Is it worth it?
As I was working out a few days ago, I was struggling a little bit. I don’t mean physically, but just mentally. I wanted to work out and I wanted the satisfaction of working out and staying on the schedule set by the program but my heart wasn’t in it. I was literally just doing it to do it. I was going through the motions. I didn’t feel like pushing myself, nor did I really want to. I was just there, doing the bare minimum of the moves presented before me. This got me thinking.
When is the act of showing up enough?
When should you push yourself through the slump? Motivation wanes for sure and habit is what keeps you going. However, when is it important for habit to take over and when should you give yourself a break? We are just humans after all and true perfection is merely an illusion.
As you know, I’m a firm believer in balance. More specifically, finding your individual balance. Therefore, there’s going to be a spectrum of when it’s appropriate for you to push yourself and when you should give yourself the break it needs. It’s going to be very personal to you but when I realized my balance, I thought it would be good to share as a perspective here and how I arrived at that conclusion.
We all know that consistency matters. To really get good at something or see results in an area, you need to be consistent – meaning you do it more often than not. This doesn’t mean that you should over work yourself though. Like if you’re doing a workout program and your body could physically get injured if you push it too hard when you’re sore. Or you’re sick and you NEED to recover.
Excuses
As I working out and really before I started, I was taking a mental evaluation of all the reasons I could just stop and not work out. Running through excuses if you will. Nobody would know, I could just do it tomorrow. Do I feel like I will actually do it tomorrow or will I be in the same frame of mind again? Am I so sore that this is dangerous right now? Am I sick? Does my body just need a break? Do I actually enjoy this program? Is it just because there’s a lot of other things I feel like I “should” be doing at this exact moment? Would I actually do them or just sit on the couch and think about them?
I wasn’t hurt. I wasn’t overly sore such that it was dangerous. I wasn’t sick. I enjoy the program. I just didn’t feel like it and I didn’t feel like “having” to do it the next day either (the next two days were designated rest days). Yes, I’m typically really grateful my body can even move like this and it’s truly a privilege that I am able to exercise. At this point, I was already over halfway through my workout and it was definitely not worth it to stop – so I just kept going.
My why
I decided it was more mental fatigue than physical and I needed to do just it to do it regardless of how much “effort” I was truly putting into it. The effort was there, but it was more of a mental push than physical. My overall WHY with working out and doing this program is not to have the perfect body or to train as an athlete. It’s to take care of my body. To move it and treat it well. Was it the best work out possible? No. Would I have been a failure if I chose not to workout yesterday? Absolutely not. Did I get myself closer to my goals by pushing through my mental excuses that day? Yes. I moved my body and I am dang proud of that. To me, it was worth it.
Habit is definitely what got me to work out that day but I also discovered my balance. Habit keeps me going when my excuses are purely mental. I also no longer feel like a failure if sometimes I am just going through the motions because the fact that I still did it is a BIG deal and I know one day that the motivation and drive to push myself harder will return.
Where is your balance? Would it have been worth it to you? There’s no right or wrong, just what works for you.
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