Taking Responsibility

Sometimes life just sucks. I strongly believe that you bring most of the misfortune in your life on yourself. I’m not saying that starving people in Ethiopia, maimed civilians in Iraq, and mothers of dead babies had it coming to them, but the little individual things are usually of your own doing. If I let one thing get to me, say that I drop my toast in the morning or that my train is running late, then it all begins to snowball. I’m mad about the toast, so I start slamming things cabinet doors, and then I might break a glass. Now I have to clean up the glass, and I’m running late so I have to run out the door and maybe I slip on a patch of ice and spill my tea all over myself. It’s a hypothetical situation, but you get the picture. I have quite a temper on me, so I’ve tried to teach myself to stay calm and work my anger and aggression out in other ways (hence the fanatical dedication to endurance sports). I’m pretty sure that most people who have met me would be surprised how often I’m reduced to a screaming, crying thunder cloud of a temper tantrum (at least once a month, but most of the time I’m by myself so I only scare the cat).

So I believe that your successes and failures are completely of your own creation. There’s no such thing as luck. This idea goes by a whole bunch of names: quantum mechanics, “the Secret,” the Universe, energy, waves, the law of attraction, whatever. The idea is that there are infinite possibilities, and that something only becomes Reality once you observe it. If you always see the sunny side of things, then more positive people and circumstances are attracted to you. If you always see the negative, then you will create a negative world around you. If you believe you are poor, fat, unlucky, then you will be, so I try to turn my back on the negative and always see the positive.

When I was in Cozumel, it was one of those times when everything seemed to mean something, and every conversation I had seemed to be teaching me a lesson. At the finish, a young guy with perfect English helped me to a chair and told me how to get to the massage tables. The next day while I was walking down the main shopping street, someone called out my name. I didn’t recognize him, but he recognized me, and in the course of our conversation he mentioned that he noticed that I had been wearing a GPS and asked if he could talk to me about magnets.

You’re probably thinking, Oh brother! Healing magnets? She’s really gone off the deep end. But I had some friends when I was working at the gym in Santa Cruz who had sworn by magnets. They insisted that they sped healing and recovery. Open to anything, I let him give me his spiel about magnets, and wouldn’t you know, his demonstration really did convince me that magnets optimized your strength and flexibility and that wireless devices like cell phones and GPSs really did have an impact. I’m sure many of you will think I’m crazy, but I swear I am wary of these things and always looking for the trick. If there was a trick to it, then he tricked me because I was sold. Now I wear a magnet around my neck every day.

In addition to the magnetism stuff he told me about the movie “The Secret” which is all about the new-agey “vibes/Universe/create your own reality” stuff that I was talking about earlier. I was also open to that idea after a long summer with a good friend in Barcelona introduced me to the concept of asking the Universe for something. (Another one of those times that I went through a huge life shift in a short period of time). It was from her that I learned to be positive to prevent bad things from happening to me. Based on the Mexican magnet man’s recommendation, I rented “The Secret,” and learned about how if you visualize your ideal future with enough energy, it will come to you. I decided that I was going to try it. I began spending a few minutes every day visualizing prosperity and success in both my personal and professional life.

But I have a little problem with visualization, every time I try to picture how I’m going to feel in a race or in a certain situation, my mind shuts down. I read Michael Phelps’ book “No Limits: The Will to Succeed” and he talks about how visualization is a huge part of his success, but how many variables can there be in a 50m pool? With a triathlon or bike race, I don’t know what the course will look like, what the weather conditions will be on the day, how much sleep I will have gotten, what the pack will look like… How can I imagine what my body will feel like if until I’m actually there? I’ve even tried to step back and remember previous experiences where it all came together. I think back and I’ve got mental snapshots of the course or things I said to myself, but I can’t for the life of me remember the feelings in my muscles or how my bike felt under me. Part of the reason I think exercising is so satisfying is that, just like when I’m drunk, it slows my mind down and I only feel/think one thing at a time. One day, for hours the only thought I had was the first line from “Baa Baa Black Sheep.”

Visualization is a branch of the whole mental end of sport (and life) that I just haven’t mastered. It’s like I can squat 500 pounds, but mentally, I’m still lifting soup cans. When the going gets tough in a race, my inner beast goes out and has a cigarette. My main project lately is to work on my mind, and develop the focus of a business/sport/life champion. I’ve been reading “The Winner's Bible: Rewire Your Brain for Permanent Change” and it’s been really great at giving more practical strategies than the hocus pocus in “The Secret.” I also read Johan Bruyneel’s “We Might As Well Win: On the Road to Success with the Mastermind Behind Eight Tour de FranceVictories,” which is all about winning with strategy.

But as soon as I began focusing on setting myself up for success, all I seemed to find was failure. Through a long, drawn-out hiccup in unemployment, I was $1000 down for the month of February and drained my savings to pay bills. My girlfriend (who has no outlet for her stress) began going through a rough patch and turned into a horrible ogre. She kicked me out of the house (for a spell) so she could get space and my world went topsy-turvy. I tore through every single pair of my bike shorts in the same spot in a week, and I stopped pooping. It felt like every time I tried to pull myself together something else awful happened that was completely out of my control.

Yesterday I was distraught. I’d fought with Grease Monkey, she said she wanted me out of her life. I spent the greater part of eight hours hiding in the laundry room at work, staring at the wall and trying to figure out who the hell I was anymore. I’d been spending so much time on her problems that I hadn’t paid any attention to my own. Obviously, it hadn’t helped. If everything happens for a reason, then the reason that all this financial and personal shit has been happening to me is because I need to step back and take stock. I need to make time for the things that are important to me, like my blog and myself. And if things don’t happen for a reason and life just isn’t fair, then it’s time to take stock and begin rebuilding my foundation by taking a close look at myself through tools like my blog.

So no promises, but it looks like I’m back…