Embrace The Suck

Over the weekend my wife and daughter were out of town visiting family and friends. That left my son Tim and I to fend for ourselves. One of the reasons we stayed behind was because we had an annual project that needed to be handled. The wood pile needed to be addressed. When we build our house in 2007, we installed a propane boiler to heat the home. Little did we know that the price of propane made the cost of heating our home much more than expected. We solved that expense by installing an outdoor wood boiler. We load it once per day with wood, and our only cost is our time and effort to cut, split and stack the wood. I usually do most of the work myself because I enjoy the exercise, and what guy doesn’t like running a chainsaw?

Splitting and stacking wood always goes faster with another person. It is also nice to have someone to talk to while you are working. I don’t know exactly how we got on the topic, but we ended up having a really great discussion about delayed gratification. This is something that many people struggle with today. I used the example of the work that we were doing was very physically demanding, yet when the task was completed, we would be able to reap the rewards of all of our efforts for the entire heating season.

Hard work now, pays dividends later was the message.

Where most of us run into trouble is that we give into doing the easy things first and we seem to put off the difficult stuff for a later date. Then we come up with lame excuses as to why the difficult stuff never gets done. Another tactic is trying to game the system. We try to find ways to enjoy the dividends without putting in the effort. Not only does this rarely ever work, it shortchanges us on receiving the satisfaction of earning something by our own efforts. This whole concept was explained to me by one of my mentors using a comparison of choice. Hard/easy, or easy/hard? Easy/hard is tempting because it takes little effort to ease into the day. Hit your snooze button several times, skip your morning workout, grab some morning beverage and turn on the TV to see what the rest of the world has been doing. It is much more difficult on the front end to jump out of bed at 5am, put on the proper gear, go out into a cold, dark, wet morning and go for a run, walk, hike, bike, etc… Which routine will produce better mental and physical health in 90 days?

We see this play out quite a bit in our office with our practice members trying to attain better health and performance. Those that are willing to invest the time, money and effort on the front end reap the biggest rewards down the road. The ones that skimp and skip there way through recommendations have their reasons for doing so, but the results are still the results of the invested effort. We are constantly facing choices each and every day of where do we spend our time and our money? It is much easier to spend the time and money to plan a vacation to Disney than it is to change your diet, invest in a trainer, invest in supplements, go to bed early to wake up early, exercise when you don’t feel like it, and say no to foods that hurt you but taste good.

Why should you endure this psychological warfare? I think we all know the answer to this, but the biggest reason in my mind is that you deserve it. Every one of us deserves to feel the satisfaction of triumph over tragedy, victory over being a victim, and success over failure as a result of our own blood, sweat and tears. As great as it is to witness a success story on television, or to read about it, nothing compares to loading all of the responsibility on to your own shoulders and seeing it through to the end. Out of the military came the phrase, “embrace the suck.” This was born out of the constant stress that our soldiers are put into, to learn that difficulty is necessary to endure in order to be victorious on the battlefield. It will come often and it will be extreme, yet you need to get used to it, and learn to overcome it by whatever means necessary. Imagine what you could accomplish in your life if you could learn to delay the immediate gratification and “embrace the suck.”

Lombardi Chiropractic Family Health Center
1116 Upper Lenox Ave.
www.lombardichiropractic.com
315-363-4114

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