Depends on How You Look at It.
It’s the beginning of mile 11 on the stationary bike.
It’s my less than ideal approach to cardio these days thanks to a torn hip labrum, but it allows me to keep to my ideal health goals.
I’ve always had a sense of what ideal feels like, and always had the ability to adapt in less than ideal circumstances to get ideal outcomes.
For example, over the past 15 years I’ve made hotel fitness centers the “ideal” place to workout, even when 75% of what they offer isn’t what I typically use, while the other 25% is out of service and clearly hasn’t been served in quite sometime.
As I sit here coming around to mile 14, I realize I’m trying to write the ideal post in less than ideal circumstance as I strive to be off my phone while at the gym (I see you 4 reps of bench guy on minute 4 of your rest/Snapchat time) and certainly don’t want to be using it for writing anything while my heart rate sits at 142.
Which now gets me thinking about this word “ideal”. It just came to me halfway through mile 10 and I thought I might write about it.
Talk about ideal.
To have time to do something about an idea the moment it hits you.
Maybe this could be my approach to writing on this platform? After all, I have been waiting for the ideal thing to say and the ideal time to write it so as to ensure my first post is ideal.
Is that realistic? Everytime? Wait for a word to come to me and just get to writing…
That would be ideal.
But I already know I don’t have consistent enough conditions for that.
Which is not ideal.
Makes me want to do a quick stock take of life as it stands through this lens of ideal.
Family? Less than ideal
Fitness? Less than ideal
Business? Less than ideal
Spiritual? Less than ideal
Relationships? Less than ideal
Sleep? Less than ideal
Nutrition? Less than ideal
Hip? Less than ideal
Is ideal just another word for perfection? Or am I looking at ideal wrong?
(Quick flick of the screen to safari to check with Webster – and struggle with whether I’m using it as an adjective or noun – would suggest that a standard for perfection puts me in the ballpark of my own interpretation).
Because what’s interesting is if you ask me how I feel about these areas on a scale of Awful/Not Good/Okay/Good/Great, then I’m scoring 0/1/1/3/3 (that’s right, the hip isn’t awful… yet).
When it comes to how we do this thing called life, what really is an (sorry can’t think of a better way to word this) ideal way to articulate how we view what’s ideal?
As I start mile 18, I’m questioning my original interpretation of the word.
Because it feels like it might just be a state that’s true to me that doesn’t have to be proven otherwise.
Furthermore, it could also be a state that I’ve not defined clearly enough to even know what it would look like even if it sat on the bike next to me.
I am a sucker for ambiguity after all (Ambiguity… definitely writing a post on that!).
What I do know though is I’ve used it as a point of reference for making a situation the best it can be given the circumstances I find myself in. Such as a 20 mile stationary bike ride without my tennis shoes, ear buds, and an iPad that died 14 miles ago.
For now, I’ll just keep making the most of the hand I’ve been dealt.
Maybe that interpretation is enough…
Maybe enough is ideal…
19.5 miles, the ideal time to cool down.
#GrowthReady