Lonely Cities by Tigertown

Most of your everyday anxieties are just jumbled up nervous energy hitting you all at once.  We’ve grown up with a certain amount of this energy given the fast-paced, competitive culture we generate year after year.  Shit hasn’t changed and it’s not going to.  Americans are motivated and pumped to create new things, think outside the box – and we crave to have it all.

Many of us from this generation either grew up playing a healthy amount of sports or a little too much.  Thus, it is natural for us to turn to running, sports, cardio, yoga, or anything of that nature to keep ourselves sane.

However, RUNNING is one of my most favorite forms of releasing nervous energy.

Running makes the rest of the day easier.  It clears the mind.  It opens the heart.  You can be just as productive without it, however, you have to fight the mind a lot more throughout the day.  Everything just seems that much harder without it.

Running or cardio, does not have to be done every single day in order to reap the mental benefits.  When I trained for marathons, you only run about 3 times a week and then add a long run onto Saturday or Sunday.  During training, I was at a very consistent rate of productivity, rational thinking, intuition, awareness with others, self-awareness, and very focused on the bigger picture at all times.  Training ultimately taught me how to be this way regularly and how to teach others to function this way as well.

So trust me, to quote my friend who has run just under 100 marathons, running a few times a week is, “do-able.”

As I adapted and switched from career to career, I had to find that balance again and make room for running that is realistic to my life and schedule.  I had to adjust from my previously, very routined life as a teacher to the spontaneous hustle-like nature of my life now.

I enjoy my schedule very much.  It fits my personality more as a person and it allows me to freely decide when to run, pray, meditate, see my family, call my friends, be with my friends, work, and so on.

With that freedom, comes a whole new way of looking at life.  It reminds me a little bit of my summers as a teacher where I would tutor for a couple hours and then had the rest of the day to myself to write, socialize, volunteer, travel, pray or what not.

When I switched careers and also adapted to the seasons on the East Coast, I quickly noticed how much I enjoyed Fall and Winter.  They are the cooler seasons, obviously, but with that comes more motivation to run and craft workout regimens, which I thoroughly have enjoyed since I was a kid.

Granted, now, I run at the gym the way I used to  when growing up in Anaheim Hills, where the desert heat will kill you if you run outside for too long.  Out here on the East Coast, I jump on the treadmill and immediately trance out to some of my most favorite running paths and memories throughout life.  It is my sacred time, where I completely forget about the world around me.  And every time I get going, I always see myself just crossing the Starting Line and heading out on a nice 4-hour journey with other marathoners alongside me, especially my dear running angel, Christy Turner.

It’s so amazing how those feelings of marathon euphoria and getting hyped at like mile 16, never leave you.

After running marathons, you tend to always internally see people with posters cheering you on, and the feeling of being about 2 miles away from the Finish Line can teach you so many life lessons in just one race.  All of this comes back to me when I am on a running high.  It’s like being in a coma for short period of time, but then being allowed to come back to life again and again.

This blog was founded upon the concept of running to very specific playlists, set to shuffle.  To this day when running, certain songs can take me away to the most nostalgic high school memories.  Sometimes a song will provoke my days of dancing and partying in my twenties, galavanting around Hollywood, finding food trucks at 3am when they were just getting popular, throwing on some crazy outfit for Vegas, or roof-topping all over Sunset, Santa Monica, and Venice.  Then, I see myself running along the Pacific, next to the waters of Venice, Laguna, Santa Monica, Manhattan, Long Beach, and Malibu.

Always fantasizing about where life would take me – that it could take me anywhere.

AND NOW, I am fortunate enough to associate running with watching my warm breath hit the 28-degree weather or feeling the crunch of snow beneath my feet and the crisp air on my face.  Or trekking through the neighborhood and watching my shoes bounce through bunches of fall leaves and then running faster to make them blow all around me like mini-tornados.

It seems, my whole world has come together through running.

If you read my backstory, you will learn more in detail how I used music and training for marathons to allow my mind to reach very difficult memories that triggered real pain or aspects of life I feared to admit to myself.  Today, I am not in pain, but as I run, I get so pumped to write.  I get so deeply inspired and grow more passionate about finding new ways to articulate to my generation how to conquer fears and anxieties through the most natural and free resources around us.

When I run, I also fantasize about my most favorite memories with the people in my life and those who have been there for me.  This is my way of embracing where I am in life, sending gratitude out into the world, and enjoying being in some sort of sweet spot of life.  And the best thing about sweet spots, is there will be more of them.  Life is full of them.

But what good is a sweet spot – a slice of heaven on earth – if you can’t even feel it?

We cannot control what the world – what God – is trying to give us.  If you are open to it, He will give you everything you truly crave.  And so running, is where I meet God face-to-face and completely let Him take a hold of me.  After a run, it feels like I just watched a movie of my own life, where He shows me exactly what could happen or will happen.  Then, I walk away accepting what I felt and saw, knowing that it will all come true if that is where my heart truly lies.  And only He and I know where my heart truly lies.

I believe these moments of clarity and euphoria are easily accessed through running prayer, meditation, writing, and nature.  But just like anything else, you have to do it more than once to get the hang of it.  It takes some practice and getting used to.  Our generation wants to rely on so many other things to cure the battle of fear and anxiety, when most of the healing power is already within you.  And that should be a relief to hear.  After about a week of training your mind to handle the task of relying on yourself, it becomes this whole new way of living, where you no longer need to pay for help.  You no longer doubt that you can help yourself creating a self-sufficient strength.  Thus, it comes full circle, to where you can help others, because you have built a strong foundation for yourself.

You simply become your own foundation.

So for now, if you can make time for the following either all in one day or throughout your week, you will notice a huge shift in your mood, energy, and love for yourself as well as those around you.  It will go from tense, to relief, to less chaotic, to more organized, to productive, to focused, to balanced-happy-and-fun!

The important thing to remember is: Do not lock yourself into a routine.

Routines are unrealistic.  Life is always evolving; constantly changing.  You must learn to love that part of life!  Routines can be used for starting a new habit or focusing on a skill, but this is a mindset we’re trying to create here.  So think about this type of life style and mindset, like when you’re cooking.  You don’t actually need the recipe!  You can read it, look it over, buy all the ingredients, make it your own, and then continue to adapt it over time!  It will still be Spaghetti Carbonara, but with your own flare and energy added to it.

Goal:  Be able to run 3 times a week, write everyday, reflect every night, pray everyday and apply what you learn from these strategies to your actual life.  Don’t be the dope who prays and then acts like an asshole.

 

This Week:  Try to incorporate the following:

• Run 3 Miles by the end of the week
• Write 3 pages of nonsense in a yellow notebook some time before work or after (date it or label it according to months)

• 1 time this week, make two columns in this yellow notebook of yours; one side is for negative thoughts, the other is for what you deem as the opposite of each of those negative thoughts (the opposites will end up being little truths or affirmations for yourself that you should believe and listen to)
• Pray/Meditate – I prefer to pray the rosary once a day, but try to pray or meditate once a day in your own way; get a book about the Bible or on meditation, or even sit in silence with a candle for 30 minutes

• Family – see or call at least once to twice a week
• Friends – do something fun with your friends at least once
• Nature/Travel – go into the city, or be in awe of something like a monument, statue, the ocean, any body of water, a fountain, a tree, art; once this week  (at least 15 minutes away from where you live)

• Go Nuts – if you like to drink, sip on whiskey; if you like coffee, go to a new cafe; if you enjoy wine, get a glass;  I believe in a healthy amount of letting go and it is necessary to be a normal freaking human being who still does good in the world.

• Music – make a running playlist, a meditating playlist, a driving playlist, a playlist that reminds you of your family, or work and so on and so forth; music is healing, but specifically use it when writing to access parts of yourself you crave to articulate.

• Shows – (this is monthly not weekly) see a live show, a play, a movie, or an art show of some sort; it is natural to crave the Arts and to get hype from it; it will inspire you and remind you why you are doing all of this in the first place

Enjoy yourself and be honest and kind to others as well as yourself.