The Physical Pillar
How Discomfort Exposes the Difference Between Real Limits and Excuses
Air swirled around me in a consistent rhythm as the audible drone of the fan came back into my consciousness. Both had picked up in intensity over the last thirty seconds.
Whoosh. Silence. Whoosh. Silence. Whoosh. Silence.
I can’t do this, I thought as my muscles and lungs ached. You did enough yesterday, just end it early today.
The thought entered my mind out of nowhere. A small smile crossed my face. I had faced these thoughts before in this situation and was becoming familiar with navigating through them. I wasn’t going to give them the grace to linger.
No, I can do this.
Every strain against the rower was proof my initial thoughts were wrong. I wasn’t finished. As the distance counter raced above my targeted goal, I let my body slide forward and the handle snapped back into its holding position. I breathed heavily. I noticed a gentle breeze move across my face as the rowing machine’s fan cycled down, its residual push bouncing off the walls of the tiny room.
It felt good to feel something again.
Glancing up, I looked out the window toward the courtyard. Cigarette packs sat on tables and people milled about, waiting for the lunch hour to hit. I would go out and join my friends soon, but my pre-lunch ritual was something I looked forward to completing first each day.
My mind felt calm as I watched the scene outside. I could sense I was tolerating stress better, and I hadn’t experienced a single issue sleeping at night since starting this rowing ritual.
In my last few years of drinking, I could feel myself slipping physically. There was the obvious metric of the scale, which crept frustratingly upward every year. By the end, I stopped checking because I didn’t like the feedback it was giving me.
But there were other signs I was faltering physically. I felt a growing tightness of anxiety that seemed to always grip me. Sleep constantly evaded me, and the smallest amount of stress would send me on a wild search for alcohol to ease the burden.
Sitting on that rower as sweat ran down my face for nearly the twentieth day in a row, I was beginning to connect with the ramifications of this ritual. I was starting to realize how interconnected the mind and body are, and how ignoring one of those components became detrimental to me toward the end of my drinking days.
I smiled, thinking back on the excuses that had run through my head moments earlier as I watched sweat fall to the floor. I took a deep breath in, exhaled, and found myself laughing out loud, sitting alone on the rower.
I was laughing because I was finally seeing that the Physical Pillar is a truth seeker.
Gliding back and forth on that rower each day became an opportunity for me to experience discomfort. When discomfort hit, the self-talk began. The self-talk looked for a way to reason with me, presenting an opportunity to choose—is the barrier I’m constructing in my head real, or is it an excuse to seek comfort? Making the choice to challenge the barrier then led to increased capacity.
As the number of encounters with this ritual increased, I was learning that the boundaries I perceived were often not true. I was working to gain the wisdom to discern between a genuine constraint and those that my mind simply created in an attempt to protect me, even though relenting meant limiting my long-term potential.
After two and a half years of lying to hide my drinking, I was committed to living my life honestly and in pursuit of the truth. The Physical Pillar became the mechanism through which I sought the truth. It gave me the repetition to encounter potential limiting beliefs every single day and to grow in my wisdom to choose to change course or to work through the discomfort.
Encountering these self-fabricated excuses daily, in a controlled setting, led to growth and improved my mental well being, self-talk, and how I perceive challenges. It’s so much more than exercise, so much deeper than the numbers on the scale or body composition. It’s real change that is grounded in the pursuit of truth.
You can find this anywhere in your life. Look for moments where your self-talk fires up strongest, and view them as chances to encounter resistance and discover growth. Face up to your self-talk and challenge your perceived limits to find out if they are real or self-fabricated.
Live life honestly and in pursuit of the truth.
Search for the wisdom required to assess whether a constraint is real, or if you’re simply giving yourself an excuse to avoid the discomfort that comes with growth.
Keep showing up.
Kyle Layne (Kyle Zibrowski)