Hell

As anyone who has spent time with me in the gym knows, I'm really not much for profanity. But, occasionally when something is really hard, I will allow myself to say something to the effect of, "This is hell." You can all laugh at me now because most people don't even consider hell to be profanity, especially at Sisu. 

The use of the word hell, though, is interesting. A lot of the time in colloquial speech, people use the word hell to refer to something that is challenging or excruciating. Like coming back from major surgery, battling through a tough divorce, losing friendships, experiencing severe mental or physical pain, or going through the intensity of addiction recovery. Those experiences are significant, and I don't want to discount how tough they can be with what I say below. 

Obviously, the word hell has its roots in religious origin. Fire, Brimstone. Eternal torment. Red devils with fiery tails. Burning. In essence, pain.

I don't often bring up my religious beliefs because I'm a fairly private person and I never want to feel like I am pushing what I believe onto other people. I might even be too reticent in this area. However, for the sake of understanding my thought process in this post, I will give a bit of background.

Most Christian religions, at least ones that follow a more traditional perspective, interpret hell to be a real place awaiting people who earn it through their actions and beliefs or lack thereof. I belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We believe in Jesus Christ and consider ourselves to be Christians but our interpretation of hell and damnation differs. 

Instead of a physical place of fire and pain, we generally consider hell as a state of being. Hell is, in essence, a condition of stagnation. You can no longer affect change, your potential is wasted, and you cannot progress. Without potential, without work, and without upward mobility, you then experience true misery, because you face eternity without hope of anything ever changing.

I've decided, based on these reflections, to stop saying that something feels like hell when at the gym. Because even though doing a gajillion lunges does hurt and is pretty unpleasant, I'm on a track of upward mobility. I'm progressing. I'm affecting change.

What would truly be hell? Sitting down and letting every chance you have to improve go to waste. When you have a door that can be opened, but you do not open it, you will never see the door that lies beyond it. Your choices are reduced. You have fewer doors, and as you choose not to open them (or even worse, to slam some closed that stand open for you to walk through), you eventually get to a point where you have no more choices left. You have only consequences.

Those consequences might not come until the triple bypass surgery, the high blood pressure and cholesterol, or the debilitating chronic illness. They might not come until the lost time with family, the inability to run after a child in danger, the need to sit out instead of join in because you simply can't. You are no longer making choices; the decisions are literally stripped away from you. 

Hell is truly a cage of our own making, and we place the bars around us one by one as we make the choices we make, until we are no longer free to choose anymore. And what could be worse than losing the ability to act for ourselves, to contribute, build up, create, dream, and then motivate others?

While I might not go so far as to say the tenth round of burpees is heaven, it certainly isn't and won't ever be hell. 

Starting

 This was my first official week getting back into working out since Peter was born. 

I was glad to be there, but I was also sad to see how much progress I had lost in terms of my abilities in the gym. I always liked being a team member at Sisu and being an asset to the team, helping others reach the goal, and being willing to do more work in order to finish with my team. 

In many ways, the journey of this pregnancy and the postpartum journey have humbled me. Certainly, I have been humbled physically, and even now I am working out with certain restrictions on my abilities because of breastfeeding and a weaker core. I can't just dive back in with no holds barred. 

Whenever there's something in the way -- a roadblock, an injury, a realization that you need to focus more on technique before you can get stronger, constraints on time, reduced ability to recover -- ego can get in the way of mindset.

Ego seems like a friend at first. Ego is what pushes you to compete, to be better, to not quit. Ego says you should be able to do this, so get it done; skipping days and taking rests is not acceptable because it's not exceptional. Ego tells you that more is better. It tells you that if you didn't give it all, then you gave nothing. 

Before Peter, I relied on ego a lot. I wanted to be noticed as a team member. I liked to believe I was an asset. I pushed myself because being exceptional meant being valued-- it meant having value.

One of the journeys I had to go on -- by force -- was unlearning this form of motivation. 

So what replaced it?

Well, I'm working on it. But, when I was doing the conditioning workout on Tuesday (my first conditioning workout in over 6 months), I was very slowly completing some of the workout goals. I was winded, running behind my teammates. My movements felt awkward and I was just so aware of how much my body had changed and how much work I needed to do. 

As I was jogging around the pond, I wanted to stop and just go home and claim that my body wasn't ready, which honestly, is the truth. My body isn't ready. After the workout, I had a drop in milk supply that lasted about a day and a half, and I'm still not sleeping great at night because of Peter waking up. Tuesday's workout happened with less than 5 hours of sleep, compounded over multiple nights. I actually found myself nodding off between EMOMs. I'm coming into the workouts with a hand tied behind my back already; these restrictions would affect me even if I was in peak physical condition, which I'm not. 

In the past, this is where ego would step in with the usual message of work harder or you'll be inferior and you won't have value here. Lack of rest doesn't matter; stop making excuses for yourself. Don't be weak. 

Instead, I said, out loud in a very out-of-breath voice, "It's better not to finish than not to start."

Here I was, starting. Ego might not find that impressive, but is it really my goal to impress anyone? No. So, let's get started.