Yesterday I had a hard workout.
You might think that by this I mean the physical activity was rough, but I don't mean that. You might think I mean that it was hard for me to go to the workout, but that's not it either.
I mean to say that I went to this workout carrying a lot of weight on my heart, and about midway through, the exertion and turmoil of myself and my anxiety nearly beat me.
It was on the rower, specifically, that damn rowing machine. The blog I wrote that got erased by me shutting off my computer prematurely, kind of went into a woman who got under my skin a little about the rowing machine. While it specifically did not unnerve me, it just added a tiny weight and yesterday there was so much weight I nearly starting angry-crying in the class.
Mostly though it was due to the frustration and powerlessness I felt in the moment. There's a lot of time where we carry so much baggage, that it seems impossible to throw on what baggage a workout carries too. (Like am I doing this right? Does everyone see my fat jiggle? O lord that girl is running 10x faster than me, I'm so lazy)
There's times I know that even with my usually chipper outward demeanor (hence the nickname) there's times I want to rage and scream and break the wall. Throwing down medicine balls and running as fast as I can sometime help, though it might seem crazy why.
There's a moment during that time where my body can't keep going with the pace I'm demanding. My lungs start burning, my muscles start giving out, my heart starts that heavy beat that tells me I'm in the red 'careful' zone, and this wave of frustration rears up and threatens to make me crack right there- whether in the gym or my HIIT workout, anywhere. And you know that you have to stop.
It occurred to me that this moment is where many people might convince themselves they can't do it, that they should give up. We tell ourselves some very nasty things in our darkest times. And what better, more perfect moment for your self-destructive darkness to make a good dent on your happiness, than to strike at the moment you percieve you are failing?
If you are afraid to push it, afraid to workout, afraid to fail, afraid of the way your body can't handle certain things, afraid to be reminded that your body can't handle certain things, remember that at one point in life, you could neither walk, nor talk. Everything began somewhere.
Don't allow frustration and fear to cut you off before you even begin. Let it happen. So what? It'll fade, and soon it'll take longer and longer to hit that point of 'I can't do this.' Before long though, it becomes 'I'll try it tomorrow. I can do it.'
And finally, before you know it, it'll be 'Look what I did!'
My solution for when my anxiety and self-doubt and everything else threatens to overwhelm me is to go another round, do one more of what I'm failing at, go another 10 seconds- anything. Because its okay to stop when you think you need to stop. But if you can push even a tiny bit more after that voice says you can't do it, you just proved it wrong. You're stopping on your terms. It makes a difference.
I don't want to go to the gym today. I'm feeling down, heavy, depressed, sad, angry and frustrated. I can't control the scenarios making me feel this way. I can't guarantee endorphins are going to wipe this all away, or that it'll magically fix anything. But if I go and do something that a voice is saying I just can't do, I take the power and I hold it, and I control it.
