“It is being here now that is important. There’s no past and there’s no future. Time is a very misleading thing. All there is ever, is the now.” – George Harrison
Sharing lessons from my journey over the course of Legally Fit has allowed me to reflect in ways I might not otherwise have done. I’ve reached a deeper level of soul searching. That’s not to say that it takes writing a blog to discover what’s within one’s own self, but for me, it’s been the vehicle. Still, there are times when I find that I never even asked myself the obvious. That happened recently when I was asked a question that I had never been asked before – and somewhat surprisingly not asked myself. . . “What’s the most important thing you’ve learned on this journey?” For a minute, I froze. I was so accustomed to far more specific questions such as “What’s your workout routine?” or “What’s your diet?” So, I was dumbfounded at this simple question. After a brief pause, I knew the answer, but before I share it, I’ll go deeper into where it comes from.
When my journey began, I felt completely unbalanced. No, finding balance is not the answer, but it is perhaps a result of what I’m getting at – more on that later. My life felt like it was all about work – even when I wasn’t working. I worked long hours, but in between the time at work, I would stress over it. Even when I wasn’t doing my job, all I did was think about it. I found comfort in overeating, and I escaped by resting in front of the television or sleeping. But my mind was always somewhere else – it was still at work. I worried about how I would do all that I had to get done. I stressed over whether I would do it well. And I panicked over whether I missed anything. None of that made me better at work, and all of it made me worse at life.
A while back I shared a lesson from when I broke my foot while working out – not because of the exercise, but because I was thinking about work during the workout. I wasn’t focused on my next step when I misplaced my foot and fell. After that, I knew never to bring work into a workout again. There’s nothing I can do about it in the moment, and my mind should be on what I’m doing. It’s a lesson I’ve carried forward to each workout, and I rarely if ever think about work or anything else while working out anymore. I’m not perfect, but it was a lesson learned. And I got better at it over time.
Of course, work isn’t the only stress. We all have those things that can occupy our minds even when it does no good. They can be big things in life like family, health, or finances, or they can feel like equally big things when stressing over social acceptance, dating, or loneliness. There’s an unlimited menu here, and what may be small for one person can be the source of another’s unending anxiety. At times, any of these can be enough to need help, and if that’s where you are, just know that there are people out there – whether family, friends, or professionals – from whom you should seek it. What I’m here to share is how I’ve gotten past some of it.
Breaking my foot may have taught me a lesson about what to do differently during a workout, but it didn’t fix everything. Yes, I learned to maintain my focus during my fitness routine, but once it was finished, it was time to go back to what I was worried about. I had no idea what the bigger lesson was yet. But sometimes, even though you may not know what that lesson is, you’re making progress towards learning it.
Staying in the moment during my workouts came with positive results. I didn’t just avoid whatever that next mishap was going to be. I also was better at working out. Focusing 100% gets better results than focusing any less than that.
Little by little, that fitness lesson made its way into other areas of life. I started to enjoy everything more because, from that workout lesson, I learned how to stay in the moment elsewhere too. Live music came back into my life in a big way, first because I was learning that I did better at work when I fed my soul outside of it, and second, because I once again knew how to enjoy it – by being present.
Ironically, this all made me a better lawyer too. One funny thing about not being in the moment outside of work because of work, is that it made it harder to be in the moment while at work too. Crazy how that works.
But just because I learned this lesson, didn’t mean I learned all that it had to give. I was better at staying present, but I was far from perfect. I’d venture to say that none of us are, but there are levels to this. Never more did I learn that than when I started climbing.
Climbing threw something new into the mix of staying in the moment . . . fear. Nowhere else is staying present more important. All I can do at any moment on the rock is whatever my next move is. That’s it. And the only way to make that move is to make sure that I am 100% there. Not thinking about what’s below or what’s above. Not thinking about the heat, the cold, or the pain. And certainly not thinking that I can’t do it. After all, it’s the only thing I can do in the moment, so it gets all of my focus. Yes, part of that moment includes a pause to assess how to take the fall if it happens. Another part is assessing what that next move may be once I make this one. But when it’s time to make the move, my mind is completely on the move.
In over 50 years, nothing taught me how to turn on that clarity in life like climbing has. It flipped a switch in me that made me realize that lesson from breaking my foot was not about working out, it was about everything in life. That lesson — and the answer to the question at the beginning of this post — is that I’ve learned how to stay in the moment. How to be present in everything I do.
Yet just as I thought I’ve found the Zen — thanks in large part to climbing — it turned out to be a moment while climbing recently that shined a light on just how far I still have to go to master it. You see, I thought that the one place I was unbreakably in the moment was on the rock. I’ve now been out there nearly 20 times, and it’s the only place where I felt perfect at this. Until I realized that I wasn’t. The short of it is that, on a recent climb, at a moment of fatigue and exhaustion, I lost it. I couldn’t figure out the crux move on a climb, and I caved. My focus was gone, and my mind was everywhere else but in the moment. I began to think about my marathon training, my need for sleep, and amazingly, even my work as I have been preparing for an upcoming trial. I’ve had moments of physical exhaustion out there before, but my focus always got me through them. This time, that focus was gone, and I was overwhelmed both physically and mentally. I needed Patty to give me an aid past the move. But even amid what felt like a relapse of my old self, I was keenly aware of one big difference. I recognized what what happening. Even when feeling myself fall out of focus, I had self-awareness of where I was in that moment. In the past, I might not have seen the difference. This time, I knew exactly when I came out of it.
