newjerseynewsroom.com

BY MICHAEL W. SMITH CPT, M.S.

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

I'm fired up and detached today. Why? It's been a tough, emotional week.

One of those weeks that you want to scream, run, sit, kick ass, do nothing, smile, frown, and become the definition of a paradox. Sometimes it feels like life is beating the (blank) out of you. It's like trying to sprint in quicksand.

Internally we deal with these conflicts and random thoughts. Times like this makes me re-realize that pain may be invisible but it's impossible to hide the scars.

Maybe it's this, maybe it's that...

Maybe it's the vivid recollections that my mind conjures up when things happen, both good and not so good, causing a perfect storm of gut-wrenching and that tingly feeling that you get in your head when you're either mad, sad, angry, or (temporarily) defeated.

After sitting for a while this morning I have decided to stare at this computer screen and type. Let my thoughts flow through my fingers with the hopes of a release of some of this pent up emotion and energy, whether it be positive or negative energy.

When inspiration starts to dry up and motivation wanes, well something has to happen. Often times sitting in quiet helps, but then it makes you go crazy. Another paradox.

Writing, reading, running, exercising, and music all help to release these random energies. Albeit temporarily.

Once these energies are released they slowly begin to build back up inside the mind and body. It can be a vicious cycle if you don't continue to release these emotions and energies by writing, reading, running, exercising, and listening to music.

The voice that we all have inside our heads can run rampant at times. Thoughts, self-imposed doubts, questions, guilt, gratitude, the to-do list, and on and on and on and on....it can be overwhelmingly defeating and frustrating. It can cause you to do nothing, to stop moving, stop working out, stop feeling good about yourself, and stop pursuing what you know and believe to be right.

This is simply me talking to myself and you know what, it's helping a bit. Even though I know it's helping temporarily, I could use the hour break from feeling this physical and mental nonsense.

When you feel like you're losing something or someone it can be very trying. It may be a loved one, family member, husband, wife, boyfriend, girlfriend, or best friend - OR a job, passion, opportunity, or chance - OR a combination of all of them. One can feel like you're losing it all.

Losing my Mom was and continues to be something that NO words can describe. The devastation is unnerving and constant. When relationships, family and otherwise, begin to deteriorate it is a difficult, difficult thing to deal with.

Anger turns into frustration, frustration turns into sadness, sadness turns into a deflated feeling, a deflated feeling turns back into anger. And that's when, as I said above, we get fired up. Fired up temporarily.

And when we are temporarily fired up that's when we have to workout, run, walk, read, or write (such as what I'm writing right now).

This temporary "fired up" feeling that I have is real and has caused a reflection on what and who is important.

Let's go...

You can read these words off this screen and feel them, disagree with them, not care about them, absolutely care about them, feel them, have gone through them, or not have gone through them.

Either way, it always is what it is. It's however you (we) define what we see, read, and do.

This can either be a win-win or nothing. Hopefully this helps someone because it'll help me, help honor my mother, and help me to get back what feels lost.

"Raise the bar and keep it real," is what I've been thinking throughout this rant. You see, I could've not published this blog post because I'm scared or worried about what people will say or think.

And that's exactly why I published it.

I write many things that I never publish, that I deem more of a personal nature. This is one of those writings. But when we feel that feeling of, "Who cares," it seems to matter less and less what people think or say about you.

Honestly, if people don't have an opinion of you, good or bad, you're probably not stepping out of your comfort zone and you're probably not going hard enough.

So after I wrote this for myself I figured, "What the hell, let me put this on my blog and elaborate on it. Let me me just write as my mind races."

So I did.

I (we) can post great exercise videos, nutrition tips, and messages of inspiration. But it helps to keep it real when keeping it real is necessary. Hence this random rant and emotions of life.

Doubt, worry, and guilt can cause you to feel like you're going insane. Insane in the membrane (in the words of Cypress Hill). Doubt, worry, and guilt are three of the worst and most meaningless emotions around. They suck and it's their mission to defeat us.

Doubt: serves no purpose other than to paralyze you and your actions.

Worry: serves no purpose other than to play mind games and pysch you out.

Guilt: serves no purpose other than torturing your mind and keeps you living in the past in such an unhealthy way.

That doesn't mean that they don't exist. Why else would I be writing this? Those three emotions can literally eat you from the inside out. They can take control of your actions and life.