Active vs. Passive

In these two 30 day challenges I've worked on (Whole30 completed(!) and 5k a Day in progress), my goal was to continue to exercise my "willpower muscle", but I'm finding that I'm actually exercising two very different willpower muscles.

The Passive Challenge

The Whole30 involved a lot of active work -- shop for certain things, do menu research, do a lot of meal prep -- but in actuality was a very passive type of challenge:  you didn't have to add something to your life, you had to not do something for 30 days:
      Don't eat grains.
      Don't eat sweeteners or added sugar.
      Don't eat legumes.
      Don't eat emotionally.
      etc.

At first it was hard to break those habits, but eventually saying "no" to myself became a lot easier.  It became second nature.  Sure, it was annoying and sometimes just damned inconvenient, but the "no" was what got easier.

The Active Challenge

In my attempt to continue that 30 day challenge result, I started this 5k a Day/Core Workout challenge.  And guys, it's totally different.  Instead of "don't do", I'm adding "do."

      Do walk/run 5k every day.

      Do squats every day.

      Do planks every day.

      etc.

I'm using a totally different willpower muscle this month.  It's the "active voice", if you're into literature at all.  It's saying "Yes" to things.  Here I am trying to continue the same thing as 30 Day Challenge 1, but I'm not even working the same muscle!

How Passive and Active Play Off Each Other

My best friend, D, practices Buddhism.  We happened to have a conversation today about her future ordination into the first level of Buddhist leadership, and she mentioned the "don't take a life" rule.  I asked if that meant she needed to be vegetarian, and her reply was basically no, with a great explanation, and it ended with:

The vow is "I undertake the training of life-affirming action" . . . . in Zen the vows are flipped from "don't do this" to "do this". 

She also suffers from fibromyalgia, and she was able to make another connection between her practice of Buddhism and her day-to-day life as a sufferer of chronic pain:

. . . with fibro, you have to think in terms of what you can do, vs the opposite.

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In the human body muscles often occur in pairs: to flex your arm, you contract your biceps and relax your triceps; to extend your arm, vice versa.  When body-builders work muscle groups, they do them in pairs, because they know balance is key.  Strong biceps with weak triceps can lead to damage, injury or pain.  At the very least, it leads to dysfunction.

So as with all things in life, here is another area which seems blatantly obvious once I've thought of it, but was like a lightbulb moment in the difference between what I'm training myself to do each month.

So, Future Challenges?

I guess one of the things I'll have to decide is if I should alternate the active vs. passive willpower challenges, make sure there's a component of each every challenge, or not take it into account at all.

Not sure what the best answer is, and as I'm only a week into this more Active Willpower challenge, I'll keep paying attention to what I learn and how I grow throughout the rest of the 30 days.