Practice What You Preach

We all know I like to give advice. I try to practice living life awesome everyday, so when I discover something cool, and learn how to articulate it, I write a little ditty, throw in a smidgen of brilliance and just a dash of vanity, and post it on here.

Afterall, it's not called Your Daily REMEDY for nothing (although I suppose the use of "Daily" may be a stretch, but this blog would be seriously watered down if I posted every day! It's all about the Quality!

The other bonus of me posting about cool things I learn, is that it forces me to be accountable for what I write. I can't write a post about diet and health then turn around and eat candy bars and ice cream for lunch! It would be totally hypocrytical, plus my devilish good looks would be dulled by the excess chub.

One of my favorite conceptual posts that I wrote was about learning to leave your comfort zone as often as possible. Since I wrote about it, everytime an opportunity comes up that I'm iffy or uncomfortable about participating in, I think about that post and how I HAVE to push forward!

This weekend was a great example.

On Friday, I played my first EVER open mic! For two weeks leading up to it, I was nervous as hell. Everytime I got an email reminder about it, my heart would start beating double time. At work, people were posting flyers.

Honestly, I wasn't convinced I was adequately prepaired and I KNEW my performance would be a little shaky from the nerves. But, I decided to stay signed up.

Was I comfortable? Not at all. I like being in front of people, and Lord knows I like attention (surprising, I know), but I've never played guitar in front of a large crowd, and when you throw singing into the mix as well, that makes for a nervous Arun.

To add to the nerves, it wasn't a true "open mic" atmosphere. Usually, open mics are at coffee shops with people chatting and socializing, with the musical performance being somewhat secondary. This however was in a little auditorium and I was on stage.

The one thing I had going for me is that I always manage to do pretty well under pressure. When I was younger, I used to do Cello and vocal performances and auditions. Generally, the actual performance always went so much better than my practice did. In my practice leading up to the open mic, I had been making a lot of mistakes on guitar and occassionally forgetting lyrics. When I went up there though, everything just flowed and overall, ended up pretty well! I may have a video to post soon!

The audience definitely approved, so now I'm thinking about playing more in public. In fact, a friend invited me to play at a coffee house this Thursday!

But that was not the end of the weekend "Escape From Comfort Zone!"

I have been planning to run The San Diego Rock n Roll Marathon next summer. I don't enjoy running all THAT much, and am usually over it at about the six mile mark, but running a marathon seems like something I just need to experience.

It's sort of one of those things on my "Bucket List."

Comfortable? Hell no! Running 26.2 miles in the San Diego summer is going to be grueling and painful!

Next summer is slowly creeping up, and it's about time I start the serious training I've been putting off.

On Saturday night, I was out until 3:30am with my friends. This is an example of my great knack for planning and responsibility as I had committed to going on a TWO HOUR trail run at 8am the next morning with my friend and his running group. This means I'd have to wake up at 6:30 on less than 3 hours of sleep.

Brilliant planning Arun.

I actually could have just cancelled very easily. BUT, that's not what I do! I was going to run damnit!

Now come about 10am the next morning I was incredibly pooped and sore, but was so glad I did it. I left my comfort zone, and as a result, my marathon training will benefit. I also ate a guilt-free pizza later that day :)

Sometimes, we need to get over our insecurities and fears, and just step it the eff up and DO IT! And for someone like me who makes a lot of my life public, I've got added pressure to live up to what I preach.

This concludes todays sermon.

Can I get an AMEN!?!