Web Theologian

This past Sunday (7/24), I completed the SeaFair Olympic Triathlon and ended up having a blast. Now it wasn’t easy, and there are a few lesson that I’m taking away from this race.

My weakest event is swimming, the brief history of my life as a swimmer is that I have been average to slow. When I took my lifeguard test I completed the swim section but just within the allowed time. Therefore I have very low expectations of my accomplishments in the swimming section of the race. Last weekend was an one mile swim, the longest I have ever completed in open water.

When it started my heart rate and breath were completely out of control. While training I have mastered relaxed swimming through the Total Immersion technique, this allows me to swim much further distances then I have before in my life. With the crowd and the excitement of the race I lost it and half way through the first lap was sure that I would not complete the race because of the swim section.

I then decided to take my time, and when I had just about lost it I swam past one of the lifeguards who encouraged me. The way I felt was terrible but when he said, “Keep it up, you got it.” that gave me rest. If he didn’t think I was losing it, then I must not be…it was a case of some very positive mirroring. At that point my heart rate came down and I was able to get moving. The rest of the swim was very enjoyable, I resigned to myself that I might be there for hours and all hope of a respectable race time was lost. I just enjoyed it, in looking back I think a good description of my swimming is like a Golden Retriever.

There are appropriate times to quit, I’ve learned this through racing. Also professionally I have found wisdom in Seth Godin’s book, The Dip. Then there are also times where you just have to keep going in spite of the feelings inside, sometimes they are fear, sometimes the fear is justified as I knew I did now train enough for the swim, and sometimes they are just wrong. While running I have never experienced what is known as The Wall, which many runner wills say they experience while distance running. They are left with pushing through it. Sometimes pushing through it is very much worth it.

Since I have good experience in distance running and I’ve updated my bike (it flies!!), my time was respectable. Actually my pre-race expectations were right in line with my swim time. If I had been able to remain relaxed from the beginning I may have exceeded my own expectations:) This experience was a reminder, and watching the night before The Good Dinosaur, both were helpful in reminding me that sometimes you just keep moving forward past the desire to stop past the fear.

In daily life there is often little choice but to continue…so then having such a weakness exposed needs a strategy which I’ll look at tomorrow with Race Lesson #2.

“Winning has nothing to do with racing. Most days don’t have races anyway. Winning is about struggle and effort and optimism, and never, ever, ever giving up.”
― Amby Burfoot, Runner’s Guide to the Meaning of Life

Growth is by design.

A baby is born in order to become an adult, when this doesn’t happen it is a tragedy. Many children go through what is called growing pains, this is in spite of taking care of themselves. The awkwardness of the teenage years are not chosen by anyone, but necessary for adulthood.

As adults the process changes, our bodies change, decline, and need more care. Our minds have developed deeply rooted patterns and at times memories fade. Therefore the process of growth must be more intentional. There are moments that the decay of our life may motivate us to make choices toward growth, or some people more elegantly intentionally choose growth without the suffering.

Rather then surrounding ourselves with people that think, look and act like us…seek growth. Challenge the way you do things and examine if it is working toward what you really want. Start the process of growth, and if you have always been growing keep it up!

“Growth is a not an accident. Growth is a process. We have to want to grow. We have to will to move away the stones that entomb us in ourselves. We have to work at uprooting the weeds that are smother good growth in ourselves.”

-Joan Chittister, The Rule of Benedict

the sessions are huge rooms but mostly empty. the speakers who were excited and prepared are only sharing with a chosen few. but when you walk through the bar of the hotel it is packed. in the evening the network event is packed. 

is the content not so engaging or is human connection that valuable. at E3 it is the JW, here at Casual Connect it is another Marriott. 

important to keep in mind especially when you are a manager investing in this for your employees. 

Every one knows, that the mind will not be kept from contemplating what it loves in the midst of crowds and business. Hence come those frequent absences, so observable in conversation; for whilst the body is confined to present company, the mind is flown to that which it delights in. 
-Mary Astill

Just because you open the window doesn’t mean the work gets done.

It can sit there all the day long while you keep yourself busy and distracted with other items. If it is open though the reminder that something is left undone may grip you. A breeze like a cool reminder that there is a world outside of all the concern of reports and status.

Open the window, but don’t forget to tackle the task that awaits you in it. Today is the only opportunity you know to have to do it, don’t let it go.

The best preparation for tomorrow is doing your best today. -H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

The iPhone did not make the feature phone better.

Hamilton did not make a new Les Mis.

Mormons did not make Christianity lite.

We are in a moment of feature improvement regarding our phones and it is extremely boring. I’m longing for something new, or nothing at all. Though if I were selling bluetooth products I’d be excited.

We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success.

Henry David Thoreau

I am a runner, and today I fell. My morning run took place while I had my car in for service. It was a nice five mile run on a beautiful cool Seattle summer morning. My fall came later in the morning while running with a backpack and gym bag around my shoulder while running for a bus…a bus that would come over 10 minutes later.

It was a solid fall because the double knot of my running shoe had come undone and my right foot caught the loop of the undone left foot. I landed hard, in four points on my body…I know because of the blood.

Two men not far from me ask (sincerely), “Are you alright?” I responded while moving to my knees to re-tie my shoe, “Nothing but my pride hurt.” But as my hands shook tying my shoes and the pain was in every part of my body, I thought of my six year old. All I wanted to do was cry, cry because I was embarrassed, cry because I hurt, cry because I thought I had missed a close bus…dammit just cry. But I didn’t, because sometimes that is what it means to be older. But I can tell you regardless of whether my daughter is hurt or not on her next fall, when she cries I will gladly pick her up.

If your emotional abilities aren’t in hand, if you don’t have self-awareness, if you are not able to manage your distressing emotions, if you can’t have empathy and have effective relationships, then no matter how smart you are, you are not going to get very far.

Daniel Goleman

Working with others has not always been my strong suit and like many people it has been a learned skill.  The skill is taking all that comes along with being a individual contributor and yet finding a way to improve those contributions with the input of others. There are people that you end up working with simply because they fill a role during a time at a company that you happen to be at. Most work relationships fall into this category.

Then there are those people that through experience you realize that you get tons done when you work together, you enjoy your work more with them, you improve as a person because of them, and ultimately you deliver more results for the company with them. Perhaps you work together for a period of time at the same company, but you know that there will always be a bond.

Grateful for those folks in my life that have given me the stories in my career, and I look forward to every opportunity to create more of them.

“Your stories are essential,” Miranda told a stadium packed with graduating seniors and their guests for the ceremony. “Don’t believe me? In a year when politicians traffic it in anti-immigrant rhetoric, there is also a Broadway musical reminding us that a broke, orphan immigrant from the West Indies built our financial system, a story that reminds us that since the beginning of the great, unfinished symphony that is our American experiment, time and time, immigrants get the job done.”

When you are doing your job the right way, it doesn’t hurt to ask for a good word to be put in for you, but people will do it naturally. I have heard it said that when you do something good people will tell four people, when you screw up they tell eight. Needless to say negativity spreads faster then goodness. So before someone asks, go and put in a good word for them. Be intentional about helping someone that has done a good job for you.

Words are singularly the most powerful force available to humanity. We can choose to use this force constructively with words of encouragement, or destructively using words of despair. Words have energy and power with the ability to help, to heal, to hinder, to hurt, to harm, to humiliate and to humble.

-Yehuda Berg

In most cases this is not good for anyone. Often it can mean that the person has made it as far as they are going to in the company. Time to hang up the apron.

Yet not when the guest is old and can’t hear. The yelling can actually be loving and beautiful.

I’d probably be famous now if I wasn’t such a good waitress. -Jane Siberry

Sundays are important to me. My faith tradition has traditionally celebrated the community activity on this day. Much has been written on the shift from Saturday to Sunday and theologians make big deals over whether it is the start or finish of the week and create a narrative on why this is important. For me this is all noise, and limits the important conversation to those that subscribe to a specific creed or calendar.

Sunday for me is both ending and beginning for me. It is a weekly rhythm that provides space in my life for reflection, and time for silence. It gives me a break, a well needed and often well deserved break. And I am grateful for it without explanation or desire to drop it into an unnecessary category for explanation. I’m curious as to how others end and begin their life rhythm.

Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance, order, rhythm and harmony.
-Thomas Merton