The endurance to stay in the yuck. It's punishing. The best kind of fun.
How to Find your How and your Why
The endurance to stay in the yuck. It’s punishing.
The best kind of fun.
Disciplining ourselves is necessary to go to the next level. Otherwise, we stay exactly where we are now.
I’ve been reflecting on my lessons. What I’m learning now. And I’m learning how to stay, for longer periods of time in the yuck. With my business coach, within business challenges, creative challenges, with my running, with a friendship I want to explore. I love connecting the dots and finding the thread that ties my lessons together. Right now, my endurance needs work. I can feel the suck and in order to go to the next level, I need to change. With change comes those feelings I like to call; The Yuck. The Yuck is everything you haven’t built and mastered - yet. The miles of a run you are pushing for, the new skills you’re trying to strengthen at work, new roads not yet taken so there is no comfort of knowing where the next turn is. It’s all new. When embraced, it feels great to stay and “suffer” a little. Huffing and puffing.
It can become the best kind of fun.
You have to tell yourself stories about staying in the Yuck to get through. Your why needs to be close by. Your mind will get stronger as it flexes its muscles at staying, especially when physiologically your body says to stop. Your capacity for more expands, mentally and physically building up your self discipline and your endurance.
Goals for Self Discipline to build endurance. Staying in the Yuck.
Identify your current level (this is your foundation - what you’ve built so far)
Pick a next level to achieve
Break it down
Stay in the Yuck
Random Example: Say you have a base of running 5 minutes, then you get winded and more makes you “poop out”. You desire to run for 10 minutes but pushing for 10 minutes is a lot. It’s doubling your current work capacity. So we break it down, anyway you want. I might simply add 1 minute a week. That’s your first goal. Just that 1 minute. Now stay here. In a little over a month you’ve met your goal!!!
Whatever your base is - your base is. That’s your foundation. Start there. Build.
ex. Physical Yuck
For me. Right now. I’m pushing myself to obtain an 8 minute mile for 5 miles by September. My friend is this fast and I’d like not only to be able to keep up, but to thrive in this zone. Easily.
I can’t do this - YET.
Growth mindset baby.
Time to break it down.
Where am I now? I simply tested how far I could go. About 1.25 miles at 8 mm.
Desired level. 8 minute mile for 5 miles
Add a 1/2 mile per week.
1.25-1.75
1.75-2.25
2.25-2.75
2.75-3.25
3.25-3.75
3.75-4.25
4.25-4.75
4.75-5.25
Stay in the yuck
Weakness are only strengths not yet built. Staying with them, sticking with them, growing them, grows you. Into a stronger more determined you. Strength of Body, Mind, and Spirit.
In my work life - I hired my business coach to challenge me to stay in my challenges. I am strong and determined but It’s still easier to leave a challenging task and move onto a task that makes me feel more effective.
Enter Discipline. or Tapas.
In Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, Tapas is the Niyama that represents self discipline in relationship to yourself for your personal growth to flourish. “Tapas is the day by day choice to burn non-supportive habits of the body and mind, choosing to forsake momentary pleasures for future rewards”.
My business coach does an excellent job in the art of playing the “other” perspective. It helps me find where I’m digging my own heels in the sand. When we identify that place that I resist myself, we stay there. We stay there because we both know this is where the growth is. We both believe it’s by staying in the fire. Not the shinny to do lists that i can crush any day of the week that brings the sweetest rewards. This requires the same mental strength and energy developed in endurance training -to embrace the discomfort that plagues us as we entertain the “atmosphere of growth’ . Traveling that turbulent road of uncertainty that leads us to the adventure of the unexplored. unknown, and unmastered. I’ve learned above all else, that I show up different every single week.
We need to surrender to this shit and fast. Embrace the anxiety as the messenger it is, that there is uncertainty and excitement about the unknown. Tapas is traveling that turbulent road of uncertainty that leads us to the adventure of the unexplored. unknown, and unmastered. Hopefully with zest and zeal instead of fear and loathing.
Ex. Small business owner yuck
Identify weakness/avoidance like ‘communications and marketing for small businesses
Desire to have a functional communications and marketing knowledge and strategy
Pick specific goals
research the communication flow of posting a blog
squarespace-saturday
cleansing writing (content)(let it out)
sending a newsletter
mail chimp-saturday
story brand
read book/script-done-monday
having a clear message-folly wisdom wednesday
post story brand with social grid-daily
Stay in this yuck. Flip perspective. You get to do this.
A perspective shift: To get to stay disciplined, burn by the fire in pursuit of transformation. The commitment to opening up to new levels of myself everyday, how lucky am I?
“ Can you put yourself in the heat of enthusiasm?” -Deborah Adele
I can. Hell yeah. Wake up and tell yourself how you want to feel. Remind yourself what it is that you desire. Finding the why behind our desires helps us keep it in the front of thoughts, attached to our motivations to choose the new, reject the old, and stay focused on the now.
How to Find your Why?
The 5 Whys? - Just ask yourself to go 5 why’s deeper
Reminding ourselves, DAILY, of the WHY behind step 4 is the key to finding that enthusiasm. Understanding the depth of our desires, is empowering and clarifying. Why are we choosing to stay in the yuck?
ex.
I desire to run an 8 minute mile for 5 miles by September
-Because I want to run longer and faster
-Because my friend is faster and I want to keep up
-Because I enjoy his company and want to get to run with him more (without slowing him down)
-Because I’m competitive
-Because competition is fun and playful. And those are the experiences I’m chasing.
That’s what we are all really desiring: experiences that bring us alive.
So - go 5 Whys’ deep to find your deeper motivation be willing to be burned by the fires of Tapas in your quest to level up and get exactly what you desire out of this sweet life. You’ll find the deeper core need that ignites your desires, by asking why. My goal to be faster is actually a deep desire for friendship, connectedness, and also a deep desire to play and compete. There is always a deeper why that drives all our desires. The practice of self discipline, to stay in the yuck for the sake of your personal growth is the key to getting to that next level.
Life is either a grand adventure or nothing at all. There is always a next level we haven’t yet explored and definitely haven’t mastered, it takes asserting our self discipline muscles to entertain the changes necessary to explore the new but so worth it.
You deserve everything you desire. Ask for it. Break it down. Allow it in, and embrace the Yuck while things are changing!!! Try this formula, dig deep and go hard after your life!!!
With Love
Jess