Tag: stress

still runnin’

Hey all,

I think things are becoming more normalized in my life in a “the only constant is change” sort of way. It’s becoming clear to me that; as I reflect on the past in an ongoing exercise to reconcile the future, things were always in flux, always changing. Moments of total chaos followed by a brief reprieve, followed by a mixture of happy and sad events.

They say “if you’re going through Hell, keep going,” and although the horizon sometimes feels like a Hellscape, I’m reminded and comforted by the fact that without bad days, you wouldn’t know what a good day feels like. Silver linings… dark clouds…

I used to write a lot about the 4 food groups – pressure, stress, time, and friction -as a way of ensuring growth and development. All beautiful things are a product of these 4 painful elements of life… it’s how diamonds are formed, it’s how babies are born, and it’s how seeds become flowers. I was on about that quite a bit through the pandemic as I trained for a triathlon and a half-marathon, and the main difference between those bouts of struggle and these bouts of struggle was that I chose those ones, whereas the ones that I’m finding on all sides of me now are not of my choosing.

Or are they?

There’s an inevitability with life that it will end. Grieving will occur and gratefulness for the time spent will come into view eventually. Between now and then, there will be graduations, student loans, stock market fluctuations, mortgage renewals, moving days, tattoo appointments, triathlons, work days, thunderstorms, vehicle payments, computer crashes, gigs, records, trips to the mall, new furniture, declining credit cards, birthdays, holiday weight…

… you get it.

And guess what – we choose the vast majority of it, one way or another. I suppose that’s why our biggest problems and traumas come from the things we didn’t – or wouldn’t – have chosen for ourselves. Nobody chooses their parents… nobody chooses to be held up at gunpoint… nobody chooses to be assaulted… nobody chooses to be gaslit or gossiped about… nobody chooses disordered thinking, or disordered eating, or chronic illness, or anything like that.

But they do choose what to do about it.
And what I know now through both first-hand and second-hand learning,
is that it’s never too late to make a change, and take control of your circumstances.

And so… I keep runnin’… both physically and mentally… literally and figuratively.

step back

“I know for a fact that the blessing outweigh the curses, but I certainly have a propensity for focusing on what I don’t have, and even worse – what I don’t have anymore.”

I’ve spent a bit of time taking inventory of what I’ve got – not so much with material things, though that’s been happening a bit, too – but with the more intangible blessings and curses. I know for a fact that the blessing outweigh the curses, but I certainly have a propensity for focusing on what I don’t have, and even worse – what I don’t have anymore.

I imagine I’m not alone. I’ve heard it described as an evolutionary trait from previous iterations of survival, where we focus on the more dangerous and threatening things more than we do the gracious and joyous where, for example, we might overlook something as nice and inviting as a fruit tree while focusing on venomous snakes, because as wonderful as a fruit tree is, missing it won’t kill you the way a venomous snake might. Chemically, we would be on high alert, triggering what we now commonly call our ‘fight or flight response’ upon observing such a threat.

This is problematic now, as we’re constantly in a state of fight or flight due to the stresses of everyday life – work, money, rush hour traffic, etc. – causing us to contend with; among other things, stress and anxiety – which is literally the body’s response to being in a heightened state for far too long. This means that even those of us who wouldn’t necessarily refer to ourselves as anxious or stressed out are still in a heightened state most of the time, that stress just manifests differently.

The commonality for all of us; though, is a focus on the negative.

But to step back and take an objective look at what we have going on is not only difficult, and not only important, but also relieving. The truth is that everything is amazing. Alone, the fact that most of us walk around with the combined information of the known universe in our pockets is an incredible feat. Myself; I have a lovely home, and beautiful girlfriend and an amazingly smart kid, and a wonderful dog. I play in a great rock & roll band and I drive a cool car, I have a cool job. I get tattoos from incredible artists and have been to exotic locations… yet for some reason all that takes a back seat when I get a toothache, or when one of our bicycles gets stolen… or when I don’t like the number on the bathroom scale.

What are you grateful for? That’s a question we’re met with every morning, before we even have opportunity to scrape the crud from our eyes, and it truly sets the tone for the day. Sure, we get pulled off course from time to time, but in the grand scheme it’s of little consequence when we stop to really evaluate what we have.

It’s always easier said than done, but it’s an important, objective look at where you’re at – and as soon as you can do that with regularity, all the while understanding that you can’t control anything except your reaction… then you’ve really got something.