Working out… Oh how I love working out.
I grew up in a very athletic household. As a result, daily workouts have been a way of life for as long as I can remember…
And the best workouts are the ones that are really hard.
The type that leave you gasping for breath, sitting in a pool of your own sweat, your muscles on fire, wanting the pain to stop while at the same time (beyond reason) craving more. It’s addictive—the feeling that you get when you work yourself this hard. Not just because of the health benefits obviously associated with keeping your body healthy, but also because of the sense of accomplishment that comes with overcoming the challenge.
Sure, you’re lying on your back, desperately gasping for breath, vision swimming, heart pounding, probably dying… But somewhere in the back of your mind you’re standing tall.
Pride swells your chest as you look back on the pain you endured and the hurdles you leapt to earn this moment. And you find yourself thinking… “Yeah, I just did that.”
I absolutely love that feeling.
It’s a reward well worth the pain invested to receive it.
But these days, I don’t workout just to keep my body strong or to get my “feeling of accomplishment” fix. It’s nice to feel strong, don’t get me wrong, but these days I mostly workout to make myself a better writer.
Don’t follow? Let me explain…
Photo courtesy of: flicker
Would you say that running a marathon is a challenging activity for the body?
Yes! Of course it is. Even the most seasoned athletes have to train for months before they can run a marathon. Their body has to be extremely strong. Otherwise they wouldn’t be able to finish the race.
Now, would you say that writing is a challenging task for your mind?
Yes! Of course it is.
What? Don’t believe me? Try writing a marathon of 3,000 words straight without stoping and see how mentally exhausted you are after that. Writing is a strenuous activity for your mind.
And just like a weak body can not finish a marathon, a weak mind can not handle writing for long periods of time. It just can’t. Your mind gets tired, just like your body; and when that happens your writing will either suffer for it, or your mind will give up all together and quite the race.
A weak mind has no stamina. A weak mind is easily distracted. A weak mind is easily convinced to quite. As a writer you can not afford to settle for having a weak mind.
That’s why working out isn’t just for athletes, because exercise doesn’t just strengthen your body. When you do a hard workout, you can also use it to strengthen your mind.
So here’s my advice: do a workout before you write. Trust me. You’ll start seeing a difference almost instantly.
Strengthen your body, strengthen your mind. Be awesome.
That… didn’t convince you, did it?
Well I guess I didn’t expect it to be that easy. Working out is hard. It’s not like you’re just going to start doing it for no reason, just because I said you should.
Most of us will go out of our way to avoid doing hard things. But that’s one of the best examples of the benefits of working out; and it’s one of the first reasons why you should be doing it…
Writing is hard too.
Answer this question honestly: how often do you choose to say “no” to writing, when you know that you should have said yes, simply because you didn’t want to do something hard?
For me, not too long ago, that answer was “way to often.”
And I was not okay with that. (story time)
So I set out to find an easy solution to my problems. There were plenty out there offered by “experienced writers.” Solutions that promised to fix my problem—to get me so addicted to writing that I wouldn’t want to leave the computer. And all of them seemed so easy and doable.
It wasn’t until after I wasted a considerable amount of time and effort perusing these cheap fixes (trying out different things like setting a strict writing schedule (didn’t work), reading inspirational writing quotes (also didn’t work), and lots of other failed “solutions”) that I finally made a breakthrough.
I realized that I didn’t want to write, simply, because it was hard; and that meant that it was going to be hard for me to fix this problem. There are no easy ways to do hard things.
The real solution then? I needed to train my mind to stop saying “no” to hard things, and start saying “yes.”
There was no other way around it. None of the advice I got from the experts was working for me, so I would need to find my own way to fix my problem.
So, I started to force myself to do something hard (working out) first thing in the morning.
I found that If I was willing tackle something difficult first thing after I woke up in the morning, I would be much more likely to say yes to something difficult (writing) later that day. It’s kind of like a snowball effect: every time I did something hard, it magically made doing other hard things easier.
While not too long ago it was common for me to go a few days without writing anything, since I’ve started working out in the morning, I haven’t missed a single day because “I didn’t want to do something hard.”
I found that working out made it easier for me to write, and therefore, made me a better writer.
Sure, the actual act of writing is still as difficult as it always has been for me—it’s not like working out can be a substitute for real practice with my writing—But that was never the point of it. The point, was to get myself to say “yes” to writing more often than I said “no.” My morning workouts helped me accomplish that.
Now, I understand that this may not be the best way for everyone. I realize that some people could learn to say “yes” to doing hard things simply by forcing themselves to write and skipping the workout. But working out is the best way for me.
Trying to force myself to write wasn’t quite working on it’s own, so I needed to find a way that would work for me. And hopefully that’s what you got out of the mess of a blog post. If something isn’t working, find a way to make it work. Even if you have to find your own way to do it.