If you workout, you’ve no doubt had a moment when, inevitably, you hit the wall. Your energy drains away, your heart rate shoots up and it feels like the coach secretly put some more plates on the bar. It feels heavier than ever, your muscles burn, your mind is shouting you to quit….to take a break and just give yourself some rest. Your tired body is sending signals to your mind, that it would be better if you stop. You are fighting with your exhausted mind, struggling to keep going. At that moment, you have two choices: You can quit or you can push through that fatigue and finish your workout anyway.
Doesn’t that resemble life so much? Let’s say you are at work. It is the end of the week, and everything you can think about is how tired you feel. You somehow want to concentrate and do your work the best you can, but the desire to just let the time go by is so much stronger. Right in this moment, imagine you are at the gym. Imagine you are doing some hard WOD. You are doing the second round, and you have one more to go. It seems like all your strength is gone. You pray that it will be already 8 o’clock and you will be done with it! But you somehow manage to break it into reps and rounds and take each one of them one at a time. First you think about the thrusters that are killing your legs. You count down every single rep, and as the reps get less you start feeling satisfied that soon they will be over. Here we go. You did the thrusters.
Now you can focus on the pull ups. You jump, grab the bar and give everything you have to pull yourself up and check out one more rep. Your arms are already drained. You feel the numbness, but deep inside you know that only if you push yourself out of your comfort zone, only then you can become stronger and better. You are almost done with the workout. Just 30 more double unders and it will be all over. But how can you keep on going? You feel every little muscle on your body and all of them are so tired. That’s it! You start thinking that you are gonna stop. After all it is just a workout. You could allow yourself to rest, right? But right there, right in that moment something starts bugging you. You remember that it won’t hurt anybody if you call it a day and quit the workout…but truth is that if you give up…you give up on yourself! That is what keeps you working as hard as you can, and before you know it…YOU FINISHED THE WOD! You are satisfied and fulfilled.
Now let’s go back to your work place. You are sitting there the whole morning, wondering how you will get through the day. Well treat it like a WOD. Divide the day in rounds, and make sure you do every rep with perfect technique. Let’s say that the morning will be round number one. The early afternoon round two and late in the afternoon-round three. Take your tasks as reps. For example, the e-mails you have to write, the analysis you have to make and the presentations you have to create. Count each of them as a rep. Make sure you will concentrate on each one and perform it perfectly. Remember- in the gym if you miss to do a movement with the best technique you are risking an injury. And here if you don’t do your job in the best way possible-you are risking to lose the job or just fail the deal.
If you are a student do the same. Divide the day into rounds. Let’s say the first period is round number one, then you will have a couple minutes break to “take your breath” and then comes round number two, a.k.a the second period. Keep going like that to the end of your classes and you will pull out the day.
Of course that is not something to do everyday, because I hope that you enjoy the things you do in your life, but sometimes we all need a break even from what we love. So if it is the beginning of the day and you wonder how you are gonna go through it…treat it as a WOD. And remember that when the going gets tough, only the tough keep going!
