Stoking the "Fires Within" - What are you feeding them or are you putting them out?

I got to thinking late last night about what keeps me motivated and pushing to be the best version of me that I can be. It was probably not the best of ideas to start thinking about as I was super tired after a fantastic CrossFit workout earlier in the evening and SLEEP was what my body was craving. Once I got into it though, the pen flew to paper and the notes started to accumulate on the page.

The "Fires Within" burn inside us at all times and at certain times these fires can consume us, direct us or even incapacitate us. Look at LOVE as an example. Can you remember a time when that "Love Fire" was so strong that it utterly consumed you to a point where nothing else was on your radar. You fed that fire with every ounce of your being, intention and thought. I can remember when I first met my wife Kathy and we were in the initial stages of our love relationship. I will never forget the burning and almost physically uncontrollable urge to crawl over a desk to kiss her for the first time. It was a fire that I had to monitor lest it rage out of control and ruin what has turned out to be the "relationship" of my life. The Kiss when it did happen was spectacular but that kiss might have not ever happened if I hadn't carefully fueled my fire within.

We all have these intense desires and passions or "Fires". I wonder though, how many people consciously feed these fires to give them life, or do most people put out the sparks before they can burst into flame. What makes a person ignite that fire within and what makes them extinguish it? Why do some rage out of control and others barely flicker and starve to gain the light?

These thoughts kept me up last night. As always, I can only answer for myself and in my case it is this undeniable desire to EXPERIENCE Life. I crave experiences, challenges and discoveries. Experiences are the fuel that feed my fire. When I am lucky enough to have the opportunity to share these experiences with others and provide an opportunity for them to have a possible "Fire" come to life inside of them is when I know I have lived to my full potential.

One of the greatest lessons that "The 365 Effect" gave me was the realization and knowing that I can change. As funny as that sounds for those of you who know me, I really didn't fully know if I could do it. As the year long process evolved it became apparent that not only could I change but that the changes would become permanent. I have always had a fire deep within to "break the cycle" of my youth and now I knew that not only was this cycle broken for good but also that I could break ANY cycle that was consuming me on any level and at any time. What POWER.....I am invincible (but still human).

My motivating factors are different than yours and my goals, intentions and "fires" are also different, but what we do share are the same "fuels". We have access to the same foods, the same exercises, the same mentors, educators and encourager's. We can find support, guidance and instruction from virtually all corners of the globe. It is at our fingertips and always within reach. You just have to CHOOSE to go after it. You have to use INTENTION when looking at how you are going to "Fuel" your fires within. You have to ask yourself GOOD QUESTIONS because the better the questions you ask yourself the better the "Fuel" you will be feeding your fires. Make sense?

I CHOOSE to feed my fires. I push, pull, drag, and sometimes kick my way to getting what I want. I haven't met all my goals or dreams yet, but damn it, I am still trying and will keep trying because, well, that's what I do.

As always I welcome any comments and thoughts. If you are finding "The 365" interesting pass me on a note, make a comment and pass on this blog on to others. Spread "The 365 Effect".

Are your Goals like Helium Balloons?

Ever had a balloon slip your grasp and run away into the sky? Have you ever witness the myriad of emotions that a child goes through when they lose a balloon the to wind?

Our goals and dreams are sometimes like a Helium Balloon and sometimes we have the same myriad of reactions to those balloons as a child does.

Think back...way back for some of you, to those days when playing with a balloon was the "Greatest" thing on earth. I for one still love playing with them, trying to keep them in the air as long as I can by bouncing them on my nose, elbow, 1 foot etc etc. I love the challenge. As a kid I went through my share of balloons whether they be filled with water, plain breath from my lungs or the "Special Treat", helium. Helium was great cause not only did it add a new sense of "Risk" to the play it also added amazing comedic effect when you sucked on the gas and made those silly voices we all know and love so well. Helium in a balloon was the pinnacle of "Balloon Play".

I can remember upping the ante with the helium balloons when trying for the "max" touches game. When played indoors the risk was an added element. If the balloon got too high above you it stuck on the roof - no problem, just grab a ladder or stand on a table and viola, game on, but the "perceived risk" was still high. It was when you went outside that the "real risk" happened. If you lost contact with the balloon it was game over. You sat and watched the balloon rise, rise, rise and eventually drift out of sight. What now? How do I have fun and entertain myself? What are my friends and I going to do to now?

I sometimes think of my goals as balloons. Some are filled with water, some are just "Hot Air" and others are full of Helium.

Water Balloons - Goals that have impact; can be messy if not handled right; Are heavy and unwieldy.
Hot Air Balloons - Blurted out goals of little importance; Fly by night goals that really don't have a ton of planning or thought behind them; Disposable goals that are situational
Helium Balloons - Important Goals, Risky goals, personally meaningful goals, Goals that can expire if you don't take action and make them happen quickly

Take a couple minutes and just look at some of the projects or goals that you currently have and identify if some of them are Helium filled. If they are, it sometimes pays to "tie a string on them" to keep them from floating away.

How many "Rungs" on your Ladder

Here's a thought.

How many "Rungs" are on your ladder? Where are you climbing to? How big a ladder do you need? Does it have enough Rungs or does it have too many? Do you have the right ladder and have you even "placed it" in the right spot to reach your target. Ahhhh.. deep thinking.

Let me break this concept down a bit. When people come to me wanting to start their "365's" one of the first thing I ask them to do is to think for a minimum of 7 days on the question, "What is it I want to change about my life". I get them to do this at ceremonial times in their days and at least 5 times a day for 7 days. No judgments, no rationalizations, no reviews; just for 7 days and at at least 5 times a day ask yourself the question "What is it I want to change about my life".

The reason I have people go through this exercise is I want them to see the patterns and reoccurring beliefs and thoughts that they have. If you can trick your mind into just blurting out an answer to a question, the answer to that question is probably going to be the most "authentic" one in relation to your current state of being. Make sense? You get rid of all the the bias and judgement involved by simply asking and then writing down whatever first comes to mind. After the 7 days you then go back and look for patterns, subtleties and trends. You do this with conscious thought and rationalization. Now is when you look to "How many rungs does my ladder need" and "Where shall I put it'.

So where are you going to climb to? I'd love to hear.

Hitting the Wall - in one way or another

In sport and in Life "Hitting the Wall" is an expression that most of you will have heard. The term is especially popular in Endurance Sport circles. By definition it is " A condition caused by the depletion glycogen stores in the liver and muscles which manifests itself by precipitous fatigue and loss of energy". Glycogen is basically the molecule in your body that functions as the short term energy source. The challenge with Glycogen is that your body can only "Hold" so much for any given period of time (for most people it's about 2000 kcal's). When the Glycogen stores deplete extreme fatigue ensues. Ok, so you might be asking yourself " Why is it important to talk about this and what do energy molecules have to do with my "The 365" program"? Well hold on to your socks cause I am about to tell you.

In 1996 myself and Jim Mandelli (Today Jim is arguably the most successful Canadian adventure racer in history) formed a 4 person coed team to compete in the 1997 Eco-Challenge Expedition Competition (Eco) being held in Queensland Australia. The Eco was the granddaddy of all Extreme and Adventure competitions and in my opinion to this day still is. The Eco is beyond a doubt, the most intense sporting experience that involves human performance, mental strength, acute awareness of the word Team and perhaps most importantly being Committed.

The Eco is not something that you take lightly and for our team that meant many hours on our bikes, on our feet and paddling rivers and oceans trying to maximize our performance and our chances of finishing the race. On one of these "practice" sessions we decided to combine many disciplines into one long and non-stop training session. The plan was to Mt. Bike on and off road for 70k, then lake paddle our double kayaks 32k up the lake, then hike up to the base of Della Falls and then turn around do it all again on the way back to my home. Easy right. Whew, tough stuff let me tell you. Now for those of you reading this and thinking "WHAT THE HECK, this guy was actually doing this for training, like, on purpose". Yes, my team and I put many of these type of weekends together in preparation for our first big race. We needed to. We needed to find out what kind of a team we were. We needed to "put the miles in" to see how our bodies would react. We needed to see how we got along with each other and how we worked as a team or even more importantly how we didn't work as a team. I also LOVED this stuff as it was a pure extension of me and who I am. To this day I am still learning from the experiences I had as an adventure racer.

On this particular "training session" things didn't go quite as planned. Everything was right on schedule up until the point where the lake we were paddling up became frozen. Yup frozen solid just like a skating rink ( I still curse my friend in the Parks Office as I am sure he gave me the wrong information about the state of the lake before we set out). We were probably 11k from the trail head and now had a decision to make. We could turn around and just make it a bike and paddle session or we could put in to shore and start our hike early and navigate from our current point to the trail head. In hindsight, we should have turned around and just made it a bike and paddle training. We mad a bad decision. Not only was the lake frozen but the snow pack was also down to the edges of the lake. Our short 11k hike to the trail head was now an almost impenetrable side-hill hike where every step was post holing (term for when step you take you sink into the snow a couple feet). We made many bad decisions on this hike and at one point we even went down to the lake to walk on it instead of walking in the snow. Kathy, the woman on our team slipped and fell head first into the ice and submerged herself. Gut check time - what do we do now. Here we made a good decision. Stop, get some shelter, get some food in and get warm. We were all suffering from hypothermia at this point and Kathy and our other team mate Omi were definitely at stage 2. So, in the course of getting warm, brewing some tea and eating some food we discussed what to do and decided to turn around, follow our footsteps back to the Kayaks and return home with all due speed. We fuel up our bodies, packed up and off we went. Here is where I return to the whole what does Glycogen have to do with the story bit.

We are now 15k away from my home after hiking out of the woods, paddling back to the bikes and peddling our bikes to this point. I am in the lead breaking the wind with my team mates filed in behind me in single file as we race towards finishing this epic and catastrophic training session. We are all exhausted, cold, hungry and like zombies on our bikes as we have been going non-stop for almost 48hours. I experience something at this point that I have never experienced before in my life and thankfully have never experienced it since. My arms start to go numb, now I don't mean when you hit your funny bone numb, I mean from my shoulders all the way to my hands I actually felt my arms go numb. It was like all of the energy just sort of leaked out. I can only explain it like this - imagine your arms are hollow and filled with water then imagine a leak in your thumb where the water drains out and you feel it drain from your shoulders to your hands-. It was crazy. So here I am trying to mentally put this together when all of a sudden my vision starts to blur. My vision started to go from wide to narrow till soon all I could see was a sliver of what was in front of me. I was so out of it that I couldn't even speak to my team mates, all I could do was focus on not falling down and using what strength I had left to move my bike one rotation closer to home. When we finally made it to my home I didn't have the capacity to get off my bike. I actually rode straight into my garage door and fell off the bike. I couldn't stand, speak or move. My team mates had to help me up and sit me in front of the fire that was going in our living room. My wife wrapped me in a blanket, held a mug of warm tea to my lips and hand fed me hot chocolate chip cookies which she had just finished baking. It was surreal. In a matter of minutes after drinking some tea and eating the cookies I started to come alive again. It was just like someone had plugged the leak in my thumb and I could feel the "water" going back up my arms and my vision went from a sliver to full view. I was amazed. It was a realization for me of how the body works. It really was the first time in my life that I had "Hit the wall". I mean I really HIT THE WALL.

So what does this mean to "The 365" and how can understanding the concept of "Hitting the wall" make a difference to you.

In the story that I shared with you I "hit the wall" hard. I hit it because I didn't do 3 specific things.

• I didn't nourish my body properly - I simply used more calories than I was putting in. I was burning so many calories trying to keep going and keep warm that the energy stores in my body were completely depleted
  
• I didn't pay attention to the subtle clues my mind was telling me - I was getting headaches, my stomach was rumbling, I was dehydrated, I was irritable, I was losing focus, My arms were numb, I was losing the ability to see. All of these things were indicators that my body just wasn't working right. I refused to listen to them and just pushed on trying to will myself to the finish.
  
• I didn't communicate to my team mates effectively - I knew even when we first hit the ice that we should have turned around but didn't speak up. I knew we should get some sleep and completely fuel up before starting back out on the bike but I didn't force the issue. I knew I was "Losing It" on my bike but for some unknown reason didn't speak up. I didn't engage my team mates fully in my for success. I let pride, stubbornness and most importantly "Ego" get in the way of my safety and ultimately theirs.

My example is very physical, it is a situation that most people would never find themselves in because not many people enjoy the type of pain that adventure racing provides. Each of us however "Hits the wall" on a daily basis. Can you identify the walls you hit and the reasons why?

Each day most of us "Hit the wall". The degree of pain caused by hitting the wall is different for each person based upon their unique situations, just like each persons "The 365" program will be unique for each person. If you look at the 3 specific things I didn't do which led to my colossal collapse you will find that there are similarities to the ones that you have come up with. Things like basic nutritional concepts, listening to your mind and bodies subtle clues, getting rid of the "Ego" and unrealistic goal setting.

Take some time to identify the "Walls" in your life. Look at what is going on for you when you "Hit" them. What is your physical state, mental state and emotional state? Are there consistencies in when you are "running headfirst in to the brick wall"? Do you repeatedly get over walls but then just have them reappear as BIGGER walls?

I think you will find that even though there may be many "Walls" that appear in your life your reasons for "Hitting the wall" will be relatively few. Identify the reasons and pretty soon the walls might not be as many and definitely not as hard or as high.

As always I welcome any comments and thoughts. If you are finding "The 365" interesting pass me on a note, make a comment and pass on this blog on to others. Spread "The 365 Effect".

10,000 Hours to Greatness.... "The 365" is 8760 hours.. hmmm we may have something here.

I am a constant book "browser", I love to skim over and devour books that catch my interest and eye. I rarely seem to finish one all the way through in one sitting as I usually take months to get from cover to cover. What I do however, is take the "nuggets" and apply them immediately. One recent example of this is Malcolm Gladwell's book "Outliers".

I find when I am "open" to a new topic or path, one usually comes my way. I am getting better at recognizing this and will speak more about this topic when I cover a chapter out of "The 365 Effect" called "Living under Umbrellas".

One of the concepts in Gladwell's book that inspired me is the fact that everyone who has ever achieved any level of greatness has worked on whatever it is that they became great on for over 10000 hours. Tiger Woods has hit over 10,000 putts, Nadia Comaneci tumbled more than 10,000 times, The Beetles played music together for over 10000 hours and Bill Gates programmed for well over 10000 hours before they reached "Greatness".

Thinking about this brought up a whole host of questions and points for me which are relevant to "The 365". Firstly, if you want greatness in any area of your life then you better choose to work on something that you love doing otherwise you don’t give yourself any chance of lasting even 1 year before you die of boredom, resentment or suffer poor performance. Second is the Committment. If you aren't 100% committed to the "end game" then you are quitting before you begin. This is not to say that there won't be challenges, pitfall and setbacks along the way.

Think of Tiger Woods and his dominance in the world of golf. Here is 33 year old who is within striking distance of 2 of golf's greatest and long standing records in the history of the sport (Most Major Wins and Most PGA Tournament Wins). Along the way Tiger has already rebuilt his golf swing twice, gone through the death of his father and greatest mentor, experienced marriage and having 2 children and most recenlty undergone a complete knee rebuild. Talk about setbacks along the way, but here is a unique individual who is in it for the long haul. He is committed and dedicated to achieving his goals. He is "open" to the pitfalls, setbacks and challenges because his committment see's him through.

"The 365" is your personal blueprint for committment and success. It is 8760 hours of you committing to a set of goals. When you think about it, it is so close to the 10000 hour number that it almost seems within your grasp and we are only talking about 1 year out of your life. Only 1 year to reach almost legendary status.

So, are you at the level where you can make the desicion to committ to working at least 10000 hours to achieve greatness in one aspect of your life? Do you know what you want to commit 10000 hours of your life to achieving? Have you ever even asked yourself these questions?

Great questions to ask yourself while you are becoming familiar with "The 365" program. "The 365" is a great first step to helping you see clarity about your committments, direction and future endeavours while at the same time building a super strong foundation of your own goalsetting abilities and strengths.