Working it out

Step aerobics before dawn does more than wake up my muscles, it plays with my mind. I step out of the car and the cold morning air slaps a washrag in my face.  I was too sleepy to care how close I came to hitting a deer crossing the road in the dark, but I’m awake now!  

In the weight room, the boom box is pounding out the lyrics to “Highway to Hell” and I know what I’m in for – an hour of heart pumping agony. I have choices. I can grumble, but then I engage the wrong muscles. As I punch and kick the air I can visualize the faceless fund manager who lost a chunk of my money, but that’s probably a misdirection of adrenalin as well. Self-talk sometimes carries me through a session.

This morning I looked down at my step askew on the floor and thought about the four countries of the heart that people live in. Maria told me about a personality model that divides people into quadrants. According to this model, the perfectionist would kick the step into place repeatedly until it squared with the tiles on the floor.  The person who lives in the country of control would divert her attention to figuring out the proper way to get the step to adhere to the floor.  Then she would inform the rest of us how it should be done. The peaceful person would align the angle of her body to the angle of her step and breathe. Then there’s me. I’ll look at it, see the irony and go home and write about it. Yup, I live in the fun country.

So why am I up at six AM doing curls and crunches? Because it feels so fun when I stop!