photo credit: MichaelMeiser

“The only one who can tell you ‘you can’t’ is you.  And you don’t have to lis­ten” ~ Nike

Swim.  Bike.  Run.

Why would I ever attempt that?  I’m not a good swim­mer.  I can’t run.  And I rarely bike.

That was me five years ago.  Since then I have com­peted in three triathlons, improv­ing each year.  Five years ago, I was over­weight and unhappy.  I began run­ning first.  Well, actu­ally walk­ing.  But that did lead to run­ning.  As I slowly began to get into bet­ter phys­i­cal shape, I also began bik­ing more.  Soon I heard about a sport I had really never thought much of — triathlon.  And I thougth, what a great way to give me a goal to work toward.  For the next three years, I com­peted in one triathlon each year.  And each year brought new knowl­edge, not only of the sport of triathlon, but knowl­edge of myself as well.

The First Year

The first year I com­peted, I came in well-prepared for the run.  I assumed bik­ing would be easy since I’ve known how to do that since I was five years old.  And the swim, well…I’ve had swim lessons (a long time ago).  It was a tough morn­ing, but I fin­ished the race (near last over­all).  What I learned was:

• Not all bikes are cre­ated equal.  I could bike, but using a moun­tain bike in a road race puts you at a woe­ful dis­ad­van­tage.  Life les­son: We need to under­stand the envi­ron­ment we are in, so that we have the right tools for the task at hand.  It’s easy to assume we know what a par­tic­u­lar sit­u­a­tion will entail, but proper prepa­ra­tion can make all the difference.
• Swim lessons years ago don’t really cut it.  I swore I was going to drown on the 1/4 mile swim.  The back float saved me!  Life les­son: We need train­ing, even on areas we think we know because we’ve done them some­time in our past.  Keep­ing our skills up is crit­i­cal to be suc­cess­ful in what­ever we choose to do.

The Sec­ond Year

The sec­ond year I learned some things from the year prior.  I pur­chased a road bike, one designed for the type of race I would com­pete in.  And I went swim­ming reg­u­larly at an area pool.  I made marked improve­ments in my times.  What I learned was:

• The right bike makes a big dif­fer­ence.  My bike time improved by quite a bit.  Life les­son: The right equip­ment for the task at hand makes things much easier.
• Swim­ming prac­tice helped con­sid­er­ably.  I didn’t feel like I would drown, and my time was cut almost in half.  Life les­son: Prac­tic­ing your skills is what makes you get bet­ter at what you do.
• Mak­ing improve­ments feels great.  It felt really good to improve upon the year before, and in all three events.  Life les­son: Putting in the time on what­ever it is you want to get bet­ter at will make you bet­ter for that event.  The peo­ple who suc­ceed in life are those who are bust­ing them­selves to get bet­ter instead of wast­ing their time on non-productive activ­i­ties.  What you see as the fin­ished prod­uct is only the icing on the cake.  A lot of effort has went into build­ing that cake up.

The Third Year

The third year, I became com­pla­cent.  I ran less dur­ing the year.  I swam only a cou­ple of times.  Instead I con­cen­trated on the bike.  It’s the longest event, and I thought if I could make a big improve­ment there, it would carry me through the other areas.  While I fin­ished with my best time over­all, both my swim time and run time went up from the pre­vi­ous year.  And the swim was very tough again.  What I learned was:

• You’ve got to keep at it.  I thought my swim espe­cially would be fine since it had went pretty well the year before.  No.  And the run was just plain tough.  Life les­son: Skills don’t stay cur­rent if you don’t use them.  Prac­tice, prac­tice, prac­tice.  What­ever it is you want to accomplish.
• Doing some­thing a lot makes it eas­ier.  I was get­ting really pretty good on the bike, and that was fully due to the amount of time I was putting in.  Life les­son: If you want to be great at some thing, you’ve got to put the time into it.

One of the great things with triathlon is that it is really three sports wrapped into one.  Isn’t this like life?  Aren’t we usu­ally pulled in mul­ti­ple direc­tions, with many things going on.  How we man­age that is key to how suc­cess­ful we’ll be.  And, like triathlon, suc­cess is defined by each indi­vid­ual.  For some it’s to win.  For oth­ers, it’s to fin­ish.  And that’s how it is in our lives too.  We’re all at dif­fer­ent parts of our jour­ney, and only we indi­vid­u­ally can define what suc­cess means to us.  And go out and achieve it.

Here’s to your suc­cess in life!

photo credit: jaxxon

“Watch your thoughts; they become words.
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become char­ac­ter.
Watch your char­ac­ter; it becomes your des­tiny.” — Lao-Tze

How’s your yard?  Or your flower gar­den?  Are there any weeds in them?

Weeds are defined as plants that have no value where they are grow­ing, and that grow vig­or­ously.  We have many of them both in our yard and our veg­etable gar­den.  With­out dili­gent effort, they grow and over­take the things we want to grow (like grass, or toma­toes, or flowers).

Well, how about in your life.  Do you have any weeds there?  Some­thing that doesn’t pro­vide any value in your life, and grows vig­or­ously?  Like a well-manicured lawn that takes time and effort to main­tain, our lives are the same way.

Exam­ple 1:

Diet and exer­cise:  If you feed your body poor qual­ity food (junk food, processed foods, soda, candy) and don’t get any exer­cise, what kind of body are you going to have?  The weeds here are the poor qual­ity food and lack of exer­cise, and they began to take over.  Maybe you feel lethar­gic.  Maybe you are sick more often.  Maybe you have a hard time mov­ing around.  In all of these cases, the “weeds” have led to this, and with­out prop­erly car­ing for your body, these neg­a­tives con­tinue to take over.

Exam­ple 2:

Lan­guage, thoughts, and actions:  For instance, if you con­tin­u­ously think neg­a­tively about every­thing, the neg­a­tiv­ity “weed” begins to take over not only your thoughts, but is also por­trayed in your lan­guage and con­ver­a­tions.  Instead of hav­ing an abun­dance men­tal­ity (that of proper care and removal of the weeds of neg­a­tiv­ity), you develop a scarcity men­tal­ity. This all leads to even­tu­ally affect­ing the actions your take (or don’t take) to sup­port the con­tin­ued growth of this weed.

With proper care of our bod­ies and minds, we can keep limit the weeds we have grow­ing in our­selves.  Just like a yard or gar­den, though, with­out con­tin­u­ous care, weeds will come back.   They’ll do this in any gar­den, and they’ll do it in any of our bod­ies and minds.  Just because we are weed-free today, doesn’t mean there are new weeds, or even old weeds, tak­ing sprout.

Be dili­gent in car­ing for your body and mind, and you’ll reap the ben­e­fits of a life with­out all the weeds.

That which we really want takes effort, and time, and sweat, and tears, and fail­ures, and prac­tice, and .….

This applies to sports (here), and this applies to your life.

So, don’t make excuses. Instead, go out there and work for what you really want.

photo credit: Space­Potato

“The last three or four reps is what makes the mus­cle grow. This area of pain divides the cham­pion from some­one else who is not a cham­pion. That’s what most peo­ple lack, hav­ing the guts to go on and just say they’ll go through the pain no mat­ter what hap­pens.” — Arnold Schwarzenegger

Delayed Onset Mus­cle Sore­ness (DOMS) is the pain or dis­com­fort felt sev­eral hours (24 to 48 typ­i­cally) after exer­cis­ing. I’m cur­rently suf­fer­ing from this.

After a break from resis­tance train­ing, I got back at it this week. Today I am feel­ing the effects (DOMS) from the lower body exer­cises I did on Tues­day night. Some at my house think it’s funny as I strug­gle to sit down, stand up, or go up and down stairs.

But I’m ok with all of it. I’m ok because I see this as progress. Progress because I’m work­ing to improve my body. It’s adjust­ing to these changes, and that’s the mus­cle sore­ness I’m feeling.

This is not unlike how your head may hurt after absorb­ing a lot of new infor­ma­tion, or heart might be pound­ing after tak­ing on some chal­leng­ing project. In all these cases, we are grow­ing. Grow­ing stretches us and chal­lenges us. In the case of my resis­tance train­ing exer­cises, I have chal­lenged the mus­cles in my legs. In so doing this, they have responded by grow­ing, and in the grow­ing process the mus­cles that were stag­nant have been forced to change. In this change, I feel soreness.

As we grow and change in what­ever we are doing, this can cre­ate new chal­lenges (for me, it was chal­lenges to my mus­cles). But it is in this growth process that we change who we are. The key, then, would be that we make changes that are for the better.

I chal­lenge you to go out there and grow your­self in some new area of your life. And embrace the changes that this brings, even though it may not be easy along the way. In the end, if you are true to your self and goals you desire, the chal­lenges you face along the way will all be worth it. You’ll come out a changed per­son, and stronger because of the growth you went through.

It’s all good.