I like this feeling. It is so easy to get caught up in everything we want to do, the tasks, the dreams, the big goals, so much so that it is easy to acknowledge the simple momentum of everything we do.

When you go for a hike, focus on the momentum. When you ride a bike, focus on the momentum. When you write, focus on the momentum that every word creates. Feel the momentum, recognize it and applaud it.

This feeling of momentum can carry you through the day.

Why did she want to go on a run with me? I pondered this question.

What I have concluded is that the people around you see what you do. They see what you do not do. They see what you say, and not say. Whether we like it or not, or even believe it, we have influence on people. My granddaughter saw me go on a run everyday. She heard me talking about it (probably more than I needed to :) ). She then wanted to do it too.

She also has watched her Grammy, go to and teach Yoga. So, she wanted to do that too. Grammy bought her a yoga mat and yoga clothes for her birthday. This was the gift she was most excited about.

During our run together, we talked, we laughed, we spent quality time together. We were both “present in the moment”. I truly hope that these are the memories of me she will take with her for the rest of her life. I hope that she is influenced by the things that I do.

I hope we all keep this idea in mind as we go about our daily lives and routines.

We all have influence.

Biking and swimming are new to me. During my initial training, it has really hit home to me the power of always doing new things. Over the last 8 or 9 years, this has become one of my personal goals in life and I intend to continue. Sometimes it is not about the “what” you do, just do something new. Try it. Embrace it. Learn from it. Never stop doing new things.

Your brain can rewire itself, new things will take you out of comfort and will start to rewire itself. The technical term is “Neuroplasticity”. There are many detailed studies about this concept.

For me, it is simple. I enjoy the feeling and rush of “new”. It excites me. It builds mental strength and resilience.

Even at my age, it gives me a feeling of always moving forward. That is a good feeling.

I have come to realize that many of them may not happen. If they don’t come to pass as I have fully envisioned them, well, that I okay. It is does not diminish my self worth in anyway. ( at least that is what I keep telling my self )

I truly believe that the best dreams and goals to have is to always have a dream or a goal you want to accomplish. There is no end point, there is not a state of well being at the end of at the achievement. The state of well being and self worth is in the process.

I am always taken back to the first walk with Duder. I can envision that very first step out the door. At the time, there were no dreams, no goals, just a walk around the block.

Every single step I have since taken, is a step forward. I create forward momentum with each step.

There is no end destination, the destination is every single step.

One of the first lessons I learned from Duder, my dog, was to Take the Leash Off.

I started walking Duder on a daily basis. One day, I reach down, popped his leash off and let him run free. He took off running. This inspired me to evaluate my own leashes, things that were holding me back and start to process of removing these barriers in my life so that I could “Run Free”

Got me thinking…

This world is full of people. People that we interact with every single day. Each of these people have things to do, relationships they are working on, jobs they are trying to do their best at. At any given moment, they may have some stress or anxiety that is controlling their thoughts. Every one of us exists in a different stage of life. Some of us have hope, some do not.

One of my favorite quotes from the great Zig Ziglar, "You can get anything you want in life, if you help enough others get what they want."

This quote has taught me the power of thinking of others first.

All of these people we interact with may sometimes need something from us. They probably do not even know it. What they may need is something small. It is the little things that have the biggest impact. Maybe something like:

• A smile for a stranger

• A wave to the runner or biker you pass

• A text to an old friend, just to say hi

• Pay for the food of the person behind you

• Offer some food to homeless person you see

• Just plain listen to others

• Offer to help a colleague with a project

Do it purely out of kindness with no expectations of anything else.

I truly believe that we are all in this together and together we can make a difference in each other's lives.

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However, this never happened.

It is how I wanted it to happen. It is how I envisioned it would happen.

As I was making my way through the Toastmasters Speech competition, won first place at the district level. I advanced to the quarterfinals. I then had to wait for the email from the chief judge to announce the winners of the quarterfinals. When the email came through, it was quite the gut punch.

Is this a failure?

Is this a setback?

How do I move forward?

Question: When you want to do something, or accomplish something, how many times does it turn out exactly as you imagined it would?

For me, None.

Some thoughts on the subject.

- As the saying goes, do not put all your eggs in one basket. The visualization that I described earlier was one of about 4 scenarios that I had planned for. One of these plans was to not get selected. So, I was disappointed, but prepared.

- Sometimes the universe will give you what you need. Posts, texts and random interactions all seemed to be information that I needed to hear at that moment. Was the universe feeding it to me? Or was I looking for it.

- I purposefully do not like or use the word failure. I just plain do not like it. It brings up too many negative things. There is no such thing as failure. I simply want to be in the game. We have all heard of prominent people who at first, did not succeed and sometimes took years to reach success.

- How do you define success? Are we waiting for some magical metric that tells us we’ve made it? Are we waiting for the world to tell us we are successful? I have my own metrics for success, and they have nothing to do with the world.

- What are your targets? Dreams? Goals? If you do not have something to shoot for. Then none of these ideas I am talking about even mean anything. Make a list of goals. Pursue them.

Life goes on. I will be heading down one of the other paths that I had envisioned.

And you know what? I will enjoy the journey.

You can watch my Toastmaster Competition Speech here!!

I have had to revisit this idea many times over the last decade. What do I want? Sometimes there is no clear answer to this question and if you do not explore it then you will be and feel lost.

Finding what you want could take an entire lifetime. I spend 50 years of my life with only vague ideas of what I want. This meant that a great deal of my life was just coasting along, going with the flow, letting ‘life’ dictate my life for me.

I have now realized that you need to tell ‘life’ what you want. You do this by having dreams, setting goals, creating targets, giving yourself purpose.

Take some time and just write down anything and everything that you have ever thought about doing or having. Get it all out. What are the items on that list that make you smile and give you some energy. Sit back, take a look up at life and let ‘it’ know, that this is what you want.

You are now ready to do what you need to do. You can find the tools, techniques, and plans to go get that thing.

When you have specific intentions, life has a way to helping you out.

I see a sign up ahead. I stop and stare at it. It says:

50 K. turn right. 50 Miler, turn left.

If I turn right, I only have 1 or 2 miles left and I can be done. If I turn left, I have 20 miles left.

In the 30 seconds of staring at that sign, I had a plethora of emotions emerge:

Why am I doing this? Why should I keep going? Is it worth it? What will people think if I quit? What will I think of me if I quit? You are in pain, it is ok to stop. You signed up for the 50 miler, you have to finish. Just stop, you don’t want to hurt yourself. Man up and finish!!

I took a left and ended up finishing the last 20 miles.

As I look back, the true motivating thing that kept me going was what I would think about myself. It was not what anyone else would think. I wanted to keep the commitment that I made to myself more than anything.

Got me thinking…

How many “signs” are we faced in life? Do we go left or right? So many decisions we make every day, many of which we choose to keep us in our comfort zones.

My challenge to you is: do you know what decisions you will be the happiest with? Are you aware of what your true beliefs and virtues are? Are you driven by what others think or are you driven by what you think?

These are important questions. I spend a lot of time talking to myself in the mirror and trying to truly understand who I am and who I want to be. This has given me the awareness I need.

Every time I am faced with the sign to go left or right, I know which direction to go.

Everyone is going to have different answers and everyone’s answers will change over time and be impacted with life experiences.

I do have some very specific techniques that I have incorporated. The one I want to talk about today is my Me-Eulogy.

3 or 4 years ago, I did the exercise of writing your own eulogy. I sat down and spend a couple of days thinking about this. What did I want people to say about me? How did I want to be remembered. This is a great exercise and I highly recommend it to everyone.

Move forward a couple of years, I looked back on my eulogy and had a thought that some of what was driving my forward came from my Eulogy and what I wanted everyone else to think about me. I was doing things for everyone else, not me.

I decided to re-think the excercise. I sat down, took a couple of days and redid the experience. This time though, I envisioned Me in the casket, Me delivering the eulogy, and Me as the only one in the audience. I call this my Me-Eulogy.

You know what? The things I wrote down were different than my Eulogy. This truly got me thinking about my very personal virtues, personal values, and really hit home as to who I truly wanted to be. It was not about a list of things I accomplished. It was not about how I wanted to be documented and remembered in the worldly side of life.

It truly came down to the guy starting back at my in the mirror. Who is that guy and who do I want him to be.

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Here is some history: (taken from history.com)

The marathon may have ancient roots, but the foot race’s official length of 26.2 miles wasn’t established until the 20th century. The first organized marathon was run in Athens at the 1896 Olympics, the start of the Games’ modern era. The ancient games, which took place in Greece from around 776 B.C. to A.D. 393, never included such long-distance races.

The idea for the modern marathon was inspired by the legend of an ancient Greek messenger who raced from the site of Marathon to Athens, a distance of about 40 kilometers, or nearly 25 miles, with the news of an important Greek victory over an invading army of Persians in 490 B.C. After making his announcement, the exhausted messenger collapsed and died. To commemorate his dramatic run, the distance of the 1896 Olympic marathon was set at 40 kilometers.

For the next few Olympics, the length of the marathon remained close to 25 miles. But at the 1908 Games in London, the course was extended, allegedly to accommodate the British royal family. Reportedly, Queen Alexandra requested that the race start on the lawn of Windsor Castle (so the littlest royals could watch from the window of their nursery, according to some accounts) and finish in front of the royal box at the Olympic stadium—a distance that happened to be 26.2 miles (26 miles and 385 yards). The random boost in mileage ended up sticking, and in 1921 the length of a marathon was formally standardized at 26.2 miles (42.195 kilometers).

This distance is planted in the heads and minds of anyone who has ever run. It is a major milestone to accomplish.

This last Saturday, I went out for a long training run. I did 28.5 miles, about 2 miles more than the 26.2 distance. When I hit the 26 mile mark on my run, I remember having a feeling of “you are done, you need to stop”. It was almost like that distance is a limiting belief.

Your body will respond to what your mind tells it. 26.2 is a number that is planted in my head.

What if history was different and the distance for a marathon was 19.6 miles. Then our entire running community would be different and that distance would be that milestone that everyone wanted to reach.

Duder’s Challenge
26.2 is an odd number when you think about it.

I am working on my personal understanding of limits. I have lived my entire life with the world telling me what my limits are.

I am working to remove limits from my life and from my mindset. Ask yourself what is possible. Dream big. Visualize grand accomplishments.

I am running a 50 mile race in a few weeks. 26.2 will not limit me anymore.

When we would go out for a run, most days, Duder would have to stop and take a dump. Roxie and I would have to stop and wait for him. I would then pull out a poop bag, clean up the mess and then continue my run carrying this warm, smelly bag of poop.

Got me thinking…

I am trying the run and carrying this bag of Duder’s poop. Are there other aspects of my life where I am carrying about someone else’s poop? Are their people that have said things or done things that get into your head and you can’t get them out? There are so many things in life, events, people, and circumstances that are out of our control, yet we let them in and they can control us. We keep carrying that poop around.

Duder’s Challenge
First, we need to recognize that there are thoughts going on in our head that can drive us crazy and these thoughts serve no purpose except to bring us down.

How can we stop doing this? How can we get these thoughts out of our minds!!

One thing that I try to do is, stop and breathe, close my eyes, and visualize them in a big room with me. On one of the walls of the room is a big red door. I open the door and push them out, then close the door. This helps me to get them out of my mind.

Before our trip, a bit of an argument about something trivial began between the blonde and I. This continued in the car with the 6 year old in the back seat.

From my perspective, I was 100% in the right and the blonde was 100% in the wrong. But she would not listen to me and our little argument continued.

We got to store and the 6 year old came with me and the blonde went to a different part of the store.

As I was walking along, the six year old looked at me and said, “Beebop, you were rude. You are mean. You go tell grammy you are sorry right now. I’m going to tell my mommy on you.” (and yes, she did tell her mommy on me)

My first instinct was to state my case and argue with the 6 year old. But, holy cow. When your granddaughter informs you of how bad your behavior is, that hits home pretty hard.

I realized in that moment how right the 6 year old was and how wrong I was with my treatment of the blonde.

Duder’s Challenge

Maybe we need to make things a bit simpler for ourselves. Do we need to think like a 6 year old?

She was an observer to the emotions, not really understanding the words and why we were arguing. Her observation was that my emotions and actions were the bad behavior, and she was right.

If you begin an argument of any kind with anyone, imagine a six year old watching. What would they think about it?

Second challenge, never argue in front of your kids or grandkids!!

There are also easy sections: downhill, smooth, and straight.

You are always with yourself on the trail. You might have a partner or companion on the trail with you as well – maybe even a couple of dogs. You are all in it together.

There is beauty all around. There are trees, rocks, dirt, flowers, rivers, and waterfalls. There is a great deal to absorb and appreciate, so let the sun warm you, breathe the clean air, listen to the sounds surrounding you, and smile.

Life truly is about the journey.”

That is a quote from my book.

Duder’s Challenge

Are you waiting for something to happen to be happy? Are you waiting for someone else to give you peace? Are you waiting for the world to define your success for you?

We live our lives in our own heads. Life is what we make it, mostly by how we think about it. If you have a basic mindset that if you get that thing or accomplish that goal, then you will be happy, then this thinking will torture you for the rest of your life.

I challenge you to wake up every morning, look in the mirror and tell yourself that you are happy. Tell yourself that you have found peace. Be happy and peaceful.

It has taken me 7 years to think about and truly appreciate the idea of life as the journey. I try to embrace it, acknowledge it, and enjoy it.

I am processing the experience with some internal pride and gratitude that I was able to complete the race.

Two months ago, as I was preparing for the race, I sat down and wrote myself a letter. I want to share that letter with you:

Hey Jeff,

You did it. You endured the pain and the agony. You found the inner strength to keep going and you reached the finish line. Congrats!! This is a big deal.

I watched you cross the finish line. You had big grin on your face. Holly was there waiting for you and cheering you on. That one final step across the line felt great!!

Nice work. This is a huge milestone for you and I am proud of you. You deserve it.

Jeff

This basic idea of visualizing the end results played a role in many ways. In my mind, I had already finished the race. I visualized myself crossing the finish many, many times. I had no doubt in my mind that I was going to finish.

With the mind fully committed, the body reacted accordingly and performed as it needed to get me through. The mind body connection is very powerful.

Duder’s Challenge
This basic concept of visualization can be applied in any aspect of your life. Here are some ideas:

• Create a vision board with pictures of goals and targets to achieve.

• Write many letters to yourself from the future with details about accomplishment.

• Find daily mantras to keep your vision top of mind every day.

Live in the challenge.

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