I turned 40 at the end of April.
Normally I don’t think twice about birthdays or age. And I anticipated 40 would be no different.
Spoiler alert…it was.
40 threw me for a mental loop. There’s something about that nice round number, a number that when we were kids we would have officially designated as…old.
It turned my focus inward.
Am I where I want to be?
Am I as fit as I want to be?
Am I as focused as I want to be?
Or thought I would be?
The wheels began spinning and didn’t stop for a few weeks.
The reality, and the conclusion, was that I was in a good place. Physically I was in great shape. Mentally I was content. I was doing work I love, coaching badass leaders and execs from the top tech companies in the world.
And yet…
40 man. It f*cks with you. Or me, rather.
And maybe you, in the past or in the future.
I wanted more.
But that more wasn’t coming from a place of discontent. It was coming from a place of appreciating that we get one shot at this thing. The ticking clock is real, and the ticks were as loud as they’d ever been.
I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.
-George Bernard Shaw
Now that I’m 5 months past that unexpectedly dreadful birthday, I haven’t changed much. But the few critical things that have changed have taken me to another level.
Another level of fitness. Another level of focus. Another level of holding that splendid torch.
And it started in the most unexpected of places…
Sunrises.
Sunrises and sunsets are my happiest of places. There’s no ocean or mountain that won’t capture my gaze. And there’s no sunrise or sunset that won’t capture my soul.
When we moved back to Colorado in 2019, we moved just a mile from the trailheads at South Table Mountain, the literal perfect place to watch a sunrise, facing East and overlooking all of Denver from the perch of a mesa filled with deer, coyotes, and the occasional mountain lion.
6 years later, at the ripe age of 40, I had taken advantage of that fact just a handful of times.
If not now, when.
And how had 6 years slipped by so easily with that in the back of my mind.
Those were the types of thoughts ping ponging between my ears.
So I did the thing that is the starting place of any durable change.
And commit is a verb.
I made the decision that I’d catch every sunrise I could for the rest of the summer.
And I did.
As with any change, there’s unanticipated benefits.
For one, I fell in love with running.
I have competed in trail races for well over a decade, but I’ve never considered myself a “runner”. In fact, I hated running.
Now I can’t get enough of it.
💡 There’s a lesson here. When we attach something we love (sunrises in this case) to something we don’t love (running), the latter tends to be positively influenced by the former.
For two, doing anything at 5am alters your behavior the night before. The drinks won’t flow as easily. The bedtime becomes a little more firm. The preparation a little more required.
The early morning can be a great forcing function for a healthy evening routine.
And for three, catching all of the sunrises for a summer was a reminder of what I noted above…
Nothing changes until we commit.
Where most people get stuck isn’t with their desire to change.
It’s that they’ve made that change optional.
When I committed to chasing sunrises, I fully committed.
Because as with most hard things in life, 100% is easier than 95%.
As I sit typing this, it’s early October, and a rainy 55 degree day.
Yet tomorrow morning my alarm will go off at 5am.
And I’ll grab the clothes I’ve laid out and head to the bathroom.
And I’ll grab my water, electrolytes, running belt, and head lamp.
And I’ll go spend an hour or more on the trails, mostly in the pitch black as the sunrise has gotten too late.
And I’ll soak in the pre-sunrise glow as I knock the mud off of my shoes before getting in the car and heading home.
Because what started as a simple commitment has led to a simple habit.
The sunrises have been replaced by the mind boggling beauty of trails under the moonlight with stars as far as the eye can see.
Will I keep it going all winter? No idea.
But something tells me I might.
Because every night when I ask myself if I’ll head out again in the morning, my monologue is nearly always the same…
Do the damn thing.
Tears…that was beautiful. So touching. I think that should be published somewhere. I do. Inspiring.