(January is dedicated to sharing with you best practices and principles for reaching your most meaningful goals.)
I’m a mile into my run and it’s feeling good. I increase the speed a little on the treadmill. The faster pace feels great. Until it doesn’t.
Once it doesn’t, I decrease the speed, back to a pace that feels good again.
This is my practice, always. In everything I do. Not just when I run.
I pay close attention and am honest with how things are feeling in the moment and then adjust accordingly.
It’s such a small and simple practice, so easy to think insignificant.
I share it with you because it’s the practice that helps you break free from the cycle of hi’s and low’s and live from a place where you can more easily achieve your most meaningful goals.
When I step on the treadmill, I’m not measuring anything: not miles, calories or intensity and I'm not striving for a result.
The pursuit is, “How good can I feel moment to moment.”
It's totally radical.
It’s this very practice; this slightly rebellious state & stance of not paying attention to anything except how I’m feeling in the moment that improved everything about the quality of my workouts (and my life).
Most runs, I’m able to transcend to such an enjoyable state I have to make myself get off.
I don't know of a more powerful state.
So why are we so resitant to this very practice?
(Hint: The answer has to do with feeling deeply worthy.)
The vast amount of articles and advice on success, goals and mastering peak performance offer strategies that never lead to a lasting result because most people never speak to the real reason, the root cause of the ties that bind.
Most strategies have us seeking ‘better’ somewhere else. Once we run faster, work harder, make more, wake earlier, become more grateful, overcome some big obstacle.
It’s my life’s mission to disrupt the conditioning and the misguided information that is keeping us stuck and feeling bad about ourselves.
Discipline, deprivation and delayed gratification always lead to relapse and sabotage because the (unconscious) story, deep down, is one of “If only I could be more like this, then finally I’ll have that.”
Whenever the story is one of fixing something so that finally you’ll feel better somewhere else; I guarantee you won’t.
The question is never about how hard you can work and how disciplined you can be; it’s about how willing you are to chase the sweet spot of any given situation. How willing you are to pay close attention to how you’re feeling right now and then adjust accordingly.
Even in our toughest moments there’s still a sweet spot, a shift we can make to take the edge off, to help us find some relief and ease.
There's no relief and little reward for soldiering through life being hard on yourself.
There's little freedom to be found in following the metrics and methods of everyone else.
Methods which seldom work, last or allow you to feel deeply satisfied here and now.
Worthy of chasing your sweet spot, of making even the smallest adjustment that allows you to feel like you could run forever; I promise this is the path to discovering how much more is possible.
xx Lori