My Father-in-Law, Congressman David S. King, D. Utah said often, “The hardest but best lessons I ever learned came when I failed miserably.” These lessons that are gotten under the worst of situations and through the hardest experiences —-never leave us and are forever drawn upon to guide us.
On a practical note, when we are training and things are either super boring or we are distracted by other things that are bugging us, we have to reach deep. Block out the badness until we finish and then go take care of the personal business. Then, there are other times when we get injured (arm, leg, shoulder, hips, knee) somewhere and life in the gym becomes much different for awhile. The pain that we have to fight through is often “deafening” and discouraging. I have a basic principle that I use because I am notorious for “over training” and I’m always in danger of a major injury. I use the mantras, “Do the work!” as I train. and then if I get injured, I plug in the next mantra, “Work Around it!” Emotional distraction or injury requires us to find another way to get the job done without stopping the progress. Let me reiterate, that these moments or times of great pain and discouragement teach us tons about ourselves and how to be better despite the pain.
Stay the course no matter what. But! Do take the time to learn from the harshness that life will deal to us. It doesn’t matter if the pain we go through is fair or not. What matters is that we learn how to win despite the pain. It’s also interesting that there are particular challenges involving pain that can only teach us what we need to know. For instance. If our coach has been telling us to do things a certain way, or at a particular time, or for a certain number of repetitions and we ignore the coach we suffer a set back of epic proportions—-We finally get the message. The suffering we caused ourselves is more than we can handle. We change. We progress. We please our coach and ourselves. We win.
In closing: I have a T-Shirt from Branch Warren that says, “Suffering Leads to Greatness!” In summary, this is the essence of learning our BEST LESSONS through pain……See all of you in the crucible of pain that teaches….
Six Pack and Senior 