Less Complaining

When I was a kid I played hockey. I'd play every winter, take the summer off, then have to spend all of fall getting back in shape. I would sleep on the couch during the first week of fall training because I couldn't climb the stairs to my room. I hated it. Then, during my sophomore year, during a particularly miserable session of endless drills, with the cold air grinding my breaths to an asthmatic wheeze, with seat pouring down my brow despite the freezing temperatures, I realized that I didn't have to hate this. I didn't have to look at it like punishment, as something someone was forcing me to do. I could look at it as an opportunity to get better, I could, even, work much harder than I was working and try to improve more.

That particular moment, the details, has stuck with me despite the decades that have past. It might seem so fundamental, so simple, but at the time the idea that I could choose to work harder and actively improve was a revelation. Luckily, I've been able to carry it with me, and remember it in the more miserable moments of drudgery-- athletic or otherwise.