It’s been a lethargic day. For the past week I’ve been toying with a sickness that would neither fully take hold nor completely go away. My bed times have been earlier, I’ve spread out my training a bit more and it appears that I’ve finally beat the bastard.
And then today happened.
There are no sniffles, no coughing, just drowsiness, not in sickness or illness, but as if I’ve been punched in the gut and my ambition has been slugged out of me. We all have these days where we’re just not ourselves. Where the simplest of tasks take the greatest amount of mental fortitude to begin, let alone complete.
These are the days when we must complete everything. These are the days when every rep, every run, every article and email must be completed, because it’s these lethargic days where we are given the chance to become tougher. (Read this: How to Become Tough)
When you feel like taking a day off, train. Take the next day off.
The winners of life are not those born with the greatest talents, nor wealth, and not even the best teachers. The winners of life are those left standing, but more than that…
… The winners of life are those who’ve put themselves through the most arduous journeys, the most daring pursuits that would have seen most men quit, yet they’ve trudged on.
They aren’t born with something in their soul that propels them forward while others fall by the wayside, they simply understand that quitting is the end, it’s the choice that so many make that inevitably leads to future quitting and finally a lifetime of quitting.
The winners of life are those who are resilient though life does its best to test them, to weaken their resolve. They may have seen more hardship than you or I, but they don’t quit.
It’s this that we all must understand, it’s in our moments of weakness where we need our greatest courage, for courage is, like all things, practiced and strengthened and learned. If we quit with something as trivial as the gym, we’ll quit our job, we’ll quit our marriage, our journey, our life. (Read this: Want to Guarantee Failure: Quit)
These days where we wake up feeling like a flat tire, empty of our air, our energy, our foundation of grit, it’s these days that we must check off our entire to do list and head to the gym and place our bodies in as much physical pain as possible.
Look at me, I needed to write this article to coax myself into training. We all need a kick in the ass, and most of the time we are the ones that need to do our own kicking.
With that, I’m off to the gym.
