Kerri On Down The Road

 A couple of years ago I bought an infrared sauna blanket after seeing ads in my Instagram feed.  I am sure that the AI bots had figured out that I was a runner and was therefore obsessed with recovery and improving performance.  Guilty as charged.  I researched the benefits of adding infrared heat to my meager recovery routine and decided that it wouldn't hurt me and might actually help.  This mindset did quaver a bit when the blanket arrived, and buyer's remorse set in.  Would I actually use this thing and how often?  The protocol called for an hour spent in the blanket set at 80 degrees Fahrenheit and to incorporate this into a daily routine.  I read the return policy thoroughly and decided to see how things went, keeping an eye on the calendar to ensure my window of opportunity to return it would not pass.  Within a few days, I realized that I not only enjoyed this time of stillness, I felt great afterward; so much for returning it. ...

 A theme repeated in many of the books I read and podcasts I listen to centres on the idea of pain being a motivator for change.  Often it is pain that tends to be the final straw that pushes us to venture out of our comfort zone, or out of a typical pattern of being, toward a new direction.  While I agree and can think of many moments in my life where this has been the case, I can also identify moments where pain was not enough. I believe that we are hard-wired to avoid pain at all costs.  This serves us well as it often means that we do not put ourselves into situations that may have negative outcomes, potentially extending our lifespan.  But it also can result in a narrowing of our life experience as we seek comfort and status quo over new experiences with unknown outcomes.  In our quest to stay safe, what are we missing out on and how are those missed moments ultimately impacting our life's direction?  I know that in my life, had I not made choices...

 My original title for this one was Compound Interest , but I was afraid that folks might shy away from reading it for fear of it being about personal finances.  In a way, the original title holds true - this post is about the investments we make in ourselves and how each of these deposits has a much larger impact than we realize. I was listening with curiosity to a podcast featuring James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits , about habit-building, goal-setting, and personal accomplishments.  One idea that he shared really stuck with me.  He asked listeners to picture an ice cube sitting on a tray in a room that was 25 degrees Fahrenheit.   He then asked us to imagine what would take place as the room was slowly warmed up to 26, 27, and 28 degrees.  The answer was nothing - the ice cube would remain frozen, seemingly unchanged by the increase in temperature.  In fact, even as the room warmed up to 31 degrees the ice would not be melted.  In fa...

 As this blog posts, I will likely still be processing all that has taken place this Thanksgiving.  For those of you who are new to this space, I will have participated in both the Chicago 5k and Chicago Marathon over the weekend with my return trip home capping off what has been an incredible experience.  It was late last year when I received the unexpected news that my name had been drawn and I had been accepted into the field of marathon runners for the 2023 race.  Entering into the lottery had been something I did without any real expectation of success.  I had tried for New York a couple of times in years past without success so didn't have raised hopes this time around either.  Well, when that email hit my inbox you could have knocked me over with a feather.  Although I was surprised and excited, I didn't quite absorb what this good fortune meant for me, and the journey that it would take me on.  I followed the same training plan that had go...

 Have you ever stopped to consider defining moments in your life?  This is a potentially heavy question that we may not have answers for.  I was inspired to wander down this thought path after listening to a podcast featuring Tony Hawk the other day.  As he discussed his career in skateboarding and how the sport causes folks to regularly face moments of challenge and failure, I started to wonder about the same moments in my life.  Before I could try to answer the question, though, I felt like I needed to gain clarity on what defining moments actually are.  My first instinct was to think about goals I had accomplished in my life, ranking the ones that felt the hardest as the most important.  The more I considered this, the more I began to question this line of thinking.  Do we want to be defined solely by the things we achieve?  It felt shallow to base self-worth purely on outcomes and end results.  What about the work behind those achiev...