I’m running around this river. There’s actually … A couple miles up, there’s a bridge and down the way, there’s another bridge. I’m running this as a loop and it started to remind me of a big lie that I told myself. Not too long ago, in fact, a year ago, we gave birth to our first son, Bodhi. An amazing event. Leading up to that, we had nine months of pregnancy, actually 10 almost, with my wife. During that time, I slowly let myself slip into deconditioning. I played sports at a high level my entire life up until a couple years ago, really. What I started to say is, oh, yeah, yeah. I’ll get back in shape as soon as Bodhi’s born, my son’s born. That’s when I really kick things into high gear. That’s really when things are going to start taking off, because I’ll run with him in the stroller every day and I’ll do this, and I’ll do that. Right now, my wife’s pregnant. She wants to eat this and that and it’s fine. Just a little phase in life.
If you don’t take care of yourself, who does? You’ve got to fill your tank, and, as you can hear, my son definitely agrees. Here we are on a Wednesday out for a beautiful hike and, of course, there’s nobody around. Everybody’s following the nine-to-five, get a job, clock in and clock out at 5:00 and then go to happy hour, maybe the gym, who knows, but you’re different. You’re here listening to these daily growth hacks, and I want to make sure you’re taking care of yourself first because by taking care of yourself first, you can actually take care of all the people around you.
I had a great conversation with a coaching client of mine this morning. What came up was something that comes up often. Now it can come up in interpersonal relationships most often. That’s the idea of getting triggered. When you get triggered, or you get stressed, or you get anxious, and oftentimes this happens with people that we’re most close to because they know our buttons, and we let them in a little bit more.
Imagine that you just went out and invested in a million-dollar Thoroughbred. A racehorse of supreme quality. Now when you take this horse home, are you going to go to the stable and feed this horse junk food? Are you going to push this horse beyond its breaking point causing injury, causing fatigue? Are you going to allow this thoroughbred to stay up late, are you going to keep it up really late and wake it up early in the morning so it gets sleep deprived? Are you going to treat this horse poorly? Of course, you’re not.
Now this morning, I got up after a rough night. Our newborn just wasn’t sleeping well so my wife and I were up and down throughout the evening. And when I finally got up to start my day, I went downstairs and noticed that the coffee hasn’t been prepped. Now, I thought about it the night before, I thought about it before going to bed, “You know what, Doug? You should just prep the coffee. Grind the beans, get the water ready. Get it all ready, so all you have to do is hit a button when you come down.”
