Conquering pain and being limitless

Once again, Wiz Khalifa "Work Hard Play Hard"

(1) "Today we have conquered pain"

At lunch we took a nice walk through the Ether Dome exhibit (http://www.massgeneral.org/history/exhibits/etherdome/). I've been on this plan to become more tough (I'll explain later) but on one of the plaques I read the awesome quote above that exemplifies my major goal in life right now: to conquer pain (in essence, to conquer myself--read on.)

This week has proved to be extremely informative about how one small decision can have a significant impact on a number of different areas. I've joined a new gym and I've decided to go to bed earlier and I'm a much better person in a number of ways for both of those reasons. 

(2) Whilst settling into my new routine/toughness plan I feel indestructible. I really do feel like I can climb a mountain (well...work towards climbing a mountain and make it to med school and publish my book and finish my other writing projects and master the piano.) Perhaps it's because I can now climb 10 flights of stairs with relative ease or stand for 6-8 hours and not feel it. Excruciating effort feels amazing. I found this quote a while back from the abstract of the book Aquarium by Victor Suvorov about Soviet military intelligence. I feel it really captures my current attitude on life:

Man is capable of performing miracles. A man can swim
the English Channel three times, drink a hundred mugs of
beer, walk barefoot on burning coals; he can learn thirty
languages, become an Olympic champion at boxing, invent
the television or the bicycle, become a general in the GRU
or make himself a millionaire. It's all in our own hands. 

If you want it you can get it...

Success comes only when the training, of
whatever kind (memory, muscles, mind, willpower,
stamina), takes a man to the limit of his capacity. When
the end of the training becomes torture. When a man cries
out from pain and exhaustion. Training is effective only
when it takes a man to the very limit of his capacity and
he knows exactly where the limit is...

That's the road to glory. That's the path to
success. To work only at the very limit of your capacity.
To work at the brink of collapse. You can become a
champion only if you are the sort of person who, knowing
that the bar is about to fall and crush him, nevertheless
heaves it upwards. The only ones who have conquered
themselves, who have defeated their own fear, their own
laziness and their own lack of confidence

 I have a lot on my plate left to conquer. By no means have I conquered even a fraction of what I want to do, but that's what helps me stay on track. That's what helps me get up at 430 every morning. That's what helps fix what I need to fix in health and in my life.  That's what helps me eliminate things and people that are just toxic. That's what will help me eventually conquer pain. That's what will help me conquer myself.