Believing is Seeing

I borrowed that line from Erik Weihenmayer, who you can see crossing a crevasse on Everest. Oh yeah, he’s gay, excuse me, he’s blind. A news anchor’s error that he repeats and features on his website, telling you something about his sense of humor. That and his love of what he calls a friend’s positive pessimism. Eg., It may be raining, but at least it’s windy. I plan to use positive pessimism for those who insist on taking themselves way too seriously.

I had a wonderful opportunity to see Erik speak the other night. He’s a motivational speaker when not climbing mountains or helping other groups of challenged people (injured vets, blind children and others) learn to climb.

Early on when he completely lost his sight, he thought that the adventures of his life were over. Soon he realized they were just beginning. And I’ll say they were. He’s climbed the highest peaks on 7 continents, something most of us sighted folk wouldn’t even dream of. Proving once again, that whatever doesn’t kill you…

I like the way he talks about people falling into three categories. Quitters, campers and climbers. I’m sure I don’t have to explain the quitters. The campers are interesting. They get to a certain level, and then camp out there. It could be okay. Or not. The climbers though, they keep on going, up and up and up.

When you believe, you can see how far you’re able to go. So what are you? Quitter, camper or climber?  What do you want to be starting right now?

Time Management, or, An Hour to Myself

It's the one thing that's mine. My runs every day are my thing. It's my therapy, my hour to myself. Nobody can really take it away from me... It's such a huge part of me.
Summer Sanders, Olympic Gold Medalist, Swimming

I know, I know. You don’t have time to take an hour for yourself. How about 15 minutes? Perhaps you’ve heard of brief therapy. You don’t even have 15 minutes? Then it’s time to consider time management.

You know about Steven Covey’s time management matrix? It’s a good way to think about what you chose to do. If you’re like most people, you do the important, but not urgent things first. That is, instead of running, meditating, playing your instrument, or whatever you do for your personal therapy, you do the important but not urgent things. These important, not urgent things include returning phone calls, answering email, writing your plans for the day, doing research, etc. The important but not urgent things are often done quickly and don’t take much thought, but they add up. You can spend your entire morning in this kind of mindless activity. Things get done, but you didn’t get your therapy in. I’m not saying you don’t have to get to these things, I’m just saying they’re not priorities.

Then there are the activities that are not important. These include a bunch of things you can delegate or reject completely. You can get your 17 year old to do his/her own laundry, and decline to be on the committee for which your colleague’s brother’s uncle needs you desperately. Also unimportant are things you don’t need to be doing at all. These include things like baking cookies that are actually not as good as the ones you can buy at the bakery, or playing computer games when you’re supposed to be working.

Think about where you can find some time for your therapy, whatever it is. It will help you be creative and productive in your “real” work.

Time. Pink Floyd

Will You Clutch or Choke Under Pressure?

According to Paul Sullivan in his book Clutch: Why Some People Excel Under Pressure and Others Don’t, there are five key traits that are needed to be clutch. Clutch, by the way, is being able to do what you can do under normal circumstances, when you’re under pressure. Simple, right?

The traits:

1. Focus on the goal

2. Discipline to maintain focus

3. Adaptability, since plans don’t always go as expected. Murphy’s law and all that.

4. Being present in the moment instead of getting distracted by past performances, good or bad

5. Managing the push and pull of fear and desire to enhance performance

You don’t have to be in a superbowl or be a superstar to benefit from these. After all, if superstar Christina Aguilera was more focused, disciplined and present, perhaps she wouldn’t have flubbed the national anthem at the Super Bowl. I gotta feeling she was thinking, I’m not myself tonight. Definitely not clutch.

Hear the interview with Paul Sullivan.

More on focus under pressure.

Be Beautiful: Download the Negative

I look at running as meditation. It allows me to decompress, download, and get rid of a lot of negative stuff. That's my secret. I go inside myself. Jeff Corwin, conservationist.

We refresh, delete and change up the playlist, not just on our computers but in life and in conversations. But how do we download in life? I like the metaphor of downloading “negative stuff” for getting the stuff out of your head and out into the universe where perhaps it can fertilize something that’s going to grow up and be beautiful.

Definition: transferring from a local computer to a remote computer.  In addition to running, there's always the running meditation. If you don’t run, there are many ways to download. Telling a friend, coach or therapist is a download. Writing in your journal is another. We might say that anything that gets info from your head to another place is a download. So writing a novel or a song, or painting a picture, can be a download; you transfer some of the negative stuff to the page.

How about a loving kindness meditation as a download? Perhaps any type of meditative activity, be it traditional meditation, exercise or performance, is a download. Maybe anything that gets you into flow, is a download. When the meditation ends, you find more peace and equanimity. So think about how you download, and take the time to do it. And be beautiful.

For a meditative video, You’re Beautiful, James Blunt

Coffee, Hold the Sugar

I’m always hearing that my clients can’t eat right because they don’t like veggies or fruits, can’t give up their biscuits (hey, I live in the south) or can’t live without salt.

I remember backpacking when I was 15 and waking up to find that we had coffee (yeah, I was drinking coffee at 15) but NO SUGAR OR MILK. OMG. I had to have the coffee and found that it was the best coffee I’d ever had. When you’re backpacking with freeze dried food, you can see how this might be the case. I took my coffee black after that trip. On subsequent occasions, tasting it with sugar or milk, I found it to be terribly sweet and weak.

There is a subset of people who are genetically picky eaters. They are truly revolted by certain food, tastes or textures. But given my own experience, I was not surprised to learn that, without too much difficulty, most of us can be retrained to eat more veggies, less sugar and less salt. You might try some of these strategies.

* Increase vegetables by mixing your veggie with another flavor (spices, garlic, onion) or food that makes it more palatable.

* Take your coffee and breakfast cereal with less and less sugar over time.

* Gradually reduce salt and add other flavoring if you need it.

* To increase fruit try adding it to cereal where it will also serve as a natural sweetener, or make fruit smoothies.

* Try to make gradual changes if you’re trying to lose weight. Pass up the bread at restaurants. Then the dessert. And of course, be mindful.

Given that children may accept a new food after as many as 15 trials, why not adults? I think you will find that the more you try something, the more natural it becomes. After all, we give up alcohol, cigarettes, people, and various other things we thought we had to have. Once you start feeling healthier it becomes easier. So go from your Starbucks latte to a latte skinny, then a cappuccino skinny, and one day you may graduate to black. Decaf, of course.

And to get in the mood...Black Coffee, Sarah Vaughan

Nobody Cares if You’re Not a Good Dancer

Nobody cares if you're not a good dancer. Just get up and dance. The same holds true for racing. Whether first or last, we all cross that same finish line. Just get out there and run. Dean Karnazes, Ultrarunner & Writer

Think about that for a moment. How many things do you decide not to do because you think you won’t do them well enough? I’m not advocating mediocrity, but sometimes you just have to get out there and dance. Or write. Or go back to school. Or do karaoke. Or try on-line dating. Or talk to the cute guy/girl at Whole Foods. Or…you fill in the blank.

I’m just saying you have to try not to limit yourself by expectations of perfection, or worry about how you’ll look or sound, or whatever else your inner critic tells you.

After all, if you don’t like dancing, you don’t have to keep doing it. But how will you know if you never try?

For inspiration:  Just Dance.  Lady Gaga

Have a Technology Cleanse. Play a Boardgame

I just read an article about a tech detox, which I thought was a great idea. Have you ever thought, or should I say how often have you thought, that you and/or your loved ones are spending too much time with their electronic buddies? I had a glimmer of this after I’d had some minor surgery. As the sedation wore off, I was finally comfortably ensconced in my own bed and my friend asked if I needed anything. My reply…my phone. I justified this by pointing out that no longer having a home phone, my cell is my only connection with potential disasters that may have occurred during my sedation. You didn’t know I was that neurotic?

But seriously, what about a tech vacation, or cleanse, as I prefer to think of it? No tv, computer, cell phone, iWhatever, eBook, eEverything. What would it be like? One of my pet peeves is seeing people walking on beautiful paths, talking on cell phones with one arm up and one shoulder up, making their posture and gait totally unnatural. If that’s not bad enough, they’re often agitated and I find myself wondering about the benefit of the walk. Can’t the call be put off for 30 minutes? Really?

Admittedly, I used to use my iPod when running until I discovered I could run and meditate. Alas, still multitasking. But after reading the article I suggested that my son and I play scrabble, the board game. I have a set that probably dates back much further than I care to remember. No pictures, no fancy colors, no cutsie theme, just the pink, blue and grey squares, remember? We had to keep score with a paper and pencil!!! Great fun.

A little techno music for fun: Manian, Ravers Fantasy