Kerri On Down The Road

How do you view success and failure?  Do you see these as existing at two ends of a spectrum, mutually exclusive of each other, and often the motivation behind ceaseless striving and relentless self-criticism? It has taken me many years to realize that life doesn't need to be a matter of strictly winning or losing, celebration or dejection.  When we don't achieve a goal, we gain the opportunity to learn, make adjustments, and, most importantly, to try again. We lose when we allow ourselves to get caught up in the binary of success or failure, missing out on opportunities to course-correct and approach a problem or work towards a goal differently. It is amazing how limiting this black-and-white, all-or-nothing way of looking at life can be and how much of our potential we miss out on realizing, simply because we decide at the first negative outcome that we weren't meant to achieve the goal that we have set.  As someone who personally sets high standards, I find it incredib...

 Last weekend marked the first real snowfall of the season.  It was an early one, and unlike typical early snows, this one was significant, and it was cold enough for the snow to stick around.  Looking out my window throughout the day, I noticed the snow falling, but didn't give it much thought.  The snow itself wasn't dense; the flakes were small, and we weren't being dumped upon.  What I didn't give credit to was the continuous nature of the storm, and the persistence with which the snow continued to fall all day and through the night. The next morning, however, was a different story.  When I went out to clear my car before heading for an early dip, I was shocked to see just how much snow had accumulated on it.  There was much more than I had anticipated, and I silently gave myself a pat on the back for getting out of the house with enough time to properly tackle scraping and brushing off the storm's remnants.  As I worked to unearth my car, I r...

 The mind is an incredible thing.  It works so hard to protect us from harm, or perceived harm, and it is this very tendency that often causes us to pull back from aspirations to stay comfortable and safe. All it took was one morning of waking up feeling less than optimal.  The previous day had been quite active, and the sleep I got going into it wasn't terrific.  So yes, I woke up feeling tired and decided to take the day off instead of pushing to complete a scheduled workout.  Hello, spiral of doom.  I found my mind wandering as I put away my running gear and deleted the workout from my app.  The place it was heading towards was one filled with doubts and second thoughts regarding the training plans I had started to formulate for the year ahead.  Suddenly, my ability (or inability) to complete one short run this morning meant the entire plan I was working on would not be feasible.  I could feel the downward spiral cueing up and preparing to...

Have you ever noticed how hard it is to hold onto something with all your might? No matter how strong your grip strength might be, or how light the object is, the more you cling, the harder it becomes to maintain a steady hold, and before you know it, you are required to surrender the object to gravity.  The same principle applies to non-physical objects, such as ideas, narratives, and identifiers.  The harder we try to hold onto things we deem important or worthy, the less able we are to maintain a connection with them. For so many years, I have clung to achievement as a cornerstone of my identity.  If I am not succeeding and exceeding, then who am I, and more importantly, what does this mean for my sense of self in the future?  Is it possible to be truly okay with being okay, and who decides what that measure is, anyway? Up until a few months ago, I would have answered no, that there is nothing okay about being "just" okay, and that trying harder was the only remed...