You Must Do the Thing That You Think You Cannot

Two posts in one day. Whoop whoop!

I got to thinking this afternoon about my training. I am always training. Training for a race. Training for bigger muscles. Training for a comp. Training. Training. Training. I like it that way.

When asked what I am training for, my response is often 'Life'. This got me thinking.

I have always had the desire to bigger and better things. No matter how fast I am, I want to be faster. No matter how strong I am, I always want to be stronger. I have been competitive with myself my whole life.

In 2006, I ran the Salt Lake Marathon. It was the first long race I had ever done. Prior to those 26.2 miles, my longest race had actually been a 5k. I had loved running and I had been thinking about running a marathon for a while. I had mentioned it to a few people, but the one comment that got me to register for a marathon was this particular response.

"I don't think you could do that."

That was all it took.

So, I trained and I ran and I finished and at the end of the race something changed. I knew I could do anything. I could push through anything that I wanted, if I wanted it bad enough.

To this day, I have never looked at any sort of competition (be it bodybuilding, running, etc) and thought to myself 'I cannot do that'. It is merely a matter of whether I want to do it or not and being honest with myself about the amount of training it will take.

Are some of the things that I do hard? Yes, but anyone can do them. Anyone with the desire to do so. The truth is, training for something exciting is one of the things that makes my world go round. I like trying and failing and picking myself back up knowing that I will get there eventually, even if eventually is more than 4 years later.

When we go out and we do the things that scare us, something grows within us. We get to know ourselves better and we gain the realization that we can do so much more than we think we can.

People often tell me they do not have the time, nutritional food is too expensive, they don't know how, etc. Time is relative. Nutrition is imperative to living long and we should all be doing it anyway. Education is everywhere. Excuses get you nowhere. They only cover up the truth which is not wanting it bad enough.

Whatever it is that you want to do, you can do it.