Solving the Riddle

I have been trying to solve the riddle for a few years now of finding some sort of balance between work and rest, and I think I am getting closer. I came out of a training session completely depressed because I had failed what I had planned, and it isn’t even supposed to be difficult. Here is what came out of it….

In order to achieve great things, we have to treat them with importance, and work diligently at them. But in the grand scheme of things they probably won’t matter that much. So is it important, or is to not? Is it even worth it

Here is my answer : Put in the work it, but leave the stress out of it. Enjoy the ride, and reap the fruits of your labor along the way. The answer isn’t found at the end of the journey.  

Why That Answer?

The great killer of the past 50 years is stress, and it doesn’t bloom from emptiness. Stress comes from having demands put on you that you’re unsure you can handle. Stress comes from goals, whether they are set by you, or by someone else, and fearing you won’t achieve them. But in most cases, the toxic chronic kind of stress I want to talk about today comes from someone else expectations of you, and you should let that kind of nonsense go. 

When it comes to your own life you should be the one deciding on what counts. What matters and what doesn’t. Goals should be personal, and mean something to you. Something positive, and not a way to prove anything to anyone else but you. 

But achieving a goal isn’t what the goal is for. The goal is there to give you a direction. And the steps you take along the way should be enjoyed. If you suffer physically and psychologically every second of every day, maybe you aren’t doing things correctly. 

What Does It Have To Do With The Gym?

Going to the gym shouldn’t be stressful. Losing that weight shouldn’t be stressful. Unless you are morbidly obese, these are not life or death situations.

Yes, lifting a bar you have never lifted before is a moment you have worked up to, and should be treated with respect, and importance. You should summon the strength of your ancestors to help you in those 30 seconds it takes for you to un rack, lift, and rack. Psyche yourself up, and lift that bar!

But whether you lift it today or not only means two things : you were able to lift that bar or you weren’t. That’s it. Don’t be depressed if things didn’t work out. Understand what went wrong and move on. Learn from the experience.

The program worked or it didn’t. Don’t go beating yourself up. You can try again. As many times as you want really. This is all about you. Training should be about you. About your progress, about understanding who you are, what your potential and your limits are. About forging a better version of yourself, learning when to push, when to rest, when to dial back, when to rev up. 

So What Is Important?

It isn’t about achieving your goal. What’s important is to keep moving in the right direction, and enjoying it while you are moving towards it. And as you get closer, you should create a new goal, and move towards that.

Life is difficult enough. Adding another level of stressful achievements you have to live up to serves no purpose but to push you to an earlier grave. 

So do something you like doing instead of what someone said was the best. Move towards a goal that moves you, and makes you want to work for it, instead of what everyone else is doing. Do something that makes you happy when you do it.

Because in the end it isn’t all that important. 

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