My name is Eric Deeter. I’m an entrepreneur, a life coach, a mindset coach, and an ultra runner.
Here are the four things I want to offer in this podcast.
Most of the episodes will be the audio from my weekly Trail Talk Facebook LIVE show on my Ultramarathon Mindset page.
You can connect with me there if you have comments or questions: @ultramarathonmindset
My friend, John Crum, is on a run streak. He runs at least a mile every day and has since the last part of 2015.
His advice for running every day: Listen to your body.
I’ve been working on a balance beam for a couple of months. The physical benefits are huge! The micro-movements needed to stay on the beam condition my muscles and the nerves that fire them to be flexible and fluid.
I’ve noticed a massive benefit to my running. I’m running faster. And I’m sure-footed on technical trails.
Ultramarathon mindset is about the connection between your mind and body for peak performance. A part of this is “body awareness.”
And balance is a key component of body awareness.
I practice the Chi Running form of running. This means I lean slightly forward and land on the middle of my foot instead of my heel.
Since working daily on the balance beam, I can feel the difference between being balanced at my ankles vs. the balls of my feet. And that few inches of difference is all it takes to make my run feel like a hard slog or an easy dance.
The Foot Collective is where I found this information. The video is a 20 minute explanation from Nick St. Louis, a physical trainer, about what beam practice can do for you.
I highly recommend this practice for mental focus and its physical benefits. It’s one of the tools I’m using to hone my ultramarathon mindset.
I had the honor to pace Abby (her trail name) in the Outlaw 100 this year. Her real name is Kathryn Ivey. Trail names are earned. And we talk a bit about how she earned hers.
The Outlaw is one of the toughest 100 mile courses in the Midwest. It’s a 20 mile loop, and runners have 48 hours to complete the 100 miles.
I met Abby through a running group on Facebook when she asked for pacers. Two of us from Kansas volunteered. She had never met either of us until the day we showed up to run with her.
Abby started running as conditioning for mountain climbing in the Himalayas and South America. Trail running has been her focus for now, but the mountains may call her back before long.
Trail Talk is a free-flowing conversation, like heading out with a friend for a run. We cover a lot of ground in this episode. Click the link and listen in for stories from the trail.
With everything happening in the world we need encouragement to stay positive.
My friend, Dallas Amsden, ran only one trail race. His main focus is Crossfit. He joins me for talk about trail running, and he also tells his story of walking through some dark days and nights.
The strategy he shares for dealing with these trying times is to take this as an opportunity to learn a new skill. Or build some new muscles.
We can choose to stretch and strengthen our mindset. It only takes the intention to use it.
One of the most valuable mindset skills is to learn stillness. Practicing meditation or yoga will give you benefits far beyond just a bit of relaxation. For Dallas, and for me, meditation has been essential to keep us moving forward in running and in life.
My granddaughter is a natural athlete. At nine-years-old, and in her first year of competitive soccer, she scores the most goals in her team.
Her coach says she’s likely in the top 1% of girls her age in Kansas City.
I say that she’s a natural because she doesn’t practice other than her regular team practices. No “soccer camp” or private coaching. Not even kicking the ball around the yard after school.
We’re amazed because most of us aren’t natural athletes.
Can you relate to this? For most of my life I always looked for the “easy button.”
I wanted to be in shape and healthy and at my ideal weight. At least that’s the story I told myself.
But I didn’t want to work very hard to get in shape or change how much I ate. Any effort I made to change my life was only half-assed. I did just enough to tell myself that I’d at least tried . . . again . . . and failed.
You may have heard the story of the student who asked the guru how to find success. The teacher led the student out into the ocean and then held him underwater.
After repeated dunking, the teacher told the student, “When you want success as much as you want air you will have success.”
Napoleon Hill says much the same in his book Think and Grow Rich.
“You must have a white-hot passion to get rich,” he says.
I want everyone to have success and to be rich! I want that for me too.
Above all, I want you to know that success and riches are about more than mere money and achievements. You know deep inside that money and status won’t make you any happier.
Don’t get me wrong! Poverty isn’t noble. It’s awful!
Passion for life, along with money and accomplishments are what makes for a rich life.
Last time I talked about how silly it is to make New Year Resolutions we expect to never keep. What good does it do to set yourself up to fail?
First you have to decide what you want. This is the place most Resolutions and goals fail. We all tend to make wishes rather than decisions. Make a decision that you want it.
Second you have to add passion to your decision. Because passion drives action.
Think about how the student feels when the teacher holds his head under water. You’re not operating from logic. This isn’t an intellectual exercise.
The reason so many Resolutions and goals fail is that we decide with our intellect. You know what’s good for you. You know what you “should and shouldn’t” be doing. But logic alone isn’t enough. You need passion . . . your emotions. Commander Spock of Star Trek is fiction. You will remain stuck if you don’t engage your emotions for what you want.
You can hire a coach. You can study. You can watch training videos. But you have to run your own miles. You have to do your own workouts. No one can do it for you.
The same thing goes for developing your mental strength as well.
The thing is that your mindset is what will make or break your success for getting in shape and eating what’s good for you.
But most of us do even less work on training our minds than we do our bodies.
So you have a choice. Leave your Resolutions in the dustbin and forget about doing anything different this year. Because . . . you know . . . it’s not easy.
On the other hand, you can make this year your best ever. All it takes is a little “want to” mixed with a dash of passion. The good news is this: You don’t have to almost drown to find success.
Hope is powerful! You need hope to keep going when the going gets tough.
Hope is that flicker of belief that things can get better . . . that things might get better. Even cranky pessimists have at least a little spark of hope, no matter how they try to hide it.
Don’t get me wrong! You and I need hope. But hope is focused on something “out there” to happen to make everything better.
Hope is playing the lottery. You don’t expect to win, but you know there’s a chance.
What most of us do with New Year Resolutions is no different. We invest very little and hope for massive returns.
This kind of hope is like waiting for a miracle.
I’ve seen miracles happen. God will sometimes step in and act for our benefit.
But I can tell you from experience that more often than not God is waiting for us to get off our ass and do something.
I put up with a mediocre life for years hoping for a miracle. I’d set goals and only put in a minimal effort. I was waiting for divine lightning to strike and make me healthy, wealthy, and wise.
I finally figured out that God gave me the ability and responsibility to choose what I get in this life.
I wrote about how I changed in my previous post.
Turning the page of the calendar into a new year and decade makes us feel almost obligated to make some changes in our life.
Add to this the peer pressure that comes from “everyone making resolutions,” and we tend to make Resolutions about minor quirks or annoying habits that don’t matter all that much.
So we make Resolutions with a handful of hope and a dash of indifference.
You won’t get rich from playing the lottery.
You won’t get the life you want by making Resolutions each year.
Any change starts with a decision.
If you’re like me, you want more from life than what you’ve got right now. I plan to keep growing and improving always.
So why not ditch the resolutions this year and decide to go after something you really want for your life?
It is possible to get what you want in life. It starts with deciding what you want and then going for it.
This could be your year . . . your decade. It’s never to late to start.
Have you noticed that most of us make New Year’s Resolutions knowing in our heart that we’re going to fail? In fact it’s kind of a running joke about how long Resolutions last.
I heard someone say this morning that they set a low bar for any Resolutions they make. That’s their strategy for not failing? Why even bother?
Something about turning the page on a new year makes us want to do something. None of us are perfect. So there’s always something you can find that you “should” try to change. But think about this: What good does it do if you believe deep inside that you’re going to fail?
Ten years ago, I moved from “Resolutions” to goal-setting. It’s kind of the same thing. But a goal feels a bit more serious. You’re supposed to work harder on a goal than a Resolution.
I followed what the gurus said. I wrote my goals down. I set a deadline. Then I folded my notebook closed and went about my life.
My goal setting ended up being yet another thing I felt guilty about. Another marker that I was a loser. For example, I set a goal to lose 20 pounds for over 10 years. The most I lost was 5. And I gained that back and more each year.
The year 2017 was a turning point in my life. I wrote my weight-loss goal as a decision. I also wrote the end result rather than the process.
“I will lose 20 pounds” is a decision, but here’s the problem. Our minds need clarity. And negative concepts don’t give clarity. Lose 20 pounds feels squishy.
My mind clicked when I wrote: I will weigh 200 pounds or less on Jan. 1, 2018. The power of writing my positive outcome in the form of a decision was amazing. I went into 2018 at 199 pounds.
What do you want to do this year? If you wrote Resolutions or goals for the year, did you make them as decisions or wishes?
Try this! Take your Resolutions or goals and put them in the form of what you will accomplish or have done by the end of the year.
Before you know it, you’ll be setting and crushing goals you can’t even imagine right now.
Yes, you can do it! I believe in you.