Training Obstacles

The whole point to imagining a metaphorical Tour de France was to overcome some of the obstacles that had been holding me back from, as Oprah says, "living my best life". My list of obstacles is a long one. And they all have to do with me. Now there is also a list of things that are "THEIR" fault. If only they...... If only I had...... If only he would..... If only she wouldn't....... If only..... Well, readers, please don't tell THEM, but that list is completely irrelevant to my happiness, my contentment with my life, or the level of satisfaction I experience. Trust me, I've tried blaming everything on "them" at one time or another and even the times when "their" contribution to my situation was, by any reasonable standard, mean, hateful, and/or unfair, blaming "them" or the situations I find myself in, even if accurate, did not help me to feel better. Anything that changes has to be either me, my thoughts, and/or my actions. Believe me, I've tried changing the rest of the world. It has yet to happen. That leaves me to change. And change I will.

One of my most pressing (or de-pressing) problems is depression. I have had periods of depression probably all my life. I blamed those times on the situation. After a couple of decades of this, I was treated for depression and began medication. I still got depressed at times, but i came out of it. I had long periods of feeling good. I have always been able to find a bit of humor or irony even at the lowest of points, so I never considered myself a depressed person. I simply was taking medication to prevent a real depression. Sort of like, one expects recessions as part of the ups and downs of the economy, but a real depression needs to be fixed immediately, or else the depression gets worse and more people lose jobs and spend less, which causes more people to lose jobs and to spend less....and so on down that spiral.

One of the people on my sports psychologist team, the team that lives in the Super-Walmart size new wing of my house, the wing that is so much larger than the original house and the wings for the physical training staff, the nutritional staff, and the helicopter pad for Johann, is Randy J. Patterson. If you can't get him to move into a wing of your house, you could buy his book "Your Depression Map".

One of the things I learned from Randy J., as I call him, is that depression can be lifted. I always assumed that I was not a depressed person, I simply had a chemical imbalance which required medication to replace those chemicals so that I would not experience a 1930's style depression. He said that depression changes the chemicals in your brain, as well as chemicals, or lack of certain ones, cause depression. He explained it this way: When you have a cold, you have a runny nose as a symptom. However, the runny nose does not make the cold worse, even though it may feel that way. Pretty much the conventional wisdom is that a cold last 7 days if you treat it and a week if you don't. Depression is another animal. The symptoms of depression actually make the depression worse. You remember all the idiot things you have done and all the things you should have done but didn't and you feel bad. Feeling bad makes the depression worse. As the depression deepens more of those idiot things and unfinished things race through your mind, on a seemingly never ending loop. This makes the depression worse, and the spiral downward continues. You get the picture.

What R.J. (sometimes I call him R.J) told me I had to do was to reverse the spiral. As I sat wondering if we could hire Superman to reverse the downward spiral as he has reversed the rotation of the world so many times to help others, RJ-Man (sometimes I call him RJ-Man) explained. To reverse the spiral, you have to start in small steps. Since part of my depression was not getting done the things that needed to be done, I made a list of two simple things that I thought I could get done the next day. Since the things were simple and I am not always an idiot, I got them done, and what do you know, I felt a little better. When I say simple I mean simple. Simple as in 1.) find a stamp 2) mail the envelope. This only works if you KNOW where the envelope is. Finding both the stamp, and the item to mail would have been too much. Seriously.

This is where having your own race director is beneficial. Each night, Johann and I go over the list of what has to be done tomorrow. Prior to learning from the RJ-Meister (sometimesI call him RJ-Meister), I could have won a Pulitzer Prize for writing the world's longest to-do lists. Now I have a master list of things to do so I won't forget them, but my daily list is much smaller. Much smaller causes less stress and is more likely to get done. Getting things done makes me feel good. Feeling good, at least most of the time, is a way for me to live my best life and the point of training for my metaphysical Tour de France.