Harness the feeling of hitting the safe spot, how does the hold feel, what is the movement feel like in the eddy, how can you grow that sensation? HOW do you feel when you hit the safe spots? The sudden good handhold on a tough climb, the dropping of the headwind as you enter the trees on a long run, the broad eddy after a series of challenging rapids? WHAT is that sensation? Relief. Relaxation, spreading through your body freely and easily. Remember the last time you were stuck there in the thick of a tight spot and then, boom, up came a rest point. You exhale. Not just breath out! Your muscles ease off and you can take a moment to look over what is coming up without the instant need to perform. AND then you look over the next few moves, or down the next winding section of river and spot the next rest point. Take a breath. Inhale, really feel it, and throw yourself into it. "Per aspera. Ad astra. Through difficulties, to the stars." How can you hold onto that sensation of relief? Find the feeling of it, and let it breath calm into your fingertips and spread down to your toes. Even if the moves are only moderately difficult. Spread that feeling through your body. Let relief take over. UNLIKE the sensations of fear, or jealousy, seen as very negative emotions that I have written about up-setting here, relief is something positive. It is something that we want to view and find the mental triggers for, and then learn how to use them as a tool to make ourselves keep on performing. Better. Again and again. WHEN I focus on Relief as a sensation I feel tense climbing holds under my toes, edges that are sliding my toes off, and fingertips that are searching for a positive edge to pinch onto. I hit a big hold, unexpectedly or knowingly, and I feel a wave of relaxation course through my whole arm. It spreads across my aching shoulder and into my leg right down to my toes - which are still on the too small edges. FOCUSING on canoeing, I am edging aggressively and powering upwind. As a coach much of my time when I am pushed is when someone gets it wrong and I have swimmers to deal with. I am powering up wind and counting heads bobbing up and down. Everyone is out and no one it climbing onto the boat. My paddling pace does not slow, the water just becomes 'thinner'. The strokes of my blade are easier, I snap out the paddle and the recovery to the next stroke is swift, not feeling like it is taking forever. I power on, by the time my boat stops next to the upturned boat the swimmers know where to be, what to do when they get there and I have the boat partially out of the water. (Kayaks are on my front deck and empty by the time I stop, on a good day!) RELIEF to me is not a sensation, it is an experience. And it is a state of mind that I want to explode into as many holds on the cliffs, and edging moves between eddies, and bounding uphill sections of my runs as I can. RELIEF is turning for home. Relief is rolling onto the top of the cliff and hitting the plane of Flat. Relief is still water on a blustery day or flooding river. Relief is seeing the beach we will have lunch on. Relief is a lowering of gradient, a sudden drop in a hammering headwind. Relief is an easing of the rain as I push pedals hard and crunch through gears. Relief is a seat and a cup of tea when the weather, the boats, the group and the Gods were all against me. ONE of my tops, by Higher State, has in the neck Per aspera, ad astra. "Through difficulties. To the stars." That is Relief. The moment the difficulty stops, and you realise you are there, in the stars. The stars do not have to be a three minute mile, an olympic gold, a First or A-Star grading. The stars are wherever you place success. And hitting those points of Relief are pure success. Embrace the sensation, let it flow over you. WHAT makes you feel Relief? Take that sensation. How can you feel it now? Practice. Succeed now. Succeed more.
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FEAR is a very big word. There is a world to be written about Fear. Here, I address Fear as a navigation tool. How can Fear help you to get to your dreams, targets, destinations? FIRSTLY you have to feel the fear. You have to see what it is that is making you afraid. I get scared when I am climbing up to, or more often above, my gear, stretching the limits of where I feel it is necessary to be, reaching for the next hand hold, then the next, and the clip comes from the one after that! Or, I find the holds are slippery, or turned to slip me off balance and throw me out and spit me off. I get scared running when I hit deep puddles and end up wading and it is dark and cold and I am a long way from home. (This winter has given me lots of chances to get wet and cold and scared.) WHAT is it that I am fearing when I am out climbing? Taking a fall, failing, hitting the wall and being injured, humiliation as I feel I ought to be able to do this route. Yes. Lots of the fear is bound up in my sense of who I feel I 'should' be. I should be able to climb this route, I should be stronger, I should be better. The belief that I should be able to carry on, but do not quite know where the reserves will be coming from. “...being brave is not the absence of fear but rather the strength to keep on going forward despite the fear.” FEAR has nothing to do with stopping. It is choice that makes you stop. Fear has nothing to do with failing. It is choice that makes you fail. Choose to accept the Fear. Choose to take it as a power-full indicator of where you are; emotionally, physically, spiritually, mentally. Power-full negative emotions will provide strong signs of what is going on at hidden levels and give you an insight that will not be found if you ignore the Fear, or brush it off. WHAT is it that is making you feel that Fear? Is it risk of mental or physical pain? Do you risk being humiliated? Do you have potential for increased pain and suffering as you go along the route to your end point? AS a runner I often found myself this winter aiming squarely at the centre of the deepest wettest sections of paths so I can get the soaking out the way and then turn my focus from dry route finding to powering on through the rest of the run and enjoying the moments of feeling strong going up a hill, or free pacing back down the other side, or pausing to listen to an owl in the woods nearby, or... Worrying and Fearing about getting wet feet has been pointless. I have found myself wading up to me thighs on footpaths, frequently knee deep, I have crossed fords wading over bridges that are normally three feet clear of the water level. SPENDING my time in Fear about this, or that, would make me turn around and go home. It has not been a comfortable winter. It has been cold and wet and involved a lot of drying out my shoes after the runs. And scrubbing mud from between my toes too! The benefits of facing down the Fear is that I have found empty trails, swollen rivers to watch, by ways and footpaths to splash along and come out the other side to squelch away from. "turn around the Fear..." It has been a bad winter when the running events get cancelled due to flooding, of the course and car park in the case of the Wokingham Half. Meanwhile, I stick to the high ground from time to time. Endure the dry luxury of road running once in a while. And the rest of the time, I suck in the Fear and get my feet wet. HOW to turn around the Fear, find it as a navigation tool and aim to turn it into deeper insight. Using Fear to see what you want takes practice, it is an emotion that we spend our life dodging, avoiding and escaping. LOOK over your favourite sport, look at times you have backed off when Fear came knocking, look at how you could have chosen to turn it around. How you could have reset it to be beneficial, to grow from it rather than shrink to it. 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. 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. What do roots do? They provide an anchor, they provide nutrients, they search in the darkness. Roots are our anchors; They are the solid base that all other growth can spring from. They provide stability in the wind, they hold on to when we are being tugged this way and that, being pulled at. Roots provide structure, vital before any meaning-full growth or expansion can occur. Roots give us nutrients; Roots provide from deep down in the darkness within the food that is necessary for our growth. Pulling up from the darkness the points that we need to learn and grow from in this moment or the next. This creation allows all upward growth to go on, and also the extension of the roots itself. Roots strive and search; Pushing on, downward, deeper, wider. Searching in the black of darkness. Searching within. Searching on. Roots are blind, existing and continuing only on faith that there will be something out there. In this mess of rock there will be water, in this mess of dust there will be nourishment. Roots are a metaphor: Bounding for the very best you can do. The very best you can be. That is your perfection, the very best you can be. That is all perfection, just the best you can be. That is all you can ever hope to do. All you can hope to be. Your best. And to keep doing your best work. My life has entered a dark place. I have been thundered back into the soil, to yearn and sift through humus and leaf matter and detritus of yesteryears living. Looking blindly, searching for the way forward, the way out. Death plunges me into the world of roots; cold, clammy, damp, dark, black. Re-member your anchors. The density of this dark landscape I strive within is its strength. As a root I cannot hope to gain anything from a void. My dark subterranean world is densely populated and through that I gain strength and support and stability. I have been here before. I have come back stronger, and I will emerge again into the sunlight stronger. My past is littered with deep-root strivings. Speckled with dark moments. And these strivings in the darkness allow for stronger stems, fuller fruits and more vibrant flowers to sprout from my life. I am more bounty-full for the darkness of my journey. Those journeys though must be taken bravely and boldly and in my very best manner. No other way to do it. The Other Way is No Other Way. To limp, to refuse, to hang my head, to fear. Fear is indecision, fear is stasis, fear is paralysis. All those things are death. Death of progress, or direction, or yearning, of learning, of growing. Death of becoming and death of being my best self. It is at times when the world is at its worst that I must be my best. When the world turns me, spinning, and drops me into darkness it is time to step up. And step out. To hold my head high. To demand my best. To announce that I am not ashamed. Not ashamed in this darkness to keep on, to laugh, to cry, to sing, to accept, to release, to joyously leap on along the road. To strive as my dark roots need to be pushed. And to find new ways and means and a better self for me. I am all I have. And this is me. Deep down in the dark. Pushing up new bright shoots and grabbing at the world with both hands. Thank you ACM Starring out the windows, Alton Towers Resort, April 2008.
We were sent off to Alton Towers - by Limo! - by The Willow Foundation, who provide days out for families with terminal illness and survivors and recovering from terminal illness. A most fantastic time and many happy memories of the weekend! Death is a fear-full thing to encounter. The death of a loved one is by far the hardest thing to come across. Your own death is a different matter, something of a journey, a transition, a change. The death of a beloved family member though. That too is a journey, a transition, a change. When the possibility arises, in short time or in long, or in an instant, it is a process of change that the body and mind undergo. 'I am safe, it is only change.' Confronting mortality is something that happens then thousand times a day for us. We see animals around us dying. We see mass slaughter in TV shows. We watch armies being laid to waste in movies and more still coming running over the hill top. We see disease and famine and pestilence swiping across continents on the Nine O'Clock News. All we are doing is watching death. Seeing people fall and animals collapse. It is sad to see, saddening to observe. Alas, all you are is an observer. A voyeur, cooly seeing events unfold. So, yes, death is constantly confronting us. And our own mortality always there in the sidelines. Yet it is only observations, grief does not come into the process. It is losing those close to us that plunges us deeply into death. Deeply into a world of change. Change is that which we fear. That which terrifies and freezes us. How will life look without him? What will Christmas be like without her? Who will I turn to when I need to know about...? They always call at just the right moment and know just what to say. What will your life look like without that wisdom, without that knowledge, without that rock to hold onto? Does it make any difference to how you interact and experience your world today, now, this moment? Does it affect what you do and how you do it? Is that really true? Change is just a transition. Death is just a shift in the ways that we address and view the world. How we choose to affect ourselves by events is that same for the calamitous, the joyous, the huge and the miniscule events of our life. I am a mixed up melting pot of my experiences and my choices. When change affects me and shifts occur my melting pot may swirl and stir and get wound up or agitated or boil a little. However, I am still a blend of all those things that I was and I always will be, purely and simply me. No matter what changes afflict me. Thank you, ACM Learn to use change, choice and decision to positively adjust your reality, CLICK HERE to check out my e-Courses, email-based courses on altering mindsets and breaking out of negative, destructive patterns. Positive Passionate Power-full Performance. The Beach and The Lighthouse
Spurn Head, East Yorkshire. SUGAR-FREE for a whole month. I (mostly) did it. I had a few slips, a few trips, a few stumbles. The aim was never perfection. The aim was to be focused on being as-sugar-free-as-possible-within-reason. SO when the ice cream came out at the end of meals, I politely declined. When the cakes and biscuits and chocolates went around at work, I politely declined. When my eye spotted cakes in cafes and said, 'err, Hello?' I politely declined. What have I learned in the end half of the project? More particularly, what have I learned after the project? A bit of background, I have a yeast-based infestation. It is an overgrowth and overabundance of a systemic (all the way through the body) fungal problem commonly known as Candida. Popular occurrences of this is thrush in women. The problem is particularly marked in my left foot, especially around the big toe, frequently looking scabby and splitting into nasty sore cuts - great for a climber, cuts on my major tool of ascension, ideal! BEING yeast-based this systemic problem loves sugar. Modern bread is made with sugar in so the yeast can grow faster and the bread will rise quickly, the Chorley Wood Technique. Rather than letting the bread rise slowly in its own sweet time and making (I might suggest) better bread. However, the bonus is that we do have lots of bread in the supermarkets to choose from and not a country buried under bakeries trying to be idealistic and slowly rise their loaves. That is another whole different argument. However, the point was that sugar feeds yeast overgrowths. Cut back, or out, sugar and you will cut back or kill off the yeast. Easy, right. THE best minds on dealing with this on removing systemic candida put a finer point on their sword. They recommend removal of all white flour - pasta, bread, cake, the list goes on! - all fruit; bread - as it contains sugars, flour, yeast… - And a whole raft, nay flotilla, of other fine foods. So, I have a bit of a trip to go on, a finely focused diet to indulge in. How long for? Three months! Seriously, three months of care-full focus on diet. ALONG with the collapse of toe health, I have discovered something interesting. My personal brand of candida manifests in scalp problems, lots of dead and itchy skin. How did I discover this? By having my cake - and eating it too! I would like to observe here that I am a master creator of a fantastic sponge cake. It really is good, let me know if you want to recipe. However, being white flour and (this time) icing sugar, it was not ideal for the process. It was the end of summer staff BBQ and also conveniently the first of September. So I blew the budget on sugar and ate, well, nothing more than I might in my End of July / Pre-sugar-free / normal meal times. THE result, two days of sneaking in a bit of sugar and my scalp has flared right back up again. Itching like crazy. So, at the end of August, and the beginning of September I have come to the Return of my Hero's Journey. That Return involves a need for introspection and examination. So, where do we go from here? WHEN I get into the ideal diet, this is going to take 3 months, I feel that - actually, really, truly - being sugar-free is not actually that much of a challenge, it is not really that difficult. I am politely declining lots of foods that I know are not really serving me very well. They are foods that I consume, and they blast through my body and ruin its equilibrium. Is that a sacrifice? No. Not at all. Roll of October! Thank you ACM Positive Passionate Power-full People If you are, or know anyone else, who is brilliantly positive and passionate I run a Facebook group for sharing your positive experiences with the world. The group is about posting things that you do well - letting others share in your success - and giving thanks for anything your are grateful for. Facebook friend me or my wife - Vicki Clubley-Moore and message us to join. There is lots of happy news out there when you go and make it! Make your life positive! Make your life passionate! Make your life extraordinary! (A fine starting point for systemic candida removal is Philip Day, nutritionist and inspirational speaker.) Have a lovely day. A Place to Pause
Grey-Shouldered Kite, Wal Wal, Victoria State, Australia. I was there with Vicki, doing some farming, enjoying stripping their kitchen floor out, fun times. They were also in a fourteen year drought when we arrived. When we left it had broken. There was a lot of rain. Hence the non-Australian beauty-full blue sky! We brought a lot of rain to Australia. As I write this it is to the first rain of September after the fantastically sunshiny summer of 2013 - best since 1974, or as I prefer to put it The Summer of Your Childhood That You Remember, that's what this summer has been. My t-shirt tan lines prove it! No we step towards autumn and the slowing down of the year. Welcome to September. I love September. Rain is permitted, reasonable, expected. Great news. |
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AuthorAndy Clubley-Moore: joyful outdoor sports activist, writer, father, husband. Lover of life, activity, success and barefoot living. |