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| A photo I took from the back of our house in Winnipeg. |
I'm not sure why I'm sleeping in. I know it's started since the second blind in the bedroom has been pulled down and the sun doesn't shine in my eyes every morning. I'm also wondering if it's my body adjusting to eating healthier and adjusting.
The human body is an amazing thing. It always wants to be in a state of homeostasis otherwise known as balance. Sleep is that healing state where the body goes to work healing itself. Perhaps some of the healing has still been from Ironman Boulder two weeks ago.
My sleeps are interesting in I'm a heavy dreamer and I'm often in a self hypnotic state. I work many of my problems and strategies out in this self hypnotic state. For those that don't know what a self-hypnotic state feels like it's that moment where you are in a light sleep and able to focus on something.
In many cases it feels real. An example is that I'm thinking of a to do list of things I need to do and in fact I think I'm writing out the list and actually preparing. I wake up to realize it was just a dream. Or there is times I'm strategizing how I'm going to deal with something and visualize myself doing it and it's like a dress rehearsal.
I find these states awesome. I wake with clarity and motivation. There was many times I'd have to do a long ride in the morning and the self hypnotic would prepare me and I'd wake up motivated to do it.
Right now my self hypnotic sleeps are work related. This week I start my full on promotion of Salmon Social. Last nights sleep was another preparation. I was taken back to the original thought of the app and the enthusiasm and unwavering belief that it's got huge potential. I woke up with my mind reset and clarity of how I'm going to present it moving forward.
The key is to have unwavering confidence, enthusiasm and belief in what you are doing. Anything less and it will not work. This applies to anything in life.
I also woke up fresh and looking forward to doing my run today.
I'm working on a train a sport every third day, giving myself added time for recovery. I've learned that so long as you train every third day you will not lose your fitness. My last run was on Thursday so today, Sunday, was the third day.
What a difference this run was over my first run back from Ironman Boulder on Thursday. On Thursday I was mentally and physically still out of it. I think most of it was because I had done nothing in 11 days and my body needed the kick start. On Thursday 30 minutes felt like 90 minutes. My muscles hurt and my mind felt like I was grinding it out.
Fast forward to today and I was looking forward to it. Right from the moment I started running I felt strong. I knew it was going to be an hour run for sure. I was actually going to go a little longer but persuaded myself that whether I do 60 minutes or 70 minutes there would be no benefit doing 10 extra minutes.
It was the perfect distance and without the pressure of training for a race and just running for fun I found I did not have the same Achillies type tightness I had before Ironman Boulder.
There is definitely a mental correlation between soreness, tenderness and injury. I found that as time has gone on and I didn't have my heart in Ironman racing or I felt unprepared that my body would seem to be more injured or I'd experience more muscle soreness.
I won't discount age as well. Although I think most of it is mental.
Only thing that bothered me after today's run was my leg soreness. An hour run should not have any effect on my legs. I should feel like I did nothing. Instead I feel like I did a mini long run. It's a little bothersome. Is it age and I need more recovery? Or is it something else?
For sometime I've been planning on going in for a medical check up. For the month leading up to Ironman Boulder I had a chronic couch. I caught it from Alyssa and Alice also got it. I've never had a cough that has been so prolonged. Especially after training I'd be hacking and during training the back of my right lung would hurt.
I'm a hypochondriac at times and of course think the worst. Is is cancer? I'm sure it's nothing but I figure it's best to get it checked out. I'm not getting any younger. Or am I just mentally feeling discomfort of muscles than I used to. That I'm not as mentally tough at blocking the pain.
I have been giving a lot of thought about how I want my life to look like on the back half of my life.
On the first half of my life I focused primarily on career. Pretty much all my time was focused on starting, growing and managing my business. From the ages of 19 - 48 my primary focus was work.
People say do you have any regrets? Would you do things differently? Most people say no, that they would not be the person they are today if they didn't experience what they experience.
I feel differently. I would do things differently and this next half of my life is going to be that half were I do things differently. I'm still working through those years and identifying what I'd do differently. I haven't yet got it all figured out and I need to be careful that I don't spend too much time reliving the past.
I'm getting into some really deep thought. Asking many, many questions in my own head. The primary one's are "What is happiness? Why do we pursue happiness? Is happiness even real? Is it even worth pursuing? How do you achieve happiness?"
Like most of us I've had moments throughout my life of happiness. Then moments of struggle. I think many of us think happiness is having moments of happiness strung together in such a way that their is nothing but happiness, that it's eternal bliss.
I'm not sure if that is happiness. In fact I'm not sure happiness is the right word. I don't even know how to define happiness. I can define being happy about something in the moment. I don't know what happiness is.
Frankly my initial thoughts are happiness is a state of mind.
For example, two people could do the same Ironman. One person has a race with no problems other than the long day wears on them mentally and it turns out to be a horrible experience. Yet another person could have all forms of adversity and perhaps even get injured, struggle through it and at the end reflect back on it that it was a great day. That it was epic.
Same circumstance, one person had a positive experience, the other a negative one. One happy, the other unhappy.
One thought that keeps coming back to me is reprogramming. Changing one's thoughts pattern.
The big question is how do you do it? How do you erase previous programming. Keep the positive knowledge and wisdom and erase all the bad stuff so you don't recycle yourself to be the same the second time around as the first time but just with different circumstance.
I was thinking that would be one hell of a business where you could go to a place and have yourself reprogrammed. Now that I think about it I think they made a movie about doing stuff like that and it didn't turn out to well. Maybe it's not a good idea to have others reprogram you. But what if you could reprogram yourself?
Then my next level of thoughts go from wanting to have a better back half than the first, to trying to figure out how to reprogram myself to the next question which is "if I could reprogram myself what would I want the back half of my life to look like?"
Then I think, "why over think it?" I look back at the best times in my life and I just let life flow. It was the times I tried to control a situation or had a preconceived idea of how I wanted to guide the situation or wanted it to turn out and it would never happen or it would be a struggle to make it happen. There was no natural and enjoyable flow.
I think what's really cool is not that I'm asking myself these questions. I've been asking them for as long as I remember. I think what's really cool is that I'm determining my direction on feelings.
Basically asking myself "does it feel right?"
An example is I was looking at Riding across america tours. Rather than thinking how cool it would be and thinking I'm going to make it happen. I play it through my mind as it's happening and simulate the feelings. Then observe the feelings. It's like I'm doing it and feeling if it is going to make me happy.
In the case of the ride across america it took me no time to realize, nope, not for me.
As you can tell I'm going deep in my mind. I think the motivation is time. You only have so much time on this planet and when you're young you don't realize time is precious.
More so now than ever I'm understanding more about what Steve Jobs said during his convocation speech at Stanford talking in the spirit is "life is too short, do what makes you happy".
Yesterday I was google surfing and came across a Jim Carrey convocation speech. I'm going to leave this blog post with this most awesome part of his speech.
"My father could have been a great comedian, but he didn't believe that was possible for him, and so he made a conservative choice. Instead, he got a safe job as an accountant, and when I was 12 years old, he was let go from that safe job and our family had to do whatever we could to survive. I learned many great lessons from my father, not the least of which was that you can fail at what you don't want to do, so you might as well take a chance on doing what you love".
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