TigerJ13 – Days of Change

Yes I hate pushups.  And to paraphrase Dickens, it is important to note that I hate pushups; this must be distinctly understood or nothing wonderful can come of this essay.  I have made a decision that I am going to do 100 pushups a day for 100 days.  For those of you who don’t know how to use MSProject to figure it out, 100 days is from April 28^th (I started yesterday) to August 5^th.  Sifu talks about making goals often and always says you should put an expiration date on any goal.  I think he got that from AA.  It’s virtually impossible to make a commitment forever.  It is daunting to face that.  So instead you make a commitment for one year and work to meet that commitment.

So if I hate pushups so much, why am I doing this?  What part of my life change is this addressing?  Most people would think it works to a fitness goal.  It’s not.  Granted, my brother, who I respect fitness-wise, once said the only thing you need to do to get in shape is sit-ups and pushups.  I doubt he still thinks that, but it’s probably not far from correct.  Still, this isn’t about getting in shape; this is about directing my mind to do something and carrying through (be accountable).  While I think this will help me get healthier, I think of it as it will help me be a better husband, father, and martial artist.  A better husband and father, because having the will and time management skills to carry through with a 100 day commitment is essential to being a good husband and father.  My friend Murphy does scouts with his kid.  He makes time for this commitment.  I can’t see me doing that at this point in my life.  I’m too selfish for my own desires (like going to Kung Fu classes or having a beer after work).  Have I mentioned that I hate doing pushups?  If this was, “I’m going to eat chocolate every day for 100 days” I think I could handle it without any sacrifice on my part.  As it is, this is going to be a challenge.  I’m going away with my wife this weekend.  Can I still do the 100 pushups while I’m away? Can I do it without disturbing my wife?

Development of will is something that I hope to teach my son.  I think it’s very important.  I also think it’s impossible to teach someone else about will if you don’t have a strong will.  You can’t say, do as I say and not as I do.  So, here I go doing something I really don’t like, for no reason that has meaning other than I said I would.

Will I succeed?  I doubt it.  I really do.  My wife, son and I are going away this summer for a week.  That will be a huge challenge.  Just getting to the summer without missing a day is going to be difficult.  What do I do when I screw up?  I think I brought this up before, when you fall down, you get up.   As soon as I get up, I have to tack that day to the back of the August 5^th date.  I expect that I will fall down a lot.  Any injury could set me back days.  So what will hold me to this? 

Accountability is a key ingredient of this blog.  I really doubt anyone is reading it regularly other than Murphy… Of course, I see Murphy in the gym about once or twice a week.  I have a feeling he’s going to bring the “Double Century” up.  I also have a feeling I’m going to have to write about my progress in the task, not to mention roadblocks that come up.  So, what is the end result of this type of accountability?  Not much actually.  The real accountability is me getting up in the morning and seeing my son.  I want him to think of his dad as a strong person.  Someone who does what he says.  Someone who is worthwhile and who’s word means something.  So, while he’s still too young to know the difference, I’m practicing what I want to perform.

Bare with me, this is a work in process.  There are three types of change.  The three types are Internal Change, Environment Change, and Time.  Environment change is the easiest one to describe.  It’s the change that occurs outside your soul.  So when I say I want to lose 20 lbs (by the way, thanks to the stomach flu, I’m down to about 188 lbs, yea me), that’s really an environment change.  My body is the environment that surrounds me.  But there is also outside my body environment.  Spring is a time for reflection for me; (not to mention hormones due to the shorter skirts, hubba hubba) it’s also a time for allergies.  I’m affected by the spiritual connection with spring, new life and therefore new possibilities but I’m also connected physically to my environment by the effect that it has to my body, which is another part of my environment.

So my environment around me I have some control over.  For instance, I discussed that during my 48 hour fast, my allergies go away to a point.  I cannot control the coming of spring and the pollen, but with proper diet I might be able to eliminate some of the symptoms.  More importantly, with the proper mind set, the symptoms of my allergies might not bother me as much as they do.  That’s the internal work.  In my humble opinion, internal change MUST PRECEDE ENVIROMENTAL CHANGE! 

Wow, that’s a powerful statement; I even capitalized it.  What does it mean?  We don’t do it very well anymore.  A long time ago, the beginning of spring was celebrated with rites and festivals.  I still do, generally by having a Cinco de Mayo party.  There was time taken to change the internal to prepare for the external change.  Back before the human being started believing that it could understand everything about the environment we live in, we celebrated nature and the universe in a more child like manner.  We had awe.  More importantly to this essay, I believe that celebration allowed us an opportunity to prepare internally for elements of our environment that were out of our control.

You cannot always control environment change, but you have the responsibility (as a martial artist) to control internal change.  Let’s say, for a moment, that you buy into my idea that change to the body is environment change.  You might question the statement about controlling environment change.  Let’s say I want to lose 20 lbs (did I mention that I’m below 190 lbs now?), I have some control over that; I can work out more and eat less.  Now let’s look at it from my friend Anthony’s perspective.  He lost about 50 lbs in a handful of weeks.  Unfortunately it put a 5’ 10” formerly muscular young man down to about 130 lbs.  Anthony had a thyroid issue.  The lost was startling when I saw him during Christmas two years ago.  He had little control and the medical community had to intercede and kill off his thyroid to protect him.  Anthony was my mentor in weight lifting, so it was hard seeing him that thin and unhealthy, but it was an example of not always being able to control your body.  A simpler example is injury.  I hesitate to bring that up, because my boss is a big believer in there are no unpreventable accidents.  Still, stuff happens right? 

Internal change is the important thing.  Preceding environment changes with internal change is the only way to make permanent changes in your life.  Again, I go back to weight loss.  I can lose 20 lbs, but until I turn my internal understanding of ME to that smaller weight, I haven’t lost it.  Lost you right?  I have a belief that eating disorders start this way.  The person doesn’t change their mental image of themselves, so they constantly see every meal as something that packs weight on them.  I can make this easier to understand too, until you make the mental changes to accept a healthier life style of eating less and better, and working out, you haven’t lost your 20 lbs, you’ve just set it down for a few months or years waiting to be picked back up.  Part of accepting the responsibility of being a martial artist means to take control of internal change.  The phrase “time heals all wounds” is not true.  If left uncontrolled, no wound is healed.  Recognition of the necessity of internal change and a conscious shaping of that change is a key to healing any wound… especially if you don’t want a mental scar.

I like the concept of changing around my internal understanding of ME.  Recognizing the ego/destruction of the ego.  Until you can look at yourself as you truly are now at this moment, you can not make internal change.  It’s akin to: how can you find your destination if you don’t know where you are?  I’ll talk about this some more another day, but I can give you a thousand examples of why internal change must happen before environment change.  The challenge is: are you prepared for environment change?  When you don’t see that injury coming, can you internally prepare for it?  My Sifu talked about this a long time ago in perhaps my favorite discussion: the universe (God) as the ultimate partner not opponent.  Basically the crux of the talk: you are sparring with God.  You have a choice of treating God as either an opponent or as a partner, but no matter how you perceive it, God is always the perfect partner.  That’s where faith comes in.  Can you look at the universe and accept that whatever environment changes come along and accept that there is a lesson to be learned; A LESSON THAT IS BEING TAUGHT!

Those are big concepts, and only two of the three types of change.  The third is time.  That nature of time is a physicist’s dream.  Since I only have a BS in it (ha ha), I don’t think I’ll try and tackle it in that manner.  Time is entropy.  Entropy is the nature of the universe that we live in to trend to disorder. And any good chaos theory proponent will tell you that eventually disorder is order.  Blah blah blah.  What does it mean to the three types of change?  Time happens.  You can try to be healthy; in fact, I believe to be a good partner with the universe you need to live healthier (which is what I’m trying to do).  Still you age; you are not the same person you were a minute ago.  Again, you have a responsibility to change internally to prepare for this.  I read an article in “The Best Life” (April 2008 “The Science: Riding the Storm”) talking about the researchers are seeing that the decline in athletic ability isn’t due to age, it’s due to the decrease in training.  The decrease in training is due to the social pressures that increase as you get older and the eventual “aww, I’m too old for this crap” mentality.  So if you train at a superior level, you can perform at a superior level (practice what you want to perform).  This does not mean you do not age.  There is environment change that comes with time, but more importantly there is internal growth that goes along with time.  If you choose to ignore that growth, you will inevitably lose that opportunity.  It has nothing to do with loss of performance; it has to do with growth. My belief is if you don’t accept that you are getting older, you miss the richness of your life and possibly stunt your spiritual growth.  But that’s just my humble opinion.

So let’s talk about self-denial.  Not as in trying to make believe you don’t have problems, but actually denying yourself something.  Actually let’s back up.  Wednesday night (today is Friday in case I don’t post right away) JD, the Murph-Meister and I went to a church men’s club lecture.  At a bar.  Don’t look at me that way…

So the talk was about “the Marital Embrace” that’s Catholic double talk for sex in case you can’t figure it out.  The lecturer was an OB/GYN and pretty much sucked.  Granted, that’s strong language but I don’t want you to think that this is going to be about his talk.  JD and I had a long conversation afterwards about various things, but he didn’t enjoy the lecture too much either.  He was upset that they always make it seem like men really hound their wives for sex.  I have to admit, I wasn’t too excited about how he gave examples of how men can self-master their baser instincts.  Let’s do a word association came Camel to Water as TigerJ to s _ _. Can’t get it?  Well how about I give you the last letter is X.  Still can’t get it, want to buy a vowel?  No there is no I.  No there is no A!  Sheesh! you are bad at this.

Anyway, let’s just say I’ve gone 2+ years without more than a hug and a kiss.  Anyway, it got me thinking though.  I’ve given up alcohol for months at a time.  I’ve given up a different type of “self-mastery” for several months.  I am no stranger to self-denial.  Still, I always have trouble with fasting.  When I was in high school I would regularly go 24 hours without food.  I used to call it a cleanse time.  Recently though, I’ve been having a really hard time even going 24 hours.  My Lenten fast this year and last wasn’t up to snuff.  To be honest, when it comes to denying me, I have a hard time even passing by a donut at work when I’ve had breakfast.  

So, driving home Wednesday night, stuffed with appetizers, I resigned myself not to eat for 48 hours.  It’s really easy to decide on a fast when you are stuffed by the way.  Now I will qualify this.  I’ve had my morning Metamucil (don’t look at me like that, it’s good for you).  I also picked up some cranberry juice and some papaya purée (say that ten times quick).  I mix that with some water and take a little cinnamon extract to make sure my sugar doesn’t go all crazy.  

So I am now on hour 34 of my 48 hour fast.  I worked out yesterday and today.  I probably won’t break my fast until Saturday morning (my wife doesn’t like this, so I might cave in and eat dinner with her, which would make it a 45 hour fast, but I’ll try to convince her of the need).  I actually feel pretty good.  I’m hungry but some interesting things happen during my fast.  First of all, I want you to know that I’m not a stranger to fasting for longer than 24 hours.  I did 75 hour fast (it was supposed to be 72 hours, but my mom had dinner late) in honor of my brother who was in the Peace Corps.  I’ve done 60+ hours many times before.  Recently though, this is my longest fast.  Funny enough, at around 48 hours, things happen. First off, my allergies disappear.  Also, my energy levels even out.  Right now, my energy is pretty good, and I didn’t take my Alegra yesterday, but my allergies are under control.  That probably should tell me a lot.  Probably, it means that my toxin levels in my body are higher than they should be.  Probably, it means that I have sensitivity to certain foods.  Probably it means I should try one of the elimination diets.  Here’s the kicker, re-read the beginning of this entry.  I suck at self-control when it comes to what I put into my mouth.  So, maybe going to that lecture wasn’t a bad idea (actually it wasn’t, I got to hang out with good friends that I don’t see too often).  I was hoping that it would help me be a better husband, which is another goal, but instead, it might have brought to light a serious issue I have with self control.

Of course, the 48 hours ain’t up yet.