This happens every day: I get up with plenty of time to get to school on time, eat breakfast, pack my lunch, and am totally ready but then get sucked into blog reading (and now writing) and checking my email. I’m hoping to get up a bit earlier next week and do some homework in the morning because I am not putting enough heart and soul into my studying right now. I think it will be easier but last weekend was too much fun for me to have any regrets.

Actually, I think I just am learning that life’s better without regrets.

And realizing this comes at just the right time, because I was starting to feel some nasty stuff that I really had to go right into to figure out, and it has to do with training.

I love Daily Mile — I like commenting on other people’s workouts, I love it when people send me encouragement, and I like to see what other friends are up to. I also love that it tells you how many donuts you’ve burnt in your training thus far and how many times you’ve gone around the world:

…but I don’t love comparing myself to other people. And in the past, this is all I would do. Compare, feel bad, push myself, get hurt, give up, etc. Not a good cycle. Now for the insight.

Why compare? This goes back to what I was trying to get at with my mention of competition yesterday.  Whether it’s school, training, appearance, or whatever, why do we feel the need to compare to someone else? What if we knew that just by being us we were enough and we were awesome and we were perfect? How would we treat each other and ourselves and how much better could we be just because we aren’t feeling bad about ourselves for not being good enough or not feeling high on ourselves for being “better than” someone else?

Sorry that this took a bit of a random angle, but I’m hoping that someone reads this and needs to hear: You are enough. You are amazing.

A thought: If you missed the last 1/4 of your workout yesterday, does that mean the first 3/4 are for nothing? What if you focused on what you did do instead of what you didn’t and gave yourself credit instead of criticism?

Another thought: this really has to do with me feeling a bit of nervous/weird over not racing this weekend at Woodstock, which was supposed to be my first tri of the season. As I’ve mentioned, I’m not planning any tris just yet. And as you’ve seen, I’m loving training with a bit more of a carefree attitude and I’m re-learning what it means to love to exercise and to move my body. And this to me is more important than jumping in cold water and then biking and running when I can do all of those things on my own time. So when I started to feel self conscious/lazy for not racing, I remembered that how I think about this is a choice, and I’m not willing to choose the perspective that’s going to make me feel like crap. Maybe you’re out there thinking, “you CAN race, you’re not injured, why don’t you?” but I doubt that. That voice is in my head–nobody would ever call me lazy for choosing to live a little instead of race when I’m not into it. It takes me back to the “If it’s not a hell yes, it’s a hell no” motto.

So this weekend I will not be racing. I will be enjoying the sun, maybe watching the race, and working on the other things I can do on my bucket list. When you start to focus on the good and take the focus off of what you’re not doing/stop beating yourself up, you get to feel good. And we all deserve to feel good!

I hope this post makes sense. If not, I still feel better. So being late for class–with a smile on my face–seems like a small price to pay!

Do you ever beat yourself up for what you’re not doing at the expense of giving yourself credit for what you are doing?
What’s a choice you made that you had to remind yourself to feel good about?