Loved this book written by someone who emphasizes the kindness of others in the ultrarunning crowd.  I understand it.  The pain/hard work humbles you and through your own vulnerability, you have more empathy/kindness towards others.

A few good lessons learned from the book I will use:

• Always smile…fake it til you make it!
• Relentless progress forward without dawdling at aid stations.  you will want to quit many times but don’t.
• Bodies will go as long as you need it to.  If you think you’re doing 10 miles, you’ll be tired at 10 or 50 or 100.
• Visualize how you’ll handle issues like a sick stomach, hurt legs, sore knees, blisters…
• Embrace suffering, practice keeping going when you feel terrible
• Remind yourself of your hard training – don’t waste the early morning
• Keep moving while hallucinating
• It’s always dark before the dawn – be patient and things will turn around
• With crew/pacers, use them to help you and tell them what to do/what you want them to do
• Never do math/calculations on pace.  Focus on current mile only.
• DO not listen to justifications on why quit.
• Expect the end of the race to be hard.  The last 30 miles are as hard as the first 70.

This book is a treasure.  It has truly inspired me to try to write poetry.  She has a lot of simple phrases (ideas) so well stated as in the title of this blog and a few longer ones like this:

“i want to apologize to all the women

i have called pretty

before i’ve called them intelligent or brave

i am sorry i made it sound as though

something as simple as what you’re born with

is the most you have to be proud of when your

spirit has crushed mountains

from now on i will say things like

you are resilient or you are extraordinary

not because i don’t think you’re pretty

but because you are so much more than that

This paragraph strikes me today because I also read an article about how to help kids get grit and the advice was if they do well, to tell them they are so “hard working” and not “smart.”  The test groups that were told “hard working” did better on a much harder test given afterwards.

I picked the title because a friend’s child told me after they had two weeks alone at home that he hated living alone and never wanted to do it again.  That scared me because I want him to be happy with himself and be confident in his journey – not afraid of reaching out to meet new friends – or to face his own fears. I sent him this quote.

Here is my first pass at trying this myself (no laughing) because part of what rupi does so well is capture everyday moments so well.  With my shoulder surgery, I found myself every morning in the bathroom with my sweet husband doing my hair for me (and he is bald so this was not his strength!) and decided I wanted to write about that:

“Love is

a husband

doing my hair

daily for weeks

when I cannot.

I reassure him

I’ll still need him

when I’m better”

Well, it’s a start!  Wasn’t there a book saying you have to practice something 10,000 times to be great.  One down…..