40K for 40 days: Intro and Day 1

D1 Inner & Outer Peace, +40ks for 40 Days

Day one:

Observations/reflections/questions

These are all notes to one's self during this 40 Day Journey to learn by moving towards something, for something with something in mind.

- Bring enough to get out and back but not too much, excess doesn't serve your journey well. What you don't need, don't carry with you (Water, food, afflictive mental states like resentment, envy or anger).

- Take your glasses off from time to time and see the true colours of the sky, season, and even the occasional rainbow, with your eyes.

- Smile inside and see if it can make it out. See how this affects your movement and energy.

- Stop every now and again when you least expect to and just take everything in around you, you might be surprised. Don't stop for too long, keep moving and reflect on what you saw, smelt, felt and tasted.

- Take a snapshot from time to time with your inner camera, you'll remember the image or scene when you access that memory cloud sometime in the future.

- Try to go with the wind and enjoy the flow, go against the wind and enjoy feeling the benefits of resistance, which makes you appreciate the flow even more.

- Grin authentically when someone passes you and when you pass someone else and know what it feels like to be the other.

- Take mental and physical breaks, they are essential to fuel and rest/recover but for too long and muscles seize and enthusiasm and energy can deplete.

- Know this is a choice for every meter of movement, with delayed gratification as a reward regardless of time, place, or destination.

- Feel the breeze, sunlight, cold air, and wind against and with. See the birds dancing playfully and grasses and trees swaying, the colours and skies on the distant horizon as well as snow-tipped mountains and know you could easily be inside today. 

- Getting outside to get inside. Feel the outer challenge, toughness, and turmoil and move through it knowing I can, you can, we can, in order to be ready to recognise and know how to navigate the inner challenges, toughness, and turmoil.

- Our familiar routes and journeys can change dramatically at the drop of a hat or a change of weather and offer a whole new route and journey ahead. Being ready to embrace and feel uncomfortable, knowing the possibility of comfort may always waiting around the next bend and discomfort is not a bad, negative, or harmful thing but rather, how we react to it is potentially where the peace or conflict lies.

- Everything can be a race or training, just depending on perspective, outlook, and frame of mind. You can win or gain something from every training but not necessarily from every race.

- Being passed out is not always a bad thing. Recognising that there are always going to be people fitter, faster, wealthier, and stronger, is part of life but not seeing them as better than you or any more worthy, is so important. Being my best today at this moment is all I can be.

- Competition, can it be seen or labeled in a different way in order to motivate, encourage, intrinsically push or pull us in our own direction rather than only see it as win-lose?

- Shouting loudly to be heard around blind bends is an act of compassion for self and others but maybe not seen as such. What blind bends or corners do I have coming up and how do I and others react to such loud calls?

What is peace for me today after my first +40k of 40 Days or even a piece of peace?

Kissing my little girls on their heads this evening, knowing they are safe, loved, and ready for tomorrow! 

- Shane O'Connor