Day 6. When you feel like you JUST CAN'T

What will you see in day 6 video?

You’ll see me hit the ground. Several times. You’ll see me stop. Trying to calm my asthma. Trying to keep my thighs from spasming.
You’ll see me almost puking.
You’ll see me refuse to give up.

What you won’t see:
What happened when it was over. I went to my husband. Covered in sweat. I asked him to hold me and I cried. For how weak I have allowed my disease to make me. For how affected I am by it. For the frustrations of having to stop so much. And mostly for the sheer fact of how DAMN HARD what I did was.
But as I head to the shower I am choosing the word YET.
I couldn’t do the whole thing YET
My body is not strong YET
I haven’t beat fibro YET
I WILL NOT GIVE UP. I will stop when I need to. I will listen to my body. But I will not give up. Period.

So let's talk about what it feels like when everything in your mind is screaming  "I can't do this!"

First off.... it sucks.  

Because what comes right after it? All the reasons why you are a failure.  All the ways you are "broken".  The reminder that you "always quit anyway, why would this be different?"  In just a few seconds your entire self esteem takes a MASSIVE hit.

This is where YET comes in again.

During that video there were so many times I was saying "you are not broken you are not broken you just can't do it yet" "you can do this" "fine, have to modify but you WILL do SOMETHING".

When you interrupt the train of thought caused by "I can't" with OUT LOUD valid affirmations you have a brief moment to convince your brain that YOU are in charge and that it is wrong. And that moment can change it all.  It's the difference between turning the workout off and pushing through.  It's the difference between raising your hand in a meeting or not.  It's the difference between confronting something and letting it just keep going. 

I want to talk about the most important word in that last paragraph: VALID.  Telling ourselves bullshit doesn't work. Flat out.  "I am so strong, I can totally just do this" when your legs are giving out and your lungs don't work is NOT going to work. "I can't do this all yet but I CAN plank for 30 seconds while I wait for the shaking to stop" IS.  "All my ideas are awesome and my boss is going to love this" is NOT going to work.  "I have some great ideas and this one is worth sharing" IS.  You can give yourself encouragement without using half truths or lies. See, you know when you lie to yourself, and what's interesting is that they have shown that you can literally train your brain to not trust you.  So if you say it's safe, it automatically says "UH HUH. LIAR" and your chemicals prepare you for danger.  If you say "this will be easy"  your brain says "bullshit. last ten times you said that it was horridly hard" and it will fight against you.

Our brains are programmed to seek the EASIEST and most IN THE MOMENT pleasurable path possible.  It's why people stay in abusive relationships too long a lot of the time.  It is going to be hella hard to leave and try to start over and the brain says "no way, Jose.  That is going to be way worse than what we have here. It has potential to be a failure too!".  Our conscious thoughts can totally go towards the future. We can reason with ourselves that, yes for 6 months this will be hard as hell, but after that? WORLDS better!  But the brains subconscious hard wiring does not agree.  

This is where MIND over MATTER comes into play.  Your conscious mind has to rule over the grey matter in your noggin. Which means that you have to simply DO the things. And as you do them, your brains confidence in you grows.  Suddenly you have proof that you CAN in fact do these hard things.  And that NOTHING BAD happened afterwards.  Slowly over time you can train your brain to stop insisting on the easiest path and each decision gets easier to make and easier to follow through on. 

Have you seen the awkward Yeti comics? Heart and Brain? If not... do yourself a 5 minute favor and go look at them here.   In fact, save a bunch to your phone and look at one a day.  This one in particular is one you will see in another post here later on: