English-only content today.

I realized something while I was in the gym. Since my teenage years, I have known one of my biggest personal challenges was my impatience. Case in point, my violin skills never developed the way ten years of private lessons would have suggested. I don’t know if it was the need for instant gratification or the need to prove myself, but I focused my energies on fast. Track and field, basketball, video games – clear objectives with quick-to-see progress bars. You sink enough practice time, you will see your sprint times improve. Practicing crossovers, dribbles, and shots – it was still a lot of hours but it didn’t take long to see results. It was the outward manifestation of my inner impatience and need to prove myself.

I don’t think I was ever…grounded. I was always in a rush, chasing one thing or another.

That did give me the ability to react quickly to situations.

Fast forward half a lifetime of experiences, I knew that I wanted to be more grounded, steady, patient. Obviously, my recent circumstances affected me in other ways that made that goal difficult. However, what I realized was, I took up something serious that allowed me to slow down, and practice being grounded and steady.

Weightlifting.

I started going to the gym in college, though never in a serious capacity. It was always a couple months of intense training to get ready for basketball or running, and then slack. Again, I was fueling my faster interests. However, post-Covid, I took a programmatic approach to weight training. I started slowing down and cutting out exercises. I went from doing anywhere between 5 to 10 different exercises in a gym session to basically 3. My trips became consistent – every other day, rain or shine, work or no work. I never missed months of training like I used to in my twenties.

Progress was slow, and I knew it. It was so slow, slower than even my own expectations. Progress was almost imperceptible.

How did I come to accept this activity? This ran against everything I used to be. Going up 10 lb/5 kg in weight took weeks, if not months. I could’ve learned at least 3 new basketball moves in that time. Yet, here I am in the gym today, doing the same weight I have been doing for at least a month to try to just get a little stronger.

I’m starting to recognize that this consistency and steadiness is the foundation of my becoming grounded. Though I still am not able to always apply that kind of peace in all aspects of my life – it’s hard to overcome inertia, not impossible – it dawned on me that I have been overcoming. Another area where this is showing up has been my dedication to learning Spanish. In just the past year, I’ve come a long way since my rudimentary lessons in Peru back in 2011.

It’s funny, I didn’t realize the ways I have already been doing my best to become the man I want to be. I’m my own harshest critic, but that’s a story for another day.