The Paradox of Easy

I have been not where I want to be with my pushups for a while now. It's not that I haven't been reaching my goal everyday, I have, I just seem to always be doing them much later than I intend to. Ideally I like to spread them throughout my day so I can have multiple opportunities to think about my kung fu, and more practice taking said opportunities. Since they are so spread out I like to have a benchmark of thirds, roughly 1/3 in the morning, 2/3 in the afternoon, and the last third in the evening, however that looks day-to-day. I know lots of people like to get their numbers done in the morning, describing it as giving them a head start on their motivation, but I get that same sort of motivational boost by knowing I'm on track through the day. 

The problem is, at some point I stopped being on track. Most days I've only done a handful in the morning and then I am scrambling once I realize the clock has struck 10pm and I'm nowhere near my goal. Last year I made myself a promise: Do 180 pushups everyday (except on the 7th rest day, or if you are sick) NO MATTER WHAT. This was the rule that no matter what happened in my training I would not allow myself to break and it became the foundation for a lot of my motivation; no matter how far behind I felt in any other areas, I knew I would never allow this requirement to slip. 

The scary thing is a few times this year for the first time, I have started to hear a little voice whispering "it's so late, and you still have so many to do" "you're so tired, just go to sleep and do the extras tomorrow" which has been extremely frightening. I know I have to work extra hard to never listen to this little voice, so every night, no matter how late it is, how tired I am, how many pushups I still have left, I get them done. And this is where my current problem stems from. No matter how much I scream at myself in the morning/afternoon to get up! just do one set! please make some progress so it'll be easier later! I know that I won't allow myself to break that promise, meaning I will find a way to get them done somehow, so the stakes to do them now really aren't that serious. 

Yesterday I was laying down and thought "if I just do 30 now, then I can do another set just before lunch and I'll be on track, which I know will make the remaining ones easier too and then my day will be all sorted, if I can just get up right now and do those 30. It's so easy, it's only 30, so why am I not getting up?" I was also thinking about something Sifu Brinker had said during the second degree brown class, about the paradox of our requirements, our choices are so simple, except they're not. And this is the idea I wanted to blog about (seriously I did not intend to write that whole section discussing my pushup conundrum, but alas, the thread of a blog has a mind of it's own sometimes.) It's very hard for things to be easy. If I want my requirements to not become overwhelming, putting things off until my numbers become unmanageable, I have to do little things everyday, but that sentiment is not easy. Every instinct in my energy-preservation-motivated and procrastination-riddled brain, not to mention the ever present force of mediocrity makes it so difficult to get up and just do it. But that's exactly why our requirements are invaluable. It's not about doing 50 000 pushups, it's about deciding to get up 50 000 times. The action itself may be easy, but the challenge often comes in the decision to take it in the first place.