"Immense"

My son's word for this landmark:  My first measurable empirical, sign of change:  twenty minutes on the Elliptical.

When I started in early September, my trainer wanted me to try one three minute session the first week, and then two three minute sessions per week.  Three minutes on the elliptical machine and I was gasping and screaming in pain.

Day 50: twenty minutes.  I felt like dancing in the street!  REAL change!  Huge improvement!  I can scarcely believe it!

Ian wrote...


"The Immense"

Today my mother did something immense; she changed her mind.  The thing with limits is that they are almost always self imposed. The belief in what we think we are capable of is often a far cry from reality, yet, our belief in it makes it real.  We see limitations, and reality promptly grants us exactly that.  So it is that changing your mind about what is possible is immense, as it gives us hope that we might be able to do it again.  As always, the first realization of the fact that reality is something we can fundamentally alter always comes with something, that in the global sense is inconsequential.  In the future it would be easy to look back at those milestones and dismiss them.  Yet, it has nothing to do with what is accomplished, and everything to do with believing we can accomplish something more.  This is the greatest discovery that I think movement, exercise, and dare I say fitness can offer.  That perhaps in some small way, we foolish humans can wrestle with the immutable destiny we have always seen as bedrock, and create actual change.

The thing I wonder at is how to find that spark again.  To find the thing that we can overturn to discover how much more we can change.  That is where the real growth lies; in finding the next impossible yet inconsequential task to undertake.