Peaks and valleys

We crave the peak experience.  We hang onto days where everything feels great, life is exciting, and we’re in “The Zone” like a shipwreck survivor clings to flotsam.  We assign the quality of “good” to days like this, and “bad” to days where things don’t go our way, to days when we have sand in our mental shorts, and everything we do turns into a biggeer mess than when we started.  Yet where does this striving get us?

If life is one long peak experience, then what becomes a peak?  If there are no lows, then how can we tell we’re at a high?  How can we treasure the days when we feel cruddy just as much as the days when we feel like we’re floating through life like it’s effortless?

For me, it is realizing that my valleys define my peaks.  I can’t always say that I can immediately see the “good” in where I’m at, especially when it seems painful or frustrating.  What I can do is turn my awareness to this process of categorizing things as “good” and “bad”, and instead let go of the value judgements to simply be with what is there.

Is this easy?  Does it come naturally to me?  Of course not … I am human after all.  What I can say is that I’m not giving up and that I keep returning to this inquiry.  That is what this blog and this community is all about … continuing one step at a time to try again, to acknowledge the glorious imperfection of humanity and embrace this as what helps make us great.

I encourage you to try this for yourself.  Does setting aside the concept of a “good” or “bad” day help you gain perspective?  Do you work at taking small steps to create something new?

“Seabiscuit” exemplifies getting back in the saddle

This story exemplifies getting back in the saddle. People think it only happens in a Hollywood movie, but that’s not true. Here are the photos of the actual people (and horse) who refused to give up. It shows that set-backs do not have to determine the outcome of your life.

Going Forward

I decided rather suddenly this evening that I needed to own the movie “Seabiscuit” on DVD, although I’m not sure why a nearly 10-year-old movie about a nearly 80-year-old horse has been so much on my mind lately. I don’t even like horses!

But as I watched it, I remembered why I love that movie. First, there’s the affable and generous Charles Howard, who bought, rehabilitated and tirelessly promoted this undersized thoroughbred with a champion racing bloodline but very little to show for it before he came into Howard’s care.

Howard and his old-school trainer, Tom Smith, saw the ragged little horse’s potential in his fiery eyes, and they agreed that “you don’t throw a whole life away just because it’s banged up a bit.”

This story is all about second chances–for Howard, coping with the tragic death of his 15-year-old son and his wife’s subsequent desertion; for Smith, who…

View original post 352 more words

For Better Heart Health Exercise Harder, Not Longer

I am on a mission to LIVE “back in the saddle” in ALL aspects of my life. I was recently side-lined from my regular exercise program with a shoulder injury. It is healing up to the point now where I will be able to re-start soon, but my two top reasons for not re-starting an exercise program is that it takes too much time, and I don’t see any results. I know I need to dial down the intensity from what I was doing (P90X), but I also know that when I was exercising intensely, my body was in the best shape ever since it was finally getting challenged. I will be working to strike a balance between intensity and conditioning to avoid injury.

I hope you enjoy the article as much as I did … it gives me hope I’m going in the right direction.