Inner Peace

I haven't much time but I wanted to get a post in this morning before my busy and long day. I got about a nine hour workday plus a four hour drive ahead of me. I really am looking forward to it.

I read a quote this morning "Running is about finding your inner peace, and so is a life well lived"

I love this quote because it really encompasses two of the things that I am working on right now. Running and finding inner peace. I love running because when I am out there running it is only me. I am not one of these people that want to run with a group, not because I am anti-social but because I enjoy my alone time. I am at peace with everything when I am running. It seems weird that I could go run seven miles and be at peace but I am. Nothing else matters for that time that I am running, everything is about what I want it to be about. It's my 'happy place' so to speak.

I am working on finding inner peace in life. I think I have to go through life thinking like I do when I run. I have to not sweat the small stuff, focus on what really matters and try to control the only things I can. When I run I can control my pace, my route and my thoughts that is really about it. The rest just happens, stuff like the weather, the traffic and other things I just can't control but I don't worry about it.

There are so many things in my life that I try to control but can't because they just are what they are. There are so many things I worry about that there is nothing I can do about them, so then why worry about it. I am working on letting things be that I can't control. I am starting to think to myself, 'is there anything I can do about it' or 'does it need to be fixed?' There are so many things I think should be different or changed that in reality don't need be changed. There are things that I think are 'problems' that really aren't problem but in fact my be opportunities.

Yesterday I went running up here in Gallup NM at 5:30 in the morning. It was about 40 degrees and I had planned a three mile route near the hotel. As I went running it was cold and half-way through my route there was a train passing through the middle of town. I had to quickly improvise a route which ordinarily would throw me for a huge loop. I was I to know how many miles I was at? I didn't worry about it. I went another way just running and figured the rest out later. I was at peace while I was running. What if I could run through life the same way? When I became faced with obstacles instead of freaking out about, what if I just kept running? What if I kept doing what I was meant to do, what I wanted to do?

My goal is to live a life of inner peace. To not let the past pull me down, to not let the uncertain future throw me off, but to just live my life the way I want to live and the way I was meant to live.

Who am I?

So over the past week or so I have been pondering more on my new favorite quote that I included in my past post. The real question for me is “Who do I believe I am meant to be?”

I have thought a lot about this and I realize that what I was meant to be was deeper that what I was meant to do for a living but on a more meaningful level what type of person I was meant to be. Somewhere in the many classes and courses I have taken over the years, there was the concept presented that you should write down what you want people to say about you when you die.

I use to really not care what people said when I died. I always thought when I die they could just dig a hole, throw me in and cover me up, I didn’t need a funeral or tombstone. A lot of this thinking was just my immature self thinking that I was not important and that people wouldn’t care when I died. I now realize that people would be sad if I passed on and there probably would be a funeral.

So the question is now what would I like people to say about me, not only when I pass on but as I am alive. No one will care so much that I graduated with an undergraduate and graduate degree, or that I was a CPA. What really matters is what type of person I was, not how I made a living but how I made my life.

What I determined is that I have often judged myself based on a belief that my worth was somehow tied to how much money I made or what professional level I achieved. Accordingly as I have struggled to make ends meet from day one, I have judged myself harshly and felt I wasn’t a good father or husband. What I now realize is that I have been judging myself against the wrong standard, what I should have been looking at was my character. What type of person am I?

So to come full circle, to be successful means that I need to live to be the person that I believe I am and that belief should be based on my character and nothing else.

It reminds me of Jean Valjean from Les Miserables. Javert believed that Valjean was a criminal because he stole a loaf of bread to feed a starving child. By his act he was labeled a criminal but his character spoke of who he truly was. Once he was able to change his identity people knew him for what he truly was, a kind and just man. However, Javert could never see that because he looked at only his one past action.

We can’t be defined by an action we once took or a label that was given to us regardless of if that label was justly given or not. The choice is now mine to determine what person I want to be and to become that person.

A New View

Well I made it back from Navajo Nation where I spent the past four days. I must say it's nice to be back in town. It was a long week and I felt like I was in another country. My cell phone barely worked, my internet was slow, and my TV channels were limited. But with the limited availability of technology came some good.

Most of you probably know that I have another blog that I started that chronicles the life lessons I have learned as a result of my running endevours. Normally when thinking of ideas for that blog, I think of my running and apply aspects of that to life. This week the opposite happened for me. I was thinking about life and applied it to my running. I guess the net effect is the same, I was able to better understand a life lesson by using practical examples.

As many of you know, I have been going through a difficult time in my life, or should I say another difficult time. Normally I would tend to be very vague and not get too far into what I am going through but seeing as that has always been part of my problem, I am going to go ahead and tell it like it is. A few weeks ago I moved out of the house and am currently living with my parents. Of course the first thing people want to know is who is to blame. The answer really is no one. We just felt it would be best if we each took a little space and worked on ourselves so that we could then work on our relationship. There is no ill will, there is no fighting, there is just a need for space.

I think my biggest problem is that I have always been "emotionally immature". I have always pretended like everything is cool and pushed my true feelings deep inside and bottled them up. The problem is that in doing that I have caused myself a lot of pain and unhappiness which in turn has hurt those around me. So I have decided it is time to uncork the bottle and let it all out. That is part of why I am writing this, I don't pretend that hundreds of people read my blog and I really don't write because I want to touch others. I write because it is the best way for me to get it all out. So this blog may become a lot more serious than it always has been, I am going to say what I have to say. In doing so, maybe it will touch someone else who feels like I do, maybe it won't. All I know is that I feel like I have a story to tell and I am going to tell it.

Back to my life lesson, I was pondering on how life always seemed to suck for me and how I always seem to be going through a difficult time. I have grown frustrated with life in general and wished life would just get easy. Then I applied my running.

When I first started to run, I could barely jog for three minutes before I had to walk. It was painful and difficult but I kept going, I kept training. There were a lot of times when I thought about giving up. I would say it was too hard and that I shouldn't do this...I couldn't do this. I had no plans of running any races, I just wanted to run.

Now months later, I have run a half-marathon when before I couldn't run for three minutes, I now consider three miles to be my "easy" run. I have gotten to this point in running because I pushed through the pain, I kept going and never gave up.

That's when it really hit me. Life is the same way. I have gotten to where I am because I have pushed through the pain and never gave up. I could easily just give up on life right now but I don't...I can't. All of this stuff that I have gone through and that I am going through is simply like a training run. It is making me stronger. I don't know where I am going but I know where I have been. I know that I am becoming a better person because I have struggled and pushed through it. Maybe this doesn't make sense to anyone but when I realized all this I gave thanks to God for the life I have been given. It was probably the first time that I could look at all the past and have gratitude for it. In the past I have always questioned God for "giving" me the life that I had, problems and all. Now I thank God for what He has given me because I have learned so much and continue to learn from it all.

I believe that there is a purpose behind everything that has happened to me. I had a nice talk with God yesterday and asked for His help. I asked Him to tell me what my purpose is or what I should be doing. I know there is more to life than just being a CPA, as awesome as that is. I get a daily quote from RunnersWorld.com to help my motivation and this morning as I checked my Email I recieved my quote. This mornings quote was deep and was timely considering my conversation with God.

"Success means having the courage, the determination, and the will to become the person you believe you were meant to be." -George Sheehan

I have never really thought before that I was meant to be anything special or important. That is where my thought process is going to change. I am going to find out what person I was meant to be and I am going to become that person. I know I have the determination, the will and the courage to do it.

Maybe that is the direction this blog is going to take. Perhaps the posts to follow will chronicle my journey to that discovery and achievement. I know that it will happen because for the first time in my life I believe it can...I really believe. I also know that my past will help me, not hinder me, from becoming this person.

It was a good week for me, it's been a good life. I look forward to whatever comes next, because I know it will be great, it will be a success.