Marathoning (Guest Post - Tyler)

It is my distinct pleasure to welcome Tyler as a guest poster. Although I disagree with who he roots for in baseball, I have great respect and admiration for Tyler. I am amazed at how he can nonchalantly mention he ran 10 miles for fun today, when to me it sounds like pure punishment. 

I am slowing down to pace myself
 and maintain balance

In my line of work I am constantly looking at making decisions based on the inherit risks. I have to determine what risks are acceptable and how does my organization manage those risks if we decide to accept them. One thing I look for is trends from year to year. If the trend is negative, I ask myself if I believe it can reasonably be corrected or reversed. If it is a positive trend I ask if it is sustainable over a long period.

As I examine my personal life I can take the same approach. If I have a negative behavior impacting my life can it be corrected or reversed? If I have a positive behavior is it a behavior that I can sustain for the rest of my life?

Sometimes when I am feeling particularly motivated with the desire to change a bad behavior I go all out and take drastic measures to change. The problem with this is that it is not sustainable and consequently does not fit my lifestyle, so I end up burning out, quitting, and resuming with the same poor behavior. If I am going to make a permanent change then it has to balance with the rest of my life.

As a hobby I enjoy long distance running. I have run multiple marathons in the last 5 years. I am by no means the fastest person out there, but relatively speaking I am faster than most, and usually finish in the top 5%. The reason I bring this up is not to brag, it is because it reminds me of an article I read this last year on running that indicated research showed the long term benefit of running on cardiovascular health is better for those who run at a more moderate pace. For men, who typically train at a pace faster than 8:00/mile, they begin to see deterioration in heart health later in life as a result of the intense strain put on the body earlier in life. Those who train at a slower pace, and were able to maintain that training, enjoyed a positive benefit of long term health.  As my high school track coach used to always say to us distance runners, “If you go out too fast you will pay for it double at the end.”

This is just another reminder that perhaps the best approach is to slow down. I believe the key to a sustainable positive lifestyle is balance and moderation. That is what I am seeking. I see areas in my life where I am way out of balance and adjustments need to be made, but I am going to try and tackle them gradually with patience. I am going to look at finding balance more like a marathon than a sprint. I can’t just hurry and find balance. I need to work and prepare and take my time so that I am able to keep moving forward when life happens and tries to push me further out of balance.

Breaktime

I respect my limits

I have felt a little overwhelmed recently. Life has a natural ebb and flow but lately I have felt the panic of a rising tide of busyness and responsibility. Yesterday I was determined to buckle down and stem some of that tide by making plans to work diligently throughout the day.

Around mid-afternoon I started to feel restless and agitated. I was tired of sitting in a chair and I was frustrated with how much more work I had yet to do. I had reached my limits at that moment. I considered slogging through it but I have learned that there are times when pushing a limit can create more problems.

I took a break for some "family fun time," as one of my daughters affectionately calls it, and I felt ready to wade back into the work I had to do. I was riding my motorcycle back to the office and just as I was topping a hill and putting it into 3rd gear my clutch went loose and I could no longer shift gears. I was able to get to the bottom of the hill and then coast into a restaurant parking lot as the bike stalled out. I made a phone call for a ride and then got off the bike to take a look at things. I found that the tip of the cable that holds it into the clutch handle had popped off. Too much tension and wear had caused it to pull through the soldering holding it together. That small piece of metal wire being strained beyond the limits it could withstand brought the entire bike to a stand-still.

Just like a motorcycle there are multiple things I need in order to keep me going: sleep, nutrition, variety, connection, purpose, and emotional expression are just a few that come to mind. If I ignore my own self-care and push my limits to the point of breaking, it can shut-down the entire system. My limits are not there to hold me back, but rather to help me stay balanced and running smoothly.

What areas of your life are being stressed to the point of breaking?
If your limits are being tested how can you bring yourself back into balance?

Pendulum Swings

I am gentle in my attempts to find balance

I had the privilege of writing a guest post for my friend Stephanie over at visibleandreal today. It was a different type of writing than I do here and I found it to be a very raw and vulnerable experience. I shared a piece of myself through a story of when I was in kindergarten, and that level of openness can often lead me to something Brene Brown talks about as a "vulnerability hangover" (TED talk).

My first reaction to that feeling is that I want to withdraw and self-protect. It has the ability to throw me completely off kilter and I even found myself feeling a little noxious and my head started to pound. When I have intense emotions like that I often want to get out of them as quickly as possible. The tendency is to jump to the opposite end of the spectrum and it results in me over-correcting.  

Image source: ehow.com

I affirmed recently the need to find balance and as I started to think about how I was responding to my vulnerability. The knee-jerk reaction of withdrawing into myself does not leave me feeling balanced. Instead of finding a centered place I was swinging the pendulum back into an extreme. It reminded me of past experiences where I have lived from a place of deprivation such as neglecting basic self-care, and then going violently in the other direction by doing something like splurging on an expensive meal. It can look many different ways but the theme that it uncovers is that rather than finding a place of balance I am swinging back and forth between extremes. It makes it very difficult to walk my path of authenticity in a forward direction when I'm swaying dizzily back and forth. 

My practice and affirmation today is that when I am feeling unbalanced, rather than over-correcting and swinging drastically in the opposite direction I will trust in myself and others to meet my needs in healthy ways. Instead of withdrawing today I practiced staying in my vulnerability and reaching out for support. I took a nap. I stayed present and connected. I felt a little wobbly at first, but I feel far more centered now than if I had let myself go with my first panicked instinct to withdraw.

What area in your life needs a gentle correction to come back into balance? How do you practice being centered?

Walking the Fence

I am practicing balance in my life

I grew up in Spring City, population 800. By "in" I mean 1.5 miles outside the city limits. Until I was about 10 the old highway road we lived on that stretched through the main street of town was 1 of only 2 paved roads. As a young boy growing up in a small town in the prehistoric age before smart phones, tablets, PS2, and the internet, my choices for entertainment were different than what my children have available. 

This is a recent photo of the house I grew up in from the age of 8 until I was 18. Although the trees are taller and the grass is not as green, it looks very much how I remember it as a child. During the summer months I spent a countless number of hours trying to learn to balance and walk across the top of a wooden fence that encircled our house and several sections of the garden area in the backyard. It was a challenge to maintain my balance on the long wooden poles used to build the fence. Many of them were uneven, knotted, and irregularly shaped. It took numerous tries to learn to even stand still and balance myself without falling. I would put my arms out in both directions to maintain my steadiness and eventually started taking careful steps. I would see how long I could go without falling and eventually I was able to cover the length between two fence posts. I then had to learn to carefully traverse around each post to make it to the next section.

I started to keep a mental record book of how long I could stay atop the fence and how far I could walk across it before losing my balance. Even after becoming proficient it always required my full attention and focus to avoid falling. Any time I allowed for distractions or let my mind wander from the task at hand I would most certainly slip off.  Those falls were usually without incident but it also took some patches of skin off my legs and left a few long scratches on more than one occasion.  

Living an authentic and healthy life that is true to who I am, requires me to pay careful attention to balanced living. I need adequate sleep and nutrition to function, but I need far more to be balanced and healthy. I need connection, safety, adventure, challenges, affection, exercise, solitude, goals, spontaneity, plans, openness, boundaries, surprises, tradition, spirituality, and a great many other things to live in balance. 

When any one area of my life becomes over emphasized, or if I find myself living from a place of deprivation, either of these circumstances can bring me out of balance. With awareness and practice I can learn to be more conscious and responsive to these shifting needs, but it will always require focus and attention. If I do not prioritize the nurturing of each part of what constitutes my true self I will find myself slipping and falling. It can feel exhausting and difficult to walk my path, but it becomes even more difficult if I am constantly losing the balance I need to create positive momentum towards my goals. 

Today I will focus carefully on what areas of my life have become unbalanced and do what is necessary to bring myself back into alignment.

What do you need to restore the balance needed to work toward your goals?

Crazy making

I embrace the uncertainty of change

In the midst of the change process I have found moments, hours, sometimes days where nothing seems to make any sense. Although I am committed to making positive changes the process of that change often leaves me feeling unbalanced. 

Cordova Bay, AK canffirmations.blogspot.com

When my parents were living in Alaska I was introduced to deep sea halibut fishing. After spending almost a full day out on the boat we got home and started cleaning the fish. I hopped in the shower to clean up and I had the distinct feeling of being back on the boat. My inner ear was accustomed to the constant rocking of the boat and even though I was back on solid ground I felt shaky. I had to lean against the wall and steady myself to avoid falling over in the shower. 

Making changes to patterns that I have become used to over many years is not likely to happen without some disorientation. If I try to wrap my arms around the chaos and try to control it I may find myself feeling not just unbalanced but a little crazy. If I persist in those attempts to force my will on the process I am more likely to slide back into old patterns. I will embrace the change process and let go of my need to control it. In time my equilibrium will return and I will find myself standing on more solid ground.

"All great changes are preceded by chaos" -- Deepak Chopra