It’s been 5 years since that day that I swore would change my life forever!  I had these naive thoughts of what would life would be like after crossing that finish line. My husband would love me more, my friends would like me more, I’d like me more.  I know it sounds strange, but it was the perception I had at the time.

But it didn’t happen. I didn’t cross that finish line that night. And it turns out, my husband didn’t want to be married to me anymore as confessed days so finishing wasn’t going to change that.

I remember dreaming about it.  My creative imagination saw me crossing the finish-line where the heavens would then open and angles would sing, and rays of sunshine would glide me effortlessly across the finish.  Upon crossing the line i would presented with a green jacket like in the Masters or they’d open a box and present me with a gold card (of course as the box opened it sang with hymns) and I would have entry into the club.  Typing this now, so makes me realize how naive this perspective was.

A finish line doesn’t change a person. It doesn’t make anyone like me any more or less.  It doesn’t even make me like me any more.  The challenge comes in the journey. How your heart grows, how you grow.

In thinking about the critic vs. the rockstar…

Why do we listen to our inner critic so much? What if Led Zeppelin listened to critics who were highly critical of Led Zeppelin I? The album was a an ode to rock’s progressive metamorphosis! This album set the stage for all future music and position Led Zeppelin as the most influential/greatest rock band of all time! We’d have no stairway to heaven had they changed their direction on their first album because the critics said too…

So the question is, why do we make decision about ourselves based on what the inner critic says? (ie: I’m not good enough, fast enough, skinny enough to do XYZ or I don’t have enough of those skills to apply for that job). Why do we create the stories in our heads?