If you’re anything like me, you probably tell yourself loads of little lies throughout your life, maybe without even realizing you’re doing it. Certainly without realizing that they’re lies.

My trainer had pity on my busted quadriceps, and rather than assign me a 5K endurance workout like everyone else in the class, he told me to come and do 20 minutes on the elliptical. So I packed my workout clothes in my backpack before I walked to work this morning, and after work I hauled it to the gym. I walked in shortly after 5 pm.

As I walked in, something dawned on me. I used to avoid the gym after work for one reason, and one reason only: Everyone would be going straight after work, and the locker room would be crowded. The machines would all be taken. I would feel frazzled and frenzied and I wouldn’t enjoy my workout. So it became my policy to wait. Until 7:00, 7:30, 8:00. The only problem with that plan was the whole going home first and getting into relaxation mode. I love my couch. So, when I get on my couch, I don’t like to get off it again unless I am shuffling up to bed.

Much like old people do.

But back to the gym, tonight, at 5:10. It was not remotely crowded. I waltzed in, changed, took my pick from about 6 open elliptical machines, did my workout, changed in the completely empty locker room, and went home.

I never even tried to go to the gym right after work, even though that would be the best possible time for me to go – keyed up from a busy day. Not in the middle of something at home. I just had a thought, and I let that thought become a barrier.

Let that sink in.

I often tell people that the only limitations they have are imaginary. That the obstacles are all in their minds. I know that’s not always true, that some barriers are real… but I bet that there are some things that all of us just take for truth like that.

The gym will be too busy.

Have you checked?

I don’t know how to X, Y, Z.

Can you learn?

They say that’s not the way you do things.

Who is they? Do they really matter?

I just don’t have time.

Do you, though? I bet you do.

These are the little lies, the insidious lies that become reality and create the limitations I have on myself.

I always thought that my nights were too busy to get much done. Tonight, after working out, I ate dinner, packed lunch for tomorrow, got some gardening done, roasted brussels sprouts, and, because my favorite workout clothes smell roughly like a 10th-day trucker, did a load of laundry. And I still had plenty of time to waste. And blog.

Seems to me like the best way to live is to actually live, rather than thinking about how hard it will be to live the way I want to live.

 

Gotta get out of bed get a hammer and a nail
Learn how to use my hands, not just my head
I think myself into jail
Now I know a refuge never grows
From a chin in a hand in a thoughtful pose
Gotta tend the earth if you want a rose.

-Indigo Girls, Hammer and a Nail

 

Steps today: 10653