An UNHURRIED Life

"Hurry is not of the devil; hurry is the devil." - Carl Jung

"Superficiality is the curse of our age." - Richard Foster

Why write about this? Because I feel that always being in a hurry has caused me to miss out on many of life's most simple joys. Owning your own business, keeping a healthy vibrant marriage, training, reading, studying ,self growth, and family all require a certain amount of time in order to be fruitful. The challenge is in learning to keep all of these in balance without forgetting what is truly important in life. My tendency is to get my schedule so busy with clients that I barely have time to train, study and spend quality time with Yoana. The hectic pace leaves me absolutely smoked and in a chronic state of mental and physical exhaustion. Perhaps some of you have experienced what I am talking about?

Perhaps it's my personality but I have tend to be fear driven with alot of anxiety. I feel that keeping ultra busy with my work will keep me and my family financially secure, but at what expense. Starting in January I really started noticing how much my physical, mental and spiritual health has been impacted from my hectic "HURRIED" pace of life. I honestly cannot say that I have cured this problem, but I am 100% aware of the problem and the negative impact it has had on my life. My training has suffered. An amazing book I read by John Ortberg called "The Life You've Always Wanted; Spiritual Disciplines for Ordinary People" really awakend me to the ideas I am writing about in this post. I know I am not alone; hurry sickness is the disease of the modern 21st century. Perhaps you have seen people do these things or you yourself do them"

* talk on the cell phone while driving
* Check your e-mail on your cell phone while driving or while eating
* Check your e-mail or answer phone calls while eating with your family
* Multi -tasking (driving, eating, talking on the phone, listening to the radio)
* Accumulating Clutter
* Constantly speeding up daily activities
* Superficiality

One of the things I have started doing is intentionally slowing down my day. Rather than speeding around everywhere as fast as possible, I am purposely driving slower or picking the longest line that the grocery store rather than the shortest one. Beleive me, it is not easy, but it is giving me more peace and less stress. I am also trying to find time for more solitude. Going for walks by the ocean or going and practing putting has been great for me in many ways. It slows me down, gets me into nature as well. Another thing that Yoana and I have started doing is hiking on the weekends. Just getting outside and hiking up mountains has brought so much joy into my life I can't believe it. I feel like a kid again when I do things like hiking.

Anyway, my point is that Life does require alot of work, but we can do our work is a slower, more mindful state of mind. Trying to do everything rushed rarel works, and the quality of our work is mediocre at best. Here is a quote from the book,

"The deeper truth is that we live is a lethal environment. American society is filled with ideas and values and pressures and temptations about success and security and comfort and happiness that we will not even notice unless we withdraw on occasion. Thomas Merton wrote that the early church fathers places such an premium on solitude because they considered society to be a shipwreck from which any sane perosn must swim for his life. These people believed that to let oneself drift along, passively accepting the tenets and values of what they knew as society,was purely and simply a diaster."

Powerful stuff. Are you passively accepting things in your life that are destructive you your soul? Only you can answer that question.

My hamsting is still healing as I feel some pain upon stretching. I think I'll start doing some light tempo running next week. I have a track meet in late June and plan on running in the 50 meter dash. Hopefully my hammie will be ready to go by then.

Training this week: I am taking this week off. True to my nature and habits, I overdid it last week and am smoked. I ran myself into the ground and need a week to recover. You would think I would start to learn from my mistakes, geez!