You sign up for this

“This is it, this is actually it, what you signed up for and we are not talking about it, or thinking about it, we are doing it.” This is a typical line that I might say when I am pulling out the motivation self talk on a really hard long run. When I trained my my first marathon last year, I had a little mantra I would always say to myself, it was “this is the marathon” and it helped me remember that the 26.2 miles I would run in March was the tip of iceberg, an iceberg made up of late night loops around the YMCA tracks after dark and Saturday morning long runs in the freezing cold.

Today I practiced piano for an hour, and was awesome. I did it right after lunch, which I think will start to be my routine, and could tell that I am making progress, not just because of the advancement of my play (which is actually taking off too!) but because the lack of resistance to sitting down and gained ability to tune out everything but practice. If I ever start to despair or peak at the timer too much, I start to remind myself that I’m working on my weaknesses and being uncomfortable/a bad piano player(for a while) that is what I signed up for.

As the years go by, I find myself seeking out things which are difficult, and when I say difficult, I mean almost objectively difficult, like running 100 miles (which is on my bucket list) because I know the good that comes from locking into the pain rollercoaster and just letting it spit you out on the other side. So try this next time you start something and it gets hard, say to yourself “yes! it’s hard! yay” and see what happens.