“What’s the purpose of it all?”
You all know the feeling: mid January, snowing, grey skies…. blah blah blah. Everything is blah… You don’t feel like working out. Don’t feel like going to catch a show either, don’t really want to hang with your boys. You literally just want to sit there. Pathetic, right? Probably not as pathetic as you might think. It’s actually quite normal. Guys, believe it or not, are human and have emotions. Now, before you go comparing this to a woman’s menstrual cycle, stop right there. This ain’t that. Women’s bodies undergo certain physiological routines that cause hormone changes resulting in mood changes and physical manifestations like ovulation and water retention. Men don’t do any of that. They are, however, affected by things like stress, cold and lack of sunlight or exercise which can leave them down in the figurative “dumps”. So, how do we beat the melancholy feelings? Glad you asked…
1. Realize that slumps are cyclical. What does this mean? Well, simply put, sometimes it’s gonna go really good for you. Other times? Not so much. The faster you can accept this universal truth, the more successful you stand to be. One Saturday you shoot 8-11 and lock your man down. The next week you’re 0-16 and nobody will pick you up when you continuously lose. What happened? The cycle happened. Sometimes you’re up and sometimes you’re down. It’s life. Nothing to get depressed about.
2. Take some “Me time”. Every Friday or Saturday evening doesn’t have to be spent in a crowd being the life of the party for it to be a success. Take a walk alone, finish a good book, have a glass of wine as you reflect on the beauty of nature at a botanical garden… just take a little bit of time and devote it to what YOU want to do, experience or learn.
3. Exercise. I hate to beat a dead horse and no, I’m not the resident “fitness guru”, but I personally happen to know that exercise releases hormones that make a man feel great, similar to the euphoric rush people get from doing drugs(seriously, look it up). A little sweat is great for you physically, but more importantly in this case emotionally. And competition has been known to improve many a mood.
So, what’s the conclusion? Maximize your sprints, shorten your inevitable plunges into despair and try to keep a baseline level of optimism in all that you do. We’re men. We’re going to get down. The important thing is we spend our time making small course corrections rather than rewriting our whole program (which was never broken to begin with).
Sincerely Fresh,
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