Breaking Barriers #9 - I'M HERE TO HEAL - NOT HURT.
I absolutely hated calling home for a bail-out ride when my foot was bothering me earlier this year. When my left knee started "talking to me" I didn't want to slow down on the hills. When my asthma kicked in, I badly want to ignore my burning lungs and keep pushing. Pushing through any of these would have caused me injury. But, I made this promise to myself.
If it is within my control, injury-free is my decision 100% of the time.
A year later it has paid off. Last year I was logging about 10-15 miles a week. Now, I'm logging in the ballpark of 50 mile weeks. I've slowly and steadily gained strength. I had several rounds of needing to slow down to avoid injury, but keeping focused on the long-term worked.
The turtle wins again
Remember, we are not talking about accidental injuries such as a fall, and we're definitely not talking about muscles that are sore from working out. We're talking about over-doing it so that the effort your are making to be stronger actually hurts you for the long term.
Having compassion for ourselves is hard to do. We are always feeling like we haven't done enough and should do more. This guilt trap drives us to push harder than we should. The frustration at ourselves, along with being raised with the misguided "no pain - no gain" chant makes anything less than a "go hard or go home" effort feel like a failure. Instead, we need to have compassion for ourselves and start listening to the signals our body gives us when we are working to hard.
By embracing compassion for ourselves, we become stronger.
Take a moment to think about what comes to your mind on this topic.
In what ways have you shown compassion to yourself?
In what ways have you been hard on yourself?
How have others helped you show compassion to yourself?
How have others hurt your ability to show compassion to yourself?
What shifts do you
need to make today?
Be brave - in the comments below, share your story on this topic.
Sending you compassion and kindness from my COUCH to ACTIVE desk.
Sincerely,
Lyn
