"Know Your Measure"

Upfront I will say this is a little self indulgent but so be it.

If I’m asked what I do, I would have to say I spend a good deal of the time trying to “know myself” — something that has resonated since I read about the Temple of Apollo at Delphi in ancient Greece and how “Know thyself” was one of three sayings etched in stone near the entrance. 2500 years is a very long time, and with the passage of time and modern perspectives, we will never really know how accurate this is. Did the ancient greek characters chiselled into the stone say “Know Thyself” or “Know Yourself” or even something like “Know Your Measure” ? We will never truly know, but nevertheless, it’s a noble pursuit.

Of late, I lean toward the words Know your Measure — so much so that I have added it to my tattoo collection along with “Light and Love” which I should also add are two noble pursuits. What we may never know was it self-help advice or a warning — before you enter this temple, you better know how you measure up because you will be tested (or something to that effect).

The other day I was out with friends on some country roads training for an upcoming 65 km ride. We were spread out with me bringing up the rear, and as I passed an entrance to my left, I noticed two farm dogs sprinting down the lane in pursuit. Recognizing that they would easily catch me at my current speed, I screamed we had dogs on our tail and started to sprint with an accompanying surge of adrenaline; the race was on. My only goal in that moment was to stay ahead of them until they either tired or got bored with the chase — and with a final roar of warning and defiance they finally came to a stop and watched me and the rider I caught up to ride away. On this particular day, I measured up.

I’ve been riding for a long time and know that with a reasonable head start I can out pace a dog until it gets tired, but I also know that under slightly different circumstances or a little bad luck, the whole situation may have ended much differently — as they say in the business though, it turned out to be a good day. In the end, all we can do is understand our current circumstances and potential circumstances, critically understand our current measure, and develop our strengths and minimize our weaknesses to deal with them — and most importantly, understand when you don’t measure up so you can go off and better prepare for another day.

My general philosophy is be as smart, knowledgeable and as strong as possible because one day you will be faced with something you have never seen before and you will need everything at your disposal to meet the measure.

And with a little luck, you probably will.

iamgpe

The distance between dreams and doing...

I was a talking to a local businessman and as part of our conversation he said something to me in Italian. As I laughed and commented my Italian was rusty, he offered the English translation.

“The distance between dreams and doing is an ocean”

I looked at him, nodded knowingly, and we went on with our conversation. Like the next person, I love a good pithy saying and this stuck with me.

It almost screams, “Create a meme out of me and put me on Instagram. I’ll get so many likes”.

I have seen it first hand — the first place people with a good idea go is to visualize enjoying cocktails by the horizon pool as their bank account fills up from the profits from their idea. They seem to overlook the ocean they need to cross to get there.

I’m not here to debate the ocean or even explain it — other than to say this is a truism (and definitely meme worthy). I will say it’s an analogy of grand proportion and something to think about if you want to tackle a dream:

• The ocean is vast and takes time to cross

• The ocean is unpredictable

• Smooth sailing and unpredictable seas are part of the journey

• Sometimes your ship will take on water and even sink — only you can decide if you want to rebuild and head out into the open seas again

• and countless other ocean references

For all those who dream — watch out for the riptide.

iamgpe

PS — I don’t plan to put this on Instagram.

I know you said you were doing GREAT — but were you really?

It probably doesn’t really matter about the circumstances that find me training for a big gravel bike race in a month, but suffice to say, I have been on the trails training.

As I was riding the other day I came across two riders — one was almost at a dead stop waiting for the second rider who was out of the saddle pushing his bike. As I approached, I offered some words of encouragement, “You can do it”

As I rode by the response was, “I’m doing great”.

The thing about being in the saddle for a while is you have lots of time to reflect — and reflect I did because my first reaction was no you aren’t.

Maybe he was in fact doing great because his goal was simply to get the bike out of the garage or he had the unusual goal of pushing his bike instead of riding it. For me success was defined by riding the bike but in this situation, the measurement for success could be different. There is an academic discussion to be made about alignment of goals and objectives to ensure measurement of success is properly reflected. In this case, with the context being on a bike trail where people ride bikes, I think to say you are doing great when you are pushing your bike is inaccurate.

Does any of this matter in the scheme of things? Not really, but again I rode for quite a while and had time to think.

Maybe it was an issue with language and how we interpret what is said — language has meaning and like all things, it evolves. It’s possible I missed the memo that says doing great on the trail now means pushing your bike. Like aligning goals and objectives, I think it’s important to align language so everyone’s understanding is the same.

It may also just be the result of being human; we are an overly optimistic bunch after all. We are always overestimating our abilities and how we stack up against each other, as well as the world at large. Sadly, we overestimate our abilities relative to reality, and if we don’t like the results, we adopt the illusion of changing reality with words or artificial action. The hard reality is no matter how much you want to change the standard deviation curve you simply can’t have the whole class in the 95th percentile — not unless you want to pretend.

It probably was simply a misinterpretation of the situation because we all get off the bike once in a while and have to push — although anytime it’s happened to me, it’s never because I’m doing great.

iamgpe