What Sort of Character?

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Look at the calendar! The New Year is flying fast as the first three months are nearly complete. Now look back…to New Year’s Eve. What were you hoping to accomplish in 2015? Did you have any aspirations for better health? Better attitudes? Better habits? Now look at today. Where are you? What have you accomplished in regards to your new year’s hopes? Did you take strong steps in January? Did you lose sight or vision in February? March is nearly complete, but today is a good day to reassess, to get back on track and
in character.

What do I mean by ‘in character’? I mean this: character ~ your character ~ drives your goal setting and your goal achieving. If you have lost touch with your character and what your character is all about, then you have probably lost sight of the goals you wanted to achieve this year.

Perhaps the milieu of work or home life has overtaken your schedule and you have no time or energy or margin in which to pursue that one thing you wanted to accomplish this year. The responsibilities of our adult lives will always hound us as we attempt to alter or change the landscape of our character pursuits. But today, I would like to challenge you to re-assess your character…look at who you are through the eyes of the author.  The author is the one who is writing the story of your life. And guess what? You are both author and character!Now with this lens, this understanding, ask the author to discover what motivates this character. What demoralizes this character? What drives this character to say and do the things he does each day? Is this character generally cheerful and optimistic or skeptical and pessimistic? Easily distracted and pulled off course or nose to the grindstone come hell or high water? How does this character relax? How does this character relate to others? to distress? to success? What or who does this character believe or have faith in? doubt? fear?

Remember, you are the author writing this story, and  the author must be aware, astutely aware of her character’s weakness and strengths. This knowledge aids the author (YOU) in building compassion and workarounds into her character’s life. Understanding the type of character of which the author is dealing and writing about, assures that the character will live an authentic life.

So consider this as we approach the end of the first quarter of 2015.
If you want your New Year story to finish on track, or even be an interesting read, the author (that’s you) must know how its character (still you) will react, respond or overcome the obstacles which the character (once again, YOU) will surely encounter as she  traverses the remainder of 2015. The story (YOUR STORY) will be flat and uninteresting indeed if your character is not developed through adversity, trial, challenge, upset, disappointments, triumphs, success, etc. Now look again,  what sort of character are you? Know your character…what drives your character. Write the days for your character with purpose so that you may achieve the reward of your goal!

Hard work spotlights the character of people: some turn up their sleeves, some turn up their noses, and some don’t turn up at all.
Sam Ewing

If there’s any activity happier, more exhilarating, more nourishing to the imagination, I can’t think what it might be. In running, the mind flies with the body; the mysterious efflorescence of language seems to pulse in the brain, in rhythm with out feet and the swinging of our arms.
The Faith of a Writer by Joyce Carol Oates

Running!

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Go Outside…For a Change

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When I get stuck in a rut, physically, mentally, or spiritually, the thing that gets me unstuck best is to go outside…outside of my house, outside of my routines, outside of my comfortable thinking. Getting outside of me gives me a fresh perspective and outlook on life. When I exercise outside and breathe deeply of the crisp morning air, I expose myself, my physical and spiritual body, to the natural elements of the earth. It is then that I realize how very connected I am to the earth, and to its mysteries and rhythms. I reap much physical and emotional energy from trekking outdoors. By going outside, my muscles and my mind must work in unison as I forge against hill and dale, sun and wind, smooth and rough, road and trail.

“Do one thing every day that scares you.” Eleanor Roosevelt

Similarly, when I get stuck in a mental rut I find it helpful to get outside of my own head and give my mind new places to roam. Reading authors and genres to which I do not normally gravitate gives me fresh perspectives and insights into how others think and perceive. Changing things up when it comes to music, movies, and food provides similar benefits. I like to think of going ‘outside’ of myself as a way to inoculate myself from the dread condition of stagnancy; to be stagnant is to be unchanged and unchanging…it is so nearly like death. And so anytime I need some creative flow, or whenever I’m feeling the blues of status quo, I try to mix things up for myself. I try to get outside of my normal, whatever that may be, which I have so carefully set up around my life and I open a door and go outside…for a change.

Run Training…Intervals

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In the previous Run Training posts, I described the tools which runners typically use to improve their running performance. Whether elite or recreational, all runners bodies respond to the training effects of Base Training, Hill Training, Strides, and Intervals. In regards to interval training, many folks just beginning their exercise journey may engage in interval training to increase calorie burn. And almost all sports use some form of interval drills to improve athletes’ aerobic and anaerobic exercise thresholds. So what does interval training involve? Basically, interval training uses measured bouts of hard-easy repetitions to help athletes adapt to higher levels of aerobic and/or anaerobic exercise. For runners, interval training is meting out hard-easy running in bouts measured by time or distance (minutes or meters). Unlike tempo training (comfortably hard effort) interval training involves running at a high level (near red-line) of exertion for a short amount of time, followed by a recovery interval equal to or greater than the work interval. Novice and recreational runners should begin interval training only after they have laid down their base training. While extremely effective to improve a runner’s running form, economy, endurance, and fat-burning, interval training need only be included once a week if the runner also performs other training methods (strides, hills, tempo) in their weekly runs. Read this article from Active.com about interval training. This is an excellent resource which describes the science of intervals together with interval training plans for runners who want to improve their 5K or 10K race times.

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Faith…Lost and Found

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In the Faith Wears Combat Boots? posts, I tackled the topic of faith: defining it, describing it as having feet, as wearing boots, as being able to work for us and through us, as an outward sign of our belief. But what happens when we feel we have lost our faith? What are we to do then? Can faith be lost and found again?

FAITH by DEFINITION:  1) confidence or trust in a person or thing; 2)  belief that is not based on proof; 3) a belief in anything: God, a religious system, a code of ethics, etc.

Faith and belief are bound together tightly when we say that we have faith in someone or something. The basis of our faith is a deep-seated knowing, a confidence we possess in our hearts and minds which may allude understanding or logical reason. When our faith is put to the test, we rarely welcome that opportunity with open arms. And yet, in order for us to truly KNOW that our FAITH is REAL and VITAL, it is sometimes necessary that we LOSE our FAITH, if only for a while. This loss can seem to us as a death; to lose faith is to feel as one who has been betrayed; or as one who is suddenly orphaned from everything and everyone which gave us sense and reason, trust and security. But maybe we haven’t really lost our faith, perhaps we have simply misplaced it…like our keys…or like the widow’s coin.

Luke 15:8-9 “Or imagine a woman who has ten coins and loses
one. Won’t she light a lamp and scour the house, looking in every
nook and cranny until she finds it? And when she finds it you can
be sure she’ll call her friends and neighbors: ‘Celebrate with me!
I found my lost coin!’
(from THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language)

Maybe our loss of faith is necessary to birth a more perfect understanding of faith into our hearts and minds. If our deeply held convictions fail to support us when we need them most, maybe we need to dig around the recesses of our inmost soul to determine what exactly we were believing in the first place.

“If your faith is never tried then your faith can never be trusted!”
        M.L. Sanchez

To lose faith, may indeed be a gift if the loss causes us to clean the cobwebs out from our initial belief. If the loss moves us to do the work of discovery, of asking ourselves again what we truly believed and had confidence in, then we should not fear the temporary displacement, but rather welcome the occasion for introspection. We should not fear losing the specter of faith which masquerades as authentic ~ a phantom belief must be allowed to blow away when the winds of adversity challenge it. An authentic faith is like the widow’s coin, it can be found when diligently searched for.

Luke 11:10 Everyone who asks will receive. The one who searches
will find, and for the person who knocks, the door will be opened.
(from GOD’S WORD Copyright © 1995 by God’s Word to the Nations
Bible Society.)