I saw this image on Facebook and wondered to myself, “Is that the real statistic, or is that in face how we see things in the world?”.  My guess is the latter.  My guess is if you actually looked at the statistics there would be a normalized bell curve around 50% for the times that a USB was plugged in correctly.

So why would most people agree with the 89% number?

My guess is that people tend to remember the failures in their lives more than the successes.  Also, because we live in a society where we focus on giving attention to failures instead of recognizing our successes our subconscious feeling is that we fail more often than we achieve success.

So if you really feel you put your USB stick in to the slot incorrectly 89% of the time, perhaps you should worry less about your USB insertion abilities and more about your attention to the failures in your life.

The 90′s

I spent the first half of the 90′s afraid and searching for myself. You can consider those years Junior and Senior high. I was small, I was smart, I fought my battles with words. I had no real friends. In the second half of the 90′s I found myself. I found the outgoing, creative, leader. I found this person by joining a club in University which gave me people to look up to and learn from; a few years later I was the president. I was still young. I liked the power, I didn’t take the opportunity, as much as I should have, to teach those who were coming up the ranks. In the late 90′s I discovered a sport called Adventure Racing.

The 2000′s

I spent the first half of 2000 living the life of a dream student. I had a full scholarship and I was part of a program that we were able to travel the world for robotics competition. I could sleep in every day, I had minimal work to do, yet I was essentially being paid to go to school and play with robots. I followed my robotics life to Medicine Hat, where I’d meet my future wife, and where I’d perform robotics research for 5 years. I hated Medicine Hat and my job and begun looking for new financial adventures. I began investing in real estate, we have properties now all over Alberta. I realized in the end it was necessarily for me, but lesson learned. Eventually the unhappiness in Medicine Hat took me back to Edmonton to work in SR&ED with the CRA. Also kind of dull but at least I was out of Medicine Hat. Little did I know how much I didn’t exactly like Edmonton either. After 2 years in Edmonton we were off to North Vancouver to begin the 2010′s. What a difference this has made!

In 2002 I raced in my first adventure race, by the end of the 2000′s I had raced across the world, won a world championship in endurance mountain biking, put together teams, took teams apart, etc. I have raced with amazing people and met so many incredible athletes. Just recently I have realized it’s not the racing that drives me, it’s the people, it’s the relationships.

What did you do the past 20 years?  More importantly what do the 2010′s hold for you?

So the past 20 years have contained more than a life time of experiences, and things are just getting started in my mind. More adventures to come, more experiences to have, more relationships to build. I’m very excited for what the 2010′s bring.

The reason I’m sharing all of this with you is because of a blog written by Seth Godin this morning, basically asking the question, What have you been up to and more importantly what are you doing next?

Seth Godin wrote this on the subject:

Hindsight is 20/20. People are already looking back on the 1990s and wishing that they had had more courage. When you look back on the 2000s, what will you have to say for yourself? [The following is reprinted from 9 years ago].

Here’s a question that you should clip out and tape to your bathroom mirror. It might save you some angst 15 years from now. The question is, What did you do back when interest rates were at their lowest in 50 years, crime was close to zero, great employees were looking for good jobs, computers made product development and marketing easier than ever, and there was almost no competition for good news about great ideas?

Many people will have to answer that question by saying, “I spent my time waiting, whining, worrying, and wishing.” Because that’s what seems to be going around these days. Fortunately, though, not everyone will have to confess to having made such a bad choice.

While your company has been waiting for the economy to rebound, Reebok has launched Travel Trainers, a very cool-looking lightweight sneaker for travelers. They are selling out in Japan — from vending machines in airports!

While Detroit’s car companies have been whining about gas prices and bad publicity for SUVs (SUVs are among their most profitable products), Honda has been busy building cars that look like SUVs but get twice the gas mileage. The Honda Pilot was so popular, it had a waiting list.

While Africa’s economic plight gets a fair amount of worry, a little startup called ApproTEC is actually doing something about it. The new income that its products generate accounts for 0.5% of the entire GDP of Kenya. How? It manufactures a $75 device that looks a lot like a StairMaster. But it’s not for exercise. Instead, ApproTEC sells the machine to subsistence farmers, who use its stair-stepping feature to irrigate their land. People who buy it can move from subsistence farming to selling the additional produce that their land yields — and triple their annual income in the first year of using the product.

While you’ve been wishing for the inspiration to start something great, thousands of entrepreneurs have used the prevailing sense of uncertainty to start truly remarkable companies. Lucrative Web businesses, successful tool catalogs, fast-growing PR firms — all have started on a shoestring, and all have been profitable ahead of schedule. The Web is dead, right? Well, try telling that to Meetup.com, a new Web site that helps organize meetings anywhere and on any topic. It has 200,000 registered users — and counting.

Maybe you already have a clipping on your mirror that asks you what you did during the 1990s. What’s your biggest regret about that decade? Do you wish that you had started, joined, invested in, or built something? Are you left wishing that you’d at least had the courage to try? In hindsight, the 1990s were the good old days. Yet so many people missed out. Why? Because it’s always possible to find a reason to stay put, to skip an opportunity, or to decline an offer. And yet, in retrospect, it’s hard to remember why we said no and easy to wish that we had said yes.

The thing is, we still live in a world that’s filled with opportunity. In fact, we have more than an opportunity — we have an obligation. An obligation to spend our time doing great things. To find ideas that matter and to share them. To push ourselves and the people around us to demonstrate gratitude, insight, and inspiration. To take risks and to make the world better by being amazing.

Are these crazy times? You bet they are. But so were the days when we were doing duck-and-cover air-raid drills in school, or going through the scares of Three Mile Island and Love Canal. There will always be crazy times.

So stop thinking about how crazy the times are, and start thinking about what the crazy times demand. There has never been a worse time for business as usual. Business as usual is sure to fail, sure to disappoint, sure to numb our dreams. That’s why there has never been a better time for the new. Your competitors are too afraid to spend money on new productivity tools. Your bankers have no idea where they can safely invest. Your potential employees are desperately looking for something exciting, something they feel passionate about, something they can genuinely engage in and engage with.

You get to make a choice. You can remake that choice every day, in fact. It’s never too late to choose optimism, to choose action, to choose excellence. The best thing is that it only takes a moment — just one second — to decide.

Before you finish this paragraph, you have the power to change everything that’s to come. And you can do that by asking yourself (and your colleagues) the one question that every organization and every individual needs to ask today: Why not be great?

I read this post from Donald Miller yesterday and it struck a real cord with me. I looked at who some of my best friends are and how we’ve shared many of the same stories again and again over the years and how lucky I am to have those very special friends. It made me realize that my best friends are doing things differently than the norm and I like them because of it. Here’s the full text to Donald Miller’s blog below.

What Makes Certain People Special? Part One
by Donald Miller

Last night I stayed out till about 3am with some old friends. We shared the same stories we always share, stories about living in the woods, in the mountains of Oregon, about how we met in Colorado, about how we used to sleep on the lawn or meet each other outside one of our high schools, waiting for somebody to come tumbling out the window to skip for the day so we could go to the river. We all agreed those were some of the best days of our lives. And each of us has lived a life with no less risk, adventure or excitement.

As the evening wore down, one of my friend said to me, “You know, Don, I think I just assumed back then that everybody was special, that everybody wanted to live an exceptional life, but it isn’t true. The older I get, the more I realize people don’t really know how to live well. There are not very many special people in the world.”

I reluctantly agreed. I say reluctantly because in my line of work you meet and even seek out exceptional people. I’ve met tons of them, many of them having become my role models and best friends.

Now, by special I do not mean talented, rich or famous. I have very few friends like that. I just mean people who are doing life differently, whether that means home schooling their kids or showing their work in galleries or inventing a different kind of bicycle to save a country. I am talking about people who take social norms as suggestions, not mandates.

I confess I have little patience for normality. Oh, I love laying in bed on Sunday morning and watching football on Saturday. I think if you followed me around for a week you’d see a lot of normal. But I can’t live that way for long.

It’s not that I think normal people are boring or not good enough, it’s that normal people often have beauty and strength and abilities they aren’t using. In America, normal means that you are a follower, a consumer, not a creator. I don’t mean to sound judgmental, but I have felt this way for a long time. The truth is I don’t want to live a normal life. I want to homeschool my kids, on a boat in the Jervis Inlet. I want them to know that if they want they can grow up and be Senators, or Opera singers. I want to study Michaelangelo in Rome and Florence, I want them to worship Jesus in a Buddhist temple, befriend famous authors, assist in surgeries in the third world, ride their bikes across Africa and disagree, at thirteen, with columnists in the New York Times. Why? Because they can, and nobody is stopping them.

Many of us are normal because we are afraid. We aren’t taking responsibility for the exceptional opportunities that are laid before us. We have failed to realize that God shares agency with us. He shares his power, and even His will. God is the Father sitting with his child at a giant, blank piece of butcher paper asking us what we want to draw. And within reason, we can draw whatever we want.

I’m going to start a series on exceptional people and what makes them so exceptional. But I’m starting this series because I want all of us to understand that we can be exceptional, too. If you want to live an exceptional life, just strike out and make it happen. Nothing is stopping you.

So, keep watching in January. I’ll be featuring more than few of my heroes and together maybe we can learn from them.

As we start, and as offensive as the question may sound, what do you think makes people stand out? What makes somebody special?

Whenever you put something together for the first time, or you run your first race, or you plan your first expedition, or you go on your first camping trip with your kids, there is always a little bit of anxiety, there is a little bit of stress, there is a little bit of excitement that keeps you up the night before the “event”. The Inaugural FEAT Canada was no different. I barely slept a wink the night before the event. As I laid in bed my thoughts drifted between, “have I done everything” and “what do I still have to do?”. I went through as many “what ifs” as possible, even though I was telling myself, “Just go to sleep”.

Lying awake

I’ve had this feeling before. I remember lying awake before my first adventure race in a tent in Drumheller back in 2002. I remember lying awake before my first expedition adventure race in a B&B in Punta Arenas back in 2006. I remember lying awake before my first Ultramarathon, my first 24hr mountain bike ride, my first University exam, my first date! It still gets to me once in a while, but with all I’ve been lucky enough to participate in, I typically get a well-rested, uninterrupted sleep (save for the dog needing out).

Being Alive

However, I was brought back on Monday night to that feeling. I laid awake with that feeling of excitement, that feeling of truly being alive! It was just today that it hit me. This is why I do the things I do in my life. It’s for that feeling of being alive, it’s for that feeling of living. The only real question, is how can I get more of this feeling? What do I need to change about who I am and what I do so I feel this feeling more often?

Making changes

The only way to change my life is to take action.  If I continue to settle, if I continue to be where I am, then the path I’m on (or rut I’m in) only becomes more defined.  If I want more “feeling alive”, then I need to make the changes necessary to achieve it.  So what’s next?  Stay tuned…

The reason for the question.

On the 21st of September I was traveling on my road bike East-bound on Marine drive in North Vancouver. Traffic was jammed and not moving. I was in the bike lane moving at a clip of around 30-35km/hr.  I was being mindful of traffic, as always, but in a flash I was down.  A green mini-cooper decided to turn into a VW dealership right at about the same time as I was passing him.  I nailed his door (leaving a dent and paint transfer from my bike) and took our his mirror as I plunged on to the cement to the right of his car in the VW dealership’s driveway.

Okay this is a gross exaggeration of what the Mini looked like, but since I didn't take any pictures (which ICBC gave me some grief for) this was all I could find...

I was immediately angry, but that subsided quite quickly as the person I hit rushed to my attention and proclaimed how he was at fault and how sorry he was. I honestly felt more worried for him than I did for myself at this time. Why did I have to hit such a nice and consoling person? (Turns out he was a doctor of psychology with a specialization in conflict and a former minister) At the same time, I was worried about my bike and, with the shock and adrenalin running through my system, I didn’t think anything else of the situation at the time. My immediate thoughts were get this guy’s information and then get to the bike shop to get my bike fixed.

Within 2 blocks of leaving the accident I was trembling. I had to stop. I called my wife and asked her to meet me at the bike shop. I called the bike shop to tell them to stay open for me. I got back on my bike and headed to the shop. When I arrived at the shop they immediately sat me down and we waited for Tanya to show up. From there it was off to the hospital where I had the “pleasure” of laying on a metal board with a neck collar in my soaking wet clothes for the next 3 hours.

When you're forced to be horizontal and are staring at the ceiling you can't help but think about things that you might not have ever thought about...

The good news is that structurally (e.g. my bones) seemed okay, but that I’d have soft tissue (e.g. my muscles) damage for a while which can be treated by advil/tylenol and “taking it easy”. Taking it easy, I have learned to understand means no use of my upper body, which makes things like sitting at a desk and using a computer difficult, let alone riding a bike hunched over the handlebars. Now begins the slow road to recovery…

I am the lucky one

In the grand scale of things I have to say I’m quite lucky with the outcome of this entire accident.

First, on a scale of 1-10 with 1 being zero injury, zero bike damage and 10 being death I’d say my accident fits in the 2-3 range all things being considered.  I have no broken bones.  I didn’t suffer a concussion.  My bike is damaged.  My coat and backpack are ripped.  The guy’s car has a damaged door and mirror.  I have soft tissue issues.  The soft tissue issues I am determined to make go away by visits to my chiropractor, massage therapist and by limiting my time behind a desk.

Second, it’s nice to know that my athletic instincts and body probably helped me a ton during the fractions of seconds while the accident was happening.  I’m positive my body reacted to the car before it registered in my conscious mind that I was about to be hit by a car.  Looking at the damage to my bike and body it’s quite apparent that I swerved to miss the vehicle quite profoundly, and enough so that I didn’t just plow right into the vehicle (i.e. t-bone the car).  I’m very lucky that my “spidey-senses” were tingling and reacting the way they needed to in order to minimize the collision as much as possible.

Third, I’ve also met a very interesting individual (the guy who hit me) which may turn into a relationship that I would never have “stumbled upon” if not for the accident.  One of our first email interchanges after the accident I explained to him how this was an “accident” and not an “on-purpose” and while I appreciated his concern for me, it was important for me to know that he too was going to be okay. It’s not like the video above where the car actually swerves INTO the riders.  Since then we’ve met again in person and I can see a relationship being built based on many mutual interests and similarities in our lives.

It could have been a lot worse

So things could have been a lot worse.  Looking at the photo above,  my situation is probably that of the guy in the yellow bike and white bike shorts.  Everyone else is upside down.  He looks like he was still hit, but he’s gonna be okay.  The rest of the riders though, who knows how they fared…  Regardless, though, I’ve had to ask myself the question – what is my life/lifestyle worth?

What is my life/lifestyle worth?

In North America we receive “compensation” for events like these in a monetary form.  Obviously, my days off the bike/trails and my body’s physical shape can not be given back to me.  Unfortunately the only way we compensate for these types of things is by “paying” for them.  My bike will be fixed or written off.  My jacket and back pack will be written off.   The guy’s car will be fixed.  The physical items damaged will all be remedied and be like they were before the accident.  Similarly, I’m sure that any doctor’s/chiropractor/massage appointments will similarly be taken care of by the insurance company.  However, unfortunately, we can’t say the same for my body, my mind or for that matter the other guy’s mind.  And, since the only way these items get compensated for by our “system” is by monetary means it begs one to ask the question – what is my mind and body worth?  And what is my lifestyle, which I’ve been forced to abandon for 2 weeks, so far, worth?

This is where things get tricky…  Some say that I should get a lawyer because they are “experts” at knowing what a situation like this is “worth”.  However, by introducing a lawyer in to the equation, it immediately diminishes the worth by 25%-33% as that is their “take”.  On the other side though, lawyers have dealt with situations like this many hundreds or thousands of times with their clients and know exactly what situations like this are valued at based on previous precedent/experience.  The reason I’ve been told to get a lawyer is because others have found ICBC to be particularly frugal when it comes to biker/car accidents when it comes to the bikers injuries etc.  I have no opinion on this as I’m just about to go through this for the first time with ICBC.  That being said, how would I know if ICBC is being fair or following precedent when I haven’t been involved in a situation like this before?

So now I’m stuck in a situation where I need to essentially put a monetary value on what my lifestyle is worth or the lost time living that lifestyle.  Because assuming my injuries go away, which I’m intent on making happen, and all the physical items get repaired/replaced, the only thing missing or the only thing that I will not be able to get back is time lost living my life the way I would normally be living it.

So when it comes to your lifestyle, how can anyone put a monetary value on your time?

I have recently discovered something about expectations.  I have known for a while that I place very high expectations on myself.  Only recently (in the 6 months) have I realized that I, whether intentionally or not, place similar expectations on others.  This has affected many relationships with individuals (e.g. family, friends, coworkers) and with teams I’ve been a member of (e.g. hockey, adventure racing, personal development).  It has not only affected relationships, but it has essentially ruined them.

So while I can attempt to examine the reasons for why I have placed these high expectations on myself and others (things like I’ve never felt good enough or I’ve felt like I had to achieve more) the real thing for me to realize and the most important thing for me to realize is that I do it and that it IS affecting others and my relationships with others.  It is something that I do so much that it has literally become a part of who I am and a part of the framework which defines me, or rather, defines the way that I interact and have relations with others.  Thus, because it is such a huge part of who I am, the harder it is to change.  But that’s what I need to do for me and for success to occur in the relationships I still have in my life.

How do I change?

The only way to change yourself is to become aware of the past, next to become aware of the now and finally to take the power of understanding the now to inflict change on how you’re going to present yourself in the future.

I have very strong opinions.  Many times my opinions or comments put others down.  Is it because I am trying to prop myself up by putting others down, or is it because I need to prove to myself that I am better than others.  I’ve been told for years that I am arrogant, or cocky.  I haven’t necessarily listened, instead I have spun it around and said, “No your wrong, I’m just very confident in my abilities”.  What if actually it was, “I’m terrified that I’m not better than you, but by putting on this external face I can make you believe I am better than you and therefore confident”?   Only a week ago I wrote in my notes, “Unfortunately some people see me as being overly aggressive, arrogant, cocky.  I see it as confidence.  Are they the same?  Am I the one who is blind?”  I think I was blind.  I was blind.

In the past I have proven to myself and others through competition (especially athletically and earlier on in my life academically) that I wasn’t just arrogant or cocky.  Through competition I could prove that I was better.  Thus, through competition, I fed myself the belief that it was actually confidence in myself that I had, instead of arrogance or cockiness.  Similarly, competition has been about me striving to outdo someone else for acknowledgement.  Striving for acknowledgement, or love, has driven me to continue to compete.

BEATING to be BETTER

By BEATING others in competition it proved to me that I was better.  Just like my opinions and comments I am trying to prove that I am BETTER.  The scary part of that statement is the previous statement.  By BEATING others it has proven to me that I am better…  By BEATING OTHERS…  How scary is that?  How scary is it, that the only way I know to get acknowledgement is to BEAT others.  If it was in just a 100m run that’d be one thing, but the scary part, is that in my life it has ALSO been to mentally and emotionally BEAT others to get that acknowledgement.  Starting with my brother as early as I can remember to a comment I made just this past afternoon I have always beat down one person to get acknowledgment from another.  It’s taken 33 years to finally catch up to me, and the result is that it’s leaving me alone.

The steps to invoke change?

In my thoughts this evening, I have painfully become aware of the past.  The goal now is to catch myself in the present so I can be who I want to be and have the relationships I want to have in the future.  Unfortunately, the athletic drive in me to compete is also fostering the behaviour in me to prove on a daily basis that I am better than others.  In other words, by always training and having that next athletic competition around the corner it is impossible for me to separate myself from that drive to be better in an athletic competition and the drive to be better than others period.  By training for athletic competition my mind will be focused on being better and that will inherently affect my non-athletic life.  It is impossible for it not to.  You can’t just separate different parts of your life.  You can’t just turn the switch on or off.

The decision

So through the help of others and after sitting awake for the past 2 hours I’ve decided that I’m going to take a break from athletic competition.  I am going to take the rest of 2011 off and all of 2012.  This basically means, that nothing big will be planned for 2013 since it some times takes a year or more to ramp up the proper training to be where I want to be.  The plan, as of tonight (this morning) is to re-evaluate my athletic pursuits in January of 2013.

For the sake of my remaining relationships, for the sake of myself, this is the best decision I can make!

I had an interesting conversation the other day and we were talking about the things we take for granted.  Hands down the number one person I take for granted is my wife.  It’s horrible, but it’s true.  I take for granted all the amazing things she does for me and all the amazing things she does to support my lifestyle.  I truly am lucky to have a wife who dedicates herself so strongly to making my life a better place.  I truly am lucky to be able to come home to someone who loves me unconditionally (and that’s not a dog).

Take some action today

So in this posting I’m encouraging everyone out there to think about that person you take for granted, and let them know how much you love them.  I’m encouraging you to think about those things you take for granted and write them down and then write down how thankful you are for having them in your life!

I’m sure you’ve heard this song before:

“I get knocked down
But I get up again
You’re never going to keep me down”

Why is it that I live in this cycle? Why can I just get up again and end it?  Yeah, yeah, I keep getting up again, but I’m sick and tired of getting knocked back down!  Why?  Am I telling myself I don’t deserve to be up “there”?  Am I afraid of being up “there”?  Where is “there”?

Low self-worth?

What does this all say to me?  It says I have self-doubt or worse low self-worth.  That’s most definitely it.  Low self-worth or lack of self-love just allows things to crash.  Why? Because I don’t feel I’m worth being up all the time.  I don’t feel I’m good enough to stay in the highs for an extended period of time.  Why am I in the situations I am in?  It’s because of the value I put on myself right now.  Everything I have now is due to the value I have put on myself.

Next step?

So what’s the next step?  I guess the real question is how do I improve my self worth?  Better yet, how can I love myself better?  Ah hah!  The real question reveals itself.  How can I LOVE MYSELF better?  How can I love myself at all?

It’s funny asking this question, because it’s a similar question Tanya and I have asked ourselves in our own relationship and many times we have referred to the book, “The 5 Love Languages”.  After reviewing the 5 Love Languages (you can take this test) my number 1 Love Language is “Words of Admiration”, while my number 2 is a tie between “Quality Time” and “Acts of Service”.  Gifts and Touch barely make the radar.  What does this mean for me?  This probably means that I need to write more for myself, give myself time with myself and do things for myself.  Interesting.  Even writing this blog, while Tanya is in bed, is allowing me to lift up my spirits.  Words of Admiration – check, Quality Time – check, Things for me – check.

The light bulb has gone off!

As I type, it seems like I can’t type fast enough.  I look at my obvious top 3 love languages that make ME feel loved and I ask myself why these three and why are they so prominent over the others?  The answer is quite obviously in my past.  It’s painful to think about it, but as a child the two things I don’t ever really remember having are words of admiration from my family or quality time with my family.  Acts of service was there, which is maybe why that’s the number one way how I show love now, even though others, for instance Tanya, don’t understand it, because their love language is something completely opposite.

Going back to the big revelation though…

The biggest thing I ever remember hearing from my family was, “You could have done better” or “Why didn’t you get 100%” or “Why did so-and-so beat you?”.  I’m sure there were words of encouragement and admiration in our household – I didn’t live with ogres.  But the fact remains that these are the defining statements that I remember.

Similarly, I don’t ever really remember good quality time with my family.  I remember lots of stuff we did.  Camping was always fun in the summers and it was probably my most fond time of us as a family.  But that was 2 weeks out of 52.  The rest of the time always seemed rushed.  My parents worked a lot and both me and my brother were in every sport imaginable.  My parents really worked their butts off to provide us with every opportunity available to us/them and for that I don’t think I can express my gratitude enough.  They did their best guaranteed.  But maybe I needed just to have some quality time with them.  Maybe I needed time to just sit down and talk.  Time to laugh.  Time to share.  Time to cry.  One thing I definitely remember about growing up is never really sharing anything with anyone.  My parents, my brother, my “friends”, my teachers, etc.  I kept everything in.  I remember seeing kids at school being so open with their parents whether it was about girls, or grades, or anything.  I was always so jealous, though this is probably the first I’ve ever spoken of it.

Only now, in retrospect, does it all make sense on why I am who I am, and more importantly what it is that makes me feel loved.  When I began typing this blog I had no expectation of getting to this point.   What an ah-hah moment for me?  Yeah me!

Repercussions?  Gratitude first.

So now what?  Knowing that my family (at least my mother) reads these blogs, the real question to me is now what?  What are they going to say?  So I need to make some things clear.

I think my family did their absolute best in raising me and my brother based on the tools they had and based on their past.  My parents were both much younger than me when they had me and things were much different then.  Hell if I had kids in my early 20s I can only imagine how I would have raised them versus how I would like to think I’d raise them now.  So before the wrath, I’d like to express my deepest of gratitude (especially since it’s still Mother’s Day for another hour and ten minutes here) to both of my parents for raising me to be me.  The fact that I’m able to understand myself now is a testament to the tools you provided me at a young age to seek knowledge and to ever improve myself.  I am so thankful for the childhood I had.  I loved playing sports, I loved being good in school, I loved our camping trips, I loved all of our trips, I loved Halloween, I loved playing outside, I loved the outdoors.  And I owe all of these loves that I had and STILL have to you.

So thank you for raising me to be who I am, because I truly do (with tears in my eyes now) love me.

I was lucky enough to get out on my bike on Sunday with my wife and head down to watch the Vancouver Marathon this past weekend. We had a friend in town from Edmonton running and we figured we’d head down to support her and the rest of the runners. This was the first ever marathon (or running event for that matter) that I’ve watched. In the past I’ve always been taking part in the race as a participant. More importantly this was the first event I’ve watched in a long time where I just cheered for random people as they were running along the course.

I realized three things

First, it feels good to cheer for, smile at and encourage others. I think cheering, smiling, and encouraging put bigger joy in me than many of the runners out there. Second, the further back in the pack the runners were, the more fun they seemed to be having. It truly was amazing to see the smiles on the faces of the “walkers” and the people at the back of the pack. They weren’t at the event to win, they were there for something bigger! More on this later. Third, it’s amazing how much work and effort it must take to put on an event of this size. I wasn’t able to watch the Sun Run with 50,000 runners a few weeks ago, but to see this many runners, and the streets that were shut down and the volunteers, police etc. it truly is an amazing undertaking for people looking to go for a 42.2km or 21.1km run.

Participating, not racing.

Further to my second realization, I was absolutely amazed and inspired by those at the back of the pack. There were some overweight people, some obvious non-runners, some walkers, some elderly, but mostly just regular people. Except there was a difference. Most of them were smiling and just loving it out there. Many of them had t-shirts dedicated to loved ones or to causes like Cancer, Japan, etc.

We were at one section on the course where the marathon and half marathon races merged into each other. It was 25km for the marathoners and 17km for the half marathoners. The halves had been going for 2-1/2 hours. The fulls had been going for 2 hours. The fulls were mostly serious people trying to get that sub 4hr marathon. The halves were just having fun. The halves were thanking me for being there. They were thanking me for ringing our cow bell to cheer them on. This group of people just kept plugging away walking/jogging/strolling/crawling. They were going to finish. They didn’t care about the time. They cared about something bigger. They cared about who they might inspire. They cared to see if they could do it. They were out there for a bigger reason, much bigger than “the race”.

When the WHY is big enough you can make anything happen

It truly is inspiring to see the back of the packers run in these events. Some times they take as much as 3-4 times as long as the winners do. THREE to FOUR times as long! These people who aren’t as physically fit are out there for TRIPLE or QUADRUPLE the amount of time as the winners. Think about that. What on earth could motivate them to do that? Then you go back to their t-shirts they were wearing and the causes (or the why’s) they were running for and it all makes sense. It was this effort that gave me the biggest gift this past weekend. It truly is amazing what you can do when the WHY is big enough!

We all have our own perspective and we’re the only ones who’ll ever have it.  You’ll never be able to truly see the world through another person’s eyes, however, through communication, a bit of vulnerability and a true desire to listen you may be able to understand their perspective a little bit better.  To be truly enlightened is to be able to understand the perspective of someone else.

For example, fooling around and joking to someone may be interpreted as something seriously threatening to someone else.  Unless these two people communicate about how they see this event and their perspective they’ll never truly understand the other person.  For instance, to one person this may be how they show affection because that’s how they were taught to show affection when they were really young, while another person may feel threatened or attacked because they were brought up in an abusive home or abusive relationship.

Simple things like the above example can have a profound effect on a relationship when not recognized or more importantly when not communicated.  It takes real conversations, with an attempt at really understanding one another, to truly get a glimpse of someone’s perspective.  To have these real conversations and to truly understand one another it takes a level of trust.

The key to understanding the perspective of someone else then?  The first step is to open up the doors to be able to trust.  Once those doors have been cracked, then it’s taking that next step to communicate.  Being vulnerable may follow.  Listening is a must.  And as the process continues over days, weeks, months and years, perspective is gained, understanding is the result and trust is absolute.