Keep Showing Up

“I should have stayed at home”. “This is crazy, I quit.”

Here I am, 7:40 am already up and running again.

My latest days were pretty much similar as I’ve been challenging myself with this new morning routine. Trust me, I feel like I am a Navy SEAL. A Self isolated Navy SEAL.

The alarm goes off at 5:30 am. I get up, stare to the window on my left, and it’s still complete dark outside.

A normal person will fall back in sleep until 7:00 am but no. Not my thing anymore.

I rush to the bathroom, wash my face and go get a hot cup of coffee. Sleeping 6 hours is not working well on me. I am used to sleep 9 hours a day, but just the smell of coffee activates my brain.

Take two sips of coffee and sit down on living room floor for meditation time. Or mind battle time.

It’s funny as every time I want to meditate, my mind throws millions of ideas and things at me that I need to figure out. I just want to stay still and focus on my breathe for 15 minutes. Whenever I catch myself into other thoughts, I re-concentrate on the breathing. Inhale, Exhale. I have some meditation music playing that I found on YouTube which helps to get in deeper reflection and stillness. Over the last 9 days, I noticed an improvement on my stillness and how I focus better. I think it is due to meditation. The other nonnegotiable task during the first hour of the morning is to not touch my phone. Checking social media first thing in the morning ruins your creativity and reduces your willpower to become the best version of yourself. Self-comparison, Judgment, fear of criticism. All of these are related to how we consume social media. To reduce the impact of it, I decided to not get into it until 9:00 am.

A morning routine sets the tone of your day. Being awake very early gives you more time to have a reflection on your life and decide what needs your focus and effort. The routine I have adopted is focusing on reflection, activity and structure. After meditation, here comes the running.

Let me start with this fact. I don’t like running. I think I ran less than 10 km in my life. But since the last month, I got into as I wanted to improve my life, and especially I wanted to master my mind. Running is a mind game first, then a sport. I started running longer distances, 5 km every morning, which was a 30-minute running session.

I loved the post-run sensation. I moved to 10 Km Run this week. It seemed to be an easy task. At least It was on last Sunday.  I went for a run after an unsuccessful Surf session and decided to run longer than I’m used to just to assess my condition. By the end of the run, I thought “This is easy, I can do it every day”.

Wrong bet.

It is a pure suffer. Picture this. It is Monday August 10th. I woke up at 5:30 am and went outside to run not for a quick 30 minutes, but for 10 Km in an hour. Happy Monday she said.

My mind went crazy and pushed me to stop at every Km. Thank god I didn’t. When your mind asks you to give up, do not listen and keep pushing through. Pain is temporary, pride is forever. I ran 9.6 km in an hour and decided to redo it the next day.

My calves were very tight this morning after last days runs. My past self will just take a rest day. I have already run 50 km, which is 5 times the distance I ran in my life in one week only.

But I refused to give up. I said to myself: “If I give up now, I’m giving up on my life.” And that’s not going to happen.

I drove back home as I was at my parent’s house last night. Picked up my running shoes and went outside. Man, my calves are really hurting. I was running like a 70 years old man, but It’s okay. I already won the game by showing up when I’m not feeling it.

“Pain is temporary. Pride is forever.”

The first 15 minutes were painful. My legs are very hurt from the last runs. I was thinking the longer I run, the easier it will be. It was. I started feeling better after 4 km, but I didn’t expect my next mind’s move. My mind went crazy again: “I have to stop, this is crazy. I have never run that longer and frequent. I will get injured; I can’t walk or surf again. I’ll stay at home while everyone is outside enjoying last days of the summer. Oh, and it’s very warm weather these days. I’ll regret this run for the rest of my life. I should have stayed at home. This is crazy, I quit.”

The only problem is I was far away from home and cannot waste time walking back as I must start working at 9:00 am. So, I had to run over the next 30 minutes to get back home at 8:45 am. So, stopping is not negotiable.

Some days, you’ll not feel it. It’s not that you’re exhausted, it’s that you’re not in the mood to do any important task that’s in front of you. You want to just go to distractions all day long, do anything but this thing you’re resisting. I get it. And sometimes, the answer is just rest.

Other times, it’s useful to find a way to do the work anyway, because if we only do our important work when we feel like it, we might not ever get it done. It’s useful to learn to do it even when we’re not feeling it. This is how you get more disciplined and not give up on your dreams.

Running away from challenges, pain and discomfort will not make you a better person, the person you would like to become. Instead, you need to embrace these moments and show up. Forget the results. Just show up. You are building this way a new mindset. A warrior mindset. Your confidence will increase. Your self-esteem will grow, and you will feel stronger. It’s not about who is better. It’s not about comparing yourself with others. It’s about how you feel regards the person you look at in the mirror. This is my goal today. Building a stronger mind. That’s why I kept going even if I’m hurt. And the funny thing, my calves are not hurt anymore. I finished the course of 9.6 km in one hour. I feel great about myself. I have avoided a bad feeling by not giving up. Regret.

I got back home. Showered, finished my bowl of oat meals and ready for a full busy day of work within my mind: “We gotta start all over again tomorrow morning".