Just Keep Swimming

It is officially an off week. It's good that this happens now. I tend to be a very black and white person. Fail or succeed, no in between. Some people would say that is how you should see the world. I was Pinterest searching for motivational quotes about working out and getting healthy when I stumbled across something I keep seeing everywhere now. "Pain is just weakness leaving the body." If that works for you, great, but it does not work for me. At all.
As a teacher, I was inundated with references to "growth mindset". This is the practice of teaching kids to embrace failure as a building block to success rather than the end of the line. It is changing your thinking from "I'm a failure" to "I have learned from this and now I can do better." It is instilling in them that you get back up, dust yourself off, and go again. This is something I need to be reminded of.
​Some people are amped up by the whole raving, spitting, drill Sargent approach to fitness and life. Some people clearly thrive on working with Gordon Ramsey. Other people are defeated by it. Other people internalize because it plays on the fear that they are already inadequate. It validates the voice in their head that constantly breaks them down. I don't need that kind of negativity. I don't thrive on that and it doesn't make me weak.
So it is a good thing I'm having an off week, because too many times I have set a goal and tore myself down, talked myself out of it, because I came up short. Sometimes we come up short. Sometimes we have an off week. But it's what we do with that shortcoming that is most important. It's a sad truth about manatees that they often get run over by boats. Some of them are scared and disfigured. This week, I got ran over by a boat, but I choose to just keep swimming.