I run every day for a few kilometers, and in the past days I felt a lot more tired than usual.
I tried to run slower but it still felt harder which didn't make any sense at all.
Today as I was running day #430, I remember I need to breathe properly. And so I did.
I became more intentional about my breathing, and immediately I started to feel less tired, and I was able to run faster.
As I remembered all those ideas, all that negative thinking in the past days trying to figure out what's wrong with me, that put an instant smile on my face. And I rarely, if ever smile while I'm running. Hehe, silly man -I say to myself, what can we learn from this?
Well, the obvious lesson, remember to breath properly. Noted, what else?
After the run as I was walking back home, I realized that this principle can be useful in many other areas of life.
We often see our results, especially when something is not working well, but rarely we see the causes.
For example, you instantly see that are tired but you don't see the lack of sleep or lack of vitamins, you feel something is wrong, but you don't know what, or why you feel this way.
It's interesting that we can immediately see outputs(estecially the bad ones), but it takes time to find and understand the causes, or reasons for why things happen the way they do.
When something is not going well, instead of immediately defaulting into thinking how bad and inadequate you are, how broken or unprepared you are, ask yourself: Am I getting enough resources, do I have what I need? And even if you don't have it, at least now you know what you need to get.
We are so busy taking action, trying to accomplish the things we want, that we tend to forget we need to function, and that performance is a process of inputs and outputs.
So if you want the results or the outputs, you absolutely have to make sure that the inputs are there first. Otherwise it's like trying to cook with no ingredients.
And here is why this simple idea is so important: you cannot make something out of nothing. If you cannot "breathe", you cannot go far, and you cannot go fast. Focus on the inputs, and the outputs will take care of themselves.
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I plan to write an article every day this year so thank you for your support. Alin.