So I met with my trainer yesterday, as I do every Monday. We are revamping my training schedule to a five day split...which is really only one more day and not even another gym day since I go to the gym six days a week, but an extra leg day and I hate those...we will see how this goes.
I am usually so happy when I hit Thursday and am done with the weight lifting. But there are results I would like to achieve, thus the change in routine.
While I was there and we were talking, she asked if I wanted to do Hard 75 or 75 Hard. Or something like that. I really have no idea as I still haven’t listened to the podcast...anyway, she laid out this whole new year, new you challenge and for some reason, I said yes!
In reviewing the workout, it isn’t really all that different than what I am currently doing...which makes me laugh because I guess I am living 75 hard all the time!
Not really, there are things that must be added and removed. I think for most people the no alcohol thing is the big issue, but that is not an issue for me. I do that everyday, anyway.
Drinking a gallon of water a day is going to be the challenge. I just do not drink that much water, like ever. I drink water all day long but not like that. So yesterday was my first day and it was a struggle to get it all in. And then I spent so much time in the bathroom, the obvious result from drinking a gallon of water!
There are other things that are going to be challenging but I think the water will be the thing that is going to get me. That is a lot of fucking water.
My other not so new challenge is getting up early again. When I started working for myself, there was no reason to get up at 4 am. Now that I am working for a firm that is on the East Coast, I am back to 4 am wake ups and I have to say I do not enjoy it at all. I feel most days that I am in some sort of fugue state, lost between waking and slumbering. This might explain a lot...
But I am up today and getting it all done, way fucking earlier than I would like and drinking way too much water. I see my life being a endless stream of bathroom trips and desperate longing for my bed...interspersed with a great deal of work and working out.
Perhaps the largest challenge of anything I ever do, is removing my resistance to change. To allow myself to be curious and relaxed around the subject of change. To let go of all my old ideas, patterns and exactitudes so that I may have a new experience of myself, of life, of whatever is happening currently in this moment.
I think the whole point of Hard75 is discipline. It is changing how you do things and when and where. It is upending the usual and supplanting it with something different, novel and well, hard. Not because taking care of yourself is hard per se, but because new habits take awhile to form and because, at least for me, I am so married to my routines while at the same time, work very hard to buck the system, even the ones I have created all the time.
This New Year, there will not be a New me. Just the same old me that is willing to do some things differently. And for the next 74 days, apparently I have signed up to do things hard.
As with all change, I have to marvel at the accomplishment - I handled yesterday with ease. My only struggle was the water and I got it all in. I can change. And I do change, all the time. Seems harder when the thing you choose to do is called HARD75 or 75HARD. I really do need to look that up! Anyway, I am relaxing into this new challenge, trusting that perhaps the hardest part was in me saying yes to begin with...and perhaps, I can be helpful to those who are around me attempting to make some changes in their own life as well.
And right now, the hardest thing for me is not going back to sleep. My body and mind not too keen on the whole getting up so early mantra of the day. The hardest thing in this moment is not closing my eyes and slumbering for a few more minutes, or hours. I really, really want hours!
But I am up and awake, at least my eyes are open, and I am writing, could be drivel but here it is nonetheless. I am holding true to my practice and to my somewhat off the cuff decision to make my life harder for the next 74 days in the hopes that I will learn new things and squarely meet new challenges in this budding year of 2024.
And perhaps reminding myself that the only way I ever go is hard.
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