It’s fair to say I had a rocky start to the week. On Monday morning I had to run into my Physio’s office after getting a flat tyre on my bike on the way into my appointment. I was already running late because a headwind had taken a precious 10 minutes out of my carefully timed morning routine. As I stood on the side of the road, hungry and tired at the start of the week I considered my options:

1.) Bail out on the appointment and just walk the rest of the way to work
2.) Run the rest of the way to the appointment – I’d be late, but I’d get there
3.) Sit on the side of the road and cry at the unfairness of life

In those few short moments of consideration standing on the side of the road with my now useless bike and places to be, I weighed up what was important to me. Turns out there really was no option. I was running to my appointment.

Running into Chris my Physio’s office I pulled my post-workout shake out of my bag (the one I missed downing because of the headwind), caught my breath, and refueled my body.

“That looks disgusting” Chris said, gesturing towards my protein shake. “Oh yeah, it is!” I replied. To which I received a puzzled expression. Shaking his head and laughing at me he said life was too short to eat food you didn’t enjoy. I hadn’t really thought too much about it. The shake wasn’t particularly pleasant but it has all the nutrition I need, I’ve gotten used to the taste and it’s just part of what I do.

So why do it? …why, Why, WHY?????

I guess it could be said it’s all ‘pain’ I’m willing to endure. I have goals I want to achieve in my life and to get the result I’m happy to go through the process. Not everyone is willing to go through the same process and that’s great – otherwise we would all be doing the same things! We all have different things we value and different pains we are willing to endure to get to our goals.

So I’m choosing this pain, I’m choosing this process, and I’m perfectly OK with it. As Mark Manson says in his book ‘The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F@ck’;

“No matter where you go, there’s a five-hundred-pound load of shit waiting for you. And that’s perfectly fine. The point isn’t to get away from the shit. The point is to find the shit you enjoy dealing with.”

Thanks for the wise words Mark, I’ll raise a glass of my less than pleasant (but perfectly nutritious) protein shake to that!