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Week 57: Chrysalis & Metamorphosis
Leaves are raining down in our yard these days. The mornings are dark and chilly. And early evenings are closing in fast.
The week ends. The week begins.
And yet, winds of change seem imminent from all over.
After nearly 5 weeks of relative apathy regarding running and everything about it, I felt that familiar pang when I looked at my shoes earlier today. Then I watched a video on ultrarunning in Sweden.
Yup.
The signs are there.
It’s time to get back in the saddle.
Following the race in September, I quickly fell into a life of little resistance. This was admittedly a byproduct of a nearly yearlong obsession that snapped back at me when I flew too close to the sun.
While thankfully my body was healthy, my mind needed the time off.
Over that time, I became grateful for the experiences jumping into ultrarunning provided me. I ran four ultramarathons this year and completed 3 of them. I saw vast improvement in a span of just a few months. My confidence (although checked a bit at the 100k distance) has grown as I remembered just how capable we are to take control of any aspect of our lives by CONSCIOUS ENDEAVOR.
We tell ourselves we can’t do things. We’re too much of this, or not enough of that. We conjure up excuse after excuse to not go after things that matter to us.
Probably because it’s much easier to just say we’re not capable of it, that it’s something for other people and not me.
Bullshit.
Maybe Marianne Williamson was right when she wrote that “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.”
Because if we are powerful beyond measure, doesn’t that make all excuses moot?
Doesn’t that put the onus back on us?
Doesn’t that mean we have work to do?
Perhaps I should restrain myself however. It’s only been a month…says the little voice inside that loves taking the easy road.
Big goals require big commitments.
And failing in big goals hurts big too.
But I’m starting to struggle classifying this year as any form of failure.
No, if ANYTHING else, this year didn’t teach me about failure, it taught me about everything but failure. About getting inspired and then turning that inspiration into reality. Because isn’t that the FUCKING point of it all?!?
I would argue yes.
Time to get back in the lab.
“Do you want to succeed? Then double your rate of failure. Success lies on the far side of failure.” -Thomas Watson, founder of IBM
Live triumphantly. See you next week.