The Wild Dog Blog

Tag: self improvement

  • Stiffness

    Muscles will stiffen in response to unstable joints, as a way of preventing us from moving into potentially harmful ranges of motion.This pattern repeats itself when we emotionally stiffen in response to life’s inherent instability. 

    We fear change, so we resist it through our thoughts and our actions. It feels like we’re protecting ourselves and maintaining control by doing so, but just like the discomfort that comes from muscles stiffening around an unstable joint, all we end up doing is creating more pain for ourselves.

    What big or small changes are you stiffening against, and creating more pain for yourself by doing so? What would it look like to think and act in a way that accepts those changes instead?

    Life is dynamic and ever-changing. We can choose to resist it and stiffen against it, or we can choose to accept it and move with it – opening ourselves up to new experiences and unimagined possibilities as a result.  

  • Friction Creates Traction

    Friction creates traction and traction is necessary for propelling forward. Have you ever tried to run or walk on snow and ice? Without enough friction between the sole of your shoe and the ground, it’s almost impossible to push off without your foot slipping backward and away from you. The power of your gait becomes limited, and moving forward happens slowly and gingerly.

    We often resist and resent the challenges that show up in our lives without realizing that the friction they create can provide the necessary traction for propelling us forward.

    What challenges have you endured in the past that in hindsight you can acknowledge led to a larger lesson or greater growth? Reflect on this now and as you face new challenges in the future. Doing so can be a reminder of your ability to endure, and of the possible meaning to be discovered if you keep moving forward.

  • Give Yourself Another Chance to Change

    The beauty of life is that you can start over as many times as you want. There is no limit to how many chances you can give yourself to change.

    What second, third, fourth, or tenth chance to change will give yourself this week?

  • Like Kids Playing on a Playground

    Play must be a part of movement for it to be sustainable and for it to actually change who you are. For all the talk of goals – where is the talk of play? I don’t mean it’s always “fun” – although it certainly can be and maybe is often. By “play,” I mean playing the way a child plays – doing the thing for no other reason than the doing itself. 

    At what point did you lose your recognition of the joy in the doing? At what point did you start judging the value of a pursuit solely based on its outcome? I’ve said it a thousand times and I’ll keep saying it: outcomes are fleeting, uncontrollable, and unpredictable – making it impossible for them to be lasting sources of fulfillment. 

    But the doing is not fleeting and is within our control. The doing is forever and never has to end. The doing is a bottomless well of fulfillment – you can draw as much joy, excitement, and inspiration from it as your intent allows. 

    To move and train and compete like kids playing on a playground means that as good as achievement feels, it doesn’t really matter. You show up and play regardless. Because getting to put your heart into something is the cake and anything that follows is a cherry on top.

  • Honor Your Curiosities

    It’s 2023 and I’m on the edge of my couch, with my face in my hands, watching my alma mater Florida Atlantic University lose and get knocked out of the championship in their first ever trip to the Final Four. I’ve never been a basketball fan. But the hype of watching FAU beat the odds all season long got me hooked. The let-down of their loss starts to sink in as I spoon the last of a pint of ice cream into my mouth and watch the camera pan across the players’ faces of despair and disbelief. I’m depressed – but at the same time – another familiar feeling starts to rise to the surface.

    That night, I type into Google “basketball coaches near me.” I’m 27 years old and I’ve decided I’m going to take a basketball lesson. When I tell my friends and family, they laugh and ask me “why?” The best reason I can come up with is because I watched March Madness, which doesn’t make it any more logical, and probably makes it less logical. But the truth is, I can’t tell them why because there is no reason why. It’s not logical. It’s curiosity.

    While the basketball lesson did not, shockingly, lead to a WNBA career – it did lead me to think about how often my actions are driven by curiosity without reason, without needing to know where something will lead or why I’m doing it, and how my life has unfolded with possibility in ways I never could have predicted as a result.

    In 2018, I ran a 7 mile trail race and saw other runners at the same race completing 50 miles and 100 miles. I thought that looked like a pretty cool accomplishment and adventure – so despite 13 miles being the longest I had ever run at that time, I came back and ran the 50 mile distance the next year. I’ve been traveling the country running ultramarathons ever since.

    In 2021, I was watching Katie Ledecky dominate swimming at the Tokyo Olympics. I thought the swimmers looked so beautiful and free in the water, and suddenly felt drawn to being in the water myself. I had no swimming experience and had felt no interest in swimming up until that exact moment. I signed up for a local masters swim team that week to learn, and have been swimming ever since – competing at Masters Nationals, in local triathlons, and in long distance open water swims.

    When I made the decision to try both ultrarunning and swimming on somewhat of a whim, I was predictably asked “why?” by my friends and family. And early on, I didn’t have an answer for them or even for myself. All I had was that little spark of curiosity and interest, and an unrestrained instinct to act on that spark – no matter how seemingly small or illogical. In fact, if I look back on my life, the most meaningful and transformative pursuits started without a clear “why.” The why was something I slowly pieced together over time once I was actually out there doing the thing. In a culture that constantly preaches the importance of “knowing your why,” it turns out knowing your why, at least initially, is not all that important and life changing.

    What’s important and life changing is honoring your curiosities and interests by taking action. Giving yourself permission to not know why in order to try, to not need to make your actions logical to other people or even to yourself. If you wait for an obvious and logical reason to act, I think you’ll be waiting your whole life. Some people do wait their whole lives and will always wonder what could have been. Some people wait until their 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, and wish they would have started sooner. As a strength and endurance coach, I hear that story all the time.

    Take the basketball lesson. Tune in and act on that spark of curiosity you’ve been dismissing just because you can’t come up with a clear why. It might lead to very little, like my basketball lesson did, and that’s okay. But it also might lead to adding surprising new chapters to your story that you never could have written while sitting on your couch waiting and wondering. In my experience, you’ll find that when you act, the why you’ve been waiting for has actually been waiting for you.

    Ready to act on your curiosities? Wild Dog Athletics provides online coaching and programming to help you reach your goals and embark on new adventures. Go to: https://www.wilddogathletics.com/ to learn more.

  • Life is Like an Ultramarathon

    When I show up at the start line of an ultramarathon, I expect to be challenged and tested. I expect obstacles. I expect to get tossed around a bit and I don’t expect everything to go my way.

    Life is like an ultramarathon – some days we get handed triumph, and some days we get handed tribulation – and which one we’re handed on any given day is completely out of our control. Most people know this, but still don’t expect it, so when things get tough they’re surprised and unprepared.

    To approach life like an ultramarathon means expecting and preparing to face challenges so that when they arrive we’re able to endure them and make use of them. I’ve run enough ultras to now know that struggle is either a price I have to pay or something that can pay me. I can fear it and resist it, or I can accept it and be curious about who it’s asking me to become.

  • Focus on Your Own Lane

    When I first started swimming on a local masters team I learned very quickly that focusing on what someone else was doing in their lane – how fast they were swimming or how many laps they were doing – distracted me from my own pursuit of getting better. In an effort to try to keep up with the person next to me I would swim frantically and lose control of my technique which obviously didn’t help me swim any faster and only reinforced bad habits. It took a lot of discipline to learn how to focus on my own lane and trust that with patience and intentional effort the rest would follow. 

    How often do you get distracted by what someone else is doing in their lane? It’s easy to get caught up in what other people are doing and where you feel like you’re falling short. But this type of comparison only leads to rushing the process and frantic decision making which will slow your progress in the long term. To stay focused on your own lane is to do the hard thing of accepting the part of the process you’re in and seeking satisfaction in the work itself.

  • The Gift of Expressing Gratitude

    Telling someone when their work and/or presence has impacted you in a meaningful way is one of the greatest gifts you can give to another person…and one of the greatest gifts you can give to yourself. Doing so not only allows for shared gratitude and connection, but inspires wonder by recognizing the mystery in how our paths always seem to cross with the right people at the right time.

  • When Passion Intersects with Problems

    Some days it feels like I was born to be doing what I’m doing, and some days it feels like I have no idea what I’m doing. I’ve come to understand this as a result of being at the intersection of what excites me and what challenges me. The intersection of “I can do this” with “I still have so much left to learn.” 

    I think this is exactly where we should want to be. I think we should count ourselves lucky every time we find ourselves at this intersection. Passion without problems will lead to complacency, and problems without passion will lead to misery. But to have the push and pull of both in what we’re pursuing is a recipe for growth and fulfillment.

  • Prepare to the Best of Your Ability

    Prepare to the best of your ability so that when you win, you can take pride in knowing you’ve earned it. 

    Prepare to the best of your ability so that when you lose, you can take comfort in knowing you did everything within your knowledge and power to give yourself a shot. 

    I’ve been on both sides of the table. Backed by months and months of relentless preparation and work, I’ve won and felt the satisfaction of the outcome matching the input. Conversely, after allowing some gaps in my game to go unaddressed, I’ve lost and felt the disappointment in reflecting on all of the ways I could have prepared better.

    What does preparing to the best of your ability mean to you? To me it means not cutting corners or leaving any stone unturned – in my sport, in the gym, in my lifestyle choices, and in how I’m training my mind. I try to pass this along to my athletes because winning and losing will always be outside of their control. But how they prepare will determine how they feel about themselves when they stand on top of the podium or walk away empty handed. And isn’t that what matters most?

    Wild Dog Athletics has 1 new athlete spot open for March. Go to https://www.wilddogathletics.com/ to learn how I go beyond the program to help you prepare for your big goals and wild adventures.