[If you haven't read Part 1 and Part 2 yet, go back and do it. They're short, and you'll be glad you did.]

Most of us are afraid to want what we want. What’s that about?

Maybe we’ve had a history of too many disappointments. Or maybe we’re holding onto some leftover childhood lectures and lessons:  don’t be selfish, who do you think you are, you’re not better than the rest of us, and so on.

If we hold an internal belief that says we can’t really have what we really want, then we aren’t going to have it. We’ll self-sabotage to make sure we don’t. The judgmental bully inside of us wins every time, until we learn to face it down and quit handing over our lunch money.

That’s not easy. It feels like we’re in for it if we do that. Our internal judges are powerful; they invoke strong emotions – fears of punishment for breaking the rules that stop us in our tracks. Really; we’re grown adults, and we feel that way.

How about we don’t? We can start by being aware. If you’ve got that “I can’t have what I want” thing going on inside of you, you might want to take 10 minutes to do a little exercise:  ask yourself if you feel that way, and then write about where that belief came from. It’s good to shed light on our internal ghosts – it makes them disappear.

Psychologists call that internal judgmental voice our Superego. It’s the voice inside (and sometimes outside, too) that tells us to get back in line, quit whining and wait our turn (which never comes). It’s good to quit whining, no doubt, but if we want to make big changes we need to break some rules, step out of line and take our turn instead of waiting for it.

We do that by making ourselves and what we want more important than the tattletale “I’m telling Mom, and you’re going to get it!” voice that says we can’t.

You might try on a new thought instead:  What if what you want is a unique expression of who you are, at your deepest core? What if getting what you want is a realization of your essence as a human being? I know that sounds high-fallutin’, especially if you’re used to being dominated by your Superego, but just give it try.

If nothing else, it’ll make you feel better, and that counts for a lot.

To be continued…

[If you haven't read Part 1 yet, go back and do it. It's short, and you'll be glad you did.]

In his book about story structure called The Writer’s Journey, Christopher Vogler says this about “threshold guardians.”

But on a deeper level they [threshold guardians] stand for our internal demons: the neuroses, emotional scars, vices, dependencies, and self-limitations that hold back our growth and progress. It seems that every time you try to make a major change in your life, these inner demons rise up to their full force, not necessarily to stop you, but to test if you’re really determined to accept the challenge of change.

Threshold guardians are the guards and gatekeepers who stand in the hero’s way, usually early in the journey. You know all about them if you’ve ever tried to make a big change in your life. You start to change and immediately find yourself nose-to-nose with the same old fears and limiting beliefs that have always held you back.

What do we usually do when that happens? We lapse into the same old defeatist thinking that kept us from changing before. What if I fail? What will they think? (Whoever they are!) Who do I think I am, that I should want this? And all the rest.

All that’s normal, and to be expected. It’s part of making big change. But we don’t see it that way. Instead, we judge ourselves for running into these gatekeepers, for having these demons in our psyches. Look at me! I’m so bad! I’m such a failure! I’ll never make it! And so on.

We need to get past our threshold guardians if we want to move on. We do that by first recognizing that they aren’t external. They come from within; they’re the things we create in our own psyches that stand in our way of being and doing something different. Because they’re internal, they’re the toughest barriers to get over. We know how to overcome external challenges; it’s much harder to get over ourselves. And one thing is for sure: blaming ourselves and feeling defeated isn’t going to help.

What is? Vogler’s book offers us a clue:

Successful heroes learn to recognize Threshold Guardians not as threatening enemies but as useful Allies and early indicators that new power or success is coming.

That’s right: our biggest challenges are usually our best opportunities. Instead of beating ourselves up for them, we can learn to welcome and celebrate them. No kidding!

Sometimes, all our internal gatekeepers want before they’ll let us pass is as simple as (a) gratitude (“Thank you for showing up, because that means I’m moving ahead!”) and (b) a simple resolve to keep moving anyway, regardless of the intimidation. Instead of coming at the conversation from the point of view of “I’m so bad,” we come at it from “Wow, look at me – I’m making progress!” And that change in attitude makes all the difference.

To be continued…

This article is Part 1. Stay tuned for more.

We often initiate change from a place of deficiency. I’m out of shape; I need to go on a diet. I’m unhappy at work; I need to find a new career. I lost my job; I need to find a new one.

That’s a common and normal motivation for change. It’s also rarely effective over the long haul.

Why not? Because when we approach change this way, we actually unleash two competing energies:  one seeks change, and the other promises to punish us if we don’t succeed. This results in a state of internal dissonance, which is what happens when we hold competing beliefs about something. In time, the prospect of punishment and accompanying feelings of fear and guilt and shame overwhelm our good intentions. Our souls are like a stringed instrument with two strings just off, vibrating in that way that makes the oscilloscope bounce all over the place.

That state of clashing energy won’t sustain us in the long term. Deterrence maybe works in the criminal code, but it’s rarely good for our souls. We’re better off changing from a place of internal harmony. I know that sounds touchy-feely, but don’t worry, we aren’t going to hold hands and sing Kumbayah. We just need to learn to make change from a place of being internally in tune.

Trying to make change under the glowering specter of judgment doesn’t promote harmony. If we don’t move past the initial shock of the wakeup call and get to a more sustainable internal place, then achieving the change we want is going to be a tough slog of one step forward, two steps back. Sucking it up and gutting it out can get us a long way, but it won’t get us all the way home.

How about we try something different? How about we try the kind of change that comes when our souls get on the same frequency as our dreams and plans and intentions? How about we make changes by responding to a genuine internal urge to be and do and have what we want?

We can do that by practicing Change Without Judgment.

To be continued.

[If you haven’t read Parts 1-5, you need to go back and do it. They’re short, and you’ll be glad you did.]

A week later, I ran another marathon. I didn’t plan to do it. I just woke up in a mood, checked in with Coach, got the nod, and did it. My time was 2:35:58 – 16 minutes faster than the week before. I missed the world record for a man my age by a minute and 35 seconds. Even if I had counted the time off the machine, refilling my water bottle and working to get the feeling back in my feet, I still would have come in under the original 3 hour goal I’d had for the week before.

Funny, the first time, when I shared my marathon story with family and friends, everybody got all inspired. This time, it was no big deal. Oh, Kevin/Dad ran another marathon. I wonder what’s for dinner.

A couple weeks later, I hit my goal of 12 miles in 60 minutes – the goal I’d set eight months ago and given up on four months later. Again, when I woke up that day, I just knew it was time. I checked in with Coach, and he was good with it. When I finished, I plopped down on the bench in the locker room, drenched in sweat, internally celebrating. I took off my shoes, and then… there was Coach’s gentle voice. “Think you could do five more?”

By now, I’ve learned that Coach only asks me to do what he knows I can do, even if I don’t agree. We set a pace goal of 5:15 for the five miles. It was tough going, and I did them at 5:35 – one of the first times in a long time I hadn’t hit a goal, but still worth feeling good about. Again I headed to the locker room, and when I reached for the combination lock on my locker, the voice came again. “Think you could do two more?” I didn’t bother to spin the lock. “I’ll do three,” I said, and headed back out. My pace was 5:20.

I want to do my next elliptical machine marathon in 2:20:00. That’s a 5:20 pace. It will beat the world record for my age by 14 minutes. Then I want to run one as fast as those guys from Africa. That will be a 4:40 pace. And I want to celebrate my 60^th birthday by running a real marathon under 3 hours.

No, I don’t actually run. All I have to do is glide. And no, I don’t count the time when I have to get off the machine to get water and tend to my physical limitations, which haven’t gotten any better – not yet, anyway.

So what do we learn from all this? You’ve long since figured out that this series of blog posts isn’t about running marathons on the elliptical machine. Instead, it’s about running past our limits, whatever they are. It’s about doing things we know are impossible. Apparently we can live in two realities at once. In one, there is no possible way we can do the thing we want. In the other reality, we can, and the first reality’s negative opinion doesn’t count. The first time we do it, we’re stunned and astonished, and so is everyone else. The second time, it’s just routine. What used to be impossible has now become the new normal.

What’s the new normal you’d like to create for yourself? Like I said back at the start, if all of us could tap into this idea of doing the impossible, we and our lives and our world would change, maybe overnight.

And all we have to do is just keep gliding along.

[If you haven’t read Parts 1-4, this will make more sense if you go back and do it. Go ahead. We’ll wait.]

Three miles to go. I glided along, keeping my eyes on the distance and pace read-outs on the machine. It felt like running through a swamp, but I kept telling myself to just glide, just keep gliding. And amazingly, I was still on pace. I closed my eyes and visualized crowds of people lining the streets, chanting, waving, cheering. I opened my eyes after a bit, and saw two things that made me mentally stagger.

The first was that I’d run another mile. The second was my wife, standing there. She’d been off walking, enjoying the park that morning. She’d taken a nap in the sun, and when she woke up, she knew. She knew I was running the race I hadn’t dared to tell her about, because I’d been afraid I might fail. And she knew she had to be there at the finish line.

She dashed over to Bally and told the guys at the front desk that no, I’m not a member, but that’s my husband over there and he’s running a marathon and I need to be there when he finishes.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more welcome sight. She met my eyes when I opened them. “I’m so proud of you,” she said. She started to cry. I started to cry. Ever try to finish a marathon when you’re crying? My tears poured down my face with my sweat, which was already burning in my eyes. “And Coach is going nuts,” she added.

You gotta understand:  Coach is as buttoned up as they come. He’s a Tom Landry lookalike:  suit, tie, London Fog topcoat, felt fedora, the whole works. I closed my eyes, and there at the edge of the crowd was Coach, waving his sport coat over his head and whooping it up. It was too much, it made me start to cry again, so I opened my eyes.

“I’m so proud of you!” my wife said again. “You can do it!” I sent her off to get some water or paper towels or something. I didn’t really want her to leave, but I had to quit crying and focus on finishing. The last mile was my fastest of the day. I burst under the arch of balloons as the crowd roared and Janet cried and Coach whooped.

And then it was over. I dropped off the machine and stood, unable to move. My time was 2:51:57. That’s counting only the time I spent actually moving on the machine, not the time I spent trying to get feeling back in my feet and all the rest. If I’d counted all that, it probably would have added another 20-25 minutes. I decided to cut myself some slack and not count the extra.

“I just ran a marathon on the elliptical,” I told the guys at the front desk as I left. They didn’t seem all that impressed. Oh well, I didn’t do it for them.

I have two more running exploits to tell you about, and then I’ll draw some conclusions, and this series of blog posts will be over.

[To be continued]

[If you haven’t read Parts 1-3, I suggest you go back and do it. This will make more sense. They’re short. We’ll wait.]

Winter became spring, and I didn’t have a date for my marathon, but when I started running 12, then 15, then 18 miles, I knew it must be getting close. I did have a time goal: three hours. That’s just under seven minutes per mile. From what I can tell, three hours is a dividing line for marathoners, the level where you’re starting to get serious. One day I ran 8 miles at that pace, took a break and ran 7 more. “You could run all day at that pace,” I heard Coach say, and I knew he was right.

Coach had started showing up not during my workouts, like he used to, but on the way over to Bally. We’d discuss goals and plans for the day, and I’d almost always hit them on the nose, no matter how aggressive they were. There were still days when I had to quit early, but fewer.

I thought I might do my marathon the same weekend as the Colfax Marathon in May, so I looked up last year’s winning time for someone my age, and it was just under 3 hours. Right on target. But then on the last Sunday in April I woke up, and I just knew. Today was the day. I didn’t tell my wife when I left for Bally. I was afraid to jinx it, I guess.

I did the first 10 miles faster than my target pace, but when they were over I had lost all feeling in my ankles and feet. I had to stop to stretch and massage and fill up my water bottle. I wanted to do the next 8 miles in a single stretch, but had to stop halfway for more water and more stretching and massaging. The bottom half of my legs were swollen, one of my hamstrings kept cramping, and the places where I had some fractures were aching. It didn’t look good.

I finished the first 18 and sat for awhile, kicking my feet and trying to get the feeling back, wondering if I was done. And then there was Coach’s gentle voice. “Think you could get back on and go a little further?” My answer was “No!” And then I got back on.

I’d hit the infamous Wall that marathoners talk about. I lasted the next 2½ miles on sheer guts, got off and staggered over to sit down. No way. Again the voice. “Think you could go further?” I did a mile and a half, and got off again. I was done. It was over. I had no feeling below my knees, my ankles and calves looked like Elephant Man. Again the voice. I did another 1.2 miles, at one point looking down at the read-out on the machine to see that I hadn’t lost that much pace. Amazingly, my three hour goal was still possible. Too bad finishing wasn’t.

It didn’t matter that Coach insists on believing that whatever I want to do is possible. He was wrong this time. Impossible obviously had won. I was 23.2 miles into a marathon, and no matter how many times Coach asked me to keep going, it wasn’t going to happen. Even if I could’ve found the will, finishing was physically impossible. My body was in full rebellion. It wasn’t going anywhere.

I sat there in total defeat, and all I could think was, “I’m 3 miles from the finish line! I just can’t quit now!” In a fog of defeat, I got up and dragged myself back to the machine. I picked up my first leg with both hands and put it on one of the pedals, then dragged the second foot up.

[To be continued]

[This is a series of inspirational job search and career transition posts. If you haven’t read Parts 1 and 2, you should probably go back and do it. This will make more sense if you do. We’ll wait.]

A curious thing started to happen as I entertained the idea of running a marathon on the elliptical:  I got a coach. Well, I already had one for other things, but now he got involved with my running program.

I don’t think I’ve told you about Coach before, have I? In short, he’s that part of me that accepts what I say I want at face value, and never doubts that I truly want it or can achieve it. He’s that drive inside me that will not accept that something is impossible if I really, really want it, that believes in me no matter what, and won’t let me quit or call myself a failure.

It’s nice to have a guy like that around – not that I wouldn’t like to strangle him sometimes. He’s a disciplinarian, but always fair and never cruel. He’s also frequently exasperating, because he never knows when to call it quits, never recognizes when I’ve reached my absolute, all-out limit. He always thinks I’ve got more to give, and always requires it of me.

Maybe you’d like to meet him. You can. He’s imaginary, but that doesn’t mean he’s not real. I’m convinced you’ve got a coach like mine inside of you. Yours will look and act differently than mine, but he or she will do the same things for you that mine does for me. You might want to go looking inside yourself to see if you can find one and get acquainted.

Anyway, once I started to think about doing a marathon, Coach started showing up for my workouts. I’d finish a session on the machine and sit down to recover, and then I’d hear a voice in my head. “Think you could do another mile?” Or, “Think you could do three more miles at 8 minutes?” Or whatever.

Usually, the questions came at a point in my workout when the answer was an emphatic, “No!” And then he’d say, “Think you could do it anyway?” And so I would, and I’d hit whatever the workout goal was, usually right on the nose. It was uncanny.

With Coach’s help, my pace and stamina went leaping forward. My wife quit worrying about how long I was gone at my workouts. Along the way, I taught myself some quick recovery techniques – breathing, stretching – that shortened my break times.

I also started visualizing. You hear about athletes doing that. If nothing else, it’s a good way to pass the time when you’re on an elliptical for an hour – a whole lot better than watching the energy-sucking crap on all the TV’s. I’d see myself running a marathon, being the shocking old white dude who could keep up with those guys from Kenya and Ethiopia who can run impossibly far impossibly fast.

I became an international marathon phenom. It was fun, and I always won every race.

[To be continued]

[If you haven’t read Part 1, go back and do it. This will make more sense. We’ll wait.]

I started to get faster and go further. About the time winter was arriving, I did 5 miles in 66 minutes, then at Christmas I did 7 in 82. One day I decided to go as long as I could, which turned out to be an hour and 45 minutes. I don’t remember how far I went. When I got home, my wife was frantic. I’d been gone so long, she thought the people at Bally Total Fitness must have sent me off in an ambulance.

One day when I was feeling really strong I decided to try to run a 5 minute mile, just to see if it was physically possible. The machine shook and wobbled – apparently I was pushing the limits of more than just me. I labored, but I did it. So now I knew it was theoretically possible to run 12 miles in an hour.

Around Christmas two terrific things happened. One day I was gliding along with my eyes shut, as I often did, when a pat on the back made me jump. It was our local Bally amazon. “Working hard!” was all she said. A couple weeks later I was limping toward the door after a workout (“Just limp,” my wife had advised. “You don’t look drunk that way.”), when a guy my age met my eyes. “Man, you work out hard,” he said. “Yes, I do,” I replied.

You can go a long way on encouragement like that.

What about my goal of 12 miles in 60 minutes? Um, not so much. Yes, it was theoretically possible, and I’d made great progress on both pace and distance, but that goal was shooting at the moon. Around mid-January, I gave up on it. There were still too many days when my legs just wouldn’t move anymore and I’d have to quit after a mile or so and go trudging home in despair.

Plus, as a healing modality, this hadn’t been my best idea. My feet and legs were getting worse, not better, although it was hard to tell if that was because of my new exercise regime or not – they’ve been getting worse for awhile. But despite that, I was feeling better – inside at least. My heart and lungs had to be loving it – especially my heart, in more ways than one. So I kept on.

And then one day, maybe a month or two after I gave up on my goal, I got a new idea – another totally crazy, wild hare idea:  “I wonder if I could run a marathon on this thing?”

[To be continued]

At my workshops, I sometimes I get asked to tell my story. I usually don’t. I think it implies that my story is somehow more valuable than anybody else’s. We’re all in this make-your-dreams-come-true thing together, and I want to keep it that way.

But this time I’m going to make an exception, because I’ve stumbled onto something so big and amazing there’s no way anybody could think it’s just about me. It’s huge, and if all of us could tap into this, we and our lives and our world would change – maybe as fast as overnight. Really, it’s that good. Here’s the story:

For reasons I won’t bore you with (okay, I’ve had a couple accidents, that’s all you get for now), I have trouble walking. Running is impossible. You name it, I’ve tried it: rehab, PT, lifting, stretching, massage, acupuncture, chiropractic, energy therapy . . . No luck so far. But I love to work out, and last September (2011) my daughter was home and wanted to lose some weight she’d put on during a year in France. (Bon appétit!) So she’d go to Bally Total Fitness with me and get on the elliptical machine, and I’d get on the one next to her. She’d go maybe an hour. I’d go maybe 10 minutes.

She lost the weight she wanted to lose, and I got an idea:  “I wonder if I could start running on this machine, the way I used to before I got hurt?” I also wondered if maybe somewhere along the way my body would decide to start working again like it did before.

Then I got a second, totally crazy, wild hare idea. “I wonder if I could do 12 miles in 60 minutes on this thing?” Never mind that I have trouble walking to the end of the block. I have no idea where the idea came from; it just did. But I do know that twelve 5-minute miles is fast.

So I started in, grinding out maybe a mile in 12 or 15 minutes. My ankles and feet don’t have much feeling in them, and when I walk my hips and legs sort of stop working, so that I have to drag myself along. I call it my Quasimodo walk. And so when I was done with my elliptical sessions I could barely get off the machine. I’d look around, trying to make sure nobody noticed as I staggered and wobbled over to a chair. I’d collect myself and then go staggering and wobbling home (I have a cane, but hate to use it), afraid some cop was going to come by and stop me for public drunkenness. (Seriously.)

I worked on pace and stamina throughout the fall, and discovered something really important: when my feet and ankles are numb and my legs stop working, I can still make the elliptical move. I don’t have to actually pick up my feet (which is a problem), all I have to do is glide. (Hint: That’s important. Remember that for later.)

[To be continued]