Pre Season

Tomorrow marks the end of my most recent cyber retreat and I managed to take the longest breaks yet from email and (even) opening my computer. I'm tapping on M's machine right now. I thought that I'd share some observations from this period. It's been my longest chosen break from training _and_ work that I can remember.

It's pretty tough to truly do nothing -- I had a fortnight of pretty low output and found myself getting a bit tense with not taking any action. That surprised me but, I suppose, that it shouldn't have been that surprising to discover that I am hooked on action. The three people that know me the best have (in their own ways) told me over the years that I have an action bias and, often, the best action is no action.

I was very interested in that stuff that I wrote about last time so I reviewed the full length director's cut of What The Bleep as well as watching the supplemental interviews. I also got myself a copy of The Quantum World (2nd Edition, By Ford) to read. The last time I read a physics text book was when I was 17. It was a good mental exercise to try to follow along with taus, quarks and neutrinos.

While the film's suggestions (implied to me) about the wisest way to live one's life make complete sense -- we create our own experience in any situation. I didn't feel the same scientific basis for bridging quantum physics into our experience of reality. My experience is the same as the main players in the movie -- my views are very similar -- but -- I didn't see the scientific underpinning (yet) for the step to quantum reality. Still, I was remined of a very good lesson in the form of a question...

How often do we reject a good idea because of our view of the messenger?

Far too often, I think.

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Following my foray into physics textbooks, I needed a bit of a break and pretty much stopped reading for a few days. The next book that I picked up is called The Anatomy of Peace. I suppose that peace is interesting to me right now because I sense that more and more people are thinking that escalating war is inevitable. It certainly is if nearly everyone starts to think it is (creating our reality).

Quite a few famous Asian authors talk about breaking the cycles within our lives and the book shares some ideas about how we can stop feeding the conflicts within ourselves and our own lives. It was a great reminder of a few things within my own life as I've been thinking a lot about the patterns and habits that I've been following with regard to my work & athletics. Many of these patterns have been highly successful but which ones have been holding me back. I'm off on a retreat this coming weekend to gain some ideas on where I hold myself back.

I've also trimmed my Top Ten list -- actually I've made a sub-set. I chose the two things that are most important to me from October 2006 to August 2007. The internet and my site didn't make the cut -- so you'll see me taking a much lower profile. I'm going ahead with... Early November, Colorado Springs, CO -- USAT Long Course Clinic, see the USAT website or email me for details. I have a few more things planned -- Epic Camps and Talks but I will be creating more space for my Top Two as one of my patterns has been extremely high productivity from high scheduling. I'm going to schedule less so that I can achieve a deeper success in my two areas of focus.

What is success? More than 8:20, I've come to realise that the true nature of the game is to see how close I can come to my ultimate potential. I sat down and mapped it out and came up with 8:17 in Penticton.

Why do it again? It is a search for the deep satisfaction that came in 2003 & 2004 from knowing that on-the-day, I had a race that came very close to my personal potential on-the-day.

So that's a point on the Top Two. The other one is M and I've been thinking a lot about her Top Two list -- atleast how it appears to me. In my heart, I know that we have alignment between ourselves. If you read any David Deida then (my view) of our relationship falls into some (but not all) of his concepts. M tends to experience "us" more than meditating on "us" like I do.

I'll be around a bit less over the next few months. I won't be ending anything. Rather, I'll be focusing on a couple of other areas that will enable me to make a deeper contribution when I return.