Readiness: Sunday Musings 3/13/11
Sunday musings (little thoughtlets)…
1) Grammar. A missing article? Man, steer clear of my blog.
2) Time 1. So much great stuff, so little time. Kelly Starrett’s Mobility.com is just so cool, and I just can’t get it into my schedule. Sigh…
3) Time 2. If daylight savings is a boon to those afflicted with seasonal affective disorder, what does it do to night owls?
4) Time 3. I have a few really good CF friends who have become very busy, and I just don’t hear from them as much as I did once upon a time. I wish they had a little more time for me, because in general that’s all I ask of a friend.
5) Time 4. The day after is worth the rush to secure the last seat on the plane the night before.
6) Vaccine. No, I’m not gonna talk about THAT kind of vaccination. Uh uh…no way. What I’m thinking of is stress inoculation, a “vaccination” against stress. I was traveling home with a colleague who was complaining that he is falling out of love with long, slow distance exercise (he bikes), while at the same time lamenting his stressful life (he, like me, is an eye surgeon).
The good news for my colleague is that he landed in a middle seat between two Crossfitters (shout out to John, an LA SWAT operator on business in Alliance). We talked at some length about the CNS adaptation to stress, how one can actually train this response by purposely placing oneself under physical duress. You know, like doing a WOD.
I know I could find the science to back up my anecdotal evidence and experience, but I don’t have the time. Here’s the bottom line: if you train at the limits of your ability, continually force yourself to execute something at that razor’s edge, there is a carry-over to essentially any stressor.
“Fran” carries over when it hits the fan in the OR.
7) Ready? I guess this one could have been another “Time” note, when is it your time? It always arrives. Your time, that is. A problem arises when your time either arrives when you are not ready, or you move as if it’s time but it really isn’t. Or it might be your time, maybe, but whether or not it is you just aren’t ready.
That even confuses ME, to be honest, even though I just wrote it!
Here’s what I mean by that convoluted koan: there is an intersection between readiness and opportunity, a coming together of the right thing at the right time such that something really good happens. For instance, you may have a singularly brilliant idea, something so far ahead of everything else in its space that it will be revolutionary. But the timing is off; you aren’t on the LEADING edge, you are so far out in front that you are on the BLEEDING edge. YOU might be ready, but it’s not yet time. Think the Apple Newton, or, you know, Crossfit ca. 1999.
On the other hand there may appear an opportunity which by all accounts is pretty much EXACTLY what you need right at that exact time. But you aren’t ready. A perfect job opens 2000 miles away, but the love of your life has 2 years to go for a degree. A trusted friend on the cusp of a success for the ages urges you to quit your “dead-end” job, the one that is paying you so much that you really can’t walk away from it just then to take what might be the dream job working with a friend.
Or it might be something as simple as not being ready for a “standard issue” life step like college right after high school. Here I think, is the teachable moment: sometimes the hardest thing to do is to identify that one half of the equation has not reached a point of readiness, whether it’s the “you” part or the “opportunity” part. Failure to identify this almost guarantees that execution will fail, or at least be very unsatisfactory. Once this mis-match has been identified, however, rational choices can be made. Strategy can be mapped out and tactics chosen.
Sometimes the best of these is to simply soldier on despite the fact that one part or the other isn’t ready (think Crossfit). Other times it’s best to drop back and re-group, prepare to re-engage at some time in the future if and when readiness and opportunity intersect (think Apple and the Newton). Either way, whether it’s you not ready for the world or the world not ready for you, the first step is to not ignore the fact that SOMEBODY isn’t ready.
And that it’ll turn out just fine when they are.
I’ll see you next week…
Posted by bingo at March 13, 2011 11:47 AM
This entry was posted on Sunday, March 13th, 2011 at 1:52 pm and is filed under Crossfit, Random Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.