The Best Part of Any Challenge...

If you listen to the wrong voices, it won't take you long to become convinced that, no matter what you're doing, you have no hope and you're destined to fail.

You're not good enough...

You don't really have time to do it right...

The economy is kicking your butt...

No one is hiring...

The instructor is the worst I've ever seen...

Depending on what you're trying to accomplish, you can easily find a way to excuse yourself and give up... if that's what you're into. (Of course, this brings up the classic question: If you're trying to fail, and you succeed, did you really?...I digress)

If you spend time reading blogs like this one, odds are that you have some level of ambition...some kind of goal in mind for where you're headed and you're likely wrestling with it on a daily basis.  You're also probably a lot like me in that you know a number of other people who have some goals that they are working on, as well. Some are just plain goofy. (A friend of mine once counted how many times he went to the bathroom in a year.) And others are completely life-changing. (Change your health, change your life.)

At the risk of making things sound overly simple and cliched, I want to refer all of you to an article I read about athletic accomplishment.  In short, the article lays out the point that those who enjoy the process of getting to their goal are much more likely to reach the "win." In other words, if you can figure out a way to enjoy those interviews, find amusement in how much you sweat during that workout, make a game out of teaching yourself the things that the instructor is missing, you're much more likely to get to the end of the process and be "grinning like the cheshire cat." That's how my mom would put it.

The best part of any challenge has got to be the getting there part.  Otherwise, the accomplishment, will have a bit of a hollow quality to it...just another flash-in-the-pan.

I'm going to offer something today I haven't done before. If you are in the middle of a challenge in your life that is very important to you and you are finding little or no ability to enjoy some element of the process, I want to invite you to email me about your situation (find my email address below). I would love to do all I can to help.  I'm not an expert, but I do believe that when we help each other, each of us is better off. Please put "FINDING FUN" in the subject line so I don't miss you. I figure this is the least I can do. After all, you've already made my life more fun just by being a reader.

Email me at jasonbterry at me dot com. I look forward to hearing from you!

Breadcrumbs

Do you guys remember that uber-freaky story about Hansel and Gretel? You know, the one where they leave a trail of breadcrumbs to get home but wind up getting trapped and almost cooked by that wicked witch, which we all envisioned as the most vile of monsters? Well, it turns out that leaving a trail of where you've been isn't always going to get you thrown into a furnace...

Last night I posted this picture on my instagram:

...then I started wondering...why are runners (like me) so obsessed/excited about our medals? Do we use them to imagine ourselves on the podium at the Olympics? Are they Brazilian power crystals in disguise? Wait...are runners and their medals really any different from other people with other stuff?

I have a diploma on my wall...
I have a couple of dated golfballs in my office...
I have a deer head hanging in my living room...
I have a wedding ring on my finger...

There are moments in all our lives, some big, others huge, that we would like to hold onto. Since we can't stop the clock we just take things with us... like the kid still wearing that church camp bracelet in February...and this can be crazy-empowering or wicked crippling and that all depends on your motivation.

If you're holding onto things from your past because you see that times past were great and you are worried that things may never be that good again, you're slowly killing yourself. But if you hold onto things as reminders of the amazing trajectory that your life possesses and of the excitement of knowing that the next level of greatness is right around the corner then that's a horse of a different color (kinda like my medal).

We don't always hold on to physical stuff, either...our emotional souvenirs can be just as empowering or debilitating.  I think one of those is called "motivation" and the other is called "baggage."

So what have you recently held onto? Why did you grab a hold? Take stock of the souvenirs lining your proverbial shelves and see if you can discern a pattern...do these things excite you or depress you? Be intentional about the markers you set up in your mind and in your soul and make sure they push you forward rather than hold you back.

As far as this medal is concerned... I'm REALLY looking forward to running a half-marathon in 1:56:17.

From Knoxville, With Love

Don't you love those lists where they rank cities according to different things? SanFrancisco, you're the best when it comes to being outdoorsy. Seattle, you seem to be the most active city in America. On the other end of the spectrum, Orlando takes the cake...no pun intended...for being the fast food capital of the country (In fairness, the most prominent chain is Subway).

In the last two weeks, our lovely little Knoxville has taken the prize in not one, but two national surveys. Either one of them on their own is worth a little bit of conversation by the watercooler to be sure, but when you put them together, particularly over a span of just a couple of weeks, you have a prestidigitatingly rich soil for all sorts of pontification. What are the two honors, you ask?

First, Barna Group recently released some new studies that dig deeply into the presence or absence of a Biblical mindset in major US cities... atop the list? Knoxville. Boom.

Second, Amazon just released some numbers that led them to claim, based on volume and types of items purchased across the country (I'll let you imagine the possibilities), that Knoxville is the most romantic city in the United States.

At first glance, these might seem like a couple of quirky facts about a little mid-sized city in East Tennessee, but what interests me is the fact that a lot of people would probably look at this and, considering the number of Marvin Gaye albums and "sexual wellness products" consumed by Knoxvillians, believe these two titles to be diametrically opposed, but are they?

The Bible tells us tons about how to love one another. Doesn't it seem reasonable to think that people with the "most Biblical mindset" should also be doing a good job of loving their special someones? What do you think? How would you explain the simultaneous holding of these two city-wide distinctions? As for me and my house, we'll be doing all we can to maintain both with gusto.

The Purest Compassion

I just finished a book called "Born to Run" by Christopher McDougall. (moment of silence for all the runners out there) Let me nutshell this thing for you...

author runs
author is hurt all the time
author is too stubborn to take medical advice (kudos to him)
author searches for enlightenment about his quandary
author ends up in a lost part of Mexico, searching for a guy that may or may not exist.
author finds the guy
guy introduces author to tribe of indians who run like its their job
author learns about their culture in totality
author gains a great amount of knowledge and understanding and runs like crazy and without injury to this day.

got it? good.  wanna know what the indians big secret was? ...a smile. They smile when they run, and not only because they're having fun, but because they believe they do it for everyone they love. The whole village seems to revolve around running.  one quote from a later chapter in the book stood out to me:

"It's easy to get outside yourself when you're thinking about someone else."

He's right. Have you ever been motivated to do something hard because of someone else's need? Heard about 100 lb women lifting cars off of babies? These guys (and all of us, the author argues) are capable of running down wild animals to kill them with their bare hands... they are all so physically fit that they could have one heck of a brawl and everyone would be dead in a minute, but instead, they have more compassion than most of us imagine possible.

Here's a question: I'm not sure what it would take, but let's say you make me so mad that I'm ready to beat you to a bloody pulp. Just before I lay into you, something gets my attention and I decide to let your trespasses slide.  You may or may not be amazingly grateful for my decision, depending on how intimidating you find me...which is prolly not very... i'm 5'9" and 160 soaking wet. Now play out the same scenario in your mind, but put Mike Tyson in my place.  Yeah,... you just became a fountain of gratefulness.

Here's my point. To me, one of the biggest reasons to take care of yourself, to sharpen your skills, to become the most powerful version of yourself is this. Compassion is at its finest when it comes from the most unexpected places.  In the same way that a bridle and bit can keep a clydesdale in line, so should we be able to control our wraths and mercies. Don't get me wrong, these are great traits for anyone to display, but if you really want to amaze people, spend your whole life getting strong enough to crush anyone or anything that crosses your path and then softly wipe the fearful tears from the eyes of the very people, of whom, everyone expects you to make an example.

PS., Just for fun, I included a video of the author discussing some of his learning while on his "running journey." It's pretty amazing stuff. Enjoy.

Super Bowl Ads... did you notice this?

Okey Dokey...
So after driving four and a half hours to get home with a ticking time-bomb in the back seat (aka, my son, who currently has RSV and whose body is producing enough snot right now that it makes him puke on a semi-regular basis.... seriously, i never want to see that in my rear-view mirror ever again) I was excited to be home in time to catch a few Super Bowl commercials... Then I saw them.... It was quite disappointing... Did anyone else think we saw an inordinate amount of commercials for CBS TV shows? And what was up with all those beer commercials that weren't even funny? It's just wrong.

I digress...

Here's what I did see in an ad that I thought was at least somewhat entertaining...

Did you catch that? From :05 to :14 there's some small text at the bottom of the screen that reads "fictionalization." Was that really necessary? Okay, maybe we should give them the benefit of the doubt here. After all, a LOT of things happened in that nine seconds

Is it actually impossible to swim in water like that?
Do lifeguards not actually jump in to save people any more?
Are you telling me that guy didn't actually punch a great white shark in the face?
Do great white sharks really exist?
Should I discount any ideas I had of being able to carry my wife like that in the future?
I think he was breathing there... is that no longer possible?

Bottom line is this (no pun intended)... Every time I see one of those little disclaimers on an ad what I read is "All the people watching this are so stupid that we can't possibly count on them to be able to distinguish this ridiculous ad from real life. Therefore, we'll put this single line of insanely small text up here for a few seconds, and thereby keep our butts out of trouble when one of them inevitably tries to punch a shark in the face."

We are living in an age of ever-decreasing personal responsibility. Just for once, can't a civil court judge somewhere just look someone in the eye and just tell them to quit being an idiot? Anyone with me on this?