JEALOUSY is being afraid that They are better than You. That They have more to give, or take, or show than You. No-one has your path. No-one has your experiences. No-one has your life. WELL, not quite. Some-one does. Some-one has the unique lessons and learnings and teachings and insights that You have gained. They allow representation of the world in a wholly new and unique fashion, a fashion never represented before in the whole of history. THAT some-one is You. Only You have your infinite path stretched out behind how, and the infinite possibilities of your future strewn ahead of you. No-one has your path. ONLY your history and your decisions can shape your future. Watching others get paid more, perform 'faster, higher, stronger' or react differently - more calmly, more confidently - with jealousy and wish for their reactions and their abilities is a self-destructive response. AND it is a fear-full response. Jealousy is a belief that some-one else has some-thing that you do not have, and cannot attain. To present on your sporting arena a watch a climber effortlessly glide up a route or seeing some-one paddle flawlessly through a series of rapids or smash out a game of tennis or score from fifty yards out or... what-ever, feeling jealous is born from a belief that 'That is not for me.' and a belief of 'I am not good enough to do that.' GREAT achievement always was followed by great effort; and great, repeated failure. Each failure was met with a dusting off, a standing up and a carrying on. " feeling jealous is born from a belief that 'That is not for me.' " ONLY You can be the some-one to change: how You react, how You perform, how You achieve, what You achieve. Your Jealousy is a fear of never being good enough. Only you can feel your emotions and choose to act upon them, or suppress them. YOU can dream it: you can do it. The void between the Dream and the Do are choosing positive action. Taking the next step. Not the first step. The first step is identification. You have cleared that hurdle. Your jealousy is your identification. You know what you want. You have felt it burning in your head and in your heart. Now you need to find the actions necessary to make progress. WHAT are you jealous of? Who makes you feel jealous? What do They have? How does that relate to your life? How can You bring that into your life? What will it take? Are you willing to put in that effort? Are you willing to fail at those hurdles, to fall down and bleed, and pick your Self up again? Are You willing to burn in that way? Burning down and burning up: lighting the way forward for your Self with your falls and also for any daring bravely enough to follow you. What makes you burn in that way, glowing your inspirational light to the world? WHAT makes you burn? Found it? Good. NOW... act.
0 Comments
RE-FRAME: This is all about language. This is all about choice. This is all about decision. YOU have a choice to make. You can choose to make a difference to how you view the world. You have within a preset inclination towards, or away from, any number of feelings, actions, emotions and experiences. AS a long distance runner my task is to keep moving onward when my body would rather have paused, stopped, given in, collapsed at any of the doorways I pass on my route. As a climber I an inclined to find the most challenging, dangerous, complicated route to travel to the top of a cliff. (Most cliffs I ascend have a 'walk off', a path that can be walked down. If I want to see the view from the top, why not just walk up there?) WHY push? Why sweat? Why bleed? Why suffer? TO achieve. FOR success. FOR joy. The sensations of suffering, of pushing the body. The reasons for the sweat dripping into my eyes. The sharp rocks when I climb, that scratch and cut as I jam my body against them hoping for a little extra friction, another inch higher... the suffering is the reason we Do sport. We suffer that we might in the end, achieve. "can fear be a power-full navigation tool?" RE-FRAMING is about looking over our concepts of negative emotions and experiences, and shifting them into helping them to find our way. How can fear be a power-full navigation tool? How can jealousy clarify our desires? "I'm smiling on the surface, I scared as hell below." THE object here is to grab something dark, turn it over and hold it up to the light. Taking the darkest of times, focusing on them and finding the pain and suffering, then reasoning with it in the light of steady meditative focus allows it to become a learning point. AS you read through my examples and learn a little about what scares me, what makes me turn around, back off, re-assess my situation and also see what makes me push deeper, finding my hidden reserves, think over situations when you have experienced these feelings and look over how you can use those emotions and memories to re-tune your attitude to face the situations better next time and perform differently. UP-SETTING is about upsetting the record you have been playing and making the replay different, better. More in line with your values, your beliefs, your ideals. IT is the dream of the success, the top out on the cliff, the finish line of the race, the achievement, that we DO the suffering for. Yet the suffering, the fear, the pain can be power-full tools to help us see where we are going, how to get there and what we can gain as we go along the way the our end. Singing: "HILLS AND HEADWINDS MAKE ME STRONG, DO DAH, DO DAH!" I want to ride my bike more. I don't want to strap my children into car seats (which they don't like), drive crawlingly slow through town (which I don't like) and arrive harried, stressed and annoyed (which no one likes!) SWOOPING down descents whooping loudly, weaving through the traffic up to red lights (and maybe hopping the kerb to get around them) puffing up the long climbs with my son singing in a seat behind me that I can do it, singing together up (shorter) climbs into headwinds with our joyous song singing: "Hills and headwinds make me strong, do dah do dah!" That's how I want to travel from place to place. Not listening to Ken Bruce telling me the traffic is a nightmare and fearing the half hourly traffic reports. I want to hear birds sing and call out good mornings to narrow boat owners and thank you's to dog walkers HOW can I do this? Give me 5 ways I can make this happen? I can put my son in a trailer. I can buy a trail-along bike. I can buy a child adapted tandem. I can get a child seat for the bike. I can get a wrap / sling / 'Baby Bjorn' carrier for the infant. NOW, pick one. We have two boys, age 4 and 2, one goes in a wrap or carrier on a back, the other in a seat on the back of the bike. They swap and change regularly whose bike and which 'seat' they want. "Failing is the best way to clarify your passion." MEANWHILE, I want to push my qualifications in mountaineering, to get out in the hills again. I want to hear the wind in my ears. I want to explore around forests, across moorland, under stones and sleep under stars, behind walls and in broken down sheep pens. So, what do I need to do that? A train ticket. A bivi bag. A rucksack. A stove and some petrol. A hand-full of food and a belly-full of desire. WHAT do you want to do? Run a four minute mile, a sub 2:30 marathon, swim 64 laps of the swimming pool, perform at the Albert Hall, dance down Broadway. Achieving is easy. Step 1: Give me 5 ways you can make this happen. Step 2: Pick one. Step 3: Leap. Step 4: Fly. "The only way to succeed is to keep trying." EVEN if, and especially when, you are not sure what you want, need, desire, chase, pick something. A target. Any target. Make yourself a deadline. And then shoot for it. List your 5 Ways. Then pick one, and go get it. What's the worst thing that could happen? You could get injured. You could not quite make it. FAILING is the best way to clarify your passion. If you are swallowed by disappointment, then you probably REALLY want it. So, find five new ways to get it - four can be from your original list. Choose one. And leap. Again. And again. THE only way to succeed is to keep trying. SO, go perform. With your heart and your soul and your whole and deepest Self out there on the line. And fly. FOOTNOTE: My family has just emerged from our first car-free winter. It was been rather moist at times. Bitingly cold from time to time. But the benefits in health, fun, and muddy muddy detours have made up for the few problems we encounter. DODGING around slightly over friendly horses that insisted on coming to welcome me to their paddocks, I skipped and squelched my way across flooded sections to the top corner of the paddocks where my recalling of the map took me. Fences pinched together and the puddles were the same constant ruin of a mess. The mud the same light brown waterlogged shade. I plodded on, finding the driest spots and step stepping over and around the water. BOOM; I am shin deep. Step forwards to keep my balance, boom, two feet up to the knee! Start the extreme wading. Step, step, step, heaving, pulling, lugging my legs with me. Still deep. Remorseless. The horses watch me curiously. Wade on. Look up. Look back. Look ahead. A puddle stretches across the path, both sides flooded. If it's eighteen inches deep here, that'll be worse. Turn around, wade back. Heave. Pull. Lug. "Every success is plagued by repeated and frequent failure." SOMETIMES you just have to turn back. Sometimes there is no other way. To go on is foolish, dangerous or just too uncomfortable. Turn arounds are not failure. They are measured decisions. What was I balancing? Depth of water, potential of taking a muddy swim - in water that could be five inches and could be five feet, probably five degrees - dodging the unknown I heave and pull and lug back to a broken down 'that can't be the way' stile that I scrabble over and then find a footpath that peters out, a Staffordshire bull terrier (friendly) and an electric fence (not friendly!) Turn around. Again. TURN arounds fill with them moments of fear. Moments of feelings of being conquered and beaten and defeated. We are not allowed to turn around. Not allowed to retreat. Being beaten is bad. That is the way we are going and we are going that way. No retreat. No excuses. "That is the way we are going and we are going that way." NO chance. Any success is beset on all sides by potential paths of winding broken trails of fear and trails of failure. Every success is plagued by repeated and frequent failure. Failure is the footprints of success, following it surely and steadily. You have to lose much to find success. THE victorious podium is shadowed by failure. The footprints that lead to it are faltering, they stumble here and there, wander off distractedly now and then, come back to the trail wearily and return again. And again. "Make positive performance out of your everyday simple actions. " FAILURE is fear-full; that is full of fear. It is something we have been trained to escape from, avoid and dodge. Our failures are the stepping stones across the rivers. They show us where to go, where not to go and they help us to navigate true to our values and to find the way across to the safe shore of success. FEAR too is a navigating tool. Fear guides our internal radar, telling us what our body can do, what might be risky, what could be dangerous, where we may be set back. Attuning your mind to your fear is a sure way to foresee the potential pitfalls in plans and actions. FEAR is a sign that we are making progress. Fear is a sign we are pushing hard enough. Pushing well. Fear shows you the way to turn, or where you need to resolve (re-solve!) and clarify your vision in order to make positive performance out of your everyday simple actions. NEXT time you feel the pinch of fear, tune in to it and listen to what is being offered. Fear as well as courage can be a fine guide. Words of caution will take you safely across the river too. Listen to what Fear has to offer, and re-invent your plans accordingly. FIRST run of summer yesterday - Sunday March 2nd. I know it was summer because I set out without a headtorch and I could see! 6:42am sunrise as I hit the road a few minutes before that. IN the first quarter of the run I crossed paths with more deer than cars. I listened to more songbirds than engines. I breathed more scent from crocuses, daffodils and snowdrops than exhaust fumes. So, arguably those flowers are all spring flowers, yes. And early March is spring, yes. And the sprinkling of rain and - still - flooded footpaths and by-ways are remnants of the atrociously wet winter, yes. However, I am running for summer. I am pushing for the bright mornings and clear skies, I am going for the fine weather and delicious hot scented summer air. And nothing else. I left behind me, quite happily - though I am sure before the slide towards winter following the Solstice in June I will navigate plenty more in the dark - thrilling moments of running along trails spotlighting my location with my headtorch and staring bright eyed up into the cosmos and playing games of constellation spotting. Running towards Orion, or dashing towards The Plough, connecting the dots and finding Polaris as I bend my way back north and shoot for home under a sky of scattered specks of stars. RUNNING builds me into my biggest self. Some-one who gets up and Does. Not some-one who sits back and says, 'yeah, maybe next yeah, next time, next week...' I am deliberately and steadily releasing, through focused training and intense physical effort, a part of myself who I no longer feel a need to express and enact. THIS part is a characterisation that I have come to see in myself over the past few years of self-discovery and mental focus. This is what I feel times of my life have been shaded by, I curl up and hide. I tremble and am afraid. I try to escape from life into my own little shell of a world, not willing to express my thoughts, my opinions and my beliefs for fear of ... what? Being ridiculed, being railroaded, being trampled, laughed at, forgotten. This alter-ego, my alternative self, is a personality that I have named Pequeno. Pequeno is a Spanish word meaning Small. I choose to no longer be small. I choose to no longer be Pequeno. Pequeno is Spanish, it means 'Small'. I choose to no longer be small. I choose to no longer be Pequeno... PEQUENO does not like Blogging. Pequeno does not like coaching. Pequeno wants to settle for a quiet and low-risk strategy of non-expressive and 'playing it safe.' There is a time for Pequeno, a time for caution, a time to be safe. Unfortunately none of the world's achievements were made without risk, without danger, without putting some-thing out on the line. NOW is a time for action, for constant effort and deliberate attention. Now is a time for focused creation of the future. Without that, nothing else will come. Only a rewind and rehash of the past over and over and over. SAFETY, as Pequeno would have me live within, is not safe. It is an illusion of safety. It is a paradigm shift to leap out and create my own business, income, world, life. And it scares the life out of Pequeno, I feel him inside me squirming and kicking. Don't do it, don't do it. You can't say that. What will they think? AND who, may I ask is They? Who am I going out on the line to impress? A lot of business 'mentors' that I have had who clearly sought to feel the Pequeno within me have spoken well to him. They have fed him the fear filled world of self-employment and the difficulties of managing my own world. Pequeno hears those stories and does well at rerunning the tapes. I nod and smile and then ignore them. The mentors have told me the business model is not viable. I throw back examples of ten people who have already done it and they ask why more have not. And argue statistics and Pequeno listens, and then pops them up for me at choice (or rather inopportune) moments - which is to say somewhere between frequently and constantly! "I listened to more songbirds than engines. I breathed more scent from crocuses, daffodils and snowdrops than exhaust fumes. " PEQUENO-NO-MORE! My mantra when I am out on the trail. I may not be the fastest runner out on the trails, or in the race. I may not be running as efficiently, or training as hard, or pushing so much weight in the gym (unlikely as I never visit gyms, my exercise routine with weights involves having my son and niece sit on my back and doing push-ups (they are both 4 and thankfully my younger son, age 2, settles for sitting on my ankles!) Weight training and my life, not so much!) The precision of my training routines, and my flat tire that stops me taking a long ride home from lunch out as the boys go out on a play-date. There are all sorts of slips, trips and misadventures in this process. And Pequeno is there, noting each one down. Suggesting a little more hiding, not pushing, not going out running - it's raining and it's dark and it's flooded. Well, of course it is dark and raining and flooded. It is January 2014. What else could it be! The battle for mental supremacy in my world. Pequeno and The Weather Versus Will Power and Drive. SUNDAY 2nd March, Will Power and Drive won out a major victory. I completed my first half marathon. On ironically the same day as Reading Half, I set out at 6:40am and cruised in relative comfort the link up lap I created the night before, Winnersh to Arborfield across the back of Barkham to Wokingham, then a weave home along quiet roads. Major dilemmas on the way; wading knee deep along a footpath trashed to excess by horses - hosed off in the front garden before going into the house! And... actually that's about it. Walk break at half way to have a long drink and eat an apple. Squelching wet feet - situation normal - from the horse fields, I am getting very used to having wet feet now though, it has been a winter for wet foot running. "Pequeno and The Weather Versus Will Power and Drive..." PEQUENO was not too happy about the accomplishment. Only a suggestion of, Ok, you've done that now. Let's stop, you've proved you can do that, now, let's move on to... err, no. How about the next training session, the next run, the next early morning. The next mission. Keeping my eyes up, my feet flashing over the earth I roll over the hills and up the inclines, sights set firmly on the stars as I stitch together what celestial navigation I may be able to pull together and string up my old self to dry. Poor Pequeno will never be the same again. And that is exactly the plan. |
Archives
December 2017
Categories
All
AuthorAndy Clubley-Moore: joyful outdoor sports activist, writer, father, husband. Lover of life, activity, success and barefoot living. |