An amusing lesson in perspective.

Taekwondo training has a great knack for putting things into perspective.

A while back in class I had an incident that reminded me of that very clearly.

We started out doing boxing drills; as is usual I worked with one of the men in class. 

Holding the mitts for him he missed the punch mitt entirely (he punched with the wrong hand) and punched full power into my forearm.  

He apologized and I shook it off – this is all part of training.

Next I was punching and he was holding the mitts – he somehow managed to think he was punching and punched me in the side of the head – luckily I had my hands up and he only punched my hands which took most of the impact before it radiated to my check.

Next we went on to kick targets – I have a pretty good kick – very strong. He put up the wrong target (I am also very fast) so I kicked his knuckles – a bit of bone on bone action. Again shook it off – these things happen in training.

I also had my foot taped heavily due to an injury I was determined to train through.

All in all a pretty typical training session.

After training when we were stretching I noticed I had cut my knuckle from punching and because I was sweating it really hurt. This was NOT a big cut.

I asked Jodi (my instructor) if she had a bandaid and was chatting away while I was putting on the bandaid and put my finger in the cut by mistake and said “ouch”!

I continued to chat away and I could see Jodi laughing. I’m thinking, “What’s funny, no-one said anything”?

Jodi kept laughing and said to THE WHOLE CLASS “can you believe that – she has just kicked the heck out of the targets with a dodgy foot, has been hit in the head and everything else today and says “ouch” about a paper cut”

The class fell about laughing and I could only join them it was pretty ridiculous!!

Also a great lesson in perspective!

When you have a lousy day keep it in perspective, a lousy day is just a lousy day and the good ones will roll around soon.

When you have a bad run, it is just a bad run and not the end of the world – the next one will be better and if it’s not then the next one will be.

When you are feeling overwhelmed by how much weight you have to lose or how far away you are from your running goal remind yourself you are not fighting cancer or a war you simply need to lose weight and keep on plugging away.