Where am I? And how did I get here? I am a product of my choices. I am a mixed up mess of all the yes's and the no's and the slow pondered decisions. I am my successes and I am my failures. I am my trials and I am my fears and I am my doubts. I am my smiles and I am my triumphs and I am bounding along toward the next success. The next failure. "I like to think that I owe regrets, 'cause every What emotions rise when you look back over your failures, your regrets? What emotions come up when you look over your successes and your triumphs? Pen and paper out: Write down ten successes you had in your life till last year. What do you feel looking over your successes? Are they huge and impossible things; mine include graduating from university - four years of effort and learning. Having two healthy home births of my two boys - 9 months each of wrestling health authorities and deep learning. I swam 5Km in 1 hour 29mins when I was 16 - intense culmination of a lot of swimming training, 13 years of it! I qualified as a climbing, canoeing AND kayaking coach - bringing together technical knowledge and interpersonal skills and a huge amount of time outside in the sunshine (and rain, snow, hail...) What do I feel when I study those 'moments'? I get that swelling of pride, the 'hey, I did that!' moment. How is it for you? Pens at the ready... What did you do last year? Come up with 5 things. What have you succeeded at in the last four months? Five more. How about since the beginning of this month? Five more. What about last week? Five More successes. How about yesterday? Another five. And today? What successes have you had today? Five more. Notice something, how much more mundane are the recent successes? Today - it is (right now this very minute) Sunday at 8:12am - I have had little time or space for life changing success, right? What about getting the laundry done, the fish fed, the rabbit hutch opened, the few pages of my book read, the stairs run up and down a few times, breakfast eaten, the bed stripped. Query: Is life an amalgam of the university graduations and births and learning-to-drives and A-grades? Or is life a mix of getting the laundry on, the pets cared for, the small things that group up to make up life. Answer: Life is all of these things. Dedicating to the small, repetitious, mundane successes allows us to experience and enjoy them, and praise the mundane activities. Let the emotions of success flow over your mundane life and spread success throughout your life. Many Thanks Have a beauty-full day, ACM My big successes in short:
I graduated in 2005 with a BA in American Studies - history and literature and art and film and culture and life the universe and everything to do with the USA. I four year course of study and self-discovery and international adventure. Our birth stories: William was born in 2010 in the living room in a birth pool with two fantastic midwives present. Zachary was born in 2012 in (a different) living room, next to the birth pool just after I called the midwives to report the coming birth! No medical practitioners present. Two beauty-full births, just the way we wanted them. I did the BT Swimathon a few times, nailing my best time at one and a half hours when 16 years old. Thanks to weekly swimming club and some blind tenacity I smashed my 1:45 target and was cruising the 25metre pool averaging 29seconds per length.
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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. 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. AMONG the picture frames, stereo and bottles of bubbles (soap and toddler, not champagne!) our library has an official Borrowed Shelf. Books kindly donated to us for perusal, discussion and engagement with. These are books with a Return to Sender - though usually no date stamp. They have a definite future laid out for them, a destination. The Library, as it stands at time of writing. 03-10-13. 6:42am. I noticed a few years ago a quirk in the new century that did not occur in the past century during my lifetime, only being a young 'un and all. That days, like today, have a curious mathematical perfection. 3 + 10 = 13. I decided to name these various days, today comes down as an addition day. Come the day in about three weeks of October 23rd (23 - 10 = 13) we collide with a Subtraction Day. ON days like these, today, my Addition Days, I like to focus on what I can add to the world. What can I give? What can I give up? How can I help? A little reminder of mindful awareness to add something to the world. AND when all the mass of particles in the world is already set out and pre-planned, all I can do is rearrange a few things to look a little different. Add some words together to make a poem, swirl some paints to create a sunset, sew some sheets together to make a hideaway den. SO today, join in the mindful fun of Addition Day, and see what you might add. Rose petals on the patio.
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! I have been absent for a while. No apologies for that. Only that dull aching feeling of 'Should'. THAT sensation of 'I should be blogging...', 'I should be doing this...', 'I should be feeling this, or that, or the other...', 'This is distraction, I should get on with the important stuff...' Locked up in my mind for a while with the monster of Should rattling the bars and roaring at me. BETTER yet than Should, I turn to the monster and face him level-eyed, staring him down and spit out my truth, 'Maybe you're right. I Could. Why am I not doing it then.' A crucial part of mental training is the language that I frame it in. Care-fully considering how to phrase a question or suggestion or idea or logic. Should is a debilitating word, it is the monster that shakes the cages, it rattles the bars and roars at me when I want to sleep, and howls when I am busy running to keep up with all those important little things that need to happen. As I run the Should nudges and shoves at me, do this, what about that, over there, and don't forget to do the laundry. STARING down the Should Monster and rewiring him with a Could liberates my time, my life, my words, my actions and my decisions. I could be blogging, why don't I. I could get up earlier and do this work, what reason do I stay in bed for? I could continue to not eat sugar and feel better in my body, what is my pay out in consuming? THE Could can be turned back around to a question. The Should is only highlighting with bright burning spotlights the problem. This is the issue, here, look at this, ha ha, I found one, Should be doing this. This one, right here, forget that stuff, look what I found. I don't like the Should Monster. He does not serve me and I do not want him in my life. WHAT you focus on grows. And when I take heed of the Should Monster's words and listen and throw my attention on his problems what do I receive? I receive more. More problems, more spotlights, more Should. The first one never served me, so why keep accepting these suggestions from this monster? MEANWHILE, all the time I have been stumbling through dark chasms of grief, past and present with occasional snapshots of the dark moments of the future. Should shoving me and telling me that this is not what is important right now. Forget that, do this. My mind un-prepared and un-willing to engage. Just needing to do stupid things to re-fill with empty crisp goodness. Shinning and scuffing my way up climbing routes, winding a canoe across a lake or down a river. Cycling the long way home and hitting long sections off road with no lights and starring at the fractions of full moon splintering through the trees and digging out my phone to navigate the river side path by the flash light on the top! Stupid, pointless, late-night distractions. YET all so valuable in my steady re-covering of this death, and those deaths of old that I paint over with my grief to allow in and forget all at once. To let me sit down here again, as 7am approaches and the lights plays over the curtains casting yellow and blue strips across the room. AND here I am. Again. Re-starting. Ok. Let's go play. Thank you for your patience. ACM The Rainbow Curtains in the Living Room.
Sometimes crazy ideas work really well! A poor excuse, really. Why do you climb the mountains? "Because it's there." WHEN we engage our-selves in the outdoors and throw our lives out there on the line what do we discover? What do we learn? We find that we are in dangerous places, trudging through waist deep snow, poking at slopes with avalanche probes, watching rivers pummel themselves into furious white patterns and watching storm clouds race across the landscape towards us as we turn and run from the peak. IS this danger embraced will-fully and actively Because It Is There? Are we risking our body and mind and our very existance just because a few hundred thousand years ago some rock shifted and shaped these hills and mounded up this rocks, or because the action of the water over the last million years happens to have created this gorge. So it happens to be 'There'. And so we go up it, or paddle down it. 'BECAUSE it's there' is not enough. WHAT is a more reasonable answer? Because I will soon not be here. In the eyes of the hills and the views of the eons of river creations you are insignificant, very insignificant, in fact, you are completely insignificant. Our lives are transient as the water, flashing past. The world watches from the banks as we dash by in a flurry. HUMANITY has the power to alter the course of rivers, to change the faces of mountains. We can change the landscape as much as we desire, given enough time and enough money. IN the end, the world wins out. The mountains that we blast with explosives, the rivers we dam with concrete, the shapes we lay in the land will last out beyond us. They will not last forever, neither too will the mountains and rivers, their longevity is, however, far superior. NEXT time you harness up and tie in to a rope to scale a cliff, or launch your boat onto a river. Remind your-self why you are there, out in the big wide world of dramatic and dangerous landscapes. Because, some day, you will not be. Some day it will be someone else pulling on those holds, and dodging into that eddy. Then smile, exhale and go get your fun. BECAUSE you are there! Thank you ENGAGE more deeply in your activities, unlock the power of your mind and learn the power-full tools within you with my FREE course in visualisation CLICK HERE for more details. Performance online courses, focused mental training to allow your to perform more positively and find success easier, CLICK HERE to find out more. Bespoke personal coaching courses out there in the world of paddle sports and rock climbing also available, CLICK HERE to find out more. ACM Positive Passionate Power-full Performance. The track to the mountains.
Tryfan from behind Ogwen Cottage, Snowdonia, North Wales. I could not make this journey without you. I appreciate your time. I notice what you have done. I approve of your effort. I see that was difficult, you put in a lot of effort. I appreciate what you have done. I would love to do this again. I see you now. You have changed my world. You have made this easier for me. You have made this better for me. You listen and hear. You look and see. For dressing up. For showing up. For coming. For inspiration. For standing up. For sitting down. For listening. For talking. For speaking up. For calming down. For fighting my corner. For caring. For getting this show on the road. For pausing. For passing this way. For passing this way again. And again. Your footprints will stay in the sands of my life. My world is improved for your passing this way. Without you this would be a lonely, pain-full time. The magic word I am defining: Thank you. All I have to add, is thank you. Thank You. ACM More on mindset and language awareness in my online e-Courses, a series of twice weekly emails focused on adapting mental awareness to improve performance and gain success. Find out more: CLICK HERE Positive Passionate Power-full Performance. "...for opening the door..."
Yurt holiday in Hampshire, a whole new way to live. |
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AuthorAndy Clubley-Moore: joyful outdoor sports activist, writer, father, husband. Lover of life, activity, success and barefoot living. |