Lessons learnt

Well i’ll be, the end of week three.

I feel like an old hand at this uni thing at the moment, I also feel like I am sinking further into the quicksand. Hello irony.

This has been my busiest week so far, it’s like the universe is all ‘ Hey Lisa, we are just going to keep piling things on you to see how long it takes you to crack’. Well I’m pleased to say it hasn’t happened this week.

Tuesdays are my ‘ I regret ever deciding to do this’ day. For the last three Tuesdays giving up seemed like a far better option. I always tell my children the importance of a good work ethic in life. I guess I better follow my own lead or something blah blah blah.

Come Friday though, I’m on cloud nine. The early morning wake ups to fit in some quiet study time before my husband and seek and destroy (terms of endearment for my boys) wake up and the no minute wasted approach has worked yet again. I’m some what up to date with my studies and all is good in the world again.

In case you were wondering where this is going, it is leading into a story about mental toughness.

My 14 year old had his first amateur fight on Saturday night. I’m sure people have very differing opinions on boxing as a sport, but the way Boxing Queensland run their tournaments, you would be more likely to get hurt during a game of chess. He didn’t get the win. It appeared his fitness let him down. To be fair he has only been training specifically for boxing since October last year. A friend of his asked him to come along to a new boxing gym. It is all ages and I tagged along too for a bit of fitness. The coach approached me after a week and said how much potential he saw in my son. Of course, me being me said ‘ Great, another sport to spend too much money on’. I will say though, I wouldn’t have it any other way. He had the first round and half of the second, then all of a sudden he was gassed. This kid isn’t unfit. He was buggered, sure, but the ref called the fight not long before the end of the third (final) round because he couldn’t keep going. His opponent deserved the win, but my point is the mind will give up far before the body ever will. It’s been a case of ‘you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink’ with our eldest, but last night he learnt a valuable lesson. He let himself think he was done and at that moment his mind told his body to quit. He came to me with the same notion this morning. He ran 4 km this afternoon.

I apply this back to my study, its freaking hard, its meant to be. Not everyone has the opportunity to be doing this. Mental toughness is something we can all work on and at the end of the day it’s up to us to just keep doing the work.

I probably got completely off track in this blog. If you are still reading, I apologise for waffling. I’m getting pretty good at it though, I feel. I haven’t had the chance to get onto step 6 yet, but that’s an issue for tomorrow.

I hope you all had a great week three and let’s see what week four brings. 😁