{"id":518,"date":"2014-07-09T14:48:50","date_gmt":"2014-07-09T21:48:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/?p=518"},"modified":"2014-07-09T14:48:50","modified_gmt":"2014-07-09T21:48:50","slug":"when-the-going-gets-tough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/2014\/07\/when-the-going-gets-tough\/","title":{"rendered":"When the going gets tough &#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/jillbertini\/13702144424\" title=\"leap leap by Jill S., on Flickr\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/farm4.staticflickr.com\/3756\/13702144424_936a5057f7.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"331\" alt=\"leap leap\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I swim laps a few times a week. In my ideal world of lap swimming, I would have my own lane and never have to share. The reality is, there are usually more swimmers than lanes. Which means sharing lanes. I generally don&#8217;t mind sharing. It&#8217;s about finding a rhythm with the other swimmers and then praying no one runs into you.<\/p>\n<p>My point is, sometimes swimming is easy and effortless, sometimes there are obstacles. I&#8217;ve been working on paying attention to my reactions &#8211; that is, the knee-jerk, unconscious responses. I have a tendency to quit or shut down.<\/p>\n<p>On Sunday, I started swimming with my own lane. Ahh, perfection, I thought. Soon enough, one woman joined my lane. Then another. And then another! Before I knew it, there were 4 of us sharing one lane. The flow was fine, but I noticed I was getting annoyed. They had disrupted my peace. MY peace, I&#8217;m telling you. <\/p>\n<p>I contemplated getting out of the pool. I&#8217;d swum <em>enough<\/em>. But then I paused. A thought surfaced: <strong>When the going gets tough, the tough get going.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Fuck that shit, I thought. I hate that. But then I relaxed, and I had another thought. <strong>What do I want?<\/strong>?<\/p>\n<p>What did I want? I wanted to keep swimming. Focusing on what I wanted, rather than on toughing it out, changed my experience. Rather than having to prove myself, I could return to the activity. I could relax and let go of the irritation.<\/p>\n<p>The next time I feel frustrated, when things are <em>hard<\/em>, and I feel like quitting, I hope I can remember this. It&#8217;s good to stop every once in awhile and re-evaluate. Am I still on the path? Is this serving me? Is this the direction I want to be going?<\/p>\n<p>I want to pause and say, <strong>When the going gets tough, what do I want?<\/strong> <\/p>\n<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_pop\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/button100x23.png\" style=\"border:0px; width:100; height: 23; \" alt=\"Share Button\" \/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Linkedin\",\"StumbleUpon\",\"Reddit\",\"Print\");var hupso_icon_type = \"labels\";var hupso_background=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_url=\"\";var hupso_title=\"When%20the%20going%20gets%20tough%20...\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I swim laps a few times a week. In my ideal world of lap swimming, I would have my own lane and never have to share. The reality is, there are usually more swimmers than lanes. Which means sharing lanes. I generally don&#8217;t mind sharing. It&#8217;s about finding a rhythm with the other swimmers and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_pop\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/button100x23.png\" style=\"border:0px; width:100; height: 23; \" alt=\"Share Button\" \/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Linkedin\",\"StumbleUpon\",\"Reddit\",\"Print\");var hupso_icon_type = \"labels\";var hupso_background=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_url=\"\";var hupso_title=\"When%20the%20going%20gets%20tough%20...\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div>","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[76,60],"class_list":["post-518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-slowbloom","tag-focus","tag-slowbloom-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=518"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":526,"href":"https:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518\/revisions\/526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}