Mind Over Matter... Wednesday, December 1

With about two weeks left till my much anticipated fight, stress from the in-laws and an injured wrist isn't what I want to be dealing with. Yesterday's vent about my in-laws carried on to today and meant I woke up all super bug-eyed and certainly not in the mood to show up at tutoring.

I injured my left wrist at boxing last night, not too sure what I did to it, but I can handle it. Nothing a day or two of voiding the heavy bags and a couple of hot packs can't heal. But as for the stress with the in-laws, today made a conscious decision to just flat out block them out of my mind.

Mind over matter. If I can get my mind over it than it doesn't matter.

Snickers, of all people, knows just how crucial it is to block your mind of any stress when it comes to preparing for a bout. When he has a fight, all household chores and anything I can take responsibilty for are handed over to me so that he can solely focus on his boxing bout -- the restricted dieting, intense training, gruelling running, and the extreme exhaustion. Likewise is true when I have a fight. However, he's not here to help me prepare for this upcoming bout so I've been having a hell of a time trying to juggle the demands of my tutoring, all the household chores and whatnot, and the demands of my training. It's been pretty overwhelming. Through in the stress of the in-laws and ya,... I want to scream!!!

Today it all hit me when I was out jogging. I was out for a heavy run in the sun when thoughts of my in-laws and the feeling of disappointment completely flooded over me.

"Damn you!" I yelled out.

I'm sure my sudden unexpected outburst freaked out the couple walking in front of me but I didn't care. It sure felt good to get that off my chest. "I'm a Bere; I'm as stubborn as they make us Polacks so just forget about them" I told myself.

I've trained too hard and have put way too much heart into this to let something hinder my upcoming fight. And so it was there and then that I decided that I have no choice but to block them out of my thoughts. I talked to Snickers about it too and he agreed, I need to block out all stress. "Please don't talk to me about them for the next two weeks" I told him. I'm hoping that the fact that my bout is about 3 hours away from Cheonan that this will rule out any thoughts of them attending but to be sure I made sure to tell Snickers to discourage them from coming.

Heading into boxing later in the evening I felt so refreshed having had screamed my lungs off at the Dankook lake. It's not that I don't care about them but the fact is you can't change people and I obviously can't seem them changing their ways before my fight so on the back burner they'll have to sit until I decide I want to incorporate them back into my life. Having said this, today will be the last day I plan on writing anything about my in-laws until after my fight so I am sorry if you comment about them and I don't respond. Please understand.

Sometimes it's really hard to find motivation to continue on with my boxing, especially when people who should care and support me don't. I really need to learn how to ignore people and block things out of my mind.

I find myself having to constantly remind myself why I love boxing and why I'm training so hard, like on a daily bases lately. There are times when I would love to just hide under my covers and skip training but I don't. Once I'm at the boxing club I'm good to go for motivation and drive, it's all around me. It's in the High School Kiddies sparring in the ring, the little kids testing out punches on pad work, teammates who train alongside me, Junior Mint who tells me to train harder and constantly reminds me to do this and that, and it's in the posters on the walls of past female boxers who took their boxing far.

It's getting to the boxing club that the real challenge lies.

Once I am there, I am good to go. There's a certain vibe at the boxing club that seems contagious; it's like a natural high. I wish I could bottle it up so that I could sip on it at home, when the outside world crowds in on my bubble-like world. Sometimes I wish I could just stay at the boxing club and yes, I have in fact slept there, numerous times actually. I remember when I was training for my first fight. I tried so hard to mentally prepare for my fight, a situation that was totally foreign to me, so I did so by trying to keep my head focused on boxing by sleeping at the boxing club.

Am feeling a much-needed boxing club sleepover coming up... this weekend?! Maybe.

QUESTION OF THE DAY...
How do you block distraction and clutter from clouding your focus?

QUOTE OF THE DAY...
Change your mind, change your life.
-- Snickers