Wednesday, April 8, 2015

Doing some work

So when I was on my little staycation over Christmas I decided to do a little reading. I sat for hours in a local coffee shop reading Find Your Happy. I had bought the book months before but never slowed down enough to take the time to read it. I am a triathlete. I am an Engineer. When it comes to somethings I can be type A++. Other things I just hope things will fix themselves. Like hard emotional stuff. Please dear God- let that fix itself. I don't wanna do the work.

I have always considered myself to be fairly happy. Note: I considered myself. I had ex's that told me how miserable I was at times. And to be honest I was starting to hear my own tapes play over and over again. At one point I thought maybe I am depressed- and tried acupuncture for that. I found I love acupuncture. Not sure if I was really depressed but it helped with stress and anxiety and a thousand other things.

Reading Find Your Happy started me down a path to find my true self again. I know that is something that is thrown around a lot but I needed to find what makes me tick. What is is I enjoy. I took a bit of an inventory of my life to figure out what was working and what I might want to let go. I have a few things I know for sure. One being- I really enjoy training more to get me to the racing. I am competitive and I need something to measure myself and see my gains. Two- It is time to embrace my inner nerd and geek. I hid from it not wanting to be that kid for so long. But look I am an engineer. I didn't get that way not being a bit of a nerd.

 I asked my Dad and Mom when I was talking to them about it "Am I going through mid-life crisis early?" They kid of laughed and suggested that it is part of growing up. You are still figuring stuff out in your 20s in your 30s is when you do the work and grow up.

As I work through this growing up- which I am happy to call it now. I have done a lot of listening to books on Audible. It also helps that it fell as winter training was in full swing so I had plenty of time to listen and learn. I heard an NPR report on a morning before a swim meet with Brene Brown. I immediately needed to find her books. I started my Audible with Gifts of Imperfection. I started learning about shame and vulnerability and living whole hearted. Things I had never really thought about. Things that most people consider to be dirty words. And to be honest have been dirty words to me.

So I am reading these books, I talk to my coach. She tells me how much she loves Brene. And then someone on my Coeur Team site posts about another book and we all start raving about our books we are reading to help our growth and I quickly realize this is not something I am going through alone. This is a struggle of some others. I am not unique in this look at myself. And maybe it is time I start talking about it. So that is my plan I am going to talk about it. If you talk about it shame loses its power! So time to bring this into the light of day. The work I am doing to improve me and become a better person moving forward!

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