Discipline - Body & Reflecting Back

Reflecting Back
05.14.05

Looking back at these next two posts and the thoughts they have brought back to me as I type them I find it interesting to reflect briefly on the environment from which they come. In-between our Hub sites life has fallen into a fairly solitary routine. During these posts anyway - getting up early in the morning to go running, then showering. Afterwards I ate breakfast with Dad with CNN in the background discussing random current events or life in the Philippines. From there it is off to class to attempt to get some worthwhile Ilokono out of our time with our teacher. Even class has become each of us in our own minds working through the language. We come from such different backgrounds and places that what we need to work on and learn is very different from each other. Class has not been formed into much of a community. From the end of class, at noon, the day is our own to do with as we please. I live about two klicks (km) from the nearest other trainee, so I also don’t see them much outside of class, partly by the distance, partly by choice. This provides an extraordinary amount of unstructured time to someone used to the college life. We don’t even get homework from class.

For me, this has moved my mind to an intense inward focus. Trying to decipher the balances that I need to be happy and fulfilled from day to day. Figuring out what I need to be able to bounce out of bed in the morning happy and excited to face the day. Some days go well, others are more difficult. Its balancing out the needs of Mind, Body & Soul and the delicate interplay and interdependence of the three. Its figuring out what goals I can pursue and how to follow so many of them concurrently. If I do nothing else with my two years here than get closer to finding that balance my time will have been well spent.

04.26.05

Discipline - Body

The very best you can do in season is to keep up with the competition. It’s the off season that really makes the athlete. Everyone works hard in season. Anyone can work hard in season when they are working with their teammates, the goals are easily visible and they can feel the pressure of their competition. It takes a real athlete to take it out of season and to have the strength of mind and depth of character to do it alone if that is what’s required of the moment. Its every day you get off your ass while everyone else rests on their laurels that makes the difference between first and the rest, between making that layout D and eating dirt.

I’ll never be able to push my body as hard alone as I can with a team, but that’s not what matters. It’s the fact that I push my body today & again tomorrow & again the day after that, that matters. It’s a balancing act between making this moment, in work out, supreme in order to pour your whole being into that workout & the realization right afterwards that some days will not go as well as others & the only important thing is that you tried & that you’ll hit it again tomorrow.