Windy Motivation 2

My inspiring girls/guys totally rock.  

That's what I was thinking at 7 AM as I passed mile two.  The run was great and while pretty damn windy, it was a beautiful morning!  Added bonus: seeing Luji and Jeff at the finish line cheering me on!  It made that last little push a smiling one.

Thanks to you all for sharing your fabulous energy! It carried me through every windy step.

......Oh!  Wait!  Wow!  Can you feel that?  Here it comes....right back at cha.

Windy Motivation

Hello Inspiring Girls!

I'm in need of some quick, deep inspiration this morning so I'm reaching out to my go to girls (and guys) for a little love.  Today is my fourth race of the year - right here in my home town.  The wind is and has been raking since 4 AM and I must leave in 15 minutes to walk a mile to the starting point of the race.

I'm not very motivated.

That's where you...and Aristotle...come in.

I know that putting good energy out there will make me feel better (that's where you come in).  And soaking up a little inspirational philosophy can't hurt (that's where Aristotle comes in).

So, this post is my attempt to actively share good, motivational, can do energy.  Soak it up.  And share it.  Please.

And I'll leave you with a little A-advice to help us both. This one hits home this morning:

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit.

                                                                                                          - Aristotle

Aaaah.  I'm feeling better already.  Thank you!

Off we go!

Time TIME time tIME TimE

Keeping ourselves in check when we don't have all the time in the world can be tricky.  My writing is certainly suffering right now because I'm chin deep in amazingly fun new stuff!  Inspiration hits me nearly every hour it seems, but my ability to sit down and capture those thoughts is simply lacking right now.

But it's temporary, so please hang in.  If partial posts with half-developed ideas (or better yet, jotted lists of randomly related ideas) were interesting, IGE would be overwhelmed with wonderfully inspiring posts that lack structure or flow and therefore the impact that they may otherwise impart.

The perfectionist in me just can't let that happen.  In fact, even the "good enough" part of me can't bite the bullet and post mostly undeveloped thoughts.

Hmmm.  Except perhaps this one.  I sincerely hope you will stick around until I can take a nice, hot iron to my time and address those wildly creative but less-than-perfect jots.  I'll do my best to make them worth the wait.

Humility

"Life is a long lesson in humility." 

        - James M. Barrie, Scottish author and dramatist


Mr. Barrie's thoughts are a fitting follow-up to Monday's post on Ego, don't you think?  What, in the last week, was your lesson in humility?  I'll be writing about mine soon...

Ego

We live in a world where professional success is a barometer for the outside world (and often for ourselves) of our personal happiness.

Consider this question:  So, what do you do?  A prolific modern day inquiry, it is one of the first things we ask in new conversation. Most of us work to make our answers as exciting and interesting as possible. We exuberantly toss out our job title or role and our company or industry, followed perhaps by a brief, clarifying tag line. Then…

Pause. Wait. Exhale. Whew! We are interesting.

So, what do I do?  My current answer is completely new for me – and honestly, I can’t help but ask why that is. I’ve been doing these wonderful things for years! Why, then, have they been absent from my response to the old, reliable question of introductory conversation?

I am a mom. A partner. I write and read and learn. We travel; spend time with family; entertain friends; explore our environment and participate in our community.  For the first time in my adult life I am not working. I am opening myself up to the opportunities of this new experience, following the ideas that strike my passions and reaching out to the people who catch my attention. It’s invigorating!

But when faced with that good ol’ question, my ego finds it just a little strange.

After all, I have conditioned myself over the years to give the traditional response to old reliable.  My professional title was a crutch, a cover, a shield. I could talk about my work without talking too intimately about myself. My ego was protected. I was safe.

That is no longer the case. There is no professional title to hide behind. In fact, just the opposite is true: the doors to new opportunity and experience are wide open!  (I’m picturing glass-paned French doors with sheer white curtains blowing in the breeze, by the way…) 

So yes, these wide open doors have left my ego feeling a bit exposed. But I’m deciding, with courageous enthusiasm, that it is a really good thing.