The Negative Me

Over the year I work hard, I grow mentally, and I accomplish a lot of athletic goals that I didn't think it's possible.  I am my own version of Jeremy Lin.  There isn't that many Hong Kong Ironman and Hong Kong Ultra Runner in general but I am breaking the barrier.  And I also got others to be more active.  I found a sport that I like, I found a sport that I can cheer and support my opponents because I are racing myself and not others. A sport that is more humble (at least at my level LOL).

But successes come with expectation.  Every time we accomplish something, we want more.  When we work hard at work, we want a raise.  When we train hard at workout, we want to get leaner, faster, and stronger.  When we are nice to someone, we want them to be nice to us.  A little expectation here and there is a good thing, but when we let our expectations consume us, it started to become something negative. Instead of looking at our years of progress, we modify our one setback and make it much bigger than it is.  We start to get frustrated.  We start to doubt ourselves, and more importantly, we start to get angry.  We start to believe things cannot be change.  We start to believe we will continue to make the same mistake.  We start to mask our problems.  Soon enough, this negative feeling spread to other area of our life.  Not only we didn't do well at our last race, but all of a sudden our work is not like how it used to be, and everything stopped going the way we wanted it.  And things don't have to actually get worst for this your negative feeling to grow because our negative feeling grow by feeding on itself.

I finally realized all these was going on when I had dinner with my friend the other night.  She asked me what makes me happy?  She told me she likes to buy shoes and she's at a very good place right now because she has a successful career and she has her focus at other activities.  I known her for years and she is always a strong and determined individual.  But she broke down crying when she told me she screwed up something last year and how she is trying to fix it.  This is the reason why we have dinner... to talk about our problems.

So she was a little surprised when I told her nothing makes me happy (of things that I have control over).  Sushi? The Garmin 910XT? Tonkatsu? Perhaps another bike? Nope.  I think it's like the 20/80 rules where 80% of your happiness come from the 20% of activities that you do. With some stuff going on at work, injuries, and me messing my own mind... nothing makes me really happy nowadays... or so I think.  I think it has more to do with this negative energy that I have.  This energy grew so big it overshadow all the stuff that make me happy, and it overshadow all the things that I am thankful for.

I know I need to do something about this negative energy because I cannot continue to grow effectively without dealing with this.  As Coach Paul told me, find yourself and the rest will follow.  I know I cannot just make this negative energy go away, instead I figure I need to focus on what I have and what I accomplished.  It is another chapter of finding myself.

I have a good job and it give me the flexibility to train.  Most of my family members are still here. Funeral is something that I rarely need to attend.  I get to travel a lot and eat different things. Thanks to the many people in my life not only am I a backpacker, I am now a marathoner, an ironman, and an ultra marathoner.  My primary care physician Dr. Zamora really take good care of me to allow me to train at the level that I am capable of.  I even inspired a few people to be active!  My Subaru friends help me with my car whenever I was in car trouble.  My therapist friends gave me advices when I am walking toward a path of self destruction.  Even my lawyer friends gave me advices every now and then.  And when I am not feeling well my nurse friends give me sound advices =)

I am very thankful that I shared my thoughts with a very limited number of friends last year because they helped me stay on a good path.  I am glad that I met 'Ninja' last year.  She is my most important friend of 2011 and probably my most important friend of 2012 as well (ya ya ya I said that on my other blog). If I didn't talk to her, I will definitely destroy myself and others.  I am thankful that I do not blame on something because everything came out of my action.  I am thankful that I am able to learn from the not so happy things in my life.

Well I made it sound like I have a lot or problems.  I think all these stuff are just things that everyone has to deal with.  I have been masking these issues for a while so the ball just got bigger and bigger.  I have been keeping myself busy just so I don't have to deal with some of these things.  In short I am not good with working with things that I am working on.  But I realized things never go away until you resolve them.  I wasn't ready before, and I will  never be ready.  But guess what, I am just going to jump in and charge forward.  It's like investing.  No one can time the market so the best time to invest is now.  I want to get everything squared away so I can continue to grow and become a bad ass ultra marathoner... among other things.  Say you don't want to, don't say you can't.  That's the model I have been following.

Nothing will resolve over night. Things will start to come together gradually, I just need to be patience.

Just like the food cutting post that I wrote.  I am blogging this to make a commitment to myself that I will change for the better. 

Louis