Invisible Fences

A little motivation

2012-02-06T12:17:00.002-05:00

Sometimes we all need motivation. Sometimes we just get distracted or its just way too easy to come up with excuses. We've got 90 days until our Tough Mudder event and it is easy to say I'll run tomorrow, i'll do some core work tomorrow, I'm too tired tonight, etc. There are a whole bunch of great motivational/inspirational videos out there, below are a few of my favorites.

Will's Warriors

2012-01-09T23:31:00.003-05:00

I resurrected this blog after almost 5 years when I becameinspired to focus a lot of energy and time on overcoming obstacles. Invisible fences is a reference to theobstacles we create for ourselves by saying things like “I can’t do thatbecause….”, “I’m not in good enough shape for ….”, “I would love to, but….”. If there is something I have truly learned inthe past year it is that most of our challenges are self-created and things trulyare 90% mental, or at least most of the time.

There are some true physical obstacles we often have toovercome as well. For me personally, Ihave had to learn how to properly manage a chronic respiratory disease that Ihave had the vast majority of my life. It was easy to use it as an excuse for lots of things which certainlyhelped contribute to the excess pounds I am now hell bent on shedding. My goal is to complete the Tough Mudder atMt. Snow, VT on May 6^th.

Sometimes it is hard to stay motivated and inspired butwhenever I get to that point I think of a special little guy who is probablystronger than anyone I know. Will is theson of two good friends of mine. Willand his twin brother Luke were born 11 weeks premature and had to fight forlife. Anyone who has had children cantell you that it is such a wonderful experience but can be tremendouslystressful even when things go well! Myfriends Amanda and Nate didn’t get to hold Will until he was a week old (I can’tfathom this, I would be a wreck). Willhad complications with being premature that has resulted in him having quadriplegicspastic cerebral palsy.

Now I have a real soft spot for kids and my wife is a trulyamazing special ed pre-k teacher who works with children with all sorts ofchallenges. Though we have not had thechance to meet Will in person yet (they live in NC), we love keeping up withhim and his family through his mother Amanda’s blog. Will is such an amazing, strong, and smartkid! He has gone through more in his almost 5 years than most of us will in ourlives. He does it with endless courageand a smile that melts hearts. He trulyis an inspiration. (Amanda wrote a wonderful overview about Will, which canonly bring tears to your eyes here)

This is why we decided to dedicate our Tough Mudder run toWill. We formed Will’s Warriors as a wayto raise money to help Will do some of the things that he truly enjoys but arehorribly expensive (everything for special needs children is stupidlyexpensive) such as a therapeutic pool membership or therapeutic riding. Of course there are things he needs as wellwhich insurance deems as luxuries for kids like Will such as communicationdevices or a wheelchair lift mini-van.

So I ask that if you can spare a little (I know times aretough for many) please consider donating to the Will’s Warriors Fund so that wecan help Will get some enjoyment out of life by doing the things he loves. You can donate here. Thank you so much for your support!

On running....

2012-01-08T22:33:00.001-05:00

I hate running. I have never liked it.

I am not a small person. Currently I am around 265 pounds and am built like the football player I never was. I am oh so lucky to be barrel chested (53") which you would think would increase my lung capacity but it doesn't (of course the asthma doesn't help that either). Needless to say, I am not built like a marathoner.

Running was just never comfortable for me. I could never find my stride and it always kills my lower legs. Being asthmatic never helped either though as it would only take a few minutes of jogging to induce some tight breathing. I have always admired those that can run and make it look effortless because it is such a convenient exercise which I would love to enjoy.

In order to successfully complete the tough mudder I need to be able to run. Not run fast or exceptionally long distances, but I need to be able to run comfortably. This will easily be the toughest thing for me while training for the event. I have started running intervals on the treadmill (2 min running, 1 min walking, repeat while increasing the run time each session) and I am getting used to it I guess. My goal is to be able to run a 5K non-stop by the event in May.

This truly is one of the invisible fences I need to knock down to make this happen and I will do it. The journey there is going to hurt but in the end it will be so worth it. I hope to say at the end of all this that I like running and hope to make it a regular part of my routine.

Strength in Pain

2011-12-23T16:08:00.001-05:00

I am approaching my one year anniversary of starting to workout at Tyler English Fitness. Honestly I did not know what to expect to get out of it. I thought I would loose some weight and get a little healthier. What I actually got was something so much more.

I remember the orientation class I went to on a Sunday in early January 2011. There must have been at least 80 people there (there had been a groupon for the bootcamp on January 1) and I was tucked off in the corner listening to Tyler and some of his trainers talk about the class and then they had us do some excercises and that was the exact moment I realized just how badly I was out of shape. I was winded by the end of the short set and that's when they told us that was just the typical warm up!

That first week was hell. The morning after my first official class I thought I couldn't walk. I was sore from head to toe. I kept going back and the soreness didn't stop. Eventually it got better and I could feel my body changing. In those first few weeks I dropped 16 lbs without blinking. It was a great feeling.

In the months since then, I have come to appreciate and even enjoy the soreness that I get from a good workout. My weight dropped but then fluctuated for awhile. I took part in a 49-day challenge and ended up finishing in the top 30. One very important lesson I learned from that was that Tyler wasn't lying when he said "you can't out train a bad diet" and that "nutrition is at least 80% of this".

So as I said before, I didn't know what to expect out of this but what i ended up getting is a whole new outlook on life. I know that may sound corny but it really is true. Getting better just builds confidence and makes you want to push harder to see what else is possible.

There are 135 days until the Tough Mudder in Vermont and while I am taking a few weeks off from boot camp but have started running on the treadmill (running is not my strong point) so I am ready for a whole new type of soreness. So as New Year's approaches I expect to be sore as hell again but loving it.

Merry Christmas to all and remember to go easy on the cookies.

TOUGH MUDDER - HERE WE COME!

2011-12-18T00:58:00.000-05:00

In my last post I eluded to the fact that I had found something as a goal for 2012. Well that goal is to participate and complete what can only be described as something boardering on just crazy stupid. The Tough Mudder bills itself as "Possibly the toughest event on the planet" and they might be correct.

I first saw a Tough Mudder video about a year ago and thought "Those people are insane but it looks like fun". Honestly, that was my initial thought. I also thought that I would love to be able to do something like that. Well, we (my wife Kirstin and I) are now officially registered for Vermont in May 2012. Initially my trainer talked about doing this and I said that I thought I wasn't going to be able to. I thought there is no way I could be ready for this event only 4 months away. That's when he said two words to me....invisible fences. (Care to guess where the inspiration for the blog name came from) Needless to say I took that to heart. Dustin (my trainer) has been motivating me for almost a year now and helping me push my boundaries and limits to places I didn't think were possible. He and the rest of the crew at Tyler English Fitness are incredibly motivating.

So here I am, 140 days away from the event and I can't wait. I know this is going to be challenging and really that is the whole point. What i think I like about the event is the fact that it is all about team work and pushing yourself. The event isn't timed. There are no prizes outside of a few for costume choice. If you finish, you get a t-shirt, head band, and a beer. The whole point of it is to push yourself and accomplish something you never dreamed possible. Here is a great video highlighting the 2011 New England Tough Mudder:

Tough Mudder also raises money for the Wounded Warrior Project, a great cause if there ever was one. In addition to the WWP, my team will be running in the name of a good friend's son who has Cerebral Palsy. We hope to raise money for him to be able to do somethings that he might not be able to do otherwise. He is a great, courageous, and inspirational kid (the whole family is really). I will post information soon on how to sponsor us as we get muddy, sore, and maybe hypothermia! Anyone out there that would like to join our team, please leave a comment or send me an email. The more people we have, the better!

I plan to post regularly as we train and prepare for this crazy event. I hope to raise some money to help a great family and to knock down some of those invisible fences along the way.

Inspired Overhaul

2011-12-17T23:19:00.003-05:00


View of Sebago Lake, Maine

So I regularly posted to this blog for a hot 6 months in 2007 and then it fell by the wayside for awhile. I did enjoy posting during those six months but then life just got crazy and I really didn't feel too inspired to write anything. Well that's all changed.

I have recently set myself on a crazy little path of trying to push the limits of what I think I am capable of in an effort to kind revamp and refine a few aspects of my life. In particular I am focusing on my health but other things tend to get dragged along, which is good. I am the type of person who needs motivation, a goal to strive for. I have set forth that goal for myself this year (2012) and I hope to share the joys, pain, failures, and success that will come with this journey

My blog used to be called Life's Lessons mostly because I had no idea what the heck I was going to be blogging about. A lot of my early posts had to do with career and workplace topics, but honestly it got boring for me. My current endeavor has motivated me to revamp this blog based what I am striving to achieve as well as one of the most popular posts I had from those hot 6 months. That post was about the importance of failure in a person's life.

Now I don't just plan to talk about failure but more about overcoming obstacles, pushing limits, succeeding at what may seem impossible. My trainer unknowingly gave me the new name for the blog, Invisible Fences. It refers to the obstacles we place in our own way such as saying "I can't do that" or some other excuse that we create. An invisible fence.

So I have overhauled the blog. Deleted a bunch of crappy old posts (no, really, they were garbage) but kept some important ones. I plan to share the struggles and success I have as I prepare to meet my goal. I also plan to work had this year to help other people as i try to reach this goal. All details will be forth coming in the next week. So stick around, it is bound to be a fun and crazy ride.

Fashionably Charitable

2007-06-13T07:17:00.000-05:00

I live in a very well off part of the country. Until recently, Connecticut was the richest state in the Union (the highest income per capita) but we have recently been eclipsed by the state of New Jersey. Regardless, in an area full of high earning socialites, it is easy to witness a phenomenon I like to refer to as fashionable charity.

Let me first begin by explaining the atypical family in the general area that I live. Most of families I would say probably earn somewhere between $75-300K a year and live in very nice homes. The fathers are usually business men working in the financial industry (insurance mostly – Hartford is the insurance capital of the world after all) and the mothers are either professionals of some sort or homemakers. They typically are driving a Acura, Lexus, Land Rover, BMW. Volvo, or Benz. The children are model citizens who are all star athletes, performers, students, blah, blah, blah. These are also the towns where if your kid isn’t taking Chinese lessons by age 5 you are sooo not fashionable.

So what is fashionable charity? It is what happens when a group of these people get together to raise money or support some kind of charitable cause. While some of the people are legitimately concerned and want to help, many are just there to be a part of something and be seen. Then to top it off you can find these same “graciously charitable people” doing the exact thing they were opposing – like smoking after a lung cancer walk. The best case I have to offer as example of this hypocrisy is recently a state spokeswoman for MADD (mothers against drunk driving) was issued a DUI. Obviously she really is concerned about drunk driving.

It just frustrates me when people do things for the wrong reasons. I know that the charities are benefiting despite the ego boosting, but the disingenuous nature of the effort is so disheartening. It naturally leads to a feeling of these people being so artificial and hollow.

I know that I am sounding like an old man saying all this but it seriously bothers me. Why bother help a charity or a cause that you knowingly violate on a regular basis? Is it really that important to have a certain image in the eyes of your neighbors? Does your public appearance really matter that much? Is selling out worth the risk? Seriously, is it?

Monday: Quote of the Week

2007-06-11T12:22:00.000-05:00

"In the middle of every difficulty lies opportunity." - Albert Einstein

If we all saw the world in this light, think of the things we could accomplish.

Monday: Quote of the Week

2007-05-14T21:54:00.000-05:00

Life is a succession of lessons, which must be lived to be understood. -Ralph Waldo Emerson

Advice is best taken and stored to later be accessed when needed. Digest it, dissect it, ignore it as you please, but only when you experience it will it make sense. Until you feel it in your bones, you will not know, but you can listen to stories of others and try to be prepared.

Happy Monday!

Quote of the Week

2007-05-01T06:52:00.000-05:00

"Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful." - Albert Schweitzer

Aside from happy people being successful, happy people are just a lot more fun to be around. Happy people are more productive at work and in life. So stop being so damn miserable.

Update: the art of failure

2007-04-25T12:41:00.000-05:00

I came across a Newsweek article today that i think ties back to my post on the art of failure. Apparently, if you do not learn from your mistakes, it may not really be your fault - it's your brain's fault. I honestly do not know what to think of this research, but I wanted to share the article.

Monday: Quote of the Week

2007-04-16T08:58:00.000-05:00

“A wise man learns by the mistakes of others,a fool by his own” – Latin Proverb

Those of you who have been reading probably saw my post on failing and know that I feel it is a very important part of life. While I don’t 100% agree with this quote, I do agree it is a lot faster to learn from the mistakes of others and is a lot easier to do.

I took this advice to my own heart when I left my last job which kept me busy day and night. I was very successful and probably would have continued to be in the future, but I walked away. Why? I listened to my co-workers, who were typically 15 to 20 years my senior, tell me about how they wished they had spent more time with their families over the years. Having had a child recently, I took that to heart and found a job that allowed me more time with my family. The funny thing was that my co-workers from my last job were both stunned and happy for me.

So take advantage of other people’s advice and mistakes, learn from them.

My rules for a simple, fulfilled, and happy life

2007-04-04T07:23:00.000-05:00

Simplicity is a way of life for me. I am constantly trying to simplify my life because that’s what I want. With that in mind I came up with a set of guidelines for myself:

Love who you can, as much as you can, for as long as you can – This one is first because I think it is that important and no, I am not touting free love here. What I mean is that if you love someone (a spouse, child, significant other, friend, etc) you should do so completely and with every ounce of your being. You should do this because you have not idea how long you will have that opportunity. I am not trying to be morbid, but life is full of unexpected turns and there should be no regrets.
Find a job that you love and are passionate about – having a job that is fulfilling can make a tremendous difference in your life. Find something that you are passionate about, but don’t let your work completely rule your life.
Buy less crap – It is amazing the amount of stuff we have and spend money on. I have just taken stock in what is important to me and buy what I need for that. Consumerism appears to have run rampant in the world today and I fully acknowledge that it is what makes the economy go round. However, I hate having too much crap. I also have better things to do with my time and money than to shop.
Read – read anything and everything. Reading enriches your soul and expands your mind. I highly recommend rediscovering your local library – it’s one of those resources that truly is an amazing thing.
Never ever stop learning – I have said it before and I’ll say it again. The day you stop learning is the day you stop living. By choosing to not learn you choose to be stagnant and you know what happens to ponds when they become stagnant? They become swamps.
Choose to be happy – happy people are just more fun. It’s real easy to be negative and grumpy all the time. Don’t let things get you down or all worked up, instead try to understand them and prevent them from happening again.
Be honest – I think this one is pretty straightforward.
Be willing to make mistakes – mistakes are how we learn best. It is fine to make a mistake, just learn from it, and don’t repeat it. Do not fear making mistakes, this can cripple you.
Pick a couple of hobbies at most – the thing that people get caught up in is that have too many things to do. Yes, it’s nice to have all the choices of what to do but if you try to do them all you are not going to be good at any of them and not enjoy it. Pick a few that you really like (one for each season if appropriate) and focus on those. Maybe its golf, gardening, skiing, hiking, biking, swimming – whatever it is just do a couple.
Cook and eat at home – Yes this actually takes more time but I think it can be high quality time. For me growing up, cooking meals was a family affair. It is where the family would bond and share their day. This time can be therapeutic too. On top of all that, I guarantee it will cost less and probably be healthier.
Limit your kids to just a few activities – the schedule for the average teenager (hell, even grade schooler) is almost as bad as their parents. Kids go to school, then to practice for a sport, then to Subway for dinner (see #10 above), then off to scouts or music lessons, and finally back home for homework and maybe sleep. On the weekends there are soccer games, church groups, and traveling basketball league games. These kids are destined to grow up to be stress junkies. There are many studies that show kids need unstructured time. Slow your kids down – they can still be well rounded on their college applications. Actually, if you speak with most admissions officers, they see kids with these laundry lists of activities and get turned off.
Take leisurely vacations – Don’t get me wrong, Disney is a lot of fun, but I think a lot of people feel the need to over plan on these vacations which can add stress. Find vacations that can be leisurely where you don’t feel the need to stick to a schedule. Trips such as beach vacations, educational vacations (D.C. or any major city is good for those), or camping can be low stress, assuming you like those things.
Don’t schedule every minute of your day – you need down time and unstructured time (so do your kids). This time allows our minds to wander and be creative.
In general just slow down.

Now these are guidelines I have set for myself and I have not mastered them but I am working on it. I think it’s important to have a clear understanding of what you want in life and a plan for getting it. I am sure this list will be added to over the coming months/years as I grow older and my experiences change and I will adapt my life accordingly.

The month that set the direction for the rest of my life

2007-03-28T07:34:00.000-05:00

I want to share a personal story of how I have gotten where I am today. I owe it all to the month of August, 1995. What happened then? I was at summer camp. I know that doesn’t sound all too exciting but let me elaborate.

In August of 1995 I went away to summer camp (I was 15 at the time) as I had done for many years but this year I would be gone for four weeks instead of my usual two. The reason was that when a person turns 15 you are now too old for the regular camp and are now entered into the LIT program. LIT stands for leader-in-training but could also be considered a counselor-in-training program. For this program you live in cabins in a completely separate part of camp. The first two weeks are spent on team and leadership development and the last two weeks you spend working with a cabin of campers.

Going into this four week stint, I knew I wouldn’t know most of my fellow LITs (some would be people I have known for years). Anyone that has gone to a sleep-away camp will understand when I say that it’s own completely different world. It’s like a much more innocent version of the Las Vegas “What happens here stays here” slogan. That being the case, you often don’t mix camp friends with non-camp friends. So I knew that the people that knew me at camp only “knew me at camp” and I saw this LIT program as a chance to try something really new. It was a chance to really try to become what I wanted to be.

At the time I was rather reserved, shy, afraid to try new things, etc. I decided to check those bags at the door of my parent’s car when they dropped me off. I got settled in my bunk and met my cabin-mates. Once fully settled in, I took a seat upon a picnic table kinds off to the side in a grove of sorts and proceeded to meditate and reflect. Now I know that sounds contradictory to my intentions of changing but read on. During that time I thought about where I had been, who I was, and where I wanted to be. I reflected about my strengths, weaknesses, and who I wanted to be. I thought about what I wanted other people to think of me, what kind of life I wanted to live, and what I need to do to make it happen. Once I found something I knew I needed to change, I purposely put myself into a situation that would take me out of my comfort zone so that I had opportunity to try something new. During my four weeks at camp I did this daily (usually early in the morning). It wasn’t long before I had a few people who joined me for my meditative sessions and I showed them what I did. They have since told me that it has made a difference in their lives.

The first two weeks were full of the type of activities that you might expect at a leadership camp. Things like having most of us blindfolded while a couple of people tried to guide us by verbal directions to complete a task. There were team building exercises, character building exercises, etc. Some LITs were kicked out of camp for having prohibited items in their possession (I’ll let you use your imagination), some had relationships with each other, others had difficulty adjusting, and others (like myself0 had very moving experiences. Through it all we all grew in ways that I think many of us didn’t appreciate until years later.

I think that the combination of my state of mind at this time along with the relationships I forged really changed me at my core. I can honestly say that my life is very different than it probably would have been without this experience. To this day, I still take time each and every day to reflect and conduct a sort of self-assessment. I try to be as honest with myself as much as possible (which is not that easy as we tend to paint rosier pictures of ourselves) so that the excercise can be effective. I have come to realize that this reflection, along with a willingness to be outside my comfort zone, are what allow me to learn and grow. Now this experience very well may be unique to me, but I am a firm believer in self-assessment, personal inventory, or whatever you want to call it, because knowing yourself well can allow you to achieve so much more.

I know the readership of this blog may be limited at this time, but I invite anyone who wishes to share their own story of a moment of change either through a comment on this post or emailing me and once I collect a few I will post them.

Monday: Quote of the Week

2007-03-19T19:16:00.000-05:00

So I’ve decided every Monday will be quote of the week day to get the week off to a good start. Here we go:

“Happy are those who dream dreams and are ready to pay the price to make them come true” - Leon J. Suenes

This quote kind of underlines a theme of mine (which you will see in future posts). It is one thing to have a dream or a goal while it is something else entirely to realize that dream. Often people give up when a road block comes in their way or are unwilling to do what it takes to realize a dream. The point is this – you have to be realistic about what you can accomplish. In other words – you can’t do everything really well, so listen to your heart and choose carefully.

Have a great week.

The art of failure and the side-effects of social praise

2007-03-12T10:56:00.000-05:00

My overall goal with this blog is share my experiences and my thoughts in hope that it may help someone else. Helping people is something I simply love to do and when I was offered the opportunity to be a supervisor I jumped at the chance. I was extremely excited to have a chance to help my team succeed and grow. I had a absolutely fantastic opportunity to work with employees ranging in age from 24 to 64 and I thought that such a range was great – the younger employees could learn the fundamentals from the older while the older learned some new tricks from the younger. I was beside myself excited about this but then I hit an unexpected road block – one that challenged me in a way I never saw coming.

I had a young guy working for me just a few years out of college, we will call him Jeff. I had hired Jeff and relocated him to my area because he seemed full of potential in his interviews. He was a good communicator, seemed ambitious, and portrayed himself as eager to succeed. I started training Jeff on my own and laid out a typical training schedule with him which consisted of several weeks with me and then working with the other members of the team. Everything was going great until we let him go off on his own. The complaints from our sales team came pouring in. They all liked Jeff as a person, stating that he was a good communicator and seemed eager to help but he would freeze up when it came time to deliver. He couldn’t execute on seemingly simple tasks when asked – he wouldn’t even attempt them. After probing and prodding Jeff, I finally came to the root cause – he was deathly afraid of failing. He was so scared to fail that he wouldn’t even attempt to try something.

I would love to tell you that Jeff was the only one, but he wasn’t. I had a handful of employees who showed the same traits. All had this fear of failure but they would make some kind of excuse for why they couldn’t perform the task. I tried coaching them to just try and if they make a mistake it’s ok – just learn from it. Despite all my effort their inaction landed them reputations of laziness and, worse, liars as they would construct excuses and shift blame elsewhere. It was a tremendously disappointing situation but I learned from it.

The lesson learned here is that we all need to know how to fail, successfully. What do I mean by that? Well I don’t mean that if you know you are going to fail then fail spectacularly. I mean that failure needs to be part of our learning experience and we need to know how to use it to our advantage not fear it. The reality is that many of us are taught (be it not intentionally) to fear failure. When we tell our children that they are smart we are praising the result of their work – not the effort put forth. Subsequently, the child wants to succeed all the time so that they can get praised and eventually will not attempt anything if there is a chance of failure.

This idea has been studied with much success by Dr. Carol Dweck and a great article by Po Bronson about her research can found here. The article does a great job of explaining this issue and demonstrates some of Dr. Dweck’s amazing findings. Dr. Dweck’s study demonstrates how social praise (as Bronson refers to it as) can have the inverse outcome of what is intended. I highly suggest reading the article as I think this matter is critical to determine one’s success in life.

I wonder how many adults carry this fear into their work lives seriously stunting their chance for success in life. Failure should be looked at as a precious learning opportunity and should be treated as such by all involved. Plenty of time and effort should be put into learning what went wrong and how it can be done differently. Don’t be so quick to rule yourself out as the cause – this is a tremendous opportunity for self-assessment and reflection. Everyone makes mistakes, but if we learn from them and try with all our effort to not repeat them, success will follow.

So how can we apply this in our day to day lives? Next time you are fear struck by a task because of the possibility of failure, consider what you may learn for that task even if you do fail. Also, don’t be so quick to judge and blame others that fail. Teach your children that if they try hard and fail, to learn from it and try again. Focus on the effort, not the result with your children and yourselves.

Failure is opportunity for those who can understand and embrace it.