Kay:
Hey there Questers! Welcome. It’s Wednesday, June 16th. We’ve got episode 378 here and we have a fun quote for you from Nicole Nichols. Nicole says that “Strong is what happens when you run out of weak.”
Shi:
Alright, Nicole Nichols, if you’re not familiar, is a certified group exercise instructor, personal trainer, and fitness expert for sparkpeople.com. You may have noticed if you’re a long-time Quester that we like to do something physical, or workout-related here on Wednesdays. But if you are a first-time Quester, we just want to say welcome. Thanks for joining the Quest. We bring you a new quote every day of the week and chat at you for about five minutes with it. We’re just so delighted that you’re joining us. So, whether you’re old or new, this is a great quote to think on because at first you hear it and you’re like, “Strong is what happens when you run out of weak.” But what this is really, really underscoring is that the human spirit is absolutely indestructible. Nothing can bring down the human spirit and the human will, when it is applied. I think that’s where this is really coming from here and you’ve probably been there before. You hit that next level, or you hit a wall. Maybe you’re running, maybe you’re parenting, maybe you’re cleaning the house and then you bust through it, and you actually have more fuel, more strength, and more energy to get done what you needed to get done, whereas just moments before you may have said, “I can’t, I’m too weak.”
Kay:
Now. I just want to go back up here for a second because if you’re anything like me, you may be hearing this quote for the very first time and say, “Strong is what happens when you run out of weak” and you felt your internal achiever say but there was no weakness there to begin with so don’t even start on the strength part. I definitely read this quote or heard it the first time and went, “but what about this weakness inside?” But what I think is really happening there, and what she’s talking about, is that point of no return, Shi, like you said. It’s like this wall and many of us have hit it. It doesn’t just have to be in the physical workout sense but it’s this place where you feel like you can’t give any more and then you do. Then, you experience the surprise and this delight and it turns out there are more endorphins on the other end of that. Now, it’s not a state you can necessarily be in every single day but when we find that (even just once or twice!) we breakthrough into a whole new level of ourselves.
Shi:
Well, this quote starts and ends with two ends of a spectrum. It’s strength is the opposite of weakness and yet we need this dichotomy in our lives, this yin and this yang, this black and this white, this night and this day, this contrast in order for us to experience the beauty of the dimension in between that spectrum. If everything was strength, we wouldn’t even know what strength is. There would be no way because we have nothing to contrast it with. So, I know that macro meta concept in and of itself sometimes helps me through some of my weaker moments or more mundane moments. This ability to realize that this whole spectrum is available to us. So, when you run out of weak, when you get to that bottom, when you’ve had it, it’s almost like you slingshot it back to the very end of weak and then you get to catapult forward to strength. In strength now we’re coming from a place of empowerment. We’re coming from a place of being able to find what it really is going to take for us to accomplish what we want to do. But so many times we find that moment of weak, that place of utter despair and we want to give up there, but you’re not meant to live there, you’re meant to Slingshot out of it and find your strength.
Kay:
Many times, slingshotting out of it can require pushing through or walking through the difficulty versus jumping over it or finding a shortcut. You might say, well, I can’t take one more day. There’s just no way. I can’t take one more day trudging through this darkness. Well, then find a different way out. Find the ladder on the tree, climb up for air, find a different way through it, but know that there isn’t that shortcut. So, when you’re at the bottom of your barrel and you’re scraping sometimes you have to push through that anyway or sometimes you have to maybe push against the limiting belief that’s telling you the only way through is to push and you need to let go. So, wherever that is for you, remembering that weakness isn’t where you’re meant to stay and that going through it will help you catapult out of it and be stronger on the other end.
Shi:
So, to remind you of what Nicole Nichols tells us, “Strong is what happens when you run out of weak.”
Kay:
Alrighty gang that means today’s your Workout Wednesday Quest. You know what we want you to do. We want you to get out there and do some form of physical workout until you run out of weak. Maybe it’s push ups until you can’t do them anymore or sit-ups until you can’t do it anymore or running a mile as fast as you possibly can. Are you ready? You know what comes next.
Kay & Shi:
Let’s quest!