Why is it that the simplest concepts and truths we have the hardest time integrating?
I was working out yesterday and I needed a little motivation so I was watching some YouTube movies from Billy Yang. He is a filmmaker who also happens to be an ultrarunner and so a lot of his films are based in the context of ultrarunning as a sport and those who participate.

But as you find in any type of adventure that expects, almost demands, that you dig deep, you also find lessons about life.

So while I was on the floor holding a bridge, I heard Amelia Boone, who is a champion obstacle course runner and accomplished ultrarunner, say she realized if she is happy in the micro, the things that make her happy in the day to day, she will be happy in the macro (you can FF to 6:48 if you want to hear her say it).

It’s really a fleeting comment in the 10-minute video but for some reason that resonated so loudly for me. It instantly made me realize that so much of what we do and how we goal set is about future. It’s about when/then thinking. When I lose weight, then I will be happy. When I run 100 miles, then I will be a runner. Whatever crazy story you tell yourself, or I tell myself. And I tell myself a lot of crazy stories sometimes.

But she says it so plainly. It’s that if we commit to being happy and choosing things that make us happy in the day to day, we are guaranteed happiness in the big picture. If each day we set aside time or approach the day as how can I see this through the lens of happiness, everything changes. In fact, a friend of mine said that Happiness is based on Happenings and Joy is an internal setting. We set our frequency to joy. And even when life gets difficult, we find the joy in it. We feel the difficulty. We feel the discomfort AND we find the joy… even if it’s a small thing that day. We are looking for it. We have tuned our life radio to the joy channel. Instead of searching the airwaves for “What’s Wrong Now.” It’s setting the radio on SEEK for joy.

It makes me wonder if I chose to focus on the micro, would I lose the weight, run the race, accomplish the goal faster, more easily, with less hand-wringing because that wasn’t the determiner of my joy — I was.

Sunshine & Sarcasm,
Lowi & G