Episode 31: Day 34 of Movement

Good morning, y’all! Welcome to today’s episode of The Work Of Becoming podcast! Today, I wanted to give you a little personal update on a goal that I had for this year, which is competing at a powerlifting meet, and I am excited and terrified to announce that I officially have registered for a real, sanctioned powerlifting meet on November 12th. So, that is approximately one month from now.

If you’ve been following the pod, you know that I had a big bout of workout resistance about a month and a half to two months ago, and I really had to take a step back, and I really actually for a while completely let go of my powerlifting goal. I shifted, and I just told myself, I promised myself, that I was going to do 30 minutes of movement, whatever that looked like, every single day.

So today, for me, will be day 34 of that. It’ll be day 34 in a row of moving for 30 minutes every single day, and I really feel like, for the most part, I have gotten past the workout resistance that I was experiencing, which is huge for me because that is something that I have really struggled with for a long time, and one thing that I really wanted to focus my change skills on this year.

With these 34 days of working out, I’ve also really gotten my spark back for lifting. I’ve kind of gotten my love back for lifting, and I’ve become a lot more cognitively flexible with the way I workout, the time that I workout, what I count as a workout, what I don’t count as a workout. All of it has kind of — I’ve really seen a lot more flexibility in my own thinking and behavior there.

But a couple days ago, I sat down, and I revisited my own goals from the beginning of the year, and obviously, on that list of goals was compete in a powerlifting meet and total 600 pounds or more. Now, do I think logically there is a way that I can hit that total? No, I don’t, and I think that’s okay. But what I didn’t want to do is I didn’t want to be all or nothing about this goal as well. I didn’t want to get into a situation where it was like, “Oh, because I can’t hit the total I wanted to hit, I’m not gonna do a powerlifting meet at all.”

And so, I started looking at meets, and I told myself if I found one that was close, that was on a weekend I was available, that I would challenge myself and I would do it, and even if it means going to that meet and lifting really, really light amounts of weight so that I can get a total at my very first powerlifting meet, that is what I am going to do.

Part of the reason I made that decision is because I remember at the beginning of the year thinking to myself I need to not only set a total, but I want to push myself to actually go to a meet because I knew that would be scary for me. I knew that would push me out of my comfort zone. I knew that it would be one of those things that would really challenge my brain because I don’t know the rules of meets, and what do I do, and what if I don’t know the cues, and what do I wear? Do I have to get a singlet? Do I have to get a belt? There is so much to worry about, and I love to put my brain in situations where it has so much to worry about because it lets me use my cognitive regulation, my mind management skills. It lets me really exercise those muscles, right? It’s sort of the equivalent of lifting heavy, lifting close to your one-rep max. If you want to increase your change skills, you don’t want to be putting yourself at that level of challenge. You don’t want to be lifting your one-rep max every single day, but occasionally, you do want to really push yourself and see how far those change skills can go.

So, all that is to say, I’m doing a powerlifting meet. It is November 12th. I am absolutely terrified. I have already texted six people being like, “I need you to help me learn how to do this!” Not powerlifting, I know how to powerlift, but how to do a powerlifting meet. My lesson for you today is I want you to, no matter what they were, take a look at the goals that you set for yourself in 2022, and I want you to really partition them out and ask yourself if maybe one of these goals is impossible, but do you want to still work towards it anyways? Do you want to get as close as possible? Do you want to do part of the goal and not the other part? Why did you set these goals in the first place and is there something that you can do even now to get yourself through to that purpose, to get yourself through to that intention, to end the year feeling like you had a relationship with your past self, with your January self, who set these goals, and you didn’t give up on her, you didn’t give up on the faith that she had in you.

So, that’s something for you to think about today. I will see you in the next episode!