Quotable Monday: Clarity

"Mindfulness is about love and loving life. When you cultivate this love, it gives you clarity and compassion for life, and your actions happen in accordance with that." Jon Kabat-Zinn

"Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend." 

Melody Beattie

Quotable Monday: Summer

"I believe that summer is our time, a time for the people, and that no politician should be allowed to speak to us during the summer. They can start talking again after Labor Day."

Lewis Black 

"Summer is a promissory note signed in June, its long days spent and gone before you know it, and due to be repaid next January."

Hal Borland

"Everything good, everything magical happens between the months of June and August."

— Jenny Han, The Summer I Turned Pretty

"Summertime is always the best of what might be."

— Charles Bowden

Quotable Monday: The Greatest!

“Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.”

-Muhammad Ali

Quotable Monday: Mission Statements

"My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style." 

Maya Angelou 

Training Tuesdays: Week 4 on the Road of "I can do better!"

Four weeks ago I got back from vacation and I sorted through the pictures. As I looked at them I thought, while I have been doing ok with the whole healthy getting in shape route I have pursued, I could do better. It was the kick in the butt I needed.

Last fall I had registered for the Rock n Roll Philly Half Marathon. The race this year is in mid-September. Instead of starting training at the end of June (12 weeks from race day), I decided to start at the beginning of May with the C25K training program. This program will dovetail nicely into my normal half marathon training and get me where I need to be providing a solid foundation for the 12-week program.

This week begins week 4 of my foundation training and it is going well, except the weather. Here on the mid-Atlantic, we have had the soggiest May ever. Rain, Rain and more Rain. Somewhere in the last several weeks, I became a runner who would get out there in light sprinkles to get a run done.

Additionally, each week I have added a new component to my training program. Week 2 was stretching/yoga. Week 3 was strength training. Week 4 as the C25K program kicks it up a notch with more running than walking it will be focusing on listening to my body as I run, strength train and stretch. Next week will focus on fuel, how the food I eat affects my training and make tweaks to  what is on the menu.
I chuckled when I came across the quote from Tony Robbins I used for the Quotable Monday post this week: "The path to success is to take massive determined action." That is exactly what I am doing in a slightly measure way. My goal is to be strong (mentally/physically) and healthy. I am not going to focus on the scale or a weight goal. That will only provide a distraction and frustration.

Weekly training log: Weeks 1 - 3

1	5/1/16		W1D1 C2k5		W1D2C25k
2	5/9/16	W1D3 C2k5	Stretch/Yoga	w2D1 c25k		Stretch/yoga	W2D2 C25k	W2D3 C25k
3	5/16/16	Yoga	W3D1 C25k	St Training	W3D2 C25k	St Training	W3 D3 C25K

Feeling stronger each day!

Quotable Monday: Success

"The path to success is to take massive determined action."

-Tony Robbins

Quotable Monday: You have to name it to claim it!

"You always have to put out to the universe what your dream is—that is in part how they become actualized.”

Isabella Boylston

Quotable Mondays: A New Book

“No, this is not the beginning of a new chapter in my life; 

this is the beginning of a new book! That first book is already 

closed, ended, and tossed into the seas; this new book is 

newly opened, has just begun! Look, it is the first page! And 

it is a beautiful one!” 

― C. JoyBell C.

I have taken a longer than anticipated sabbatical from this blog. Sometimes you find yourself in life's doldrums and things slide onto the back burner unknowingly. Three months ago my professional life was thoroughly disrupted and I went through a period of introspection. The past three months in many ways has felt like a cocoon. I am now emerging from that cocoon and testing my new found wings.  I like the idea of starting a new book vs a new chapter premise of this quote.

Quotable: Tuesday edition

"The last of the human freedoms-

To choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances,

To choose one's own way."

Victor Frankl

Quotable Monday "Resolution Reboot"

"January is always a good month for behavioral economics: Few things illustrate self-control as vividly as New Year's resolutions. February is even better, though, because it lets us study why so many of those resolutions are broken."

~ Sendhil Mullainathan