So this past week during gym class we’ve been working on ab strength…and the exercises we were doing were really tough. Anyway, I was doing leg raises and holding them at low point and I was really struggling when I realized something: I was fighting and sputtering air and totally fighting the muscular pain I was in. So I tried to relax and I started to focus on breathing deeply and I applied my mom’s counsel: “breathe through the pain”. And holy cow did it work!!
Any athlete can tell you that the only way to survive the tough workouts is to breathe. Now to someone who is new to sports and physical activity it comes naturally to simply ignore the suggestion and continue to gasp and sputter and fight against the aching muscles. But it’s true. The only way to truly improve and grow in any sport is to breathe through the pain. To allow ourselves to feel it. We become accustomed to that feeling, until performing comes easier and easier because we are okay with our physical weakness and we don’t fight it.
Guys, in the moment I decided to accept the fact that my muscles in freaking pain, the moment I stopped fighting my pain, I actually started improving and I felt that I could do anything because suddenly feeling muscular pain wasn’t “the worst thing ever”…it is just a means by which I get stronger.
Well…the point of this post isn’t to give you all very well-known tips about physical activity. When thinking about this concept of breathing through the pain I realized a few things.
Weakness comes with being human, it’s a fact of life. And for those who like me believe in God, our weakness was given to us by God. So why the heck are we fighting it all the time? Why don’t we just let the pain and the anger and the sadness teach us to be better and stronger people?
In life, maybe the key is to breathe through the feelings, not to fight them. Being dumped sucks, losing a job sucks, losing an important person in our lives is devastating, unkindness is frustrating, and the list can go on and on. The thing is, we should allow ourselves to feel all those feelings, and instead of being defined by them, we can choose to let them make us stronger. The feelings won’t disappear, like in the workout example, the muscular pain definitely doesn’t disappear, but we learn to be strong enough to live with those feelings or that pain.
I don’t think that we can just get over certain things in life. A lot of the time people think this life is supposed to be just perfect and happy and glorious. And it should be, but that doesn’t mean that it’s without struggle and sacrifice. I mean, no fit human hates the results of their intense training, but that doesn’t mean that they freaking struggled to get where they are.
Guys, if you’re struggling with something, l don’t think that you need to feel like you need to get over it. Feel it, learn from it, but don’t let the pain define you, choose to be defined by the strength that comes from breathing through all those emotions.
You are incredible, don’t let anyone tell you differently.