_SportyBrains_

Today I am going to be deviating from my usual spirited and witty banter on all things that currently inspire or make me curious. I hope that is okay with you all, because the past 48 hours has been thought-provoking for me and there are some things I would like to share. At this time I'm confident most of you are aware of the 40-175 year sentencing of former USA Gymnastics "physician" (and I use that term very loosely) Larry Nasser. I first learned of the verdict just casually walking by a TV at the facility I work at and thought to myself "thank God, this was addressed appropriately." I then went on to whatever I was doing at the time and that was that. Until during some downtime I began to not just think about what just happened in the Gymnastics world, but the sport culture and those in it in a broader sense. Most of the time, it's absolutely wonderful. I have learned so much about life, work ethic, resilience, and myself through sports. I am continu...

Howdy Fellas! Thanks to all who checked out my last post on the concept of consistency. Now that some of the abstract stuff is outta the way, I thought I'd dive into some more practical (hopefully!) things to consider, some of these you may or may not have thought about as I wanted to get a little deeper into tapping into three considerations for developing a mindset conducive with consistent living vs "do this thing and succeed" type of content. At any rate, hope you enjoy and as always, take my ramblings and reflections you will. Push through, but do it lovingly.  1.       The first  thing to expect when we try and become more intentional and consistent in whatever the  discipline-a morning routine, physical activity, performing in your sport, etc-is that after we get through the initial resistance period (yes, be ready for it). We consciously and subconsciously put this up in our paths, but realize the thing we do gets easier and more automated if ...

So, this story begins earlier this week when I get a call from my main office telling me that we, just like basically everyone else in The Woodlands, will be shut down due to a “snow day”. All of you who live in areas not called Texas, feel free to laugh at us-it’s okay. I’m kind of laughing at us myself.   After receiving the call and rearranging all my meetings, I had to reevaluate what to do with the next 24 hours. On one hand, I could stay up late, sleep in, and let it be a rare mid-week free-for-all. I could even never get out of my PJ’s! On the other hand, I could set my alarm for my usual time, get up and run, and keep some structure working from home on projects I struggle to finish during the week. While Option A sounds enticing enough and perhaps more fun-at least temporarily, Option B won. I set the alarm for 5:30 AM, drank all the coffee, had my usual Honey Stinger bar and headed out to run-side note, it’s speedwork day and according to the weather app feels like 1...

"When I started out, I did compare myself to others. Was I good enough? Was I pretty enough for that role? But it’s the impostor syndrome that is injected in any artist out there. What it does is it keeps you striving for excellence, and wanting to do better, and wanting to get it right even when you feel like you never hit it. Doubt keeps you in the process, and it keeps you honest." — Viola Davis, quoted on  vanityfair.com Impostor Syndrome. You dirty b@$#%^&. Before I take this concept and I plaster my thoughts all over it, here's the Merriam-Webster description of impostor syndrome so we're all good... The term "impostor phenomenon" is used to designate an internal experience of intellectual phoniness that appears to be particularly prevalent and intense among a select sample of high achieving women…. Despite outstanding academic and professional accomplishments, women who experience the impostor phenomenon persist in believing that they are r...

*This is my last post of the year. But it’s not about 2017, or 2018, or resolutions. I’m sure many of you are disappointed. Ok not really. So, I once read a comment on an Instagram post of yet another running pic that read: “ your legs are #goals” and promptly rolled my eyes a little. Really??  That comment makes basically no sense and is not good on the body image end of things either. Perhaps I’m just becoming a crusty old curmudgeon, but doesn’t it seem that the concept of goals (no hashtag) has become thrown around so much it lacks it’s original meaning? While goals, especially for athletes and businesspeople, remain necessary steering mechanisms for intentional progress, I have a pet peeve of that word being thrown around too much. And by how goal-setting can get misused. Or our focus gets misguided too heavily on a certain goal or we minimize them to clichés/loose terminology for just something you wish you had-we kind of have opposite extremes here it seems.   ...

...insert your name above....  Today we’re talking about lies, awful lies-but not the ones you usually think of: like when your mile PR is juuuust a few seconds over what you tell people or maybe that time when you were seventeen and you were staying at your "friend’s house" for the night (for the record, I have not committed either of these!). This post is about the lies that we tell ourselves. Yep. I do it, and probably most of the planet does so too to a degree. What’s crazy is how slick our negative belief systems can get at telling us things that are untrue. Absurd things. And like to the point where we don’t even question what’s going on anymore-it’s like “oh, okay Adrienne, whatever you say!”  That’s when stuff gets weird. And can work against us, but trust me-it doesn’t have to be this way. What this post really is about is about the jacked-up things that negative self-talk does to us often-like daily. These lovely thoughts are also referred to as Automatic N...

“Don’t look back, you’re not going that way.” -unknown Raise your hand if you ever find yourself doing this! Not quite sure what I’m talking about (or you're in denial, which is okay)- then read on. And you can put your hands down now... So there’s this awful thing we sometimes do to ourselves... some of us have this tendency to take our past achievements (Yay!) and use them to psychologically beat us down instead of build us up (Noooo!). When you read this for the first time, this idea likely makes little sense (or it's my writing style, but not much we can do there...)-or maybe it does if you’re all wise and stuff. If you're like me, we often find ourselves always going back to some arbitrary standard we set for ourselves this one day or moment in our lives and held onto it as to determine our worth and confidence forever and ever.  I'm writing to those achievement-oriented individuals out there; myself included of course. Maybe this blog should be re-named...