Friday, January 27, 2012

pinteresting (running inspiration found and not found)

I hit a brick wall in my running yesterday.
A hard brick wall.
A brick wall that had me off and on the treadmill four times, trying to finish one run.  


A brick wall that I kept hitting, and that I used to justify crabby behavior and comments towards my husband.  


It's tough being a perfectionist all-or-nothing-at-all person and trying to keep some balance in the healthy eating/exercising department.  And yesterday was my first day failing miserably. 


Oh dear.


It's troubling.
There may have been tears, a pout session, and excuses involved.


After I got off my duff and made myself finish with the thought that "I will NOT allow my crabbiness to continue, and I CAN physically do this, I just need proper mental motivation", Michael kindly allowed me to clean up.


I realized, as I was cleaning up, that... (brilliant thought, here, just wait) the Bible verse Colossians 3:23 (Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men,) applied to me. 

I wasn't running for praise from anyone else, to lose weight, or any outward motivation.  (In all honesty, I was running to be a good example for my son someday, and I truly desire to learn to love to run.) But the verse still applied to me.

It could just as well read:
"Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for your perfectionist self-approval."

Convicting?

So I haven't done much with that thought yet.  I'm still letting it stew. 
However, I did obsessively research on pinterest after one of my four attempts at my run.

I wanted motivation. 
Do you realize how many boards are out there entitled "motivation"?

Scads.
Scores.

I was looking for pins that would inspire me to keep going mentally.  
I wasn't looking for "the perfect abs and tush" pictures to motivate me. 
(It's surprising how many of those are out there, actually.) 
I wasn't looking for angry "I need to beat out my emotions and heartache on the pavement" kind of inspiration either.
I was just looking for emotionally stable persuasive words that would inspire me to stay running at mile howevermany.  

It's shocking how few emotionally stable running words there are. 
Many of the "quotes" are "look at all the fat non-exercising people. you're doing so much better than them."  (Admittedly, I repinned a few of these.)
or:
"Remember how miserable you were without exercising.  You'll be somebody someday if you're physically fit."
or:
"Do you really want to eat that biscuit?" (Yes. I do.) 

I was acutely disturbed at the obsessive mentality on these "motivation" boards.  Some of the advice was downright medically unhealthy.  But...I was able to find some "inspiration"/"motivation" what have you in the mire and muck of public opinions on healthy "ideals." We'll see how inspirational my research truly was when Michael comes home today and I go on my run.  


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