committed, the self-controlled and the strong stick with their own undertakings…
Remember the guy behind the tree smoking from earlier? Yeah, he is either lying
to the people he bragged to or avoiding them… I would rather suffer through the
pain, meet my goals and expectations then be “that guy”… So which person are
you?
Finally…
Let me tell you this… It took me years to get to this level but I did not just fucking
leap here from my couch… I made goals, I met some, I failed some. I struggled,
I quit, I hated myself and I adjusted the process more than a guy in tight
pants adjusts their junk… The secret is that every failure was conquered in the
end and every victory was fuel to plan the next assault on becoming a better
person… This is a process, a marathon without end. I will never be done, I will
never be satisfied because the human experience is boundless and the only
limitations are the ones you put in your own way.
“I
wanna do “X” someday is just another way of saying you don’t have the initiative,
the resourcefulness or a plan to do it. It’s not even on your radar until you
figure out how “X” is going to happen. Goals realized are just the foundation
for the next attempt at self-advancement...
Let’s
talk about fasting tomorrow… I cannot think of any sports analogies to go with
fasting…
See
you tomorrow… I have a guitar lesson and its getting late... But not too late.... haha
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