You Are Making Progress
I know you are. I know it and I'm not even watching you.
The reason why exercising on a treadmill can feel so much more tedious than walking or running on a real path is because you're not getting anywhere. You're not moving farther away from anything or towards it. The scenery doesn't change.
There's a gym in LA that has all of its treadmills set up in an overhang over the freeway. They were thinking that might help with the feeling of inertia, I guess, but I think it makes it worse than ever. You can run as fast as you can for hours yet cars will still speed by you on their way to somewhere all night long and leave you exactly where you are.
It's easy in real life to have that same feeling, like you're working and working and trying your hardest yet getting nowhere. But there are no treadmills in real life, so I promise you, if you're moving, you are getting somewhere.
To remind yourself that you really are making headway although it may not feel like it, it can help to define your progress. If you've been at the same job forever, that tenure is valuable. If you just got out of a bad relationship, you've learned about yourself and can avoid making the same mistake again. And even if you've made the same mistake ten times in a row now, you've made progress. The scenery has changed. Maybe you'll even make that same mistake one more time before you learn how to avoid it. But still, you are much closer to your goal now than you were ten mistakes ago.
Sometimes progress is invisible until you can look back on it in hindsight.
-Brigitte
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Comments
osumarko Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Thank you. I needed the encouragement. Its hard to see if you're making progress until someone else points it out to you.
romeo Wednesday, May 19, 2010
some enter life very well adjusted knowing that the most important jobs are often the hardest and serve as a dignified and honorable foundation for rest of society as the many thankless jobs that pay little or not at all -is kind of like probono ~it's really a labor of love, just like raising children for instance -may be someday people will realize how much we owe the ones that helped raised us to maturity. can you imagine jesus, a buddha or what have you asking for compensation. how does one place price on life..... what we do is not as important as what we bring to it -which makes us who we are.
my life is an open book -if progress is what you seek ~plese consider the source
Joe436 Thursday, May 20, 2010
The thing I have always liked about the treadmill (in my case elliptical) is that after running as far as I can, I don't have to worry about running back. Not sure how to transition that into a valuable life lesson. I guess this was pointless. But I'm clicking submit anyway.
Nure Thursday, May 20, 2010
The last statement is very true.
I needed to read something like this, since I have been feeling "stuck" ever since my winter semester ended. I don't know why, but I feel lazy and discouraged. I have things to do, but I don't want to. Probably because I am slowly giving up on myself psychologically. It's possible to change your state of mind for day to day aspects, but when it comes down to long term relationships...it's not very easy to "change the scenery".