Keeping motivated mid winter can be hard

Motivation in mid winter can be hard to come by.  Often I'm lured outside by glorious sun and bright blue skies, only to find frigid temps that send me scurrying back to the warmth of indoors.  What's really hard is knowing that the next day I could awake to mild temperatures and sideways rain, which is sure to snuffing out what little motivation I have. In times like these I find myself stagnant and looking for inspiration. One story that has always provided me with the motivation to beat those winter blues follows.

Four Hundred and Forty Four days

By Colonel (Ret.) Tom Schaefer

On the 4th of November 1979 our American Embassy in Teheran, Iran was overrun by Iranian revolutionaries. In the center of a city of 4-million people there was little we could do to secure the Embassy with only 15 Marine guards. At that time I was the Military Attaché working for the Ambassador and the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Little did I know that I was going to be held captive for the next 444 days with 150 days of solitary confinement, two months without talking with a fellow American, five months without letters, and a period of two weeks held in cold storage for extensive interrogations?

My goals in captivity became evident, live, make everyday productive and win the challenge of being held by a group of ignorant Iranians. Early on I told my guards that I was going to win this contest and they were going to lose. Those words came true.

How could that happen? How could I return to my country as a healthy 50-year old grandfather after 444 days of cold rooms, poor food, solitary confinement, and a multitude of life threatening challenges? It wasn't easy, but I had to make my captivity a positive experience.

I had many specific objectives each day regardless of my surroundings. Primarily I had to keep myself mentally and physically fit. In rooms as small as 9? X 6? I was able to insure that most all of my days were productive. I knew that I had to be physically strong to be mentally fit.

To keep my body in good shape I exercised on the average of four hours a day. This time included two hours of yoga exercises each day with tiring body challenges. As part of this program I was able to do 1000 push-ups a day (one hundred at a time), squat thrusts, body bending (eventually I could put my forehead against the wall behind me) and easily place my palms on the floor without bended knees. I learned to stand on my head without my hands on the floor for 15-minutes (this after 3-months of failures). I lost 35 pounds off of my 5? 10?? frame because of the extended exercises and poor quality food.

Along with the physical workouts, I accomplished daily needed mental exercises. I honestly felt that without the brain functioning at a challenging pace, I could not meet my daily physical objectives. To exercise the gray matter I read over 200 books (History, Philosophy, Biblical etc.), memorized poems, songs, map works and even taught myself to speak, write and read a new language. I found four German language textbooks early on in captivity and eventually could read and understand German, something that I had wanted to do since I was a small child with a German-speaking Grandmother.

Much of my daily activity is recorded in a diary that I secretly encoded in my Bible in order that my captors would not steal my notes. I was able to record daily physical and mental accomplishments.

Those 444 days resulted in the GREATEST LEARNING EXPERIENCE OF MY LIFE. The physical and mental exercises with a positive attitude insured I would be a winner.