Sports and My Mind – The Eternal Battle

Sports Are Not For Me

I am a strong person. Strong-willed, that is, and I have a sharp mind. I am quite set in my ways, and I always have an opinion.
This is an excellent trait to have, but not when it’s working against you. You see, my mind has decided sports is not for me. I’m not good at it, I don’t enjoy doing it, and I hate everything to do with sports.
Now that wouldn’t be so bad as long as I didn’t need it. Unfortunately, I do. I need it to clear my mind and to feel better in every way. But my mind still says no.

Benefits of Exercise

When I was a teenager, I suffered from depression. Seeing what I had gone through already at that age, that’s not surprising. My parents had split, and my mother had a major mental breakdown, so it was bound to have some backlash on me. I know that when I started to do sports, I felt better. I did some light fitness exercises, and I did R&B dancing classes. Within only a couple of months, I recognized the beneficial effect these activities had on me and my mental health. So far, so good, you would say.

If Only

Unfortunately, no.
But Liz, now that you know it is good for you, surely you will continue to do sports one way or another for its beneficial effects? Nope.
Throughout my life, I have taken up a wide variety of sporting activities, only to drop them a few months later. I’ve done jazz ballet, fitness, steps, Pilates, yoga, R&B-dancing and probably some others I have forgotten about. I just don’t know how to keep it up. For one reason or another, something comes up, and I quit.

Sedentary Lifestyle

Ever since quitting my job in retail and starting to write full-time, I have gained a lot of weight. In retail, I stood the entire day, running back and forth, carrying groceries and boxes of new supplies. It was a medium-intensity job, or so I read once. Nowadays, I sit behind the computer.

Gamifying Our Walks

The first year, my husband and I would go for a walk every night. We used PokemonGo to incentivize us. It was fun to catch Pokemon and to fight the larger ones together. And we didn’t want to lose our streak, so we made sure to obtain our goals every day. We actually continued doing this even after we had long lost our interest in the game. We recognized it made us go out even when it was raining or snowing. The game gave our walks a purpose.
When we got too tired of PokemonGo, we switched to Harry Potter’s Wizards Unite. I’m not a huge Harry Potter fan, but the game was fun for a little while. But the game was too longwinded. The first time we played it, our half an hour walk took two hours. And standing still every two meters does not help with making you stronger. We quickly lost our interest in the game and dropped it. But we also dropped our walks.

Struggle

My husband walks to and from the office three days a week, roughly twenty minutes. That’s great, but it doesn’t help me. I try to go for a walk when he’s at work, but going alone is ten times more difficult than going for a walk together. Often my husband will say: yeah, I’ve walked enough already. I don’t feel like walking.
And trust me, it’s a thousand times more fun to stay at home and play videogames or watch Ridiculousness on TV than to go out for a walk.

It Does Help

The thing is, I feel a thousand times better after going out. When I’ve been outside, it’s like my head is clearer, like the wind takes some of my depressing and dark thoughts away.
I occasionally do exercises along to a YouTube video, like Yoga with Adriene. Only doing that once or twice makes my body move so much more fluently.

I’ll Get There

As I said, my mind is sharp, and it is hell-bent in pushing me towards the wrong decisions. I know, with my intellect, that I would feel so much better if I did my yoga exercises regularly or if I would walk every day. But I don’t.
However, I’m trying to change my habits. This week I’ve been for my evening stroll every night. My husband agrees with me we should go back to walking every night if only for the talks we have while we’re out. Last night he suggested to take our rowing-exercise machine from the attic and go back to using that occasionally. I applaud the initiative, and I’ll even try to use it myself. Knowing myself, it will probably stick for only a few weeks, but that’s okay. Maybe I can trick my mind in doing an activity like this for a few weeks at the time before switching to something else. If only exercise wasn’t that beneficial to me.

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