Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Entry #8 - Pride and Embarassment

-- Honor and shame from no condition rise. Act well your part: there all the honor lies.
-- Alexander Pope

Mixed feelings today. Pride and embarrassment. How does one deal with this? I choose to focus on the positives because in those I will find motivation. If I focus on the negatives, I will find myself less likely to continue.

I've been fighting the onset of a cold. I wasn't feeling up to par so I gave serious thought to skipping bootcamp tonight. However, the closer it came to time to go to the gym the more agitated I got at the thought of skipping. In the end, I decided to go and that makes me very happy. I don't know where this inner fire is coming from. Where is the motivation coming from? In the past, this little excuse would have given me license to miss the workout I so desperately need. I am not sure why it is different this time, but I hope this doesn't change.

-- Adversity and perseverance ... can shape you. They can give you a value and a self-esteem that is priceless.
-- Scott Hamilton

Well, Marty came to bootcamp tonight ready for business. Holy cow! He beat us up and down and every way possible. There wasn't much new, but there seemed to be more of it. It was fun, but it was hard.

Starting with the positive. I did my first legitimate plank tonight. For those who don't know, a "plank" is where you get in the "up" position of a push up and hold it for as long as you can (or as long as Marty tells you). Sadly, I was only able to hold it for 30 of the 90 seconds Marty was asking, but it was a good first step. I was also happy that I was able to do most of the exercises. About the only adaptation I did was to do squats instead of walk-outs. We even did a bridge (hands and feet on the ground, forming a tunnel that someone can crawl through) and I was able to do that .... once. I may have been able to do it more, but it was hard on my shoulders and hands. So I adapted the rest of those.

Now the negative. We were split into two teams. I am the slowest person on nearly every exercise. I felt like a great liability to my team and that I was the reason we lost nearly every challenge. I hope that my teammates didn't feel that way, but it is hard to see it any other way. If the challenge involved running, my little trot is not nearly fast enough to keep us in the race. I did my best to keep it close, but in the end, it fell short more often than not. I try to put this in perspective and keep my spirits up. I long for a time when I can not only keep up with the rest of the group, but when I can be a leader and superstar for the group. Darn that nagging competitive spirit.

If I am honest with myself, the negatives for today are less about what I wasn't able to do and more about what I want to be able to do. I can see the challenges before me and I am frustrated that I am not yet at a point where I can do it. I want to be able to run. I want to be able to drop to the ground and hop back up when needed. All my negative feelings from today stem from a realization of a goal that still seems so far away. I can give credit to myself for the great distance I have come, but I still see a long road ahead of me. I can't travel fast enough to suit me.

-- Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success.
-- Dale Carnegie

Like I said before, I am refusing to dwell on the negatives. I made it to bootcamp when I had nearly given myself license to skip. While at bootcamp, I did many things I had never done before. This is progress. This is growth. These are signs that things are getting better. I need to think of it this way to spur myself to further growth. And of course, my father's reaction when I got home was priceless. I told him that it was a really tough workout and Marty had worked us like dogs. He just laughed and said "Good". Typical. :)

It seems like motivation is the word for today. I find motivation to be a tenuous idea. I hear a lot of my bootcamp friends talk about motivation. They list a lot of external reasons why they are losing motivation. I can totally relate to this idea. Motivation can be lost because you do better in competitions, life is getting busy, or something is making you really emotional. But, I am beginning to realize that motivation is completely internal. Now stick with me because I am just throwing this together as I think of it. :)

External influences serve as reasons to become less motivated, but it is within our power to decide whether or not to be de-motivated. My life is getting busy, but I choose to put aside time for workouts or diet planning. I am stressed or emotional, but I can choose not to seek solace in food. In the end, I am the driver of this car and it will go where I point it. Just because I come to a fork in the road, doesn't mean I have to take the less motivated road. I need to believe this because I cannot allow myself to be a victim anymore. That is what put me in the obese and depressed state in the first place. No longer will I allow my environment to push me around to a way of thinking. I have the power. I can choose how to respond. Raining? Grab an umbrella and keep walking. Roadblock? Take a detour.

-- In my experience, there is only one motivation, and that is desire. No reasons or principle contain it or stand against it.
-- Jane Smiley

I think success is about breaking the Stimulus/Response mentality. For example .... Stimulus: delicious food present, Response: eat it. I want to adopt an Action/Thought/Reaction mentality. Action: delicious food arrives, Thought: this food is counterproductive to my goals, Reaction: walk away or eat something healthy or go punch a pillow (anything but eat it!). Marty taught us something about this in our classes. I think the most important thing is putting that thought in there. Once you stop and think about it, it is less easy to fall off the wagon. Well, you have to put correct thoughts in there. Don't think about how it is just a small thing so I can make up for it tomorrow. Instead, think about how genuinely evil that item is. It is trying to break me. It is the enemy. It is an evil devil trying to lure me back to my gluttonous life. Be gone foul demon!

Ok, ok, brain dump over. Sorry about all that. My brain goes on a tangent and I ride it like a surfer rides a wave. At least, this time it seems I landed near shore rather than out to sea. :)

-- The self is not something ready-made, but something in continuous formation through choice of action.
-- John Dewey

4 comments:

  1. Kevin, you were a rockstar tonight. Not one of us thought of you as slowing us down or making us lose. Team A kicked that contest's butt. No one cared that they beat us by a few seconds, we were SO PROUD that every round was SO CLOSE!!! The only time I got close to frustrated was during the basketball challenge, and YOU were the one who helped fire me back up! We were missing every shot, and I was about to give up, when you came in right in front of me and made it and we finally had 4 points. That made me believe I could make it too, and I did! Sure, the other team got to 20 just a few seconds later, but who cares? We all got a great workout and we all had fun. And I am soooo proud of you for that plank, you're amazing. It wasn't very long ago at all that you were sitting on the bleachers bouncing your basketball. And now look at you!


    Also? I want to steal this:

    "External influences serve as reasons to become less motivated, but it is within our power to decide whether or not to be de-motivated. My life is getting busy, but I choose to put aside time for workouts or diet planning. I am stressed or emotional, but I can choose not to seek solace in food. In the end, I am the driver of this car and it will go where I point it. Just because I come to a fork in the road, doesn't mean I have to take the less motivated road. I need to believe this because I cannot allow myself to be a victim anymore. That is what put me in the obese and depressed state in the first place. No longer will I allow my environment to push me around to a way of thinking. I have the power. I can choose how to respond. Raining? Grab an umbrella and keep walking. Roadblock? Take a detour."

    <3

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  2. Thank you Becca! I know you worry about your journey as well. But from the very beginning and ever after, you amaze me at your mobility and perseverance!!

    I'm glad you liked that paragraph. I know it is cheesy, but what I said in the blog is true. I hope it can help people at any point in their journey or decision to start a journey. It gives me a warm fuzzy feeling to know you like that paragraph and that it might help your thinking. I will try to think of some more "gems" in the future. :)

    <3

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  3. I just want you to know that you are a huge source of motivation for me. I've been "stuck" where I'm at for nearly 3 months now. I've contemplated skipping many bootcamps, but I feel like I have to be there to support all of my other peeps. And you are so impressive Kevin. There are many things that I couldn't do when I started that you are doing now. You truly are a huge source of inspiration. I love watching all of our bootcamp peeps transformations. It definitely keeps me motivated. :)

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  4. Thanks Angela! I truly hope that is the case. I don't want this to be a one way street where I am inspired and motivated by you all. It would seem like I am leeching off your successes. I know you get frustrated with your plateaus or backslides, but even with those, what you have accomplished so far is AMAZING! You are a huge advertisement for what is possible. Keep it up!

    I look forward to a day in the not so distant future when we are all sitting around a healthy lunch after a half marathon talking about "remember when we couldn't ..." :)

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