Something Besides Workouts

OK, so the topic of this post is: How do you know you are doing enough or too much towards increasing your self-awareness? Yesterday while getting a massage I made the statement about myself: "A few weeks ago I thought I was trying too hard, and now I feel like I'm not trying hard enough, and yet I know I was right both times." What does this mean? It's an intrinsic aspect of my personality, and yeah, go ahead and say it I AM NOT UNIQUE. I like things to be projects, with clearly defined entry and exit criteria (i.e., when it starts and how to know when it's done), yet I know that this process of increasing self-awareness isn't a project at all!

But what I find interesting is that I can look at myself and my desire for this to be well-defined and realize that's just another quirk of human nature and I can SEE that that's my instinct, and I can even sense when I feel anxious, and just let it be. So I guess that means that things are moving along quite nicely.

I am sleeping like a rock--or as I saw someone else describe what happens when you are doing consistent, high-quality lifting, like I'm in a coma. Coma, as in unconscious state, NOT the coma, or head, of a COMET. Not only that, but I can feel the fatigue daily now. I feel like I need a good 12-hour sleep. Maybe tonight...I have to give myself the best shot at feeling good throughout my 1/2 Ironman tomorrow.

What I'm trying to do is bring that ability that I have when doing my workouts to just go into my "flow" state outside of the workout realm. I'm sure I've said it before, but it helps to keep reminding myself where I'm heading. I've seen a similar theme expressed in a book that I'm reading--The Runner and the Path--so again, I know I'm not unique in thinking that I should be able to "extend" the gift I give to myself when I run or bike or swim into the rest of my daily life.

A good friend of mine thinks that what I'm doing when I exercise is just "focusing," and at one time it was primarily that, but now I have "refocused" that activity in just letting myself be in a free state where I am just letting my body go on autopilot.

There's a time and a place to let my brain do its thinking thing--and there's also plenty of time to let it shut itself down or become the third-party observer of itself.