It has been around forty-five days since I have moved into my dorm here at Paul Smith’s College; forty-five days since I started my college journey. I look back at what I was feeling when I first moved in and what I thought after the first week, and I just can’t help but notice how much has changed since then. I am the type of person who craves a routine in order to function effectively throughout daily life. When that routine is disrupted, it makes me quite uncomfortable because I don’t know what’s going to happen next. All the uncomfortable feelings manifested themselves in thinking about home, and how I had a routine that made me so much more comfortable than I presently was at the time. Eventually, I fell into a routine here, and my college experience instantly became much more comfortable.
I know that I talk about it all the time, but working out may have been the one thing that saved my sanity after coming here to college. I could probably be defined as a “health nut” because I really watch what I eat, and I work out every single day. The fact that I do these things is really just an example of my perfectionism, because no matter what I do, I usually think of a better alternative. For example, if I put chicken on a salad for lunch, chances are that later in the day, I will think, “Why didn’t I put turkey on the salad? Turkey is usually more lean than chicken. What was I thinking?” Now this may be a bit of an over dramatization, but it’s probably what will eventually pop into my mind at some point in the day. So for one thing, I was a bit uncomfortable when I didn’t know what I should eat while at college. Once I knew what all my options were, I became much more comfortable, which in turn made me happier.
When it comes to working out, it can make or break my day. For a couple years now, I have completing the P90X workout program, which basically requires that you work out every day. I became so used to working out every day at home, that it quickly became uncomfortable being at college because I didn’t know where I could work out, or if I would be able to work out here at all. I guess you could say that P90X made me a little shy while working out, because I used to do the work outs by myself in the basement of my house. Having to work out in the gym was very uncomfortable for me, because there were so many people around, and I knew they were all sizing me up. Let’s face it, that’s what happens at the gym. Everybody sizes everybody else up, so me being 5’ 10” and 135 pounds means that people would automatically think that I really couldn’t do much of anything. I knew this was totally untrue, and maybe people weren’t sizing me up like I thought they were, but I became quite uncomfortable nonetheless. Eventually with the help of my dumbbell set, I figured out how to do my workouts in my dorm room, and those workouts such as plyometrics (jump training), yoga, and kenpo (mix of karate and cardio), which required more room, I began to do in the dance room.
Needless to say, I fell into a routine that was a lot like the one I was used to at home, which made me more comfortable, and consequently happier. This is one of the reasons why I constantly say that working out helps me to “stay sane”, or other things like that. I was used to workouts driving my schedule, and I just couldn’t become comfortable here at school until that became the case again. When I think of my workout mentality and perfectionism, I like to think of something that Tony Horton says during some of the P90X workouts. He says, “Do your best, because that’s always enough”. This can be encouraging, because everybody is at a different level of fitness, so all they can do to get maximum results is to do their best. Ralph Waldo Emerson also has a famous quote along the same lines. Emerson says, “Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.” That’s what I’m going to try to do in my workouts and in my college life. Like Tony Horton always says, “Do your best, and forget the rest.”
No comments:
Post a Comment