“Unless the lake was actually frozen, I would go out on it.” On winter days, he adds, “The first four kilometres are hard because you can still feel your hands. After that it gets easier, because your hands are numb.” — Oliver Zeidler, Reigning Olympic and world champion in the men’s single sculls, article “What Makes a Champion?” from Flow

Ever wonder at how hard it is to row a single scull against elite athletes for 2000 meters? Row 2000 meters on a rowing ergometer for time and see how you feel. It dents your soul in hurts so much. So I laughed when I read Zeidler’s quote, because “numb” applies to more than overcoming the cold. Elite athletes push aside levels of discomfort that sideline the rest of us.

I write this fresh off a kettle bell circuit that made me question my own sanity. I made it through the workout, rested long enough to manage typing, and began typing this blog post. My rest involved reading the article quoted from above. We tend to be most open to positive action when we’ve already done something good for us. The opposite is also true, of course, so avoiding one bad habit helps us avoid a string of other bad habits.

And this brings me back to doing hard things. Each hard thing done makes it more likely that we’ll do another hard thing, and another, and soon we’re surprising ourselves with all that we’ve accomplished in a day, a week, a year… and onward to a lifetime. That’s one reason I tend to write and publish every day, because it feeds the next hard thing I want to get done. What have we done today to make us proud of our effort? There’s still time to add something to that list.

Ironically, the kettle bell exercise that makes me feel most alive is called a gravedigger. It will get your heart rate up quickly, and reminds me of the rhythmic swing of rowing, without the cold hands. That workout was fresh on my mind when I read the interview with Zeidler, and surely influenced my decision to seek it out in the first place. Reinforce the positive, whenever possible. Momentum ensues.

We probably shouldn’t aspire to numbness in our lives, but pushing through discomfort to perform at a higher level is a worthy aspiration. Today’s discomfort is tomorrow’s excellence. And why wait any longer than that?