I ran

I have just taken on a challenge - to imagine that I have only fifteen minutes to live, and to write the story that needs to be told.

Life hangs on a thread and is precious, a true gift and a blessing.

You can spend your life looking at all the things that are wrong with it and how it doesn't compare to others, or you can live it fully - wonder at the incredible luck that you are here at this moment in time.

Is it all about living a huge life and stretching yourself?

Life is whatever you want it to be.

The most important thing you can do is be aware, honest and responsible for where you are now and decide for yourself where it is you want to go. What is the journey you would most like to make?

You had also better build in a healthy dose of relationships and being of service to others.

You may not feel that as a desire right now, but I'm pretty convinced that at some point in time, that will become important to you.

What else needs to be said? I do believe that we are intricately connected and I also subscribe to that whole philosophy of what you do to others (people, animals, the planet), you do to yourself.

I came across an inspiring idea recently that is new to me although not new as a concept.

When certain tribes of native American Indians set goals, they set them seven generations ahead, which is the equivalent of about a hundred years in our money.

What difference would that make to you to set your goals beyond your time on this planet? How different would your goals look?

I'm not saying you shouldn't have your own goals, but make sure they include what you want to have, what you want to do and who you want to be. Then see how they fit in with your hundred year goals.

As has often been said, it is not the planet we are killing with our focus on short-term profit and gain. The planet will probably still be here long after we're gone. It's ourselves as a species and the other species that we share this planet with, that we destroy with our constant greed and desire for luxury and convenience.

Studies on happiness have also discovered that taking the easy way, such as using our cars instead of using our own power, reduces our levels of happiness.

The power we are looking to obtain won't fulfill us if we don't make use of the power that already exists within us, that we give up in our endless search for short cuts and convenience.

How did I use my power?

I ran.

Am I TOO rested?

I ran a VERY gentle mile-and-a-bit yesterday morning as I'd been without food for the previous twenty hours.

After a quick shower I then sauntered up to my local hospital for an appointment to have a colonoscopy, just to check my internal workings were up to scratch.

When I was being checked in they gave me the heart rate and blood pressure check, and the nurse seemed a little surprised that my resting heart rate was lower than it should be (outside the normal range apparently).

Does this mean that I've been practicing my resting far too much and have become exceedingly proficient at it?

Was I far less worried than I should have been about the impending medical procedure?

Might the efficiency of my heart have been improved by my 505 days of consecutively running a mile each day?

Is there a potential problem with my heart?

While the nurse said that I should mention it to my doctor next time I see him (no need for a special appointment), I can't help thinking that the reason for my low resting heart rate is more likely to be one of, or all of, my first three above possibilities than the latter one, but who am I to judge?

Anyway, although I'm still not supposed to drive, drink alcohol or operate heavy machinery until at least lunchtime today (not that I anticipate doing them then, at least not all at once), this morning I planned for another gentle mile-and-a-bit, as I gather I still should have some anesthetic in my system.

However I felt so strong that I boosted the run to a pretty quick two-miler and I feel great!

Oh and I had the best results from my colonoscopy than the previous three I've had over the last eleven years too.

Do you think there might be something in this running a mile each day lark?

The lesson of 500

This morning Nicky came with me for a gentle just under 3-miler, which was impressive for her as she hasn't run for months.

For me it is a day for celebration as it was my 500th consecutive day of running at least a mile, and I feel rather proud.

I wonder why that is, as it's nothing spectacular to run a mile, and it's also not spectacular to run a mile the next day either. Actually, thinking about it, it's not spectacular to run a mile every day for 500 days.

It's something to do with the idea I thought of fairly recently of pushing the ordinary far enough that it might become extra-ordinary.

I'm not suggesting that I'm extraordinary, or even that running a mile each day is extraordinary. It's just that at some point ordinary with enough commitment becomes something that is a bit beyond the ordinary, whilst still being ordinary, if that makes sense.

For me, the people I really look up to as "heroes" probably wouldn't see themselves as such in any way, because they are ordinary people doing ordinary things who have pushed themselves beyond what I, and others, consider reasonable.

If I think back to when I started this experiment, I would not have considered it possible for me to still be doing my daily mile. That's what feels great.

And yet, although for a large number of the 500 days I have had to overcome resistance to do my mile or so, on its own each of those small wins wasn't that big a deal.

It's when I add up the small wins and keep putting one foot in front of the other, I suddenly realise that I am capable of far more than I ever gave myself credit for.

Now that's a lesson that could make a huge difference in my life, if I can bring that to every aspect of my life!

Time to wake up

I've been rather remiss on my blog postings of late.

The running is still going on, in fact this morning's two miles was my 494th day of running at least a mile each day, and Sunday's run will (hopefully) be my 500th consecutive day.

I've had really different experiences from my morning runs over the past three days.

Saturday I felt more powerful running than I had in ages.

Sunday I ran 5K and my legs were still asleep when I finished.

This morning I felt pretty strong again.

I'm currently feeling a little challenged by how I'm going to manage my mile on Saturday the 21st (which should be day 506), as I'm due to have a procedure in the local hospital that day.

Someone told me at a conference on Friday, that they see me as someone who wakes people up.

Well, I know I do that pretty well for myself, albeit often with the help of either an alarm clock or a cat that wants me to feed her, and I frequently do it for the other members of my house, but I think she meant it in a slightly different way.

I like to think that I awaken others, and sometimes myself, to all the possibility that's out there all the time. It's just about allowing ourselves to see it.

As I asked myself on this morning's run, what could make this the best day of my life?

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"!