I Want It To Suck More

This phrase started as a rather cynical reaction by a good friend of mine to state of the world as a whole. But today I'd like to flip the script with an area I decided to apply it positively: challenging yourself.

When It Doesn't Suck Enough

It's easy to fall into a routine. You figure you're doing "enough," as long as you're putting in some effort. To a degree, this is true. But to truly grow, you need to at least occasionally make things a truly punishing experience. You need to make them suck.

Now, I'm not saying you need to make it hard to walk or think straight every time you leave the gym or finish a project. Not for the whole day, anyway. But if you can easily jog out of the gym each time, your workouts don't suck enough. If you always have boundless mental energy left, you may not be challenging yourself enough. You need to be looking for ways to challenge yourself more, even if you have to force it at first.

If you're truly hungry for growth, to become your best self, you'll find yourself being unsatisfied when it doesn't suck enough. And when that happens, you'll want it to suck more, so you can punish and challenge yourself. Other people might call you a masochist, but you know the truth: adversity leads to growth.

Making It Suck More

I'll kick this off with a personal example. I run sprints on my lifting days immediately after I'm done with the lifts. Due to the terrible weather, I had been doing them on a tread mill at the small gym in my apartment complex. But one day, the gym wasn't open because the floors were being redone. So I took myself out in the snow and miserable cold, and ran them there. I sprinted up and down the path between the buildings for the obligatory ten minutes.

Make no mistake: this sucked. It was bitter cold, it had snowed the night before, and the path hadn't been shoveled. I was covered, but by no means bundled up thoroughly. My lungs burned from the frigid air. But by the end I felt amazing. I'd made it suck more, and there was no going back. When the floors were done and the gym was accessible again, I couldn't bring myself to go back. I needed it to suck, I needed to be outside, slogging through the cold and snow to get my sprints in.

I'm not here to tell you to endanger yourself in your workouts, or any other area. I wasn't out there doing sprints in sub-zero temperatures in shorts and a T-shirt. But I am here to tell you to find ways to make your workouts and other exercises and experiences more punishing, and thus more rewarding. Find new ways to challenge yourself, to force your mind and body into positions that you wouldn't normally be in. Go looking for adversity, challenge, and punishing experiences to strengthen yourself. Make it suck.

How Do You Make It Suck More?

As always, I want to hear from all of you. Tell us how you challenge and punish yourself. How you make it suck more, so that when it sucks beyond your control, you can take it.