Growth...

Today's positive book contemplation was about struggle. How it's good for you to struggle. It reminded me of the saying that all growth comes from struggle. All change comes from stress. If you aren't struggling, if you aren't pushing, you aren't growing.

And all of that is true...and also...

Growth can only come with rest.

Last week at the end of my weekly cycle with my new exercise system they said that for the next two weeks it will be four days a week instead of three. Well, that messes me up. They are full body strength or sculpt sessions. I've been doing them M, T, and Th with the Hemsworth speed workout on Friday. Wednesday is a cardio only day and the weekend is off from formal work.

Looking at making it four days a week, and knowing that I'm not going to lift on weekends, if I kept the Hemsworth that was 5 days a week of full body work. And that's not going to work.

Last week I had to shuffle my schedule a little and tried to do three days in a row of full body work and could not make it through my session on Friday. Not at all. Now to be fair, I also had a blood draw on Friday morning for a full panel so I had that plus the messing up of my breakfast schedule, but too many days in a row, less blood, and later food all meant no way on lifting a barbell over my head multiple times with good form.

Brent had thought I was being a little overly ambitious with the schedule, but I honestly didn't think it would be an issue, and it might not have been if I hadn't had the other stuff. But...

You have to have downtime if you are lifting. The actual strength building happens when you are at rest. The stressing of your muscles is good, that's the workout. But if you just continually stress them without giving them time to recover all you are going to do is hurt yourself. They won't grow, they'll give out.

Growth comes in the downtime.

And it's not just muscles, it's all growth. We need quiet times, times with no distractions, to really tune in to what we need to do. You need those walks in nature without your headphones in. Those times sitting and staring out a window without a phone open in your hand or a an audible book playing in your ear. We all need distraction free time to figure out what we are so desperate to distract ourselves from.

It's important.

And it's hard to do. In today's day and age it's so easy to constantly be entertained, or at least distracted. You have all the world's knowledge in your hand at any given moment. You can read books, wikipedia entries, social media. You can watch videos or listen to music. It's all right there. Constant entertainment and distraction. And eventually it will wreck your head.

You need quiet time. We aren't designed to be constantly taking in information. We need that time for our brains to sort it all out. We do a chunk of that in our sleep, but we also need distraction free time when we are awake. Time to make the connections between information. Time to really get to know who we are and what we think about everything.

It's part of what happens when people get sober. The substance of choice is a great distraction. It fuzzes up the feelings, it wipes out whole areas of things you don't really want to think about. Getting sober means that all gets turned back on and you have to deal with it. It's why for a lot of people sobriety doesn't stick. They don't want to face those feelings. And I think our constant deluge of input from our phones is doing the same thing. It's keeping us all from facing our feelings, from looking at who we are. It's all an addiction to the next attraction.

Growth comes in the still times. In the restful moments.

For the next two weeks I'll be skipping the speed workout and just doing PVOLVE four days a week. Then next month I'll make sure to double check the number of days in each week that that routine takes. Leave those Wednesdays open. I'll also make sure to take some time to sit quietly and look out the window. Or clean house without my headphones on.

Growth comes with quiet and rest.

I hope you have a restful week.