A little push

The discipline to push through, when others quit.

Four miles into my run today, I seriously felt like my heart was going to tear open and spill out onto the gym floor. We all have days where we just don't have much in the tank...today was one of those days. The pain was overriding any drive I had to press on. Repeated attempts to reference some belief in my brain, to find an empowering philosophy failed, time after time. Normally, some strong belief comes to the surface when I'm about to quit and am rationalizing about how much that would actually make sense. Today...nothing.

For some reason, though, I told myself to keep on going, even if I had to walk. Quitting was not an option, even though I was racing through every rationalization I had in the bag. So, I kept on. I slowed the pace to a brisk walk, so I could catch my breath a bit and hopefully, find some reason why I should reach down and find the gumption to keep going. My head was frickin pounding. My legs felt like they were someone else's, and I just could not get it going. Music wasn't doing the trick...nor was any of the internal searching I was doing.

Then it hit me...this blog. I realized I was going to have to sit down tonight and update this thing, and discuss my activity for the day. My goal for this run was six miles, and I wanted to be able to jot that number down tonight when I posted. I swear the pressure that comes with professing your goals to the world is one of the most powerful motivators we have in our arsenal. Nobody wants to look like a poser. It's the worst...at least that's what my rules tell me. I won't look like a douche. I'm sure that's ego..and a problem, in somebody's eyes. I don't care. It's what moves me into action. Now that I know this, I have a hugely effective strategy for leveraging myself into taking action.

The last two miles of the run were still brutal, but I finished. Not sure I would've had the guts to, if I hadn't dug deep and found a reference to drive me into that state of never backing down. We all have our thing that gives us this leverage. It may be a towards thing, it may be an away from thing...doesn't matter. What matters is that we find the leverage we need to get our butts moving. What's yours?

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