Lessons Learned ~ HAWMC, Day 17

Today's prompt is entitled "Learned the Hard Way." What is a lesson you learned the hard way?

*Ironically, after Sunday's post about writing style, in which I stated how much I hate trying to blog from my iPhone, that is exactly what I am doing today. Deep breaths and patience will see it through.

I've learned a lot of lessons in my lifetime, some easily, others through pain and hardship. But after every lesson learned I have emerged stronger and wiser as a result. Seeing as this is a diabetes blog, I should write about a lesson I've learned about diabetes. There certainly are lots to choose from! I'm going to go in a different direction today though, and take a more personal approach. A very recent lesson. Immediate in fact.

Every Tuesday night my husband and I watch Biggest Loser. It's become our Tuesday night routine and I find myself looking forward to it, sad as that may seem. (Though I force myself to tune out when they see the doctor, because his constant inaccuracies about diabetes drive me mad.) I love watching the extreme transformations each person undergoes over each season, but my favorite part is the challenges. I'm always looking for new exercise ideas and the BL producers come up with some pretty cool challenges for the contestants. In the last couple of weeks, however, the show has been cut from its regular 2 hour time slot down to 1 hour, and rather than cut out some of the drama and in-house antics, they have almost entirely cut out the weekly exercise challenge. In fact, the challenge in tonight's episode was edited right out of the broadcast altogether, except for a 10 second mention by the host at the beginning of the episode. What was the challenge? The best one yet: the contestants had to complete a mini "Tough Mudder." I would have LOVED to see that. (Yes, there are videos on the Internet, but NONE are viewable in Canada). 

For anyone who has never heard of Tough Mudder, it is British Special Forces designed 10-12 mile obstacle course comprised running interspersed with 20-30 grueling obstacles. Mudders also take place in tough terrain and at high altitudes where available. Check out the video below for a sample course.

Anyway, after hearing they had completed this challenge, I mentioned to my husband how I would absolutely love to do a Tough Mudder in the near future. His response? "Pffff, (laugh) you? Seriously?"

WTF? To say that there was smoke coming out of my ears would be putting it very mildly. It was insulted, annoyed, angry, and had a range of expletives running through my brain. But then I asked him why it surprised him that I would want to complete a Tough Mudder, and he responded by saying, "Because it's so dirty. I just can't see you running and crawling through mud." Oh, okay. So it's not that he didn't think I COULD do it, but rather that he was shocked I would WANT to do it. Less insulting, yes, though his reaction is totally going to fuel my fire to show him that I can and will complete the challenge.

I learned two very important lessons here. 

Lesson #1: Rather than flip out and release the bombshell of expletives I so desperately wanted to share, I bit my tongue and asked for more information. This simple act helped us avoid what could have been a huge and unnecessary argument. I need to remember that one in the future.

Lesson #2: I can accomplish ANYTHING I want to if I set my mind to it and train hard enough. I WILL do a Tough Mudder next summer. And for a practice run, I'll be participating in the Spartan Race (a similar type of event but with options for shorter distances for beginners) here in September 2012.