What Drives Me; Why I Train

Alice Munro wrote in her commencement speech at Penn, “Here’s the thing about self-comparison: In addition to making you vacate your own experience, your own soul, your own life, in its extreme it breeds resignation.” Your focus on others is simply that. You cannot have laser focus on your race when you are watching someone else race…..insert goal for race.

Michael Phelps (R), swimming. Chad le Clos, comparing. 
Adam Pretty/Getty Images

This Alice Munro quote complements my BHAG blog post, because when you don’t KNOW where you are going by CHOICE you will go by chance. You will follow others where they are going and be lost from your own path.

There is no integrity in “it’s not fair” and “I deserve”. I take responsibility for my own well being. This life is not something that is happening to me this is something I’m choosing for myself.

Why I Train – The Choice I Make

I LOVE training. Why I train? I love being in the arena. I love to be in there doing the hard work. For me it is about doing the hard work. The JOURNEY for me is being in the arena: face bloodied, covered in sweat, driven by my inner voice, my inner choice.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly;….who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.” ~ Theodore Roosevelt, “Man in the Arena,” 1910

Training hard gives me an amazing reason to fly right; to eat clean, to sleep as hard as I train, to meditate. And each of these things builds on the others.

Training Others – Giving YOU the Choice

That’s how I train people as well. Know your goal. Meditate. Sleep. Show up ready to train. When it’s time to eat, you will be fueling all of the things you just accomplished and building a cycle of shifting toward success. All of a sudden it is easy to make the healthy choices because it rules YOU.

Meditate. Make conscious choices. Train hard consistently. The choice about what you put in your mouth shifts, and you know you are fueling the next thing, whether it is training, working, sleeping, or being present for your partner/child/parent.

Everything is connected. Give it your best. When you KNOW where you are going, when you actively choose your path, THEN you have something to give; to yourself first, and then so much more to others.

I just like to show up strong, silent, doing – and that is my winning. Doing. How do I take what I am learning and actually change the way I am living?

Doing. Training. Practicing who and what I want to be.