Mindset
When I was four, I wanted to be a ballerina. No one took me seriously and I was never enrolled in ballet but I did get to take gymnastics for a time in my teens.
If you read books or watch movies about ballet or gymnastics or just about any serious sport, the participants follow a grueling schedule. In the movie Save the Last Dance, when Sara resumes ballet training to try to get into Julliard, at some point she unwraps and untapes her bloody feet to soak them in the bathtub.
I used to feel really sorry for myself because getting better was such torture and the alternative was worse. It felt incredibly unfair.
Then I saw an interview with a guy who was in Special Forces for a time and he talked about how hard the training was. He said he got through it not one day at a time but a half-a-day at a time at most or even an hour at a time.
He would get up every morning and tell himself "I'm staying until LUNCH. I can quit right after LUNCH but not before then." And after lunch he would tell himself to stay until dinner.
Since seeing that interview and having my mindset altered, I compare my healing process to things like ballet training, where taping up bleeding toes is all too common.
Lots of people do this sort of thing to their bodies. They just do it to pursue a sport or a tough career, not to get their lungs and defective body to actually work without (as much) pain and without drugs.
If you read books or watch movies about ballet or gymnastics or just about any serious sport, the participants follow a grueling schedule. In the movie Save the Last Dance, when Sara resumes ballet training to try to get into Julliard, at some point she unwraps and untapes her bloody feet to soak them in the bathtub.
I used to feel really sorry for myself because getting better was such torture and the alternative was worse. It felt incredibly unfair.
Then I saw an interview with a guy who was in Special Forces for a time and he talked about how hard the training was. He said he got through it not one day at a time but a half-a-day at a time at most or even an hour at a time.
He would get up every morning and tell himself "I'm staying until LUNCH. I can quit right after LUNCH but not before then." And after lunch he would tell himself to stay until dinner.
Since seeing that interview and having my mindset altered, I compare my healing process to things like ballet training, where taping up bleeding toes is all too common.
Lots of people do this sort of thing to their bodies. They just do it to pursue a sport or a tough career, not to get their lungs and defective body to actually work without (as much) pain and without drugs.
