Positive Thinking post 4 of 5 -- Newton's First Law

This is the fourth in a series of five posts on creating a positive mindset to start 2018. On Christmas Day, I discussed how the week between Christmas and New Year's is a great time to reset our goals for 2018.  Following that, I'm writing a series of five posts this week on how to use positive thinking to set us up for success in 2018.  My first post discussed the principle of doing no harm in our thoughts, words and actions and its relationship and practical application to positive thinking.  My second post discussed how to apply compassion to help maintain a positive mindset in the face of negative influences.  Yesterday's post discussed the importance of a consistent practice of positive thinking to fight against the tide of entropy and decay that will, if left unchecked, allow negative thinking to grow and take root.  Tomorrow, I will conclude this little exercise with some thoughts on positive thinking in response to, and in the face of, obstacles and disappointment when we don't fulfill our goals. 

Today's post is on Newton's First Law and how to apply it to start a practice of positive thinking even from the most unhappy and negative points in our lives.  It is a cruel irony that when we are at our lowest -- at our most desperately unhappy point -- we find it hardest to start the long climb up.  It is also a cruel irony that when we are at a place of contentment and satisfaction, and when it would be easiest to incorporate a practice of positive thinking, we are least motivated and least likely to spend the effort required to start it.  In the first situation, shifting our focus to positive thinking would be a very effective way to give us what we need -- a way out of the darkness, while in the second situation, positive thinking would be an effective way of ensuring that we maintain equanimity and stay away from the darkness that waits below. 

Newton's First Law 

Newton's First Law is the law of inertia: a body at rest will stay at rest and a body in motion will stay in motion unless acted on by an unbalanced force.  The cruelty of inertia is the "unbalanced force" part.  It takes a disproportionately large expenditure of energy to start that initial push into motion.  The benefit of inertia is that once that energy is expended, it takes a relatively smaller (although not necessarily small) amount of energy to stay in motion.  Think of any exercise session -- the hardest part is starting out.  The toughest part of any run for me is always the first mile, or the first 12-15 minutes (I'm a really, really slow runner). After that, it gets a lot easier.  Even sprints and pick-ups, where I'm running a lot harder, feel somehow easier than thise first "easy" 12-15 minutes.

It is the same with changing our patterns of thinking from negative to positive.  That first push -- that first commitment to change -- is always the hardest.  After that, each subsequent step builds on the first until the effort to continue is relatively smaller, even if such effort is not necessarily small.  So if we've fallen far down into our own despair and nothing in our lives seems to be working, how do we climb up?   The trick is that the first small step can be very small indeed. It can even be very, very small.  What matters is not the size of the effort. What matters is not even the result of that effort.  What matters is just that some effort is made to overcome the emotional inertia.  

You versus the Volcano 

Picture that you are heading towards the rim of a volcano. Clearly change must be made or you'll fall into a pit of molten lava.  But the only change urgently required in first instance is to stop.  Turning around, walking in the opposite direction, running if need be -- that can all come later. The first step is just to stop heading towards the center of that volcano. You don't want to stay near the crater too long just waiting for it to explode.  But one small step at a time is a more than fine way to start.

"No matter how many steps you have taken down the wrong path -- turn around." -- Turkish proverb 

Personally, I have found it surprising how quickly momentum can build when we make a consecutive series of small, healthy changes. I saw it when I faced my own serious health crisis two years ago.  Within 18 months of consecutive small changes (along with a lot of help and guidance from some very good people), I accomplished more than I ever thought possible for myself.  As for positive thinking -- after a series of minor but debilitating injuries this year a lot of my plans for the year have been dashed.  That caused me quite a lot of despair at times and it has been a struggle to maintain a healthy and positive attitude in the face of those ongoing setbacks. I tried to build up my spirit the same way I tried last year to build up my body (once again, with generous help from some very good people).  I took little steps, one step at a time.

So if things are going well for you and you are still reading these posts, perhaps you will choose to spend a few minutes thinking about starting a practice of your own. Perhaps just reading about the practice has already started to allow a few seeds of positive thinking to take root.  If, however, things are stressful and dark and difficult, even the smallest amount of effort can seem impossible.  but this is when changing our thoughts is most critically important. So just take little steps, one step at a time.  That is often all we can do.  But the good news is that it turns out to be plenty.

Priorities, limits and costs. And an incrementalism update

Since Thanksgiving, work has been brutal; late nights every night, weekend work every weekend and a 24 hour trip to New York thrown into the mix. With those work hours, sticking to a daily training schedule has been close to impossible. So I've had to draw on my own lessons from this blog and make up some new ones. Or rather write down some lessons that I have used but not previously articulated.  

Do what you can do 

The old lesson of "just don't do nothing" has been in my mind except I've had to adapt it to a weekly outlook instead of a daily outlook. I've committed to get up at 4:55 on Tuesdays and Thursdays to meet Josh for the SwimMAC masters swim class. Even that modest goal ran into obstacles when I had to pull some really late nights at the office and an all-nighter of 32 hours straight..  Some Tuesday night conference calls aside, I've been able to get to the track for some (but not all) of Fillnow Coaching's weekly run classes. Otherwise, no other training has gotten done on weekdays.  On weekends, I've kept up my long runs and other weekend workouts until this past weekend, when my wife took my daughter to Atlanta to see a comedy show and I was working from home the whole weekend while watching my 9-year old son.  

Simon gradually realizes that he's over-qualified to diagnose this problem. 

I planned a trainer ride on Saturday but my new electric shifting wasn't working, requiring a house call from Simon at The Bike Depot in Waxhaw, who was super nice to come try diagnose the problem. After some head scratching, he concluded it must be a dead battery, which was weird since the system was practically brand new. So I recharged the derailleur batteries Saturday night and discovered that I had a dead or faulty coin cell battery in the right shifter. After fixing that low tech problem Sunday morning, I got in 45 minutes of riding Watopia on Zwift. One lucky discovery was that in setting up Zwift on AppleTV Saturday night, I never ended the ride because I never started the ride.  So on Sunday afternoon, there I was, all alone in Watopia on a London day. So I had the whole island to myself. 

Solo ride in an abandoned, post-apocalyptic Watopia.  

So far so good for my weekend trainer ride  but I couldn't go on a 1:45:00 long run until my wife got home and she didn't get back until 7:30 pm.  I had to work from home quite a bit on Sunday and the last thing I felt like doing was going for a run in the dark between 7:40 and 9:25 pm. 

So that brought up two unpleasant options: get up at 6 am Monday and run in the cold and dark before work, or skip my long run. This was a problem since I really didn't want to do a 6:30-8:15 am long run to start the busiest work week of the year and I also felt very nervous about the prospect of skipping what I regard as by far my most important workout of every week. Option 2 was really tempting.  It is so nice to stay in bed and so unpleasant to get up in the cold and dark to go for an almost two hour run starting in the cold and dark. But I didn't skip it. I laid out my run clothes on Sunday night, packed my work clothes and went to bed at 9:30 pm so I would feel decent getting up at 6 am Monday. What convinced me to forego my comfort and get that run done?  

Use goals to impose a cost to missing workouts  

This is where my Winter Race Ladder really came in handy. The weekend after New Year's I have a 10k, then a month after that I have a 15k, then the month after that I have a half marathon. That's a lot of running races between now and March and Kelly is building up my distance gradually and incrementally to get me ready for each of these races, as well as a half ironman exactly six months from this Christmas Eve blog post. 

I have had to accept that I cannot fulfill all of my scheduled workouts during December due to extreme work demands, but I have a bull's eye on the calendar for every week's long run. I got really nervous over the thought of letting two whole weeks go by between long runs. In the end, my unwillingness to do an early Monday morning long run lost out to my own plan to run a race a month from December through March. I knew that the winter race ladder would be motivating but I did not foresee that one day it would be the difference between staying in bed and getting it done. I felt the cost of missing that run would be too high.

Establish clear priorities from your goals  

Having set my race goals for the winter, the priority became pretty clear.  I'm an endurance athlete, and a really slow one at that. My most important workout of the week right now is my long run so that I can build the endurance necessary for the half marathon in March and then another half marathon at the end of a half ironman in June.  Knowing that priority and its importance created a lot of clarity and focus.

Respect your limits and your priorities  

The sun came up quickly and the early morning light made for a great run.

the flip side of honoring your priorities is to also respect your limits.  With the hours I've been working this month, I did not feel it would be healthy or even possible to fit in all my workouts.  So rather than pick at random, I committed to do my Tuesday /Thursday masters swim classes, Tuesday night run class, my Saturday workout and my Sunday long run. I wasn't even able to hit all of these every week. But when push came to shove, I drew a line in the sand at my long runs.  

Talk the talk. Then walk the walk  

I have found it to be really important to maintain positive thinking and to take concrete steps to ensure that I stay positive and fight against the constant tide of negative thoughts that confront us, especially when we are tired and busy. Maintaining this blog helps me a lot as it makes me think about my workouts and my bigger plan. Having a coach also helps to keep me accountable. And making an effort to be a positive and supportive force for my friends when they are struggling to get active keeps me exercising to keep me honest: it was a Monday night motivational email to a friend who was struggling with getting started with a fitness plan that got me out of bed at 4:45 Tuesday morning for my first masters swim class!  After sending that long and encouraging email to my friend on Monday night, I couldn't face the hypocrisy of sleeping in on Tuesday morning!!

Update on incrementalism 

As painful as it was to start out that long run last Monday morning, it ended up feeling really good and being a critical building block on the road to all of my running plans for 2018.   

Kelly is sticking with the run /walk plan. This long run was structured as a 8 min run/2 min walk, 9 min run/1 min walk, 10 min run/1 min walk, repeat to 1:45:00. I got in 8.19 miles at about a 12 minute average pace during the run intervals. My next long run is another 1:45:00 run, all at 9 min run /1 min walk intervals, preferably on trails (i.e. with hills).

The week after that is the Joe Davis Memorial 10k in Fort Mill, South Carolina and after that the distances keep ramping up. So missing my weekly long run is the one line in the sand I won't cross!

Pick your priorities and follow your path. 

Suffering is the Currency of Growth

I think at this point that it should seem really obvious to me but I am constantly amazed at how closely connected my experiences in  endurance training and racing are to my experiences in the rest of my life.  More specifically, I am amazed at how the lessons I learn in training and racing triathlon translate so directly to the lessons I need to learn in confronting the challenges of my day to day life. 

Suffering has a cost, but also has rewards 

I talk a lot about how triathlon saved my life by yanking it out of the clutches of diabetes. But almost more importantly, triathlon saved my life by teaching me that suffering is not inherently bad; it is simply the currency of growth. I say this not to minimize anyone's particular experiences with suffering: there is a lot of suffering in the world and there is also a lot of pointless suffering.  I believe the only appropriate response to someone else's suffering is compassion.  But in many cases, if we can learn to pay attention to ourselves without judgment, our suffering can teach us exactly what we need to learn and can become our most effective incentive for growth.  And this is a lesson I learned exclusively from endurance sports. 

Lessons from deep in the pain cave 

I will always remember my first experience with real triathlon-related suffering.  I was on the really, really hilly 10k run course at my first Olympic/international distance triathlon in Pinehurst, North Carolina. I still remember the run course description on the SetUp Events website: "the run course is tough." Given the universal propensity for race organizers to downplay course difficulty in the course descriptions, I should have been much more scared going in to that race. But ignorance is bliss and this was my first real race of any kind of longer distance so after 1500m swimming, and a moderately hilly 30 mile bike, I was still pretty surprised at how much climbing I was doing in the first mile or so of the run. 

Olympic distance tri at that point was a super long distance for me.  I had been training with Kelly for less than 5 months.  As the hills kept accumulating on the run course, I started to hurt very badly; well before the halfway point on the 6.2-mile run. With only five months of training, the hills simply felt like too much for me, I had to walk up almost all the hills.  I forget what my pace was, but it was slow.  Every mile marker took forever to hit. I honestly did not know if I would be able to make it to the finish; by mile 3, I was all alone and the last one on the course but I kept saying to myself that “all you have to do is not stop.  If you don’t stop, eventually you will get to the finish line." So whether I was running or walking up a hill, I just kept putting one foot in front of the other over the remaining miles to the finish.  I was pretty deep inside the pain cave of my mind. The physical and mental suffering was intense. 

But eventually, I turned a corner onto the street that led back to the park and I could hear the crowds at the finish line but I couldn’t see the finishing arch behind the trees.  I checked my watch and saw that I was only 2/10ths of a mile from the finish, but I still couldn’t see the finish arch or any of the crowds.  For a split second I had this terror that maybe there was no finish line and maybe I would just have to keep running forever because I couldn’t stop until the finish and there was so finish so......  It was such a silly thought but after 1500m swimming and 30 miles biking and 6 miles running it seemed to make sense at the time.  But I said to myself often and repeatedly, "all you have to do is not stop and you will get to the finish".  And of course I did.  It was right behind the trees just a few steps away at that point.  And God bless the triathlon community who waited around to give me huge cheers for a very proud DFL (dead ____ last) finish in 4 hours and change. 

I did another Olympic distance tri after that and a half ironman, but I think I learned more in that first Olympic distance race on that single run course than in anything else I have done (including the half-iron).  

All you have to do is not stop  

I instantly learned two incredibly important lessons on that run course:  the first lesson I learned is that all you have to do is not stop.  It is so simple, even though it is not always so easy. And I use that lesson in every single race and on every single long ride and long run in training.  And I have also started using it in my day to day life. I apply that lesson when I have had too busy a week of work to make it to the gym, or have a whole week of bad workouts, or am really hurting at the end of a long ride or long run, or have been injured.  It is okay to go slow. It is okay to slow down.  It is okay to walk the hills.  All you have to do is not stop.

The best "why" is because you matter  

The second lesson I learned is even more important and has helped me in every problem that I confront in my life: that I matter.   After a lifetime on the couch, and ignoring my own needs and getting diabetes and then reversing diabetes, it was on the run course at Pinehurst that I learned the secret to motivation -- the secret to how to keep going when your muscles and your mind are begging you to stop.  I learned that I was worth it.  I was worth putting up with the pain to get to the finish line. I was worthy of finishing the race. I was worthy of saving my own life by conquering the diabetes. The feeling “worth it” part started somewhere on that run course at Pinehurst in May 2016 and then took a long time to keep developing all the way throughout that year.  I had a lot of times during the year when I wanted to quit.  But there is something funny about being alone and in pain on a run course at a race and needing to run another 3 or 4 miles in that pain so that you can finish dead last.  You really have to decide whether or not you think you’re worth it.

My first trainer Jim Guimond always says you need a really big "why" to keep a life of fitness going throughout the years. My "why" changed a lot over the first 2-plus years after my diagnosis. But I wish now that I had used "because I am worth it" as my “why” years ago, before I got sick. I now believe that the best “why” is “because I am worth it.” And I had to suffer a lot to learn that. And I used both of those lessons many times since, especially on the run course at IRONMAN 70.3 North Carolina that October. 

Kelly's note to me before IRONMAN 70.3 North Carolina  

I am profoundly grateful for every hill on that Pinehurst run course and every ache and pain I had in that hour and twenty 10k. And I still never cease to be amazed at all the ways that realization of being "worth it" changed other things in my life. 

Now, more than a year and a half out from that experience at Pinehurst, I have started to realize that whenever I'm suffering in some other area of my life, there is a lesson hidden not too far below the surface. And when I can remove myself a little and observe it with some objectivity and with less judgment, the lesson appears, and I am more often able to intuit what I should do. The necessary beneficial change then quickly follows. It's not pretty and it's not fun, but suffering is the currency we pay for change and growth. Think about it. Suffering is so inevitable in life. We may as well get the rewards since we are already paying the price. 

Second podcast episode recorded tonight

​I had an absolutely incredible conversation tonight with Jim Guimond of Kinetic Heights in Charlotte.  Jim was my trainer for that first year after I was diagnosed with diabetes and has been so instrumental in me changing, and saving, my life.

Recording episode 2 of the Up Off the Couch Podcast with Jim Guimond of Kinetic Heights  

Jim talked to me at length tonight about his approach to training and motivating people who come to him looking to escape a sedentary life and get up off the couch. I got to peek behind the curtain of how an effective personal trainer approaches the challenge of inspiring and teaching someone how to change their life when they have no positive experiences with exercise to fall back on. 

Whatever stage you're at with your fitness you will want to listen to Jim's motivational and inspiring words as we relive those initial scary months when I took my first tentative steps up off the couch. 

Look for episode 2 to drop on Saturday.