Pecking Away at Problems

Late yesterday afternoon, the sky got dark.  The wind blew hard and the temperature dropped.  Such a tease, Mother Nature.  Much needed rain never did fall, but the promise of it was enough that it deterred me from getting on my bike.  From 5 pm til about 7:30 pm, it was a very legitimate decision.

But at 7:30, the clouds had blown over, the sun was shining, albeit starting to set, and the wind had died down to about the closest thing to a dead calm I have seen since moving here.  There was a good hour of decent light left, so I could have gotten on my bike and done some training.

I did not.

By then I had already "resigned" myself to taking the night off, and I didn't have the mental fortitude to change directions and take advantage of the opportunity that had presented itself.

 Which brings me to my thoughts today.  Work has been hard lately.  Tough, consuming situations that have drained both emotions and energy.  Home has been hard lately.  Parenting is a tough gig, and parenting a "tween" seems an especially tough gig.  And this training is really hard, with moments of brilliance and light but other moments of worry, failure, dread and paralyzing self-doubt.

I used to be an avid reader of M. Scott Peck, a psycho-analyst and author who wrote a number of books, the most well-known of which was The Road Less Traveled.  His starting premise has always stuck with me.  He begins by saying that life is difficult, and life's problems are difficult and then focuses on the role of discpline in taking on those problems.  "Without discipline we can solve nothing. With only some discipline we can solve only some problems. With total discipline we can solve all problems." 

This is important because I have really been examining my approach as a parent, a manager and an individual and have been looking at some things I want and need to change -- things that require consistency and focus, which translates to discipline.  And a big part of it is having the discipline to use my time wisely and not waste precious moments, hours, parts of days -- time just isn't refillable.  We all have a finite amount of it in our lifespan.  So wasted moments cannot actually be recovered.

Peck addresses this too.... he says, “Until you value yourself, you won't value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it. ”  I am finally at a stage in my life where I am genuinely happy to be me, genuinely happy to be living my life.  But this is a fairly new perspective on my part, and I think many years of not valuing myself and my time have led to a practice of not always being wise about my days (and nights).  

All of the things I want to change (body, mind, spirit) will take true work, but I need to remember that these are not just things "I have to do", but rather investments in the kind of quality life I want to lead and the kind of quality person I want to be.   Investments in Plan A, as it were.

So.. discipline.  Okay. 

One, two, three, GO.

Thanks, blog.