Today I went to do my daily work out and you know what? It sucked. Not actually, but I perceived it to suck. I was tired, I didn’t feel good, my range of motion was all weird, and my joints felt awful.
Worst of all, though: I had anxiety through the whole thing. Nothing acute or anything, just a low level feeling of “eh.” It was a constant discomfort, a needling voice in the back of my head saying “You’re not doing it right. This isn’t going right. Where’s the burn? Where’s the sweat? Why isn’t this working?”
Perhaps the best way of saying it is: “Why isn’t this going the way I want it to/expect it to?”
“Want” and “Expect” and sort of analogous words in this context. I had a feeling that whatever was going on wasn’t what “should” have been going on, and that was driving me crazy.
“Should,” to me, is a four letter word. I want it erased from the history books. More on that later.
Anyway, so my workout was hard because I was already tired from a late night up and a day of bad food over the weekend.
It wasn’t until about halfway through the workout that I addressed these feelings. It wasn’t so much giving excuses as it was examining “Why am I so tired? Why is this so hard? Why is my body not doing what I thought it would?” After a couple of realizations, I got off my own back about working hard.
I realized that my body wanted one thing, but my mind, like a slave driver, was yelling “Produce! Produce! Produce!” and essentially whipping my body into a state of both emotional and physical discomfort, which is not how I like my workouts to feel. Make no mistake, I like the discomfort of a good sweat, hard work, and the strain of muscle failure, but I’m not a big fan of my brain telling me “you’re not good enough” when, in reality, I’m doing the best I can with where I am.
But “best” is a subjective thing, I realized. Today’s “best” will not look like yesterday’s “best” or even yesterday’s “worst.” This can be for so many reasons; a bad night’s sleep, a hangover, a recent death, passing, or big change, or just some bad food.
Anyway, today’s workout very quickly became a spiritual practice (like it usually is) with some extra “weight” or “resistance” going on: the weight of expectation. In the program I’m doing, I do a different workout every day, six days a week, plus a rest day. This was week two, day one, all about pushups and pull-ups, both of which I struggle with, so I was excited to see how much I’d improved now that my muscles had healed and I was a week stronger.
However, due to many other circumstances, my mind was in one place, my body in another. My expectations were not met and that upset my mind, for a short time. However, with the practice of awareness and acceptance, I realized “OK, this is where I am right now, and I’ll do the best that I can right now.”
Worst of all, though: I had anxiety through the whole thing. Nothing acute or anything, just a low level feeling of “eh.” It was a constant discomfort, a needling voice in the back of my head saying “You’re not doing it right. This isn’t going right. Where’s the burn? Where’s the sweat? Why isn’t this working?”
Perhaps the best way of saying it is: “Why isn’t this going the way I want it to/expect it to?”
“Want” and “Expect” and sort of analogous words in this context. I had a feeling that whatever was going on wasn’t what “should” have been going on, and that was driving me crazy.
“Should,” to me, is a four letter word. I want it erased from the history books. More on that later.
Anyway, so my workout was hard because I was already tired from a late night up and a day of bad food over the weekend.
It wasn’t until about halfway through the workout that I addressed these feelings. It wasn’t so much giving excuses as it was examining “Why am I so tired? Why is this so hard? Why is my body not doing what I thought it would?” After a couple of realizations, I got off my own back about working hard.
I realized that my body wanted one thing, but my mind, like a slave driver, was yelling “Produce! Produce! Produce!” and essentially whipping my body into a state of both emotional and physical discomfort, which is not how I like my workouts to feel. Make no mistake, I like the discomfort of a good sweat, hard work, and the strain of muscle failure, but I’m not a big fan of my brain telling me “you’re not good enough” when, in reality, I’m doing the best I can with where I am.
But “best” is a subjective thing, I realized. Today’s “best” will not look like yesterday’s “best” or even yesterday’s “worst.” This can be for so many reasons; a bad night’s sleep, a hangover, a recent death, passing, or big change, or just some bad food.
Anyway, today’s workout very quickly became a spiritual practice (like it usually is) with some extra “weight” or “resistance” going on: the weight of expectation. In the program I’m doing, I do a different workout every day, six days a week, plus a rest day. This was week two, day one, all about pushups and pull-ups, both of which I struggle with, so I was excited to see how much I’d improved now that my muscles had healed and I was a week stronger.
However, due to many other circumstances, my mind was in one place, my body in another. My expectations were not met and that upset my mind, for a short time. However, with the practice of awareness and acceptance, I realized “OK, this is where I am right now, and I’ll do the best that I can right now.”