Monday I was on the elliptical at fit club, just reaching the end of my cardio program. The manager was there and he laughed and said, “What? Are you tired?” Probably in reaction to the grimace on my face.
I said, “No. This is me embracing discomfort.”
In order to understand my answer you have to be familiar with the program I was doing. Since it came out in October, I have been doing the apocalypse zombie program that was put out for Halloween. I kept doing it because I really like the tabata format of it, but now I think I need that constant reminder the fit coach talks about at the end of the workout. The last two minutes of the program he bumps the resistance to twelve and says in my ear says that when you’re tired and nearing the end is when you have to push through. Here you learn to “embrace discomfort” and it translates over into your daily life.
I was never good at “embracing discomfort”. I don’t like being too cold or too hot or too tired or too hungry, etc. My girls always tease about how I bring the whole house with me on every excision to avoid discomfort at all costs. When this cardio program came out, I figured it’s something I should work on. I had to listen to it enough times so the concept took some root in my brain and begin to appear in everyday life. How am I doing? Well….
On my trip back to the cape last Friday I stopped to get gas without my coat on. It was colder out than I thought, but I was already pumping the gas. I had to stand there and endure the biting wind until the tank was filled. Believe it or not, instead of shivering and mentally cursing and hurrying the experience to be over, I actually thought of what Paul Romeo talks about in that program. I stood still, held the nozzle, and thought about “enduring”. Thinking thoughts on how this will soon be over. I’m not dying. It won’t last forever. The car will be so warm…and…before I knew it, the pump shut off and I was climbing back in the car. So, physically I think I’m moving forward on embracing discomfort.
What about “mental discomfort?” What about those reoccurring thoughts and memories of situations and people you’d rather forget? You know, the ones that creep up on you and take you down; steal your bliss; sap your energy. Maybe a few more weeks of the program will remind me to call it forth when this happens in my head, just as it did at the gas pump. Because, when you stop to think about it, feelings and moods are fleeting. They do not last just as the cold at the gas pump didn’t last. Thinking back on every time I slipped into a slump, overnight or over a few hours, the feeling would dissipate or the mood would change and I would end up chiding myself for giving it so much credence.
And so, as another day goes by, I guess I’ll do that zombie program until the winter cardio comes out, and…I have written.
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