Training Session #47-July 30: The problem with saying “I want…” Be careful--your vocabulary reflects your internal landscape
In 2013 I was diagnosed with sarcoidosis, an autoimmune disorder that chewed a hole in my cerebellum, atrophied various muscles, impaired my vision, balance, coordination and consequently stole my confidence and my ability to run. I have dedicated the summer of 2018 to regaining my strength, coordination, balance, and relearning how to run. I am participating in a 5k run on September 23rd in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This is my training journal.
This is my attempt to grow physically and mentally strong again.
Write on. Fight on.
The previous training sessions can be found here, under “Fight on- Summer Training Log”
*For the next 6 days I will be training in Destin, Florida.
Time:
6:33 am – 7:26 am
Conditions:
Outdoor-79 degrees
Training Maxim:
No hurry. No pause.
Training Performed:
Jogging/walking intervals- 53 minutes
Quote I’m Thinking About Today:
“One of the most common causes of failure is the habit of quitting when one is overtaken by temporary defeat.” Napoleon Hill
Reflection:
When I was a child my grandfather use to warn me, “Watch what you say.”
“Why?”
“Because your words lead to actions.”
During training today, in the early morning Florida soup, I thought about my grandfather’s warning.
How our vocabulary reflects our internal landscape.
How many times have we said I want to do something. I want to write a book. I want a better job. I want to lose weight.
The problem with I want is what comes next…imagination.
I want to write a book.
And then I imagine myself at a book signing. Smiling, shaking hands, and signing my name on the first page of my best-selling book.
What I don’t see is the hours and hours and hours of doing: research and writing and editing and revising. Followed by submitting, then waiting, then rejection, then rewriting, then submitting, then waiting, then…
I want is about pleasure. I want is about satisfying our ego. I want is about the reward.
For years, when I was at my physically and mentally lowest, I wanted to run. I dreamed of running. But dreaming was all I did.
And dreaming, I believe, only made me physically and mentally weaker.
Why?
Because I wasn’t doing.
After 47 training sessions I can run again.
But the only way I learned to run again was by doing– not dreaming.
Like my grandfather tried to tell me many years ago, “your words lead to action.”
From The Previous Training Session- July 28: Your happy place is not out there
The other day I heard someone say they can’t wait to leave here and get to their happy place.
“Where is your happy place?” I asked.
“A beach far away from here.”
We all want to change how we feel. However, we convince ourselves that the good feelings we seek are out there– on a beach.
But what if that beach is 100 miles away? And what if you don’t leave for another three weeks?
Can you find happiness and peace right here, right now?
Can we condition ourselves to be happy and at peace anywhere? Standing line at Walmart? Sitting in traffic? Having a difficult conversation?
I believe we can. But it takes real work. It requires you to not let your external environment to control internal happiness.
So how can we make any place our happy place?
Tony Robbins suggests making a list of ways we can immediately change how we feel, to go from pain to pleasure, and feel good immediately (Awaken the Giant Within).
Maybe its holding hands with your spouse. Smiling with your children. Playing music. Taking a walk. Taking a moment to admire nature. Replaying a pleasant memory.
The point is– your happy place is not at the end of the highway. You don’t have to pay tolls to find peace.
Happiness and peace are in you. They always have been.
