P90X: "Daring to Try the Impossible" Day 16 of 90

How hard does something have to be before it is too much for you to contemplate?  What is the point at which you say, "No way, not for me?"  Many look at this P90X program and decide that it is too much.  I do understand.  It is a commitment of literally an hour per day.  It means that you will watch your diet and be disciplined about following the fitness program.  The exercise is pretty strenuous and hard.  Those can be some pretty tough obstacles.

I did my workout today, Cardio X and I really kicked butt on it.  The workouts are getting to the point where I complete every workout and every repetition.  That was NOT the case two weeks ago when there were some things I just plain could not do.  My flexibility has practically doubled.  I am taking few to no breaks per session on any of the nights now.

It's a challenge for me to do this, as has been many things in my life these past four years.  A lot of the challenges I have taken on are things not many would attempt.  Losing my 80 plus pounds and keeping it off, writing a book, and achieving many of the things I have done in my work life.  Now this P90X challenge is in front of me.

Does this make me special?  No.  Not a chance.  It is personally rewarding, yes.  But there are many people, every day, who face far greater challenges than this.  I try to remember that when I begin every day and look at what is in front of me.  Doing P90X is not impossible.  It is completely possible.  It is just hard.

Know what else is hard?  Fighting your own cancer.  Having to sit with your child when they are in pain, and you can do absolutely nothing.  Living with a medical condition that you will have to carry with you to the grave, because there is no cure, only medicines to help manage it.  Now THAT takes real courage.  THAT is a challenge.  How do you deal with a hand that you were dealt that you didn't ask for or ever contemplate was coming?

When things look hard, I think about those things.

I also think about those people who choose to put themselves in harms way.  People who may give their life to save another.  From our Police and Firemen...to the military...to someone performing a random act of unselfishness to protect someone else and paying the ultimate price.

It's humbling.

While I was on the treadmill today, I watched a DVD of mine called "When We Left Earth."  It's about our space program.  When I watch the first men who went to the moon, I watch in awe.  I look at the astronauts who got into those rockets.  Rockets that were largely untested.  Every new rocket had improved technology in it.  Which means they were using it for the first time.  The Saturn rocket used on Apollo 8 was brand new, 35 stories tall and had a million gallons of fuel.  The last people to get into a Saturn rocket had died testing it.  That was Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee in Apollo 1.  The mission for Apollo 8 was to go to the moon, do 12 rotations and come home.  Alive.  It was the precursor to the moon landings...proof that we could go all the way to the moon and back.

I think a lot about all of those astronauts.  What kind of men did something like that require?  What were they made of?  This was a risk that we cannot even contemplate.  They had almost no control over the machinery.  The on-board computers had less technology than what we have today in a complicated digital watch.  They actually had slide rules to help with the math.  Slide rules.  No one from this generation even knows what they are.  They climbed onto those large man-made bombs and strapped themselves in to take the ride.  Frank Borman, one of the astronauts, said he calculated the odds of mission success at 33%.  Seriously?

So when I look at things, like P90X, I think about those kinds of things.  Doing it every day reminds me that persistence pays off.  It reminds me that I can control more in this life than I might think possible.  It keeps me healthy, something that has become very important to me.  But no one's dying with the decision to do this.

Can you do this?  If you are asking yourself that, remember...no one's asking you to cure cancer, or survive it.  No one is asking you to risk your life.  No one is asking you to perform brain surgery.  No stress about trying this.  No one even invested money and is asking you to turn it into profit.  It is an exercise program.  That's it.  And it is physically demanding.  So what.  (I say that with a 'period' purposely...it is a statement)

Give it a try and if you push through it, you will love that you could do it.  And you will feel great about it.  And you will feel, the next time you have an obstacle in your life, that you are just a little bit better prepared for the challenge...because you have done some tough things in your life and whipped them.

See you tomorrow.