Inevitably, the subject of self improvement comes up in the conversations of my life… That’s what happens when you devote your time to something, it becomes noticeable… If you are pursuing a master’s degree, without a doubt it will come up in many, if not most of your conversations with others… Football fanatics talk about football and junkies talk about heroin because people connect with others on the level we are on or striving to attain…
When the conversations arise about self improvement, people find out that my workouts, diet and lifestyle are pretty extreme and I hear the same thing with the same dismissive tone, from almost everyone… “OH, I COULD NEVER DO THAT…” By dismissive, I don’t mean they are dismissing me, they are dismissing themselves… Eliminating the possibilities of what they could do even before they started…
Did you hear that? People dismiss their own abilities BEFORE they even know what their abilities are… I want to repeat that over and over again until everyone reading this or hearing me speak really understands what they are doing…
It looks this:
Them: So how often do you workout?
Me: Oh every day… Two hours a day…
Them: Oh… I could NEVER do that... I don’t have the time… When do you workout…
Me: I get up at 4:55 every morning…
Them: Oh I could NEVER do that…
Now I could go on… If the conversations continue, we talk about fasting… They could NEVER do that… Meditation… They could NEVER do that… Vegan… They could NEVER do that… Clean diet… They could NEVER do that…
I explain that it took me years, I started slow, that I worked my up… I do this because I want to empower people, not intimidate them, but I have this question in the back of my mind whenever this topic arises…
You tell me repeatedly with great detail about what you cannot do, your reasons and your lack of ability… So tell me… What the fuck can you do and why aren’t you doing it?
Yeah… Good question right? I am absolutely certain that it is indubitable that you cannot get up early and workout, fast and eat a clean diet right now… Unless you have been doing it for a while and worked your way up to it, it would put you in the hospital… I don’t doubt that you are unable to… My question still remains…
What can you do and why aren’t you doing that? You tell me you want to get into a good fitness routine and yet, you don’t try, or if you do, it is only temporary until it hurts and you immediately quit… Your diet lasts until your sweet tooth overpowers you, you fail once and give up… You want to try fasting but hungry hurts… Drinking enough water makes you feel bloated but you will eat until you are sick and that is perfectly justifiable and you will loosen your belt, make a funny comment and your goals slip further and further away…
I could go on but you don’t need me to… You know what you say you want and then you see your own behaviors…
Take a look at it this way…
If your holistic health was school you say you want an A+ body and mind, your report card would look like this:
- Sleep D –
- Nutrition F
- Training C
- Hydration C
- Stress Management B
Look, I hate to break it to you, but if you want an A+ body and mind, you need better grades folks… Now, what can give us better grades? Hard ass work…
Let me point his out before we go on…
Saying you want to be in shape, but you seriously want to avoid any and all discomfort is, for lack of a better word, dumb as fuck… It’s impossible to be holistically healthy without pain… I won’t even argue with you about that because you can come up with all the excuses and reason you want, but pain is the only way to excel… Before you dismiss me, think about this…
This shit hurts… All of it… Exercise hurts, fasting hurts, studying late hours hurts, clean diets hurts… Sobriety hurts… Some pain is physical and some pain is mental, but either or, is still pain… Embrace the idea that your journey to health will hurt and accept when you do feel the pain of sore muscles, exertion, long hours of reading, experiencing withdrawal, eating right when you want a pizza, drinking water when you want alcohol… Understand that pain is a marker to excellence… You really think that professional athletes don’t hurt when they train? Not only should accept that you will feel pain, you should fucking thrive on it… Revel in it; love it when the sweat drips off of your chin… You should be proud of yourself for reading a book in one day, getting through your study hours, meeting the goals of the day when you want to stop and watch television… To quote my oldest son, “pain is how we learn, pain is what teaches us that pain isn’t all that bad, it just “kinda “ hurts but we understand what it means to be resilient and that the majority of our limits are self imposed…”
So if you can get the understanding that your limits are self imposed, then I will ask the question again… What the fuck can you do and why aren’t you doing it?
If I say I can do 100 Burpees, don’t say, “I could NEVER do that…” say “ I can do 10… I can do 5… If you can’t do a pushup, get on your knees and try to do them… If you can’t, find some way that you can and work your way up…
Now I am going to admit… When I started, I could do 3 Burpees, 20 pushups, zero pull-ups and had to steady myself on the back of the couch to do 10 squats and the next day I couldn’t sit down on the toilet without crawling myself down the wall… My first workout was a fucking disaster… I learned how to cheat all of them to get my numbers up and as I got stronger, I refined the movements until I was doing them properly… I set goals that looked ridiculous to me… I wanted to do 50 Burpees, 50 pushups, 5 pull-ups, and 50 squats… A year later I met those goals and now those numbers look puny to the workouts I do every day… My point is I’m not Superman… I’m a human who was once lazy, fat and had zero confidence… It took me a year to meet those first numbers and all that did was excite me and enlighten me to that fact that my “impossible” goals were indeed, quite achievable… I live in a world now, where there are infinite possibilities… I entertain goals that look ridiculous to others... Not just fitness goals, not just health goals, but things that would take gargantuan efforts to attain, and feel like all I lack is a plan…
So again, what the fuck can you do, and why aren’t you doing it? It will take effort, pain and time but you can do what anyone else can do… There are only the limits that you set; the world is wide open and waiting for you…
Get off your ass and get to work…
The 90 Day Life Change Challenge update… Slept in until 0530 this morning… Then I kinda hung out in my room in the quiet and enjoyed doing nothing for an hour and a half… I had three workouts to do but there was music and reading I wanted to do first… I broke my ½ Murph record this morning by a minute and 3 seconds and when it was over, I laid in the floor gasping and cried a little bit, but please keep that between us… I was a little overwhelmed, exhausted and burned up all the oxygen in my blood… Like I said, excelling hurts... sometimes so bad, you will cry… After I recovered, I did my squat challenge… Today was 270 squats and 54 pushups… Then P90X3 Eccentric Lower and then P90X3 Yoga… Finished that and went down for meditation and got up at 1020… Chilled out, wrote this blog and ate lunch… It has been a great morning and tomorrow is a kinda rest day and a trip to Los Angeles to get a longboard in Venice Beach at my favorite skate shop… I hope it’s still there…
Well… I will see you tomorrow… We are looking at a little over two weeks to go…
Love you like an English teacher loves correcting grammar…
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