Be bold yet again!

As the school Easter holidays are now over, it was back to the "normal" routine in our household this morning. This meant doing my morning run at 6.30 a.m. again, which had been more like 8.00 a.m for the last two and a half weeks.

You would think that after running at 6.30 a.m. (and occasionally quite a bit earlier) right though the winter in the dark and the cold, sometimes on ice, I would find it quite easy now on my 481st consecutive day of running a morning mile, but not a bit of it.

I've just finished reading Steven Pressfield's two books (The War of Art and Do the Work) about resistance, how it is our real enemy that keeps us from living our "unlived life", and also that you can never vanquish it.

You have to overcome resistance anew every single day.

Steven Pressfield is spot on.

I have my run-a-daily-mile-plus habit embedded into my morning routine, to make it as easy as possible to do. I even lay my running kit out in a separate room before I go to bed so that I don't have to make a decision that might give me an excuse not to run , and so that I don't disturb anyone else in the house.

And yet, I still felt my resistance bristle this morning.

Why exactly am I still doing this?

Haven't I already proved my point?

There were other questions, which I can't remember, but there was also the feeling, I don't want to do this, this morning.

But, as Steven Pressfield says,

"The enemy is our chattering brain, which, if we give it so much as a nanosecond, will start producing excuses, alibis, transparent self-justifications, and a million reasons why we can't/shouldn't/won't do what we know we need to do.

"Start before you're ready."

And as Goethe also said,

"Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it."

Two Easter dips

We've been down in Hove since yesterday and I've enjoyed my first two dips (don't think I can really call them swims) in the sea in 2011.

In a matter of seconds of being in the sea my legs were aching from the cold, but I still loved it.

In fact, my Easter morning was perfect with a (just over) three mile run, out and back to the old burnt-out West Pier, followed by a bracing dip in the sea, and then breakfast in the back garden. And that was before any chocolate appeared.

I've already finished The War of Art and have moved on to Steven Pressfield's Do The Work, which is currently available form Amazon to download for free.

I'm currently sheltering from the sun. I never thought I'd be saying that in April, unless I was running a marathon.

The unlived life

What a glorious Good Friday.

I think my cold is on its way out, and if I hadn't had a tight deadline this morning I would have loved to expand my mile-and-a-third into a two, three or even five-miler.

I read something that I really like in one of the many different books that I'm dipping in and out of at the moment, this one is "The War of Art - Winning the Inner Creative Battle" by Steven Pressfield. I'm reading it on the Kindle application on my iPhone, which I'm quite enjoying using.

The phrase that I like is "Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance".

I identified with this immediately.

For most of my adult life, this phrase was, and also felt very strongly that it was, an almost uncanny description of my life.

These days I wouldn't have said it was true, until when I thought about it a little more, I realised that, while not as extreme as it used to be, there is still some truth in this for me.

I remember when I wrote me very first coaching tip back in 2004, I titled it "If I'm doing what I love, how come it's scary" (I hadn't got the hang of shorter clearer titles in those days).

I had an expectation back then that when I'd been coaching for a while and felt that I'd really got it, then it wouldn't be scary.

Now I know that scariness is actually a measure of how well I'm doing. If I'm not scared, then I am too comfortable, I'm simply retreading the well-trodden path without thinking too much, I don't have the energy of pushing past my own boundaries.

Scariness is good, and should always be there to keep me on my toes.

But while I'm living much more of my unlived life now, there is still more of it as yet unlived. And resistance is absolutely what is stopping me living it.

In the last few days I have been becoming more aware of what I think this unlived part of my life is.

My next step is to recognise my resistance, challenge it head on, and welcome the extra scariness that will come with pushing past it.

As Steven Pressfield says, in another of his books that I'm reading, I have to "Do the Work"!

The inexhaustible well

I ran my 470th consecutive daily mile this morning.

I've been struggling with a sore throat and cold for the past few days. I did think that telling people I hadn't even had so much as a cold since I started my mile-each-day might be tempting fate!

Oh well, it's good that it keeps being a challenge in one way or another.

There's a great quote I came across this morning from a book that I've started re-reading, Your Inner Coach by Ian McDermott & Wendy Jago. The quote goes,

"There's a whole world of wonder in you. It's like gaining access to a well that's inexhaustible, to a storehouse of power that's limitless. The more you dip in the more the water refills, because as you dip in and draw on it you stimulate it at its source."

I was thinking that something else that might be true is that the less you draw on that water, the less that the source is stimulated and therefore keeps in good working order. Also, water that just sits there and never flows in any way can become stagnant.

So, connecting to your subconscious, which I know I do when I run, is another great reason to run!

The art of non-conformity

What a beautiful morning and a lovely run across the golf course this morning.

It's been a great week with some new challenges, including facilitating a leadership development day in the parks of London, and another day facilitating several communications skills workshops to a hundred and fifty 16-year-olds.

And on top of that I had a birthday!

I've just started reading what looks, at first glance, to be a great book. It's called The Art of Non-Conformity, with the sub-title "Set Your Own Rules, Life the Life You Want and Change the World".

How could I not be attracted to a title like that?

I'll keep you posted.

Today's 3 questions

My 460th day of running a mile and the day after my 56th birthday.

All is good. I've just run my mile in the dark with my head torch again because I'm heading up to London quite early for the day.

My 3 key questions for myself today are:

• what could be perfect about this right now?
• who is it that I want to be?
• what do I choose now?