Yesterday I didn’t work out. I planned to but things just got in the way, including my lack of motivation. I don’t need motivation today because weekdays I have a habitual routine and I know that I’ll be working out after I publish this. But weekends are often off schedule and motivation is required. I didn’t have it yesterday.
That said, I’ve only taken one other day off in about a month, and two days are not a big deal to miss out of 30. I intellectually know this, missing my workout wasn’t a big deal. Yet because I intended to work out, I didn’t have the right frame of mind about my missed workout. If I woke up feeling awful like I did last week, head pounding, and needed a break, that’s ok. But waking up with full intention to do my daily exercise and then not doing so feels like a failure.
Yesterday I had to help my wife with a task on her computer. It’s something I’ve done many times but the setup on her computer was different and this simple process took 3 times as long as it should have. I was frustrated. I was speaking to the computer as if it was an animate object that could hear me. I swore. I got angry. I wanted to throw the laptop across the room. It was stupid, and worse yet the whole thing still only took about 5-6 minutes to do. I should never have let this minor slow down get to me, but I wasn’t in a resourceful frame of mind.
Yesterday I ended the day with a meditation. I lay down with headphones on in the spare bedroom and woke up 50 minutes later not having heard any of the last 1/2 of the 20 minute session. I didn’t even realize I was that tired, but the meditation was actually just a nap. Instead of accepting this, I was upset that I chose to lie down and allowed myself to fall asleep. I went to my bed but rather than falling directly back to sleep, I was up and disappointed about missing my meditation, and then was missing sleep as a result. That’s far from a meditative frame of mind, and certainly not why I meditate.
Each of these minor things could have felt different if I was in a different frame of mind. Each of these were unnecessary stresses that I allowed to build up in me. They really weren’t reasons to be upset. They weren’t moments that I needed to fret about. They were not things that needed to set a negative mood or to perseverate about.
Sometimes resourcefulness takes too much effort. It’s easy to beat yourself up rather than to frame things in a positive way. Sometimes the frames around your thoughts are rigid. Cold. Unkind. You would give anyone else a break, give them an opportunity to slip up, or not follow through… but yourself, no, you don’t give yourself the opportunity.
Get it right, or be disappointed.
Failure is not an option.
Mistakes are something other people can be forgiven for.
Results are required. Now.
This is not a healthy frame of mind. It does not provide any benefits, and it steals joy. It’s better to be gentle. All it takes is seeing outside the frame. I’ll push hard on my workout today. This morning I already redid the same meditation I slept through yesterday. And I see the futility of being upset at my wife’s computer. The poor framing is easy to see today, the trick is to see it in the moment, and to be kinder to myself when I don’t have the right frame of mind.
