Five dollars

Yesterday while walking home from the grocery store I passed a woman selling Spare Change News (a paper published by the Homeless Empowerment Project and sold by Boston's homeless and low income). She was singing "spare change news" over and over in a sort of bluesy monotone. It was actually really beautiful. I happened to have $5 in my pocket, so I gave it to her.

It's just $5 and for many of you, that might seem like nothing. But it wasn't nothing to me, because I'm currently living off savings and I'm getting a little bit stingy.

When I was young and had an infinite knowledge of the world, I thought charitable giving was selfish - just a way for people to feel better about themselves - and that made it something not worth doing. I think this was around the time I read The Fountainhead, and if you were ever a teenager and read Ayn Rand, maybe you can forgive me.

It doesn't matter why you do something good, just that you do it. If you need to give to feel better about your rabid consumerism, fine. If you give so you don't feel guilty, fine. If you give because someone tells you to, or everyone else it doing it, that's great. If you give your time instead of money, or if you make a sacrifice - like reducing your electricity & heating usage - for the good of mankind, that's wonderful. If you want to one-up each other by doing all these things and more, I won't stop you.

Do something nice for someone today. You will be doing it for all of the above reasons, and that's just fine with me.


Edit: I just realized today is known as "Giving Tuesday." I had no idea that was a thing - I guess it's a happy accident I posted this today. I propose we just make every day "Giving Tuesday".

Finding Zen

I've written before about learning from my role as assistant coach for Girls on the Run.
Earlier this semester we challenged the girls to run laps without talking to anyone - just focusing on themselves, their thoughts, and how they felt while running. These girls are very chatty, so this was really a challenge for them, but they gave it their best and were (mostly) quiet. After our run, we talked about the value of slowing down and spending time with just ourselves.

via Huffington Post

It's a great lesson for everyone, so I decided to challenge myself to 30 minutes of solitude.

Even when we are by ourselves, solitude is hard to find. Technology provides the world at our doorstep, and that can be a great thing. But to be truly alone in my challenge, I turned my phone and laptop off.

At first, the quiet and sense of space around me was amazing. I felt both big and small - just a small part of the world, but with so much possibility. It felt like a long time, but that probably took about a minute. Then I thought about doing pushups.

I stuck it out for the full 30 minutes, but I can't say I really achieved any sort of zen state. Most of the time I had conversations with myself and planned out my schedule for next year.

I know some people practice meditation and find it really beneficial. I find I have a better shot at zen if I'm wearing myself out physically - so yoga, or a long run, is my version of finding solitude. And while I do bring my phone with me when I run (both for safety and to track my progress), I've stopped listening to music and just allow myself to be present.

If you always run with music, try going without. Maybe just start with a short run. You might be surprised at how refreshing it feels to be alone out there, just putting one foot in front of the other.

Overcoming The Bear

Boston saw its first snowflake this past weekend, so it's official. Summer is over.
If you're like me, training over the winter is really hard. Something switches, and I suddenly crave naps, cheese, and whiskey. The athlete in me wants to keep my training schedule, eat lots of veggies, and spend time outside. But The Bear in me wants to eat that athlete with a side of cheesy-bread and then hide in a cave until the sun comes out again.

Every summer I think This is the year I overcome The Bear. But the following summer I always find myself slowly working off the extra pounds, and wondering why I couldn't have been more diligent. This year, I'm hoping to do better by combining a dose of realism - I probably will gain some weight, and that's ok - with a plan of attack, following these tips:

1. Be realistic, keep it small: If you struggle to stay active through the winter, don't pretend you're going to be running a marathon a week. Make a few small commitments, set reasonable goals to ensure you are meeting your commitments, and then give yourself a break. If you want to run consistently over the winter to keep your base, set a reasonable weekly distance goal and let yourself meet that goal anyway your body feels like it. Enter a few winter races to keep yourself accountable (I do the Super Sunday 5 mile race in Cambridge every year).

2. Find a buddy: If you can't find it in yourself to get up and workout, find someone who will make you. They don't have to actually be there physically, although that's nice; the key is accountability. You have to hate the idea of letting them down more than you hate getting out of bed. For me, November Project is my buddy.

3. Make a schedule: Or a training plan, or whatever you want to call it. It needs to be something that benefits you, not something that makes you feel guilty and angry, so keep Tip 1 in mind. And remember, it doesn't need to be daily or even weekly, and it doesn't even need to be specific. For instance, my "schedule" looks like this: Wednesdays - November Project stairs, 2 swim workouts/week, 1 trainer session/week, 3-6 miles running. It's loose in terms of schedule, because I tried regimenting my training, and it made me cranky. And it's low on activity, because if I do more than scheduled, I feel awesome. No shame here.

4. Prioritize: You'll notice that my "schedule" above has more swimming workouts than anything else. That's because I prioritize swimming in the winter - it's easy to ramp up that training because it's not weather dependent.

5. Focus on water: Drink lots of water. Winters are dry, and you are probably spending more time at the bar. If you can't resist the whiskey and cheese, at least chug water like it's your job.


What's your strategy for fending off The Bear? I suppose I could simply avoid him by living in a warmer climate...

The Experience

This spring I took a leap - I left my job, where I had been happily telling people what to do for seven years, to find my passion in life. I wasn't sure at the time what that was, but I knew I couldn't wait to figure it out. So I jumped.

Bob Mankoff/The New Yorker Collection/Conde Nast via nwpr.org

It was exciting, but it was also lonely. I didn't realize how much I valued being around people all day. I'm an introvert (mostly) and because all my social needs were filled at the office, I never thought much about other communities. But now I started to see community all around me, even in things that probably weren't intended to be social environments, like going to CVS. Why yes, I do need some help choosing toothpaste. Want to be friends?

Something really cool jumped out at me. We spend our lives consuming stuff. Food, technology, infrastructure, media... and every time we consume we have an "experience" - the customer experience. Companies strategize on how to best provide great customer experience, through customer service, product quality, etc. Now, with so much information available to consumers which gives us a lot more power to be choosy, customer experience is changing.

Providing a great customer experience still means attentive customer service, knowledgeable employees, innovative products, etc. - but now it's critical to provide a sense of community and identity, to keep customers engaged, to make them feel like they belong to something big.

Companies are definitely starting to get this - UnderArmour has its "I will what I want" campaign (watch this video of ballerina Misty Copeland. Totally inspiring.), Reebok has Spartan Race and CrossFit and "immersive fitness".

But it has to be bigger than events or marketing campaigns - customer experience is about telling a consistent, compelling story in every part of a company's operations. Oiselle, one of my favorite women's athletic apparel brands, sponsors amazing female atheletes who kick ass and blog about it. But they also provide a community for runners (including some cool dudes) called the Flock, with outlets on Twitter, Facebook, and Strava. The brand is much more than clothing - it's a shared bond. Even if you never meet any of your new running buddies in person, it's nice to know that someone out there is rooting for you.

After all that warm fuzziness, are products just icing on the cake? Quality, innovation, and design are still important - but I think the experience is becoming more of a non-negotiable, a requirement to selling great product. Without it, no matter how beautiful or innovative your product is, it's just stuff competing with other stuff for shelf space. Experience is the differentiator. 

You decide.

I was at an event this past weekend where someone I didn't know told me "You have a cute nose." It's a pretty weird thing to say, but it's not that much weirder than a lot of other comments that solely address appearance. Whenever this happens, I want to somehow explain every cell, thought, belief in my body - all the other things that describe and define me - but that's pretty difficult. I sometimes feel like who I am is out of my control.

Truthfully, I'm obsessed with image and always have been. I care about how I look, and about how I'm perceived. I'm not mad that my nose is cute. I'm mad that there's so much more to me, and it's so much harder for people to see. I'm mad that people think commenting on nose cuteness is an appropriate social interaction.

Most people probably remember being taught that perception is on the outside, and not worth worrying about. It's who you are on the inside that counts, and no one can take that away from you. But on the other hand, there isn't such a solid line between outside and inside. Or between real and perceived. Or between now and the future. Oh boy.

Maybe it's a merging, or a reconciliation. I'm not that different at thirty than I was at three:

Super focused. Loves sweaters. Definitely does not color inside the lines.

But obviously, I've been through a lot more at thirty and those experiences have made me more capable of making decisions about who I am. People often describe life as a journey, but I'd say it's a process. You build, review, and change the process until it works optimally. Sometimes you choose the inputs and sometimes you don't, but you get to decide how they contribute to the process. Over time, you decide who you want to be, and hopefully you use that power for good. After a while, maybe those decisions become so strong that people are compelled to perceive you the way you see yourself. But if that's not the case, at least you got to decide.

I find that to be an incredible freedom, and also a good mantra. You decide.

Gratitude

This fall I started working with a program called Girls on the Run as an assistant coach for a group of twenty 4th & 5th grade girls. They are crazy, super fun, talented, intelligent, and amazing. I am learning so much from them! Twice a week, we discuss issues relevant in their lives and then work on our strength and conditioning and put in some miles with the goal of completing a 5k at the end of the season.

Leading  discussion with the girls makes me think about how these issues affect my life (in a shocking amount of ways, life is not that different now than in 4th grade). Today, we talked about gratitude.

Annapurna Circuit, Nepal

I think of my recent adventure trekking the Annapurna Circuit in Nepal, a trip that was physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausting. I had just quit my office job, where I had been for seven years, to focus on finishing my masters. I had no idea who I was anymore, or what I wanted in life. I needed this adventure to wipe the slate clean - and it did. 

Everything I had worried about at home - which essentially boiled down to Am I enough? - was irrelevant. All I worried about in Nepal was access to clean water and putting one foot in front of the next. The most grateful I have ever felt was when I stepped into an outdoor solar shower and found that the water was not only hot, but had good water pressure.

That shower was so damn good, given the circumstances, that I'll never forget it. I mean that seriously. Every time I take a shower at home I tear up a little. I have such a nice shower, and I am so grateful for it. There is no sarcasm here. I feel similarly about toilet paper and working plumbing, and anyone who has spent time on a similar adventure knows what I'm talking about.

So I'm grateful for showers - but also what they remind me of: surviving, persisting, and succeeding through my 20s, only to find in my 29th year that I felt like a stranger to myself. And then having the courage, and the support from my friends and family, to go find myself again. I'm still in that process and it's been tough, but man am I grateful for being here.

But gratitude isn't just about feeling thankful. It is also "readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness" (Oxford). This is the gratitude that strikes me as important now. To be thankful is good, and good for you. To return kindness, to take your thankfulness and happy feelings and do something with it - actually means something. 

Now I have to ask myself: I'm thankful for hot showers, so what...?

Humpday Commit

via theoatmeal.com (it's like he's in our heads!!)

It's Wednesday, and the week is half over. What have you accomplished? If you're anything like me, this is the point when you think Crap, I meant to do _________ and now it's basically Friday. Ugh. I guess I'll do it next week. Except, as you probably know, next Wednesday rolls around and the same thing happens.

This is not about procrastinating - I'm not a procrastinator so I have no advice for people who struggle with that. When it comes to getting things done, I'm the queen of lists. I'm a do-er, a get-it-done-er.

The problem I have is that my goals don't actually need to get done, and usually get pushed to the side by the things that do. So I'm creating something called "Humpday Commit" (#humpdaycommit) - every Wednesday, I'm making a small commitment that helps me achieve my bigger goals. (Let's take a moment here to recognize that I'm making a commitment to make commitments. Woah. I might have problems.)

This is about setting yourself up to win at life by making regular, incremental commitments to bring about change for yourself. Not just to complete a task and cross it off the list.

I really hope you will join me in this. I'd love to hear your commitments and share in your success, but I'll also need you to hold me accountable!