Growth Occurs In Recovery

August 14, 2009

In Hold Your Ground, we talked about how exercise is a brilliant parallel for developing a solid mental footing. Having a strong confident physical stride goes a long way to giving you an empowered mental footstep too.

The most valuable part of exercise for me is the time to refresh the lesson on ignoring negative voices. Working out hurts. It’s uncomfortable. With every workout, you have to stop yourself from thinking yourself out of it and go ahead and just get it done.

But I push. It’s what I do best. I push when I shouldn’t. I push verbally and say things too directly or in ways I regret. I’ve made some kind of peace with that. I’d still rather make mistakes and embarrass myself over and over than sit still. I really do want the next 20 years to be different from the last 20.

I wish I could just lean back. When a holiday is forced on me and I eventually give in to it, it strikes me that pushing all the time can actually slow you down in the long run.

How is this like exercise again?? Well, for one thing,

Progress is still happening when you stop.

When you’re lifting the weight, you’re breaking the muscle down. It’s only in the next day and weeks that strength gains are made, as the muscle fiber heals and grows. It is natural and necessary that action be followed by rest.

High level productivity training in many fields uses this analogy to improve efficiency in workers. Companies have understood that driving people into the ground causes them to drop. Employees are taught to reduce work hours but make great use of what hours they have. Production gains are greater when people are given time to rest. The employer must trust that he benefits even when employees appear idle.

Quiet and calm are just as important for growth and change as those times when there’s a lot happening. If you carry physical stress and ignore it for too long, your body will shut you down. That’s why sleep is called the second shift.

2. Strengthen your weaker side.

Every single injury I have sustained through physical effort has happened for the same reason. The dominant side of my body was trying to take over. I learned this on a BOSU, killer stabilization that it requires.

When the movement is really difficult, I can feel my right side consciously shutting down the weaker left side and trying to carry the whole movement. I can feel it trying to numb and dull the weaker side’s perceptions. It feels like the big sister who doesn’t trust the younger sibling to do the job, let alone help, so just butts in and does it all. The left side of my brain, which controls the right side of the body, tries to impose all its knowledge and certainty that only it knows how to do the job. So, the left side of my body is unprotected, can’t meet the demand, and gets hurt.

Time off is a chance to strengthen the human relationships that form the stage for the rest of the show. Without the foundation, pushing seems to lose its point. In my driven way, personal connections sometimes take a back seat to my drive to get things done. The right balance needs to be re-established.

3. Give more of yourself than you thought you could.

The best workouts are the ones where you let resistance go. You may have resistance to lots of things, some closer to the surface that you recognize and deal with more easily, some more buried. Exercise is largely the practice of locating it, recognizing it, and overcoming it.

How much more can you give? How much more can you take? For 30 seconds, not till the end of the workout, leave yourself behind. Leave your own body for a second or two and see what that feels like.

You may not know what it is you fight against exactly, but exercise can show you where inside you it lives. Release it. Watch it separate and leave. This is how you reach personal empowerment. Once you can do it in one context, you understand better how to do it in other contexts. There is less fear because you already know how it feels to be there and come back. Holidays give you time to confront the reins that hold you back, and snap them. The only one setting your outer limits is you.

No one can go from 0 to 100 instantly, nor should they. You’d miss out on the real appreciation of what 100 is all about. The fastest way to move forward may be to create some aerodynamic drag to slow ourselves down. Let success find you.

Happy peaceful aware summer energy.

Posted by Christine Scaman | Filed Under Move Thy Body