Know thyself

So, I'm paying for it now. I pushed really hard yesterday and I think a number of my muscles are hurting.. but hopefully in a good way.

Last night, sometime after my workout, as I sat on the couch, muscles hurting a bit, I thought of the line from Hamlet. In the beginning of Hamlet, the adviser to the King named Polonius is giving fatherly advise to his son. He tells him a number of good solid proverbial lines and then says to him "Above all else, to thine own self be true." Why was that going through my mind? Well, first of all, I'm a weirdo and have read Shakespeare's Hamlet about 8 times.. but also because I was wondering if I was really being true to myself.. did I really know myself in my exercising... in other words, did I overestimate what I could do or did I do right by pushing myself.. right now, my muscles are picking the first one over the second one, but I won't really know until a few days down the road.

I think a lot times when we exercise, especially when we're first starting out, we don't know our limitations and we don't know how hard we can push past them. I honestly think that when someone firsts starts exercising (and from what I've read on Yahoo! health, this is correct) you need to start slow and work your way up. If you push hard and not know your limitations, you can burn out quickly and become discouraged or worse, you can seriously hurt yourself in the process. Start small, build yourself up, do short tests to see what you can do, step back, review and then push forward again.

I think this happens a lot in our spiritual walk too. For some just starting out, they go overboard and get involved in so much, get into so much and then get burnt out or worse yet, get hurt spiritually and walk away. In our spiritual walk, we need to understand our own personal limits. The Holy Spirit will lead us and guide us. That is His job, that is what He does. Listen to the Holy Spirit, let Him tell you when to push hard and when to back off. Pray that God helps you see where you need to move forward... and allow God to push you past your limits, don't do it yourself. When we allow God to push us past our limits, then we know we're safe.. but if we push ourselves.. we can get burnt out or worse, spiritual hurt and walk away.

Where in your life does God need to push you past your limits and where in your life do you need to take a step back and review what you're doing and how you can keep things in pace with how much you can do.. but physically in exercise and working out.. but more importantly in your spiritual walk