Short
and sweet today... It is Saturday and this old man needs to not get some things
done but I wouldn't dream of not posting, after all, it is part of the goal,
right? Not going to lie, this morning I wanted to quit... With two months down,
everyone I know watching me to see if I can finish this monstrous task I have
taken on, and I wanted to tap out... My alarm went off at 0455 and my first
sensation was pain… My back hurt, shoulders ached and I had that feeling of
being so tired you just kinda want to, sorta, yearn for the world to just
ignore your existence for a few more hours… I slept for 8 more minutes and Lady
Gaga again reminded me that she had a Million Reasons for me to get up… There
were no games this morning, I didn’t count down, didn’t reason with myself,
didn’t anything… I kicked my pillows out of bed, sat up and steeled myself for
the blinding light of the bedside table lamp… Stepping out of bed my ankle felt like it had
two stainless steel pins in it (it does), my back screaming to remind me that
there was no way in hell that I was going to do anything this morning…
Then
the flood of bargaining started… I could surely blog this morning instead of
doing that hated ½ Murph… I reminded myself that I actually like the ½ Murph…
Well, my mind continued, it’s only 49 degrees outside so you can put off
outside yoga until later, Right? Nope, by the time I finish this ½ Murph and my
squat challenge it will have warmed up enough and I can wear a hoody, I said…
But, my back hurts and I’m limping, I whine… I will stretch out good before I
start, I said… I’m tired… This will wake
me up I reminded myself again… I groaned, but it’s Saturday, I have been doing
this for two months and I can certainly write this morning, work on guitar
practice and do all this shit later when I am feeling better… Right? I
continued brushing my teeth, not paying much attention to the voices in my head…
Suddenly, my mind burst out, YOU HAVE A PODCAST AT 9:30 AND THERE IS NO TIME TO
GET ALL THIS DONE, YOU WILL HAVE TO POSTPONE EXERCISE! it triumphantly shouted…
I poked my watch and it said 0528 and I laughed reminding myself that I could
certainly do one ½ Murph, 145 squats and a ½ hour of Yoga in 4 hours… My mind
went silent, brooding… I hesitated to see if it had something useful and it
pouted at me as I fired up my television so I could run my timers and music…
I
laid down on the floor to stretch out my back… I was stiffer than a wedding
boner and immediately, it started… “See, you’re never going to get this loose
enough to do a ½ Murph, maybe you can get it good enough to sit and blog and
this will be better this afternoon…” I continued stretching and slowly it began
to free up again and within a few minutes, it felt alright but the entire time
I was stretching out, my mind was in free fall, saying everything it could to
stop me… I stood up to start the timer for my 1/2 Murph and desperately, my
mind whimpered, “at least go pee first…” I could feel myself trying frantically
to find some way, any way, to delay starting that ½ Murph series…
I
walked back in the bedroom, put my hand on the mouse and started the timer… As
soon as I started the timer, My mind said, “well, you will never beat thirty
minutes...”
Let
me hesitate right here… I have been doing a ½ Murph for a about a year and the
three goals I have for doing a ½ Murph are one, finish, two, finish in under
thirty minutes and three, try to beat my fastest time if at all possible… Now I
always finish and I have never exceeded thirty minutes… Occasionally, I beat my
best time but that isn’t always possible… So when my mind said, you’ll never
finish in thirty minutes, I knew it was grabbing at straws and would shut the
fuck up soon… Or, at least until the ½ Murph was over…
I
finished in less than 25 minutes and my mind congratulated itself like it never
said I wouldn’t make it… Then it said, you know, those squats could be done this
afternoon… I said five sets of 30 would go quickly… It said how about a couple
sets now and finish up this afternoon? No, I said… I started squatting and it
was silent for a while considering if I could indeed, do five sets… It rambled
on like an angry drunk for three sets and then resigned itself to silence as I
finished the fifth set…
Well,
it’s much too cold to go do outside yoga as sweaty as you are… I sighed… I will
put on my hoody and you know as well as I do, yoga will keep me warm… My mind
rebelled, and said, you will catch a cold! I said, listen, that’s a stupid
hillbilly myth, shut up… I went to the garage, opened the door and as soon as I
felt the cool breeze on my skin and heard the birds on a quiet Saturday morning,
I felt accomplished, successful and powerful beyond measure…
Does
this sound delusional or is it an almost exact copy of the conversations you
have with yourself that you lose almost every day of your life? Do you plan on
exercising in the morning that turns into exercising in the evening that turns
into exercising tomorrow that turns into doing absolutely nothing? Exercising in the morning sounds great when
you consider it the evening before… The next morning the thing that sounded
like you were going to conquer the world, now sounds like you would rather not
conquer anything except for your snooze button… Last night you were Alexander
the Great of morning exercise, and the next morning you are the Genghis Khan of
the snooze realm…
Why?
Because you let your mind talk you out of it…
Yeah,
I get it… But why are some people healthy, fit and kicking life’s ass and you
are walking among the dead? That would have a rather simple retort… You’re weak…
Ouch…
I
wish we candy coat that a little and I guess I could if I wanted to mute the
blow, but I really don’t… I wandered among the walking dead for decades wanting,
needing, pleading with myself, to please stop being so fucking lazy… Start,
stop, start, stop… Plan, break the plan, plan again, and break it again… Give
up, hate myself, start again, stop… It was a vicious cycle that I couldn’t
break out of… I certainly didn’t want to be what I was and I was horrified with
myself… Truthfully, I had so many problems that I could have solved if I would
have just ignored the voices in my head telling me that it was too hard…
Listen,
truthfully being in shape sucks sometimes… Eating a healthy diet sucks… There
are times when I want to stop this nonsense of running on the hamster wheel of
self improvement… I want to watch television, and drink beer while I’m waiting
on my pizza to arrive… I want to sleep in, wake up, get stoned and lounge about
the house in my underwear scratching my ass and looking into the refrigerator
every 15 minutes not knowing if I am hungry or bored out of my mind…
I
can’t...
That
sounds good and then I remember how much I hated myself when I lived like that…
No self esteem, no confidence, no joy… Always sick to my stomach, always tired,
groggy, brain fog…. Why would I sacrifice what I have now for that? This is two
hours a day and then practicing self control… I still hear the same arguments
that you hear, except now, they aren’t valid anymore… They’re like a far off
drum beat that I can tune out… The other life is a 24/7 fight that I lost every
day, slowly eating away at my self esteem, confidence and self worth…
Pizza
ain’t worth that…
Sorry
to be so harsh but today a guy in the mall ask me what I was doing, because he
said that I had an aura of health around me that he could feel… We discussed
the struggle to stay healthy and he said he was fighting every day to keep
motivated, so I thought about it all day and I wanted tell you CJ, the only
thing I could come up with is that I stopped listening to the negative fucker
that lives in my head. The voice that says I can’t, because I can… The voice
that says I shouldn’t, because I should and especially the one voice that claims conclusively that I
will fail, because listen dude, I won’t fail… I fucking refuse to go back to
that misery I used to call my life. That life that I settled for, accepted and
hated…
I
absolutely love the challenge life… Like my morning motivational speech says, “Give
me 10,000 men and I defeat them with my heart alone…” So if that is true, what’s
one voice in my head going to convince me of again? Not a damned thing…
Get.
To. Work.
The
90 Day Life Change Challenge update.. Just did it… Day started trying to choke
me out and I fought back, fought back viciously and knocked it out… You can too
you know, it’s just a lazy voice in your head stopping you…
Well…
Sorry, lied to you… That was going to be short and sweet and it turned into
long and quite punishing… *shrugs* Sorry, not sorry…
Love
you like Angelina Jolie loves weird sex… Have an intentional rest of your day!
See
you tomorrow when we are going to talk about a very valid reason for getting up
earlier…
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