Category: Makes You Think

This category covers things that relate probably require some reflection and some time to allow your brain to process more completely. It will be the largest category because the aim of this site is to get people to shift their thinking in some way and to create a new “normal” state. It is safe to say that any post that is included in this category will probably present you with a new piece of information, a new way of looking at something, or a different take on what is already considered common sense or common knowledge.

Structured Synergy

What do I want from a partner? “To exist with them in a way that allows us to continue to cause each others greatness.” I want to help them become more of what they are. This matches my life purpose – to create beauty – as actualizing potential serves in the beautification of an individual. This can be rendered in support, guidance, coaching, or time alone together just to get things done. I’m aware that I am not complete and need help in the journey to where that takes me. That’s important. Realizing that there’s work to be done and that I will need the help of others does a lot of help me keep my mind open.

It also strikes me that what I say I want now I did have a number of times in the past. Each relationship has started off with someone who found me interesting, inspiring and funny. It ends-up in a different place but the beginning is always good. The words they say and the actions they take do indicate something positive which happens to match how I feel and believe I act. This is very significant – we make great starts in the formation of a partnership but something breaks down that transforms the help we offer each other from synergy to something perceived as destructive by the other person. As best I can tell, although I haven’t asked any of my old girlfriends, contempt enters the relationship dynamic and this paints everything bad.

It is amazing that a partnership can sour so completely and so quickly; although a number of my friends have commented that this is how relationships go. The glow leaves after the first few months and the two people begin to find comfort in the relationship and start to express their intentions. My thought was that we’d likely never fall in love if people were completely real from the very beginning although I’m not sure. The few times I’ve simply not cared about being what I thought the other person wanted I was happy and more peaceful. To date though, there have been 2 unsuccessful relationships of this nature – one didn’t work out because I checked out and the other didn’t get started because the school year ended. Regardless of the outcome of these experiences, we never ended up hating each other or developing contempt for who the other was. It was fun and then it was over.

What I’m now considering is that the synergy that I once had with my old girlfriends did not go away, it just changed into something else that was interpreted as an effort to control behavior; which it was but not from a place of intentional malice. What begins as welcome observations about ones actions and nature eventually becomes unwelcome. If the observations continue, even after their unwelcomeness has been been made clear, the intentions of the observer have changed from alchemist to parent REGARDLESS of the rightness or accuracy of the observation. Synergy comes from creating more from what is there. If the mind or a willingness to change is not there YOU CANNOT MAKE GOLD with it because there is nothing to work with.

In these cases, synergy can be restored when both parties accept and work with the reality of the situation; ones contentment with a world view dissonant from yours is something that YOU can accept. Provided it works for you, embracing a differing world view (or their unwillingness to change) is the one thing that you can do to restore the synergy into a relationship. It does require of their partner an accurate reporting of what is going on in their head – the thing that you disagree on needs to be the actual thing you disagree on. Steroid use is an example of this. Some people use steroids in order to build more muscle or strength so they have more muscle or strength. Other people use steroid to build muscle and strength so they don’t feel insecure around other people. It’s a lot easier to accept and deal with your partners desire to be muscular and strong than it is to deal with one who is insecure or narcissistic.

I need to be blunt with myself and with anyone who may consider getting involved with me in a relationship. The opportunities for synergy must be built into the structure of the relationship because my track record is one of allowing these moments to fade away. My career/education/recreation goals need to remain and I need to continue to build towards them. If you can’t work in the same space, you need to work away from each other, if you don’t like the same exercises or fitness activities you need to keep doing the ones you like on your own, if you are taking something advanced in school you need to accept that your partners knowledge is limited and their efforts to help are based on good intentions vs. wisdom. If you can work in the same space, fantastic! If you enjoy the same fitness or exercise activities, enjoy them together and push each other to greatness. If your partner is encouraging and supportive of your journey towards higher eduction, be grateful and pass along as much of this information as you can. Doing anything other than getting on board with them 100% or 100% out of their way is going to stop the synergy and begin to suffocate the relationship.

Maintaining a climate conducive to synergy within a relation can be challenging and it does in someways go against the best interests of the individual – following a dream requires focus that won’t be spent on me. There is an abstract gain in that the relationship gets stronger because one of the members gets stronger, but the immediate experience may be one of perceived loss. In a strong relationship their is rarely a long term cost and usually a long term gain by having one of the members go back to school, love to cycle or train for marathons, work hard to build a sustainable business. Some of the relationship roles will be adjusted temporarily, others changed permanently, but the self-actualizing experience of working toward goals tends to inject a sense of possibility and hope into a relationship, but only if the relationship is structured for synergy.

“Relationships Ruin You”

Sometimes people say something and their comment pisses you off. A few years later they say the same thing and you just nod and agree with their wisdom. My dad is a lot like that. He’s said some crappy things over the years only to have them reveal themselves as lessons a few years later.

My favorite has been the evolution of his view on how I interact and behave in relationships.

“You shouldn’t take things too seriously” was what he used to say. It bothered me. I wanted to be in love with a beautiful girl and I wanted to be in a relationship with her. My view was that these things were the best way to find happiness and fulfillment. He didn’t say that I was wrong, he just said that I shouldn’t take things too seriously. I didn’t agree and did what I wanted.

The most recent iteration of this thought, “relationships ruin you” was greeted with my nod and agreement, and a lot of laughing. It’s me, I’m just not very good at them. They’ve all ended. 4 of them lasting a few years longer than they should have  – 8 to 10 years spend with people I don’t talk to anymore, in relationships that were challenging experiences for everyone. A decade of my life spend, well, living and experiencing whatever it was that my father was trying to help me avoid.

He was right all along. I take things too seriously and being in a relationship has been WAY too important to me for all of my adult life since I started my first serious relationship 20 years ago this September. I would give-up my identify, my dreams and goals to focus on the other person and “us”. I think it bothered him to see me waste my time and my potential because he appreciates the shortness of life in a way someone my age didn’t want to.

He never said it, but I can imagine it being rather disappointing to watch one of your two children squander their opportunity to make a life they are proud to live and share with others. Dad doesn’t really interfere with my affairs and he’s been a big supporter of anything that I’ve done on my own. He never suggested that I give-up on a relationship and work on myself, he doesn’t tell me what to do, but he’s been there each time to pick me up when things end.

I completely understand and realize what he was saying. And I agree with him, Relationships ruin me. It is no one elses fault but my own. I’ve been doing this all of my adult life and it’s time I stopped it.

Relationships, per-say, are not the problem. It has been my desire to be in a relationship at all costs vs. being happy, build a career or business, being charitable, whatever, that has been the problem. I’ve been making the decision to table everything. A shift in my primary focus is what I need now that I realize what my dad was saying.

Thankfully it didn’t take 20 years to sink in.

Because We Need To Know You Don’t Know

“I don’t know” is not an apology. There’s no shame. It’s a simple statement of fact, is the key line in Penn Jillette’s special comment to cnn.com as a follow-up to his interview on Piers Morgan. He then compares his answers during the interview to Piers’ answers to the same questions. They are saying exactly the same thing it’s just that Penn admits it. Neither one of them knows how to look after all of the people in the US but Piers’ answer “the government” does shifts the responsibility of answering onto something that isn’t part of the discussion. It’s distracting and it can be a very effective tool when trying to convince someone of non-existent expertise. Piers HAS answers to the questions he just doesn’t know the actual answers.

That’s the thing with bullshit. No matter how you shine it, gloss it up, and air the room, it’s still bullshit. The only way someone is not going to see it as bullshit is if they don’t want to see it as such, they CANNOT see it for what it is or they do see it as bullshit and they don’t tell you that they know you are full of shit.

Penn’s comment comes at a time when I have grown particularly open to the fact that I don’t know a lot of that things that I thought I did. I’m starting to know what I don’t know and that makes me wiser, if only slightly. Long term it means that I may end up actually knowing these things because I’ve emptied the knowledge hole of the bullshit so it’s ready and waiting for the facts to fill it.

I’ve always sort of admired people who say “I don’t know” because I find their honesty refreshing. It’s time saving because you don’t have to think about the quality of their answer. The process of internalizing a lesson someone gives you is resource heavy because you have to vet the quality of the information they are giving you, ask qualifying questions, collect more information about the topic to allow you to store it in a way that is easy to retrieve, then unconsciously the brain does whatever it does to assimilate the information into a world view that is consistent with the real world.

Now imagine someone makes something up instead of saying “I don’t know.” You move forward on the belief that it is true – you fill the knowledge hole with bullshit – and fully believe that you are right about the topic. Confident and passionate because you got it from a good source. When you spread the lie later to someone who respects your opinion, you burn a little piece of your credibility.

Overtime two things happen that take a major toll on the quality of your life. First, people stop trusting you because a lot of what you say is incorrect yet you fail to see it or even consider that it could be wrong. Second, your “knowledge” starts to become a liability to you because it cannot be counted on to represent the way the world actually is but you have full confidence that it does represent the world – worse than not knowing or not knowing that you don’t know, you believe you know yet don’t. It may not be your fault that some of the people you considered to be mentors or sources of wisdom misrepresented themselves, but it sure is your problem.

Over the last 6 months and more and more recently I say “I don’t know”, “I’m not sure”, “what do you mean by that”, “what impact does that have on you”, “what impact should it have on me” and “what do you need/want me to do”. I say these things because I’m growing more and more confident that I don’t speak the same language as everyone else, and that maybe most of the people speak a different language from each other.

I’ve known my dad for almost 40 years and we’re now asking each other more questions to get an understanding about what the other is talking about. For a very long time I believed that I understood him, but as we chat now, it’s evident that we have a very different understanding of many words, concepts and things. My mom, dad and brother are the people who I have spend the most time with in my life and after almost 4 decades of interaction the only thing that they can say to me that I know I fully understand is “I don’t know”.

This is liberating. It shifts me from participant in life to scientist-participant in life. I need to seek high quality information from reliable sources. The new challenge becomes the vetting of the sources, and here I’m really lucky. The people who know me the best and who I respect the most answer questions with “I don’t know” often enough from me to realize that facts are the critical currency when it comes to talking / mentoring / educating me. Ones ability to say “I don’t know,” to be comfortable without knowing and to be curious to find out the answer is the first thing I’m using to vet the quality of my sources. So:

  • If you always know the answer, you don’t.
  • If having an answer is more important than having the correct answer, your answer isn’t important.
  • If you KNOW you know and don’t need to check current research, you may not know anymore.
  • If you are emotional when you are learning something, you don’t know it yet. Be cautious when dealing with facts with overly emotional reactive people as emotional states tend to impair the brains ability to store memories accurately.

What does my world look like after I’ve vetted my sources and realized where the wisdom lays? It’s very interesting. I’m learning more, that is true. But I’m also having some really great conversations with people. By cutting out the chaff you free up a lot of time to engage other people, or the ones you like more frequently. I realize that I know at least 50% less than I thought I did, but that knowledge build my confidence that most people know a lot less than they think they do so my expertise in certain areas are actually a lot higher relative to my peers. I know a heck of a lot about 10 things and bits and pieces about other stuff. If you can admit when you don’t know something, talk to me about the other stuff if you know and listen to me when I talk about the 10 things. Otherwise, we can just talk sh!t and have a good time.

They Change When They Are Gone

A word of warning to anyone who reads this blog and can identify with me more than just a little bit, they will try to screw you out of what they promise when they are gone. You need to get it in writing, get a lawyer and take it to them as hard as they are taking it to you.

What am I talking about? Ex girl / boy friends, ex wives and ex husbands. If you have a tendency to be manipulated you need to guard yourself by removing yourself from the equation and let the professionals handle it. Lawyers are not susceptible to the manipulation techniques you and I fall for. They’re hard nosed, aggressive and ruthless. They’ll take food out of a child’s mouth because they apply logic and rules to the world and leave the emotional stuff to their clients. “It isn’t the child’s food, it’s my clients food so I’m taking it”. What is sad about it is that the parents of the child didn’t care enough about their future to take care of their affairs; but ultimately the blame falls on the lawyer who simply doesn’t care about what you think because you won’t pay your bills or honor your word.

When there are children involved, mousey people need to get out of the way and hand off the thinking, negotiation and litigation to someone who is qualified to see your ex for what they are, someone who’ll withdraw money and support as soon as they can. They will try to screw you and your children out of your futures when they decide that it’s time to move on. The trophy wife will appear and your children will matter less and less to them as the new family comes into being.

But if you’ve represented yourself, your on your own. You will get nothing and you and your children will likely be moving down the SES ladder while he buys new clothing, cars and stuff. Ask your lawyer and they’ll tell you what to do. Listen to them and let them do their job. You don’t have the experience they have so shut your mouth and watch how they work, methodical, precise and with a single minded determination to look after YOUR future.

  • Get full support, spousal and child, for as long as you can – till the last child is 21 OR completes university which ever comes latest.
  • A trust fund or some form of child support needs to be written into the agreement to cover death to prevent someone from channeling your child’s money into someone else bank account.
  • Agreement must be made about a 50:50 split in the cost for the children’s stuff; this MUST be written into the agreement because he’ll / she’ll buy the Armani suits or Jimmy Choos’ while you buy things at Walmart.
  • You must write into the agreement a way to compensate for deviations in the child sharing agreements – if he’s constantly late picking up the children or needs to shift around the times, keep a record of all of these deviations and send them the bill at the end of the month. It costs money and time to look after children so when one parent hands the children back to the other they are saving money while it cost the other. This will happen and there needs to be a condition in the agreement to cover for this.
  • Most importantly, you need to accept that you will act the same way towards them as you always did so you need to disengage and pay the professional to look after your future. You will be grateful if you do and you’ll regret it if you don’t.

The thing about getting as much as you can now is that you can always give some of it back if it turns out to be too much. The inverse is not true, they won’t give you anything if it turns out to be too little.

Don’t believe me? They told you they’d love you forever and now they are gone. Don’t believe a word of what they said in the past, believe only that which is written down, agreed to, signed and enforceable. They will try to ditch their responsibilities, it’s just what people do when they check out. Guard yourself by getting lawyer and letting them do their job. They ask for more than you want because that’s how negotiations go. Stay out of their way and let them look after your future.

From One Release To The Next

One of the cool things about teaching LMI’s RPM is that there are four releases each year at the start of each season. We get the music, learn it and then teach it for 3 weeks before mixing older tracks back in. Getting the music every 3 months changes the instructing work flow enough to have each release feel like a distinct period of time, unique and memorable. I like this because it causes me to stop and consider what I was doing during when I was learning a previous release.
I take particular pause at the revelations that I’ve had between release 50 and 51.

  1. It takes time to recover and heal from big changes in life. Certain parts of the recovery will be quick, others will seem like they have occurred only to pop-up again.
  2. The way I have been living my life is unsustainable because it no longer represents the manifestation of who I am – I’ve changed a lot since I dreamed my dream so I need to dream another one that reflects my present wishes and entitlements.
  3. I do not take action quickly and actions make me feel better. Almost any action makes me feel better. It really doesn’t matter what it is so long as it stops me from sitting there thinking about stuff that I can’t control, can’t know and can’t possibly care about.
  4. You don’t have to enjoy what you are doing in order to be doing something purposeful. You just have to be doing what you set out to do.
  5. Do the small things quickly, buy the convenience items, find out what is stopping you from letting go and take care of it. Letting go from time to time is important.
  6. There can be a lot of changes in three months, but if I look closely, the signs of change were there for a while. There are few surprises when I’m willing to take a long honest look at myself.

Bring on 52!

Tough Question To Not Have An Answer For

About a month ago Sharon asked me what I liked doing. Simple enough question but I could only reply with “riding my bike” which isn’t the best answer to give someone who has a rich social life, an infectious personality that brings people up and a sense of humor that is broadcasting and wildly funny!

My answer was not what was expected, or maybe wanted, but it was the truth and as soon as it left my month I had a suspicion that something very significant had happened. I think my answer obliterated the understanding Sharon had of me because what she’s known of me has been fun, activity based stuff and a genuine passion for doing whatever. When I replied with biking all of that other stuff got whitewashed and we were left with one very interesting and dynamic person and one introverted self-isolationist, looking at each other with two bewildered and slightly silly looks on our faces. From here there were two directions to go and so we each took a separate path away from each other. Mine was a path away from the present me who didn’t know what they liked doing towards the person I used to be before I let me drift away.

My answer was as embarrassing as it was revealing. Who had I become, and why? And why don’t I know what I like doing? Why is riding my bike the only thing that I was able to muster when asked about it? Who was I being when I answered her question? How had I become this person?

Well, I caught a break sort of. I got a concussion a couple of days later and the doctor suggested that I take a couple of weeks off of thinking too hard about anything. The truth was, I didn’t have a choice, I wasn’t able to function normally. The concussion drove me down to the pits of despair, as they can do. I was lost. In my diminished state of function I wasn’t able to see anything in my future and, worse, I didn’t see anything in my past. And my present had me sitting on there, head in hands, pit in my stomach, confused, scared and in serious need of something of purpose.

I was beginning to see that I was still in recovery from a number of relationships and hadn’t actually let any of it go and I didn’t know what I liked doing because I have either been in a relationship or in the end of a relationship for years the last 5 years. I hadn’t let it go so I was still acting the same way as I used to. I was still thinking the same way too which meant that I hadn’t started to re-expand my interests to find my own passions again. When Sharon asked I wasn’t going to say that because I didn’t realize it, but as I sat there I knew I had missed the moment to live in the present. I had on some level made the decision to substitute thinking about the past for actually doing something. Given that the brain rewards itself each time it makes a correct guess, and given that I wasn’t engaging the physical world, I had no difficulty manufacturing the information I needed to not more forward in life.

I was living in the past and as each day passed, I was living further and further in past. Each moment saw me becoming more and more detached from the present reality. I was fully committed to whatever it was I was creating and I was really good at it! This manufactured suffering became a habit and I needed to get away from it so I rode.

The purpose of the bike riding was escape, then aesthetics, then training. This leads to me riding too much and getting less than optimal training effect. I’m also prone to burn-out and fatigue. But it’s the opportunity cost of riding so much that made the answer to Sharon’s question so lame – I don’t do very much else for fun because I have been using cycling as a way to escape something. I had stopped doing almost all of the things that I used to enjoy and spend this time pushing my body to the limit first to forget, then to look lean and finally to ride faster. So this means, in one way, that I haven’t even been riding my bike for fun either.

On that day when she asked, the completely honest answer is that I don’t like doing anything. I do one thing a lot but not for fun. I do it to escape which I’ve labeled fun.

Hmmm…..so I’ve set out to find what I like doing so that I can, by the end of the summer, write a better blog about it.

Closure Begets “Closure”

For a very long time I have struggled with closure when it comes to past relationships. I thought I had a handle on it, it’s the feeling you get after a relationship has ended when you no longer think about the person, the relationship you held and no longer wish for the future you believed you would share with the person. This understanding seemed to cover it for a very long time, I just thought that I wasn’t very good at it. Closure was just a skill that I was deficit in.

But that’s really silly when I stop and think about it. There isn’t such a thing as closure. There’s “closure” but that’s a concept, talking point, mental state about which people talk like they have a common understanding of what it means. But I don’t think I have the same understanding of closure as a number of my friends, clients and even members of my family.

The state of mind “closure” is the “not really thinking about it in a negatively influential sort of way” that I always understood it to be. There’s mostly agreement about this.

Closure, or the action we take that allows us to reach the closure state of mind, is decisive action to commit to a different future that is based on a logical analysis of all the information available. It is decisive because you run through a check list of all the concerns, eliminating them one by one until there is no reason left NOT to commit to the new future. The doubt is eliminated by this thorough examination of the facts as you know them. If at some point in the future you were to question the decision, you can be confident that you don’t have to be concerned because you performed your due diligence. You’ll adapt and change based on new information, but you don’t need to think about it again unless you get new information. This is the process by which we get closure and achieve the closure state of mind.

When I chuck this realization into my brain and let it do battle with my world view, there is an exciting feeling that builds right where my unconscious mind materializes as awareness. The sense is that of a lightening of mind, a freedom, like I’m suddenly able to run again, and as I do, useless pieces of me are burning off and that helps me run faster. It’s like I’m escaping the gravity of something that was dark and I’m off into an open expanse of nothingness.

For the more scientifically minded, it’s like the mental energy that was being sapped by continuing to think about things that had not been properly analyzed and actioned on is now available for other tasks and this is experienced as a boost in brain processing efficiency.

The consequences of this are pretty cool. First off, you get to stop thinking about stuff that you shouldn’t have been thinking about anyway. Second, you get to feel better because you aren’t thinking or agonizing about this stuff. Finally, you are smarter in a relative sense because you do have more processing capacity, which will improve you concentration, memory, and other executive functions. Lumped together, these represent a huge improvement in the quality of life.

So if you’re stuck on something from the past or have gotten into something now to stop the pain of the past, that a few moments today to write-out the check list as to why you’ve close of that part of your life. You may be surprised to find that a much better quality of life is just one self-dialectic conversation away!

Addictive Relationships

In early May Sharon lend me her copy of “I Don’t Want to be Alone: For Men and Women Who Want to Heal Addictive Relationships” by John Lee. She had found the book to very helpful. I read some of it and put it down. At the time it was because I was tired and needed to try and get some sleep, but over the next few weeks seeing the book sitting on the shelf started to nag at me. I told myself that I was too busy to pick it up and last week I gave the book back.

Now that the book is gone, I understand why it was nagging me. I stopped reading it because it was making me uncomfortable. I had been approaching the book from Sharon’s perspective, trying to see and understand how and why the book resonated with her. You get no insight when you read that way because you’ve already made a judgment that taints your ability to experience the lessons yourself. But, as is the way with thought fragments, enough of what was being read made it in and started to make me feel uncomfortable.

And I remember thinking when I was reading it that I could see myself in each of the characters to some degree. Unfortunately, I wasn’t reading the book backwards so any identification with the characters meant that I was relating to them as they were before they uncovered and solved their problems. Oh oh! Better put that book down Pat, if you don’t you’re soon going to find out that you don’t want to be alone; and frankly, are terrified of it. Fortunately Sharon had finished the book and was able to coach me towards having the experiences I needed in order to see this fact.

I fall in love quickly and completely. It is a poets love, consuming, passionate, intense and, sadly, codependent. And as a poet in love, I write and I broadcast out the state of being in love because that’s helps me to feel things. Some of the stuff is great, some of it is good, but most of it is just words typed out to allow me to experience a happy emotion that I think I should share with someone. If these efforts are liked, I do them more until they stop being liked and then become annoying. But I perceive the change in receptiveness as someone checking-out and, since I’m terrified about the prospect of being alone, fear grows, taints my thoughts, and things breakdown rapidly. I’m not fighting for a relationship, I’m fighting for what I feel is my entire identity.

It isn’t a good way to live. Fortunately, Sharon saw it quickly and did what was needed for me to feel the rapid breakdown and identify why it was happening. Now the challenge, addressing the codependency issues that I have been unconsciously expressed for most of my adult life and to move my life to a point were I can want a partner in my life but not need them in order to function. That is my next journey, and I really do owe finally finding the path to Sharon. Thank you Sharon!

The Moment Of Possibility – Where I Go Wrong

I wrote the following on April 25, 2011, 11:21:01 AM.

These are fine moments in life! If there is a time to allow yourself to live in your head it is when you find yourself being liked by someone you like too. Right now before many words are spoken, before many actions are taken, thoughts of the possibilities exist without the constraints of reality. There is nothing now so the only possibility is that of anything. It doesn’t last long. Words will be spoken, actions will be taken, reality will soon introduce something that begins to shape the future by eliminating certain possibilities.

This will happen because that is what happens. One moment becomes another as time rolls on. No matter what becomes of it, it is fun to stop and think about a bunch of things that are not there, yet or never will be.

I dream about a future that does not exist, I float through thoughts of things that are pleasing, exciting, confronting, enjoying them, trying things on to see if they are something I’d like to do. Then, I being to manufacture the circumstances by which I’m  able to make the chosen dreams a reality. Setting-up meetings and making excuses to chat, all the while releasing my mind from my commitments to the old dreams that don’t seem to matter anymore. I change my attitudes, my behaviors, and the way I think about life.

It’s obvious where this was coming from and it’s obvious to me why it doesn’t work very effectively for anything other than creating a muse, and heart ache. It helps me write, it helps me feel like I am alive after feeling dormant and waiting for so long, it does feel like it’s real and like it’s what I’ve been wanting for so long. But it won’t last because it isn’t real. It is fantasy tangent taking me away from that which they know into a world that cannot possibly come true.

It’s a poets love, rooted in make-believe and about to melt down.

Refinding My Passion For RPM

When I first started teaching RPM back in 2007 with release 33 my desire to be the best instructor possible was insane! Even for me, I was single-minded. It was easy to get lost in because it let me work really hard and there was structure to follow and I tend to do better with structure when I’m starting off with something new.

I taught as much as I could and started to get better. I got a little burned out in the first 6 months because I did it so much, but my energy came back when I went down to 2 classes a week. My passion for RPM has stayed pretty high up until about 6-9 months ago when I started to dread it. I taught decent enough classes, but they weren’t really doing much for me. I drifted over to focus on my own cycling classes and released myself from any RPM. I had considered giving it up completely.

In early June release 51 arrived and when I got it I thought about it wondering if I would care enough to learn it as well as I need to. I listened to it, loved track two – Halfway Gone and basically played it over and over again.

A little while after that an instructor friend copied me on a message to a new cycling instructor saying that I loved what I did and may be of some service to him as he finds his way. He has the fire for RPM like I had fire 4 years ago. He’s really driven to improve and be better than he was yesterday. Each day needs to show some improvement and he’s going to the limit to have the experiences he needs to be better. It’s contagious and I caught it!

The last few classes I have taught have been some of my best in the last couple of years! They’ve been a lot of fun, I’ve known the choreography because I’ve heard the songs 100’s of time and the right words and coaching seem to flow out of me spontaneously and with no conscious effort. A few participants have commented that it’s nice to see me back to what I was doing before. The classes were okay before, fun and hard working, but it has been evident that my mind was not completely on-task. This weeks classes have seen me being completely present with the participants, working them, coaching them and leading them again, both in body and in spirit. I’ve really enjoyed the trip back to and rediscovering my one of my passions.

So for me, release 51 has been paired with release 33 as significant and, in many ways, life changing. It’s a wicked release and I’m really looking forward to teaching this week!