Let’s visit the topic of perspective, because I am becoming more and more sold on the fact that it’s one of the most important skill sets that I can invest my energy in.
Yesterday, a friend of mine had a tough training day; she was well below her PR snatch weight, and 2 minutes behind her previous time in the benchmark workout at CFNE.
I have been there so many times, too, and I remember how much a training session like that would affect me. I would question everything from how strict I had been on my diet to what my sleep patterns had been like. I would let it emotionally suffocate me and make me feel disappointed in myself. And, at times, it would make me question how “old” I was feeling and start wondering if this was the new direction my body was going to be headed.
But, there is an inherent danger tied to that sort of impulsive reaction. Allowing a single event snapshot like that dictate a more general, overall assumption is unfair and just doesn’t add up. What should be more interesting to me is a series of 2-4 weeks of snapshots of workouts over the course of a month. If you’re seeing those sorts of results “most of the time”, that’s something worth digging in to. However, pulling from one or two of those is like watching minutes 80-95 of a full length movie and trying to pretend like you can figure out the rest of the story line.
What’s the bigger picture? What’s been the situation for the last 2 weeks, not what happened today? What’s your husband been like when he gets home for the last month, not why did he seem so uninterested at dinner last night? And, where has your weight been trending over the course of the last 3 months, not what did the scale say this morning?
Responding, versus reacting, to events like these is something I’ve been focusing a lot of my effort into. Being passionate is one thing, but passion with patience is where the magic lies.