Did December surprise you too?

You know that feeling you get when you… …come out of an unproductive meeting. …finally break away from scrolling social media. …peel yourself off the couch after binge watching a few too many episodes. …get sucked into your phone and can’t even remember why you picked it up. Malaise. Discontent. Annoyed. This is the opposite of flow. Too much of this leads to an unfulfilling hour, day, week, month, year(s)! I’ll be the first to raise my hand. I’m guilty of bringing my phone to the…

LESSONS FROM THE WATER READ PREVIOUS ARTICLES WEBSITE SCHEDULE SUBSTACK Last week I taught an adult beginner swimming class at Rogue X. One swimmer was 73 years old and had nearly died after falling into the Rogue River eleven months ago. Another thought she was in the wrong class because she already considered herself a strong swimmer. By the end of class, she was glad she stayed. It left me thinking about how the water reveals what each of us is ready to learn. I wrote about it here: Read:…

The Long Game We’ve talked about awareness. We’ve talked about redirecting attention. But the real work—the work that changes us—lives in the long game. Because once you see a habit… and once you learn where to place your attention instead… you enter the part no one really likes to talk about: Repeating it. Over and over and over. Sometimes with ease. Sometimes with frustration. Sometimes with no visible change at all. This is exactly where most people assume something is wrong. They think if…

Alone, together This week I had the pleasure of layering coaching sessions with three swimmers; the intersections colored each person’s learning in new shades and launched them up the spiral of learning. But it wasn’t without reservations. From me: will they feel like they’re getting the same benefit as they would one on one? What if they don’t like each other? And I imagine, for them: each had to give up valuable one-on-one time and allow group dynamics. It was a risk. Do you prefer doing…

What are you training for? When people ask me, “What are you training for?” my answer is simple: life. Sure, I like to take on a big swim each year (my version of misogi)—this time, I’m celebrating my 50th trip around the sun with a 50-mile swim in a Vermont lake. But here’s the thing: I don’t want training to feel like something separate from the rest of my life. I want it to fit into my days, not take them over. Training for Life, Not Just a Goal If you’ve ever looked at the long list of…

LESSONS FROM THE WATER READ PREVIOUS ARTICLES WEBSITE SCHEDULE SUBSTACK Hi there, I’ve been quiet for a few weeks — heads down finishing the prep for something I’ve been building toward for months. Last week, I watched six people swim across a bay they’d never seen before. Not once, not twice, but day after day for the entire week. Complete strangers to each other, they’d been training with me since October — scattered across the country, doing laps in their local pools all winter, building…