Challenging your limitations
Are you, or are you not?
If you spoke to me last year, and every other year before that I would have made two things vehemently clear if we ever crossed the topic:
I’m not a runner
I’m not a morning person
On Running
For all of my life I hated running. I was perfectly happy to run after a hockey ball, but because of my hatred for running, I spent the first half of the season actually building up any respectable capacity of fitness and before long the season finished, and that capacity dropped off a cliff as my activity fell to a cool zero.
I think a big push for me to start running is the fact that I came off of probably my worst season playing hockey. I wasn’t a good team mate, and I didn’t really live up to what I felt I was capable of. A root cause of this was how I felt about my fitness, As mentioned previously, it normally took half the season for me to even hit a reasonable baseline. I felt this year, across the whole season, I didn’t even get close to that. After all the disappointment I felt like I needed a change.
Recently I bought some running shoes (having never owned a proper pair) and I just started to give it a go. The first session was really just a sorry effort, and if anything it reinforced the idea that I hate running. But there was some part of me that felt pretty good about it. So I went again, and again, and again, and the negative feelings towards running for the sake of running just went away. The suck was no longer drawn by hate, but as a function of pushing myself. A product of intense training is the release of endorphins, also known as the wanky runners-high. If anything I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it, but chemically it just makes sense.
On Sleeping
For as long as I can remember I have never practiced any reasonable sleeping schedule. I never went to bed early, I only ever managed to get to school as the bell rang and I slept in every chance I got. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this. If you can manage your responsibilities while still protecting your sleep then honestly I don’t think it really matters.
At university I was able to go to the might unirec in between or after classes. I never went early in the morning, and I never went late. This was awesome for someone who is lazy in the morning, and lazy at night. This year, since starting work I’ve had to make a few adjustments to my habits, so I started by going to the gym after work. It was the natural choice as a self-proclaimed ‘not a morning person’. However, after days of mental fuckery, I found that the last thing I felt like doing was the gym. I could embrace the suck, but I felt like my workouts suffered. On top of two hockey trainings late during the week and a game on the Saturday, I found that I pretty much managed 1-2 workouts a week.
I found myself between a rock (I hate waking up early) and a hard place (I didn’t make a good enough effort to go after work). Despite all the evidence throughout my life which suggests otherwise, I chose the rock. To cure my disappointment I decided that in order to read and gym as much as I wanted to, I needed to create more time in the day. So I started waking up early. After a few days of shitty sleeps I started to feel as though it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it was. My circadian rhythm started to shift back, and I found myself getting up early now more then I ever have in my life.
Conclusion
This isn’t to boast about how awesome and active I am. It still requires 6 alarms and a terrible mental battle to get me out of bed, and often I get to the gym 10 minutes after I should’ve been in order to get a full workout. About 30% of the time I don’t even get up at all. By no means am I a fast runner, and by no means can I run far. Almost everyone I talk to from work can run faster, and farther than me. I don’t even really run that often. Since these two shifts in my life the lesson has become extraordinarily clear and surprising. We as people are never truly pre-disposed to suit only one thing or another. My self-classification as ‘not a morning person’ as well as a hater of running was not a product of my biology, it was really just a product of my self-imposed limitations. By validating every day that I can’t be someone who wakes up early every day it was as much a habit as it became apart of my personality.
I am not a morning person, but I am also not not a morning person. I am not a runner, but I am also not not a runner. I am only what I tell myself I am, and you are as well. Challenge what you are not, to see if you truly are. Embrace the suck to see where your limitations start. Maybe you might prove me wrong, but I think you’ll surprise yourself.