Personal essay/blog
Discipline Over Motivation
Lessons Learned Hard to Live By
As many of you already know, I’ve recently stopped smoking. I can’t count down the days since I’ve last had a smoke. I am not sure what day I actually ran out of cigarettes. But that is the day I stopped. Somewhere at the beginning of March, I think.
I had previously set a quit date of February 14 but then a bunch of life shit happened. It was NOT a good time to add extra stress. I had to travel to California and be all peopley for nearly 2 months. I peopled every day.
I am an extreme introvert. Peopleing completely and thoroughly exhausts me. I also do this weird thing where I anxiety talk. I talk and talk and talk and don’t let anyone get a word in edgewise. This is also exhausting. It usually happens around people I’m meeting for the first time or people I am incredibly uncomfortable around.
Smoking relieved me of some of that extra anxiety.
So, I didn’t actually quit until I got home from traveling. And not until I ran out of cigarettes. I forbade my husband to buy me cigarettes, though I didn’t ask him to quit with me. He quit anyway a few days or weeks after I did.
As soon as I quit smoking, I broke out my old running shoes and restarted my love affair with running. I love to run long. Ah, but there always seems to be that wrench, waiting in the wings, to be thrown into my works. Spring had sprung and with it came the winds.
The Texas Panhandle is notorious for its strong winds. We have 2 seasons here: extreme cold and windy, and extreme heat and windy. It is always windy here. Spring winds are just stronger winds. 25 to 30 miles per hour sustained with gusts up to 40, 50, 60, or even 70 miles per hour. And ‘naders! We live in tornado alley.
The winds and the pollen count made running untenable. But my recent addiction was causing me to constantly eat and crave sugary snacks. Since I wasn’t running, I had to find some way to offset those calories and burn some fat. I’m not terribly concerned with losing weight, but I definitely do NOT need to gain any more weight. I haven’t, yet, lost all of the weight I gained in 2013 when I quit smoking for the first time. I gained 50 pounds in a matter of months. AND I had gained about 30 pounds three years prior to that when I stopped doing meth in 2010.
So, I really can’t afford to gain more weight. That had actually been my excuse for not stopping smoking sooner. I kept saying I needed to lose 25 pounds before I quit. I did lose 25 pounds, but I didn’t quit until, well, I did. I had gained back about 10 of those 25 lost pounds by the time I quit in March.
But the winds were seriously fucking me up. It was so windy one day that I got sand in my eyes and nose sitting in my living room. Just a giant dust cloud. So gross.
I decided to try to find a workout program I could do inside. I had to do something low-impact because our home is a pier and beam foundation. Too much jumping about and the house might come falling down.
I found an excellent program. Team Body Project. I took their fitness test and scored much higher than I expected. They recommended a starting program. I didn’t want to pay money to join anything, so I just stuck with their free membership. I did the first week of the two-week program twice. With the free membership, you get the first week of any program they offer.
After the two weeks, I went ahead and paid for the premium membership which was actually cheaper than most gym memberships. And I didn’t have to go out and get people all over me!
I really like this workout program because of some of its core philosophies. They are stickers for progress, not perfection. And they have taught me to not rely on motivation to get going. Rather they encourage the discipline of pressing play (on their many and varied workout videos) every day. They encourage people to hit the pause button as often as they need to, to take as long as they need to to get through a session (some of which are as short as 10 minutes), and to practice the form of each exercise.
The discipline of routine is one of their major philosophies. Even if it is just to practice forms or just to do some stretching, or just to walk a little (they have walking videos where the two founders, a married couple named Alex and Daniel, walk and ask each other silly questions).
There are SO MANY routines and videos and programs. I could press play every day for the rest of my life and not get through them. The videos include how to modify forms to suit your needs. If you cannot do a situp from the floor or a pushup from the floor, they give you the modifications that will mimic, as closely as possible, the muscles the situps or pushups are working. They have standing-only routines. They have Knee-friendly routines. Compassion routines. Pilates, resistance, boxing, HIIT, walking cardio, intense cardio. You name it. I’ve noticed the routines and programs I’ve watched try to incorporate every muscle group in the entire body. They seem to be focused on fitness and overall health, but will also help you sculpt if that’s what you want.
The number one thing I love about Team Body Project is that you just can’t simply rely on motivation alone. You have to learn discipline. Or habit. Call it what you want. I know, I would happily sit in my recliner, not pressing play, reading and munching on Hershey Chocolate Kisses, or bacon, or Hershey’s Chocolate Kisses AND bacon (don’t knock it til you try it). That’s exactly what would happen if I waited to be motivated.
So, I press play. Every single day.
Now, if I wanted to make the big bucks on this platform, I’d translate everything I just wrote into a how-to on writing. Maybe I will. Some day. When I feel motivated.
