The Sit-Ups Were Worth It

Many years ago — when I was far more athletic and significantly more naïve — I made a life-changing decision to join the United States Navy.

It was another brutal Minnesota winter. The kind where your eyelashes freeze and the air hurts your face. I had heard boot camp was in Florida. Palm trees. Ocean air. A poetic escape from the frozen tundra of January.

Yes, even back then I was willing to do just about anything to escape winter. 🤣🤣

Little did I realize the Florida training base had closed years before. All Navy recruits trained just outside Chicago — in the cold, wind-whipped stretch of Great Lakes that feels suspiciously similar to Minnesota in February.

So much for the beach.

And yet — I excelled.

My entry scores were high. I was slated for an intelligence role. I showed natural leadership among my fellow recruits and was appointed Recruit Chief Petty Officer (RPOC) — the liaison between our division and the Recruit Division Commanders (RDCs).

For weeks, we were systematically torn down so we could be rebuilt in the Navy’s image. Individuality softened. Emotions hardened. Precision replaced personality.

Sleep together. Eat together. Shower together. March together.
There was not a single moment alone.

Then came “Service Week.” Some of my division were assigned to the galley. As RPOC, I was assigned to the drill hall, helping train divisions behind us.

Which meant something rare:
I walked back and forth alone.

On this particular day, I had done well at the drill hall. I felt competent. Steady. Capable.

And the sun was out.

If you’re from the Midwest, you know that first almost-spring sun. It’s not fully warm, but it hints at warmth. The air shifts just slightly. The light feels golden instead of gray.

I slowed my pace.

The sun hit my face.

For just a moment — I let myself feel joy.

I smiled.

I might have even skipped!

And when I returned to the barracks, I was ordered to do 100 sit-ups.

Apparently, another RDC had seen my moment of happiness and informed mine that I looked “too happy” for their work to be effective.

I was being punished for smiling.

It felt wildly unfair.

But here’s the part that matters:

It didn’t matter what came after.

I needed that moment.

What I Understand Now (That I Didn’t Then)

Twenty-five years later, I understand what happened in my nervous system that day.

For weeks, my body had been in a sustained stress response. High alert. Cortisol elevated. Hyper-vigilance activated. Constant correction. Constant evaluation.

When we live in that state too long, the brain’s amygdala (our threat detector) stays switched on. The prefrontal cortex — responsible for reasoning, emotional regulation, and strategic thinking — starts to go offline.

You can only operate in survival mode for so long before something breaks.

That brief walk in the sun was a micro-reset.

In trauma-informed psychology, there’s a term that’s gained traction in recent years: “shimmers.” Coined by Deb Dana in Polyvagal Theory work, shimmers are small moments of positive regulation — tiny cues of safety that tell your nervous system, you’re okay right now.

They aren’t grand victories.
They’re flickers.

Warm sunlight.
A laugh you didn’t expect.
A deep breath that actually reaches your lungs.

From an NLP perspective, those moments act as anchors. The brain encodes them as state shifts. When you consciously allow joy — even briefly — you interrupt a stress loop. You create new neural pathways that say:

Not everything is threat.
Not everything is danger.
There is also safety.

And here’s the part that most people get wrong:

Joy does not make the fall harder.

Hope does not amplify future disappointment.

That’s a story our protective brain tells us to avoid vulnerability.

In reality, positive emotional states broaden cognitive capacity. (Barbara Fredrickson’s Broaden-and-Build Theory explains this beautifully.) Joy literally widens perception. It increases creativity. It improves problem-solving. It builds psychological resilience.

That small moment of sunlight didn’t weaken me for what came next.

It strengthened me.

It let my nervous system downshift just enough to keep going.

Those 100 sit-ups?
They didn’t erase the joy.
They followed it.

Why This Matters Now

Many of the women I work with live in sustained high-functioning stress.

Leading teams.
Carrying outcomes.
Holding emotional labor.
Managing expectations.
Navigating systems that weren’t designed to support us.

We convince ourselves we don’t have time for joy until the work is done.

But the work is never done.

And your nervous system was not designed for endless winter.

You don’t need a sabbatical.
You don’t need a week off in Tuscany (though I won’t argue with that).

You need shimmers.

Micro-moments of safety.
Micro-moments of pleasure.
Micro-moments of “I am okay right now.”

The brain encodes what you repeatedly notice.

If you only rehearse pressure, your nervous system will wire for pressure.

If you intentionally notice sunlight — even for 20 seconds — you begin wiring resilience.

So if you find yourself smiling in the middle of something hard…

Don’t brace for punishment.

Let it land.

Even if the next 100 sit-ups are waiting.