This morning, I woke up and wandered down the hall to the Swim Bike Boy’s room, where he was sitting in the dark, playing on the iPad.

“You need to get dressed for school,” I said.

I flipped on the light.

He put down the iPad, and proceeded to literally writhe in the bed, saying, “But I am so tired.”

“Really? Because you weren’t too tired for the iPad at six o’clock in the morning,” I wailed.

I marched out of the room, and muttered, “Can’t bullshit a bullshitter.”

Same thing happened last night with his homework.  He did the first part and the last part, leaving the middle part completely starkly un-done… thinking I would flip to the front, the back and declare him a boy genius.

Again. Can’t bullshit a bullshitter.

And his sister? Oh man, she’s even worse, by the way. 🙂

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[This is in her in some sort of action.]

See… in all of my almost thirty-six years (yes, I am that young… I know I look older… I am not, but thank you. No need to comment on that…. ahem.)  Anyway, in all of my thirty-six years, I have learned a lot of things… mainly how to BS my way through a million things.

The kids can’t pull anything over on me.  I come from a long lineage of folks who look at the shortest distance between any two points (through the house, to the car, in a project)… and we take that route.

When I first started driving, I would often meet my parents at church after school activities or whatever.  (For whatever reason, we would be in two separate cars.)  When we went to leave, I could see the look in my dad’s eyes.  And I got the same look in my eyes:  Who’s gonna win?

Win WHAT?

Oh, that’s right.  The “race” home.

Now, we wouldn’t drive fast, but we would strategize the fastest way home.  Dad would go one way. I would go another.  When I frequently pulled up in the driveway, there he would sit, smug.  You can’t take Skidaway Road at this time of day! he would say, mocking my seventeen year-old, lack of wisdom self.

Can’t bullshit a bullshitter.

 

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In training and racing, we frequently say “suck it up, buttercup” – and some of us even have t-shirts that say soBut what does that even mean?  [A friend of mine enlightened me one time that not everyone can just “suck it up” – interesting read here.]

However, for 99% of us? The everyday folks with nothing but a giant barrel of excuses from which to draw…?

Well, most oftentimes, we can suck it up.  And guess what?  We should.

Because most of the time, we are so full of it!  We are using the stupidest, lamest and most ridiculous excuses to be slack and whiny and full of BS. 

The truth of the matter?  There is no shortest distance between the couch and the finish line of a race.

The shortest distance between two points en route to race day is directly proportional to how hard you refuse to take the stage in this week’s production of “The Bullshit Artist.”

Accountability. Dedication. Consistency. An attitude of “No Excuses.”

At the same time, we must learn when to let something go.

This is part of it… most often the things we really can’t control (kids being sick, work deadlines) are exactly the things we don’t let go.  We harp and whine about those, “Well, if it wasn’t for work, then I would have gotten that workout done.”

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However, we don’t think about the other workout, just the day before that we sandbagged because we stayed up late watching Sex and the City re-runs on TBS.

(Which is ridiculous. You should never watch SATC on cable. All the good stuff is cut out. Duh.)

So anyway.  The things we can control (bad attitude, bad nutrition, a plain case of the Quitter Syndrome, re-runs of SATC), we let that kind of dumb stuff rule our destiny.

We let those dumb excuses be exactly the things that hold us back.

That kind of nonsense has to stop.

The moral of the story:  don’t be the bullshitter in your own training plan.

Instead, be:

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And get it done!

And yes, I know how many times I used bad words in this post. #sorrynotsorry

Maybe this will balance it out –> Can I get an AMEN?

Happy Monday, y’all!

* * *

Don’t forget the waterproof iPod giveway from AudioFlood – ends 8/31.

 

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8 Responses

  1. Tonight, as I bike, I will wear my Suck it Up Buttercup headband in your honor, and have a smile on my face for reading this today. Good luck with the kiddos and school…it’s worse when they are teenagers. Yippee.

  2. Great post! Between my husband and I our kids aren’t going to get away with anything!

  3. OMG! I JUST blogged about this very thing last night! Phoning it in – faking my way through the workout just so I could check off the box. Wondering what might happen if I stopped settling for good and went for GREAT… I think I may have even pointed to some SBM inspiration. 😉

    Awesome post Mere! THANK YOU!! As always, you’re inside my head!

  4. Great post!! Growing up I too was the BS artist!! I was able to get extensions on due dates at school! I was able to get rid of late fees on bills! I have been noticing that my daughter has inherited this from me as well. I can see right through her line of BS. For me the TRI lifestyle has been a game changer. . I can not BS my way through a TRI and so it has forced me to get rid of excuses and put in the training. This road to personal responsibility has not been an easy one at all. I have seen the error in my ways and how debt has become a part of my life. If I want to get rid of debt and complete a TRI I need to do the work!! Great post!! Thanks for sharing!!

  5. My favorite quote that I came across recently:

    “The only thing standing between you and your goal is the BULLSHIT story you keep telling yourself.”

    This is now my daily mantra 🙂

  6. “There’s no shortest distance between the couch and the finish line” is brilliant.

    There is a shortest route between the start line and the finish line though. That route goes through months of hills on the bike, run intervals where you don’t know how you’re going to get through the third repeat, let alone the 6th, and swim sets where you start out worried you’ll drown and end up wishing you would so it would be over.

    What sets you Ironman types apart from the rest of the world is your willingness to do all that for 6 straight months so that you can hurry up and get to the end of 140.6 miles.

    You’re a beast Mere.

    (also a phenomenon 🙂 )

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