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In my experience, exercise was helpful, but mostly only after I realized what I could learn about myself from it. Primarily, it allowed me to better understand and manage 2 types of “automatic” thought processes that I have constantly:
(1) Intrusive Thoughts - unpleasant thoughts that pop into my head
(2) Motivated Reasoning - mind trying to draw logical but untrue conclusions in line with my current feelings at the time As an example of how the 2 may combine in normal life, an internal dialogue might look like this:
(1) Intrusive thought: “I can’t accomplish this goal”
(2) Motivated reasoning: “Because I’m a failure and I’m worthless”
The most insidious thing is that these motivated conclusions feel so right, feel so self evident. With exercise, similar thought processes will arise. The difference is, because you are dealing with a simple physical task, there is the possibility of immediate physical evidence to demonstrate to yourself your intrusive thought, and the reasoning for it, are simply wrong. The analogous thought processes during exercise might look like this:
(1) Intrusive thought: “I can’t finish this workout”
(2) Motivated reasoning: “Because I’m not in good enough shape and it hurts too much, I can’t take it, I need to stop”
There is a point where I feel like I want to stop, and at first it seems so reasonable to stop, to not overwork myself and hurt myself. But if I push on past that point, there is a realization “Huh - I’m still here, I’m still doing this, I thought I didn’t have it in me, but irrefutably I did because I am here still doing this after I thought I was done.” I always thought I was naturally unathletic; I was never good at sports and hated exercise until I became an adult. Looking back now, I realized the only reason I was unathletic was because I believed I was, and my power of belief made it a reality. As I’ve grown older, the intrusive thoughts and motivated reasoning are still here, but where in the past they stopped me dead in my tracks, now I have learned to see them for what they are and not let them define me. Everyone has different experiences, and I mean no disrespect to anyone who hasn’t found value in exercise; I believe there are many ways to learn these types of lessons; for me, it just happened to be exercise, but it could have been anything. |