Many of us were back at work Monday, Tuesday this week, and others have an extended break till next week.
Always though at this time of year, the feeling for many people is the same, the wonder I've been able to switch off is tempered by the guilt of not working because we're institutionalised with setting targets or finishing tasks or getting ‘stuff done’
So for many people, Enjoying the Christmas time and the time off work is tainted by the fact that going back will seem ever harder especially the older you get and the more times that you do it and so at this point in the year I'm often reminded of the quote that's vaguely attributed to the legendary American cyclist, Greg LeMond, and is printed on the wall of the practice “It never gets easier, you just get faster”.
Although there is no particular evidence of exactly when LeMond said this, it has been attributed to him over the years in all sorts of aspects of endurance sport that apply equally well to returning to work in January after a lazy, peaceful and happy extended break over Christmas.
What we find in these circumstances is that for those of us who've worked for decades and done this over years and years and years, we have developed the stamina, a ‘set of muscles’ that allows us to power through the January and February and March with other people earlier on in who find it harder, more depressing, more upsetting.
The circumstance reminds me of people who have their first baby, and this is very poignant because Tom, who is our academy and marketing director at the clinic, had a little baby boy on the 5th of December, on the same day as my son Callum's birthday and is now entering into the full exposure of what parenting is actually like.
I remember before my brother-in-law had his first (he has two boys) and I had 3 kids under 10, I was explaining to him that if I were to parachute him directly into my life right now, he would ultimately die within minutes, because he would not in any way be able to cope with the carnage of having 3 children under 10, a full-time job, and also trying to have a little bit of time for yourself to ride a bike. The point is that we develop the ability to deal with these things over time through a process of evolution, not revolution.
The best way to deal with that process is to embrace it and to understand that there is no mystical time in the future where it will be ‘easy’.
It will never get easier to go back to work after Christmas, never.
It will never get easy to parent 1, 2 or 3 children through their lives into university and beyond.
It is never easy to do the jobs that we choose to do; we just get faster.
We get better at dealing with the ups and the downs, better at dealing with the fatigue, better at making decisions which make it better, and we move to a better place, a ‘more successful’ place over time.
The key to all of this is the reflection that we have on the process. Endurance sport is supposed to hurt. We're supposed to embrace the pain of training and the discomfort that comes both during and after in order to get to a better place, to allow us to achieve things that we could not achieve before.
Why is this different to building a family, or building a career, or building a life?
Of course, and as with all the great quotes and sayings, it's not any different at all.
Blog Post Number - 4394
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