Limiting belief #1 Running is hard.
Believing something to be hard makes it so. If we believe
something is hard we tend to try harder. Trying harder means using more
effort. Using more effort than is
necessary is the opposite of efficiency. Have you ever fallen and rolled and gotten
right back up without difficulty? Have you ever tripped over a rock on a trail
run and hooked your back foot on the rock. If you stiffened up in order to try
to avoid falling, as I have had the experience of doing in the past, you may
have injured yourself. I once pulled a
hamstring that way. But the point is
that we have more subtle ways of using our own energy against ourselves. We
think that more force is the answer. We have been raised to think that more
effort is a virtue. We do not know how to seek the easy way, the better way.
The way of ease is not known to us. It is a strange path. We can step on the
earth lightly and lift from its surface easily and be connected to nature and thereby
to ourselves. With each step we define ourselves. Or we can pound on the earth
with each step and wonder at the hard impact we feel and how our setbacks seem
to come out of nowhere.
Do this. Run once with absolutely no goals except to
experiment to find the easiest way to run. Try this, try that, but only listen
for the easy. What is really easy for you now? Keep the effort level of the run
very easy. While you are exploring, you might succeed in finding your way.
Things might get so easy, so natural as to be supernatural. That is fun.
Then take this attitude into one day of daily life. See what
a difference there is in adopting this attitude more deeply. Then again bring
this learning back into your running.
(part 2 will be published tomorrow)
No comments:
Post a Comment