It will be hard to believe for people that know me from a post high school setting, but basketball was my primary athletic obsession when I was in younger.  Honestly, for about 6 years of my life, basketball was almost all that I worried about and gave attention to.  Basketball and trying to “fit in” were my primary goals and objectives when it came to surviving high school.

The idea of playing a game of basketball right now seems almost comical and if anyone was present at my last showing of the Annual O’Neill High School Alumni Basketball Tournament, then you know it is beyond comical and to the point of being embarrassing.  While my basketball career never blossomed and I never reached the levels of competition I dreamed about, I still take away some very valuable lessons from all those years dribbling, shooting, practicing and playing games.

Here’s a lesson that I keep coming back to that relates to mental imagery and sports performance.

Mental Imagery and Sports Performance:

One thing that I’ve developed over the last 7 years is a decent ability to use mental imagery and affirmations to support my performances.  These practices developed out of my meditation practice that was very consistent for about 4 years, the same period of time that I was regularly practicing and at times teaching yoga.

The irony is that this was a major weakness in my maturity as a basketball player.  Therefore, in a retrospective fashion, I have learned a lot about what not to do by looking back and reviewing my mental imagery during those games.

One thing I did well as a junior high and high school basketball player was practice hard and practice often.  By my junior year in high school, I had not only developed a decent ability to play “quick” but I had also developed a pretty serviceable jump shot.  The issue that I found was that the ability I demonstrated in practice and in the junior varsity games very rarely came through in a varsity game.  That was also the case my senior year (maybe more so) where I had transferred to a new school and found myself even more uncomfortable in my own skin.

The question is why?  I mentioned above that one thing that I focused on in high school was trying to “fit in”.  Something that most adolescents hope happens, but for me it became an issue that crippled my mental imagery during those games.  Let me give one example that sticks in the back of my memory and then I’ll discuss how this lesson is currently influencing my Iroman Louisville preparations.

1 for 3 at a free throw line:

My senior year I attended a new school and to my fortune we had a pretty good basketball team.  We were highly dependent upon one or two players ability to score, but overall it was a great year.  In the first game of the district tournament, there was a play that has stuck with me for all these years.

Just before half time the other team was pressing the ball up to the court to make a last second shot attempt.  I happened to be in a good position, stole the ball and sent up a shot from about 2/3’s the length of the court.  For some unknown reason a player from the other team fouled me, so I got 3 free throw attempts. (That’s how I remember it anyway).

I remember going to the line and looking at the hoop, getting the ball from the ref and going through my free throw routine.  I had been through this routine thousands (if not a hundred thousand) of times, since I started doing it in the Elks Free Throw Contests when I was in grade school.  So what was on my mind? 

It’s a picture of the crowd.  They are off to my right with several of the student body members holding home made signs and others wearing homemade shirts.  In particular, the individual I was most anxious about, the one I worried the most about what she thought was wearing a shirt with my number.  Or… I wasn’t sure … I wished she was … I hoped she was.  She was about 3 or 4 rows from the court and about 15 to 20 people from the wall.

As you can imagine, I didn’t do well at the line.  I went 1 for 3.  Your first thought might be that this doesn’t have a whole lot to do with mental imagery, it has more to do with concentration.  You might be partly correct, but let me finish the situation at the free throw line.

The interesting thing for me about the whole situation is not that I remember what was actually going on in the gym, with the crowd, with this anxiety raising person; the interesting thing is that I actually remember fairly well the situation that was NOT real.

I remember being at the line, going through my routine and then I remember a whole made-up post game scenario that was going through my mind.  Here’s the scenario that I was creating while at the line: 

[made up scenario] After not having talked to this person in sometime, for some reason after getting finished in the locker room I head out to the team bus, surprisingly she’s there by the exit door and is happy.  I think that she’s happy because we won the game, but she tells me that I had a really good game and she’s surprised that I am playing so well.  The conversation goes on about the game and all the good things that I was doing at the right time of year, then before we end the conversation, she asks what I would be doing later.  I eagerly mention that I had no plans and we decide to figure something out so that we could just hang out with some friends. [/end of scenario]

Again, this scenario never happened.  But that story line and the real setting that it occurred (at the free throw line alone in a district tournament game) have made it stay pretty clear in my mind.  The thing that I can look at now from a performance perspective is how this situation influenced my physiology, anxiety and ability to perform a simple shot – the free throw.

The anxiety associated with making the free throw was compounded by the need to make the shot to allow my fake scenario to come true.  Because what happens if I miss the free throw?  I don’t get the praise, I don’t get the ability to talk to the girl post the game and I end up going home after the game bored and a failure (that’s what I likely perceived).

So while I am in a high pressure situation and need to calm my mind, relax my wrists, have strength in my legs and have a fluid motion – I end up raising my anxiety, increasing my heart rate, tensing up my arms, rushing my shot and pushing the shot short because my legs give out.

Top down imagery:

Herbert Benson, MD has written one of my favorite books titled, Timeless Healing: The Power and Biology of Belief.  Benson is most famous for his work around the Relaxation Response which is a technique that I believe is very valuable for athletes, but it is the discussion in Timeless Healing around imagery that I find very valuable in this context.

Chapter 4 in Timeless Healing is titled, The Brain’s Prerogative.  Within this chapter there is a discussion about “top down” and “bottom up” events.  A bottom up event is something our brain responds to in response to the environmental stimuli we encounter.  The simple example is when we touch a hot burner, we move our hand.

A top down event is when our brain responds to something that we create in our imagination or bring up from a strong memory.  The thing that we need to understand is that our brain interprets these top down “situations” just as it does the bottom up events we encounter.

Here’s an example Benson gives in the book:

Have you ever been driving a car and imagined an accident occurring?  You probably emerge from this momentary lapse only to realize that your speed has decreased and that your heart rate has increased.  Without the enviornmental stimulus of an actual accident, of screeching tires or cars slamming against one another, without the physical impact of such an event, your nerve cells have nevertheless reacted.  Your mind has ordered the same fight-or-flight response it would have for the real threat of an accident, and unbeknownst to you has directed your foot to ease off the gas pedal.

How this applies to my triathlon training right now:

When we went and did the American Triple T race over Memorial Day weekend, one thing I noticed (pretty significantly) was that I was losing tons of time and speed on the downhills.  Some people were saying that it was just because I weighed a little less or was just a little anxious.  Others said that I shouldn’t worry about it because it is better to be cautious and stay upright than be a daredevil and end up on the deck.  At first I was in agreement that I didn’t need to worry too much about my descending, but it created a whole new level of mental anxiety when we did the team time trial at the TTT and while I was slowing down on a descent, I still developed significant speed wobbles.  Enough of a situation that the two guys that flew by my both commented on how I had made a nice recovery from my out of control front wheel.

It all came to the forefront on my mind again during our Cave Run Camp when I lost approximately 10mins of time on a training partner (Royden) on a 40mile loop and it was obvious that I was losing every second on a downhill.  Saturday night as everyone was discussing their rides, a few people talked about their top speeds on a descent we had on that first loop.  36mph, 40mph, etc.. etc… When I looked at my data, I was embarrassed to share the fact that I had only hit 28 to 29mph.

What people don’t know about my riding at the TTT weekend and at the Cave Run Camp is that I had been through 100’s of top down bike wrecks.  It was getting to the point that anytime I came to even a slight descent I would immediately begin to imagine out-of-control speed wobbles and most of the time I would imagine a wreck or two.

What do these imagined disastorous descents do to my body?

1. Increase my heart rate
2. Tighten up my aerobar grip
3. Get me out of my aerobars and into a seated position
4. Create a shallow breathe
5. Tighten my legs
6. Point my toes

All of these things actually make descending more difficult.  So in order to improve my descending, I have been focused on changing the mental imagery script that comes naturally when I start to go downhill.    Here is what I’m currently doing:

1. I take a deep breathe
2. On the exhale I begin to picture myself running through the finishing line strong with my arms raised in triumph
3. I take note of the finishing time on the clock and realize that I have met my race expectations

By the time I do that exercise, I am often to a place in a descent that I can ride through the rest of the downhill.  This exercise has actually been working very well for me over the past month.  I have developed a level of comfort in my aerobars that I haven’t had in the past and at the Cardinal Harbour Half Iron Distance triathlon I found that I didn’t lose significant speed/time on the downhills.  I still lose some, but nothing like before.

Another benefit is that I don’t have all the anxiety.  The breathing, the imagery – it all helps to keep my heart rate from spiking and my overall anxiety at bay.  What I find is that if I don’t actively choose to use these methods, I revert back to my hardwired imagery and start to see myself lying on the road bloody and beat up.

If you are someone who struggles with confidence or has periods of anxiety during a triathlon, start looking at the stories you create in your mind while training.  Then begin to retrain the negative stories lines by inserting more positive imagery.  It has helped me with swimming in the past and I hope it continues to improve my cycling skills.

This past week was interesting for me in so many ways that I almost don’t know where to start. Let’s start with the value and impact of the words we use:

Written: I write a lot of things throughout the week. I sit down and write out directions to athletes for workouts, I communicate on the EnduranceBaseCamp forums, I post status updates on Facebook, I send multiple tweets everyday, I send a few hundred emails, I send a few hundred texts messages and I often write things that end up in a blog post.

The point that I’m trying to make by listing all of those mediums is that I put out a lot of myself in writing each week. The one place that I no longer write is in my personal journals. This means that the majority of my own self discovery done through writing (which is my preferred method) is now done in an open forum.

What I have found interesting over the past couple weeks is that these words actually make it into the conciousness of some people. A few quick examples:

1. I was sitting at Panera Bread Friday evening with a guy that is looking towards a half iron distance triathlon. We were talking about his summer plans and what amount of fitness and skills would be necessary to participate in this type of endurance event, when a guy and his daughter came by our table. I personally didn’t recognize the gentleman (nor his daughter) but he came by and said, “I enjoy reading your blog.”

It kind of caught me off guard, so my response was a pretty quick “thanks”. After trying to think of a time in my past where I met the gentlemen I realized that he must have just come across the blog. It’s too bad I wasn’t quicker in my response because it would have been interesting to see where / when / who and what about this blog resonates with this guy. Maybe next time?

2. Twitter. Two weeks after a less-than-thoughtful tweet I received an email from a guy that Nikki and I know responding to that specific tweet. Yikes. I put so little thought into those messages. It might be scary to start piecing together patterns of thought and see how my impromptu mind works. (This response has actually turned into a good exchange of emails and phone call about things important to me.)

3. Race Reports. On Sunday I met a friend at the grocery store that mentioned he read my TTT race report. Not surprising really, but I have not seen this friend in months so it wouldn’t be surprising to also find out that he stopped checking in.

These are just a few ways I’ve seen the power of words displayed to me this week. None of these people came to me and said that their lives had completely changed or been turned around by my written thoughts, but each of them found it significant enough that they mentioned they had read something I wrote.

This was an important reminder that whether you are blogging, using a message board, micro-blogging or writing a note to your spouse, the messages you send have impact. Especially if the person receiving the message has given you some authority on a subject matter, such as some of my athletes and clients give to me in regards to wellness and performance.

Verbal: As much as I write, I talk even more. I hate talking on the phone, but I end up talking hours each day with clients. We talk about their eating habits, their sleep patterns, the latest news story, the weather and just about anything we need to talk about to keep motivation up during a training session so they can complete their tasks for the day.

As much as I enjoy writing, I find talking to be quite difficult to be effective. It probably has to do with structure? I try to have a beginning, middle and end to the things I write. While talking… it just falls out of my mouth. And while my verbal filter has become better over the years, it still lacks.

One example of how our choice of verbiage can create impact – is within my marriage. Nikki and I have been through the book The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate by Gary Chapman. In that book we learned pretty clearly that I can best express my commitment to Nikki by sharing “words of affirmation”. Sounds like an easy task, but it can (and has) been a challenge at times. It is not challenging because I don’t want to express love to her, nor because she makes it hard to love her. It can prove to be challenging because speaking heartfelt and caring words is probably the most difficult form of communication for me to use. (Time, Gifts, Touch, and Acts of Service are the other four in case you were curious. I’m a “time” guy.)

This means that the words I use when talking to Nikki need to be well thought out and she needs to be positively affirmed often. The impact of the words I choose to use when communicating with her create either harmony or disharmony in our lives, marriage and relationship. (And because we work together, run a business together, train together and race together… our harmony is the most important variable in each others lives.)

Consumption of words: I realize that we often don’t consider words to be something we “consume”, but the truth is that we choose everyday what we are going to fill ourselves up with.

Today was a perfect example for me: On my way to work I had the local news playing. The first story was of a local doctor that killed his wife. The story was that they had been fighting and he pushed her off their boat. In an attempt to scare her, he ended up running her over and killing her. The second news story was even more sad. A 22 month old baby had died by drinking drain cleaner that the parents had left on their table. They had drain cleaner on the table because they were making meth. As if the story wasn’t sad enough, the father was 19 and the mother was only 14 years old.

At that moment I realized I had to make a change and turned the radio off. Why the morning news always has to focus on the robberies, deaths and accidents is not understood by me (but I bet a Waffle House or gas station gets robbed tonight and it will be the first story at 6am.)

It is in these moments that we can choose to consume or not consume these stories. This is one reason why Nikki and I also decided to get rid of our cable in 2009. In 2008, I was letting the CNBC talking heads determine my perception of the future – and it wasn’t looking very bright.

As we get bombarded with messages, news stories, sale pitches, advertisments, magazines, books and blogs – remember that what we choose to read and consume will impact us in some way. So choose wisely in what you consume. This also means you need to be wise in who you decide to associate with because in many ways your are choosing to infer meaning from their words and opinions.

Words you speak to yourself: I’ve written about the value of speaking positive affirmations, so I’ll post a link to that post here: Talk yourself into a better triathlon performance.

Our self image can be driven by the words we use in our own internal conversations.

Emotional Recovery: so what does any of this have to do with performance, triathlon or running? Well a positive self image, confidence and positive self affirmations have a lot of impact on performance.

But I have found this past week interesting from an “emotional recovery” point-of-view also. By emotional recovery, I mean my ability to wade through these oceans of words, stories and imagery and remain emotionally stable.

The American Triple T is now 9 days gone. This past Saturday (6 days out) I finally felt physically able to do a workout that I would consider “normal”. While my body seems to be coming around, my ability to mentally and emotionally recover has proven to be somewhat slower. Here are a few clues and symptoms that I’ve seen that make me consider this:

1. My mind is still trying to gravitate to the negative when I work out. “Your not going fast enough”, “You’ve lost fitness.” “You shouldn’t be this tired”, etc.

2. My ability to be empathetic is fairly limited.

3. My care taking ability has run out. Nikki had her wisdom teeth taken out on Friday of last week, by yesterday (Monday) afternoon my ability to filter out “production and work” and fit in “care taker” was gone. (Have I mentioned that I have the most patient wife ever? This is something all triathletes need to consider before deciding to make Ironman a regular and passionate pursuit.)

4. My mental ability to remain focused is limited to 30 to 40 minutes at best. And why this post has taken 3 days to write.

Final Thoughts:
a. The words that you decide to write or speak mean something to someone, so make sure they mean something to you.

b. When you decide to listen, watch or read materials, be careful that they are leaving an impact upon you that you are willing to accept.

c. If you find yourself taking in discussions, stories or television that you don’t find beneficial: change the conversation, change the channel or leave the room.

d. When you have internal dialogue – be positive.

e. If you find the ability to effectively monitor your internal conversations to be difficult, examine your physical fatigue.

f. If you find the ability to show empathy and remain sympathetic difficult, examine your physical fatigue and be very cautious with who you interact with and how you interact with them.

All lessons that I’m trying to absorb this week myself.

img by : retrofuture, click image to see at flickr

Training Anxiety:

I’ve had a lot of anxious days with my training over the last few weeks. Most of the anxiety is not over what I’m doing or how my training is going but with my analysis of what I’m doing and what is “optimal”.

A few weeks ago I got really anxious about my personal workouts as I started thinking about the optimal way to train for an Ironman. Specifically, the most effective way to train for an Ironman to reach the goals I have set out to accomplish this year. The interesting thing for me as a coach is that many of the same anxieties that I have about my own training are shared by the triathletes that I’m coaching.

The truth of the matter is that my anxiety had less to do with my knowledge of how to train for Ironman, then it did with being 100% accountable for all of my personal workouts and training analysis. As I sat down to write this training phase for the Ironman Louisville group I followed the steps that I normally follow:

1. look over the annual training calendar and review what our training goals are for this phase
2. review the benchmarks or fitness tests that were most recently completed by the athletes and see where they are at and if they are ready to move on (I do this for swim, bike, run)
3. review conversations that I’ve had with the triathletes and see if I pick up on training issues that maybe going unnoticed: tired too often, consistently poor nutrition choices, stressed at home or work, etc
4. take the key workouts for the training phase and put them on the training calendar
5. complete the training schedule to fulfill both psychological training needs and to continue improving the triathlete’s fitness and physiological / metabolic profile to meet the Ironman’s requirements

What I found was that while I could sit back and answer these questions for my Ironman triathletes, I was having some difficulty answering them for myself?  It was difficult to be objective and honest.  It was impossible to be unbiased.  As I looked at the answers I was emailing and discussing with those triathletes that I coach, I realized it was sometimes the opposite advice I was incorporating into my own training.

Here are some of the inconsistencies I saw:

• I’d tell my athlete to “be patient” and trust in their developing fitness, but I’d tell myself “you need to start running faster on this run every week”
• I’d tell my athlete to “recover well and eat well” when they felt tired, but I’d tell myself that I “didn’t have time to rest up this week” (really bad the 2 weeks I had a cold)
• I’d tell my athletes to remember what our goal is this year – Ironman Louisville, it is 26 weeks away (at the time) and we have several months to continue to develop fitness before we get into specfic Ironman Louisville prep.  But I told myself, “You’re not in the best shape of your life right now, how are you going to be your best at Ironman Louisville”.

In the end analysis, I had convinced myself that somehow my training needs were different.  I was different.  When in reality what I needed was an objective voice, a voice of reason.  What I needed was the ability to step back and review my own benchmarks and training history and realize that I too needed:

• Pateince
• Humility
• Faith
• Rest, Nutritious Food and Stress Relief

In order to help me get this done, I hired a coach.  It has been a very positive step for my training and I believe that it will be a very positive step for the athletes I coach too.  I ended up using the EnduranceCorner coaching services, primarily because of the respect that I have for Gordo’s approach to the sport and lifestyle.  I used to learn a lot from his triathlon forum back when it was alive at gordoworld and I enjoyed learning from his clinic at the Olympic Training Center back in 2006.  He also has perpective that I would like to draw upon; he went from a working “Joe” doing triathlon to a professional triathlete.  While I have no dilusions of going pro, I think that this experience is worth drawing from.

Data Analysis and Training Anxiety:
Here’s a lesson that we all can learn from

If you are not doing the training, it doesn’t matter what the analysis of the training data says, you are not setting yourself up to succeed.

I have to admit that starting in January of 2008 I began falling for this data “entrapment”.  This began with the greatest gift I’ve received from an athlete I coached in a long time – my Garmin 305.  I love that thing.  But with the Garmin 305 came a new level of data responsibility.

Prior to the G305, I used a basic Polar Heart Rate Monitor that allowed me to get an average heart rate, max heart rate and time (not even laps).  After a workout I would enter that information into my training log (at workoutlog.com which I had used since 2003).  But after the G305 the process got more involved, I had to connect the watch up and download the data.  I started using the Garmin Training Center only for the data download and then would try to manually enter the info into workoutlog.  This became too much so I decided to just use the GTC, until one day in June when I went  to load my data and notice that all the data is gone?

Frustrated I search the data, thinking that my daily auto back up of my computer would have saved it.  It didn’t!  Ironically I felt like all the running and cycling that I had done for the year was erased.  Almost like somehow because I couldn’t produce some chart to post on my blog or share with other friends/athletes my body had lost all that exercise and training benefit.  It was really that ridiculous.

I moved onto using Motionbased and GTC, and then on to a new traininglog website that allowed me to also coach my athletes.  The new site became as much of a job trying to maintain and use as my job of coaching was, so I just recently moved some athletes back to workoutlog.

The anxiety about all of this came back into my own training program when Gordo asked me “what kind of weeks have you been putting in over the last 10 weeks or for all of 2008″?  OMG – Where’s my chart!  So I spent 4 hours Sunday trying to recreate a training log to share what I’ve been doing.

I’m not saying that having data isn’t important.  It is a very useful and important tool.  As a coach it is difficult, if not impossible to assist someone or help them without having the data.  But as a coach, If I had to choose between someone who completes their runs regularly and logged occasionally or ran occasionally and logged obsessively, I’ll choose the former.

That being said, to cut down on this anxiety and get the information I need, I’ve chosen to use the following procedure:

1.  upload my G305 data to workoutlog after each workout / swim times just manually enter (workoutlog now has a very clean user experience when the G305 has been downloaded)

2.  weekly upload my G305 data to my WKO+ software to get the deep down analysis it offers

Alan over at EnduranceCorner has had a couple good posts recently discussing some of these topics:

• Benchmarks and Forecasting
• WKO+ for Simpletons

The Positive Side of this data displacement and anxiety:

1.  I don’t have solid records of run/bike/swim from January to mid June 08, but I know this:  I set a personal best at the Iroman distance on Sept 6th (11:00), I then rode over 300 miles commuting from Illinois to Indiana and on Sept 13th ran a fairly decent 3:17 marathon.

2.  I set a personal best at the half marathon just 10 days ago, running 1:21:53.

Racing has a way of showing us “The Truth“…. training logs and charts often lie if we’re not careful or if we don’t have an objective eye to look them over also.  That is one of the best services I can provide as a coach.

We all need athletic “blinders” … most of the time.

This morning Nikki and I got into an argument during our run. It centered around a workout that I had given the Chicago Marathon group that we were in the middle of completing. I was trying to get a message of “experience” across, while she was trying to get the point of “perfection” across.

In the end, we both had reason to feel frustrated. But the workout ended great and another life lesson was learned while taking part in this endurance lead life.

Upon thinking about this mornings run, I have continued to think about this idea of training with an emphasis on perfection. I am actually in favor of training for perfection, but only within the right mindset. For example, training with a focus on perfect experience and not perfect outcome.

This may seem like an argument in semantics, but I don’t think so. I’ll share more on this subject when time allows, but here’s a quick thought:

Perfect Experience vs. Perfect Outcome

I find that when I become more devoted to challenging an aspect of my own physiology or mindset I obtain a higher satisfaction out of my endurance lifestyle, versus the times that I become focused on obtaining some external outcome (i.e. Boston Qualifying, top 3 age group, etc.). The irony is that I often perform my best when I am able to completely detach myself from those external influences (times, paces) and allow my body/mind to focus on self-perfection in my performance.

This is a fine line (as in today’s workout) when a workout or race is governed by specific external factors. It is difficult but it can be done.

Creating our athletic blinders.

Elaine Breeden is a swimmer at Stanford University that just qualified for the USA Olympic Team in the 100 and 200 fly. Back when Elaine was a swimmer for the Wildcat Aquatics program, I had the opportunity to work with her for a short period of time in one/one and team settings.

At that time there was also some interest in sharing ideas with her about how to prepare mentally for competition, I wrote my “Mental Training for Athletes” article as a response to thoughts that I wrote out to share with her. As time passed, I continued to see personality traits in her (at 14) that I felt were an essential part of her success. I wrote some of those thoughts in a blog post titled, “Personality of a Champion“.

After Elaine qualified for the Olympic Team she was quoted in the paper and interviewed on tv, which lead me to send her some questions regarding her mental preparation. I feel that one thing she said in her reply, really addresses this topic of “perfect experience” vs. “perfect outcome”.

Here is that specific question and answer:

Me: I am really interested in some things that they quoted you saying in the Lexington Herald and in your interview, specifically: “I had my eyes shut and was focused on my stroke” interview after the 200.

Elaine: Closing my eyes is more of a natural reflex while racing than something I plan on doing. Its my way of putting “blinders” on so I think about my stroke, not the rest of the heat.

Most of us do not understand what it means to compete at such an elite level – I don’t. But I can only assume that the temptation to feel motivated or driven by an outcome is significantly greater at that level of performance than any level I have competed in. Especially when your competition is ultimately determined by finishing first or second (and not some personal best).

Elaine’s response is the reminder that I sometimes need. I need to focus on my experience and ultimately the performance will be there and the outcomes will take care of themselves. This is another characteristic of a champion, they understand what they can and can not control – then they perfect what they have the power to manage. In fact, earlier in her response she wrote:

“My focus going into trials was to stay confident and positive and to concentrate on the things I had control of. “

It appears that she is much better at implementing some of the mental training and preparation ideas that I shared with her than I am myself. Not surprising to me. As I have said many times since meeting her, she is very talented physically, but there is something about her personality and character that sets her apart (and she is only 19!).

Elaine has shared some more thoughts with me and I have a few more questions to ask her, but I’m going to wait until she gets back from China.

Seek the perfect experience. Control what you can. Find the blinders you need … and allow the outcome to occur!