My martial arts students and I have an ongoing joke where we, “never use the t-word in class”: tired.
The idea behind it is a classic martial one: our mind will always give up before our body. And so if we can discipline our mind (to push through tired, pain, and fatigue), we’ll be able to better push our body (outside of their comfort zones and into zones of growth).
It’s important, however, not to carry this mentality with you 100% of the time and to, contradictorily, “never use the t-word” only some of the time.
Stepping onto the mats for a martial arts class is a great time to embody this mindset.
When you’re getting ready for bed, not so much.
It’s mindfulness that you should carry with you 100% of the time.
This can be tricky to explain because if you’re not careful, mindfulness can unknowingly turn into mindlessness.
When we’re mindful, we’re intimately in tune with our physiological state. We know when we actually need to rest and when we actually need to push.
When we’re in tune with our ego, however, we start to make mindless decisions—such as skipping workouts because we’re feeling lazy or using long days as an excuse to eat poorly or letting screen time infiltrate our schedules and take over higher priority tasks.
The post-task feeling meditation can help clear things up.
Simply imagine how you’re feeling at the end of a designated task—do you regret doing it (because your exhaustion levels were exacerbated and are truly going to effect the rest of your day/week) or are you glad you did it (because you beat the schemes of the ego)?