I Swim and Find Time for Myself Underwater

It was almost 10 years ago, a new role, a new company, and a new place for my wife and I.   I had always wanted to be healthier and happier.    About 9 months in I needed to find some way to escape and to drop about 70 lbs.   It just so happened we had moved into a swim and tennis community just outside Atlanta and the weather was warm enough to start swimming.   The community had a 10 lane Olympic pool so my wife and I started to use it.

About three months later my wife and I moved again, this time to Memphis.   No swim and tennis community but a huge pool in a big yard and what had started a few months before continued.   Each day I would wake up about 5:00 AM, make a pot of coffee and after the first cup jump into the pool.  I would swim for 45 minutes to an hour.    Each day I would get out of the pool and step on a scale and I slowly watched myself getting smaller.   One year later I was 70lbs lighter.  

Each day on my drive to work I would feel an incredible sense of calm.  That calmness contributed to my success, I just didn't realize how much.   I understood at the time and could feel what my swim was doing for me.   I liked that person.

Now for most people this would seem to be where the story ended.  Swim, get fit, loose weight, and be happy.   I changed jobs and the work became so much of a focus that the swimming stopped.    It happened slowly, first it was less and less because the work was consuming me (I loved what I was doing for work and still do).   I had lost myself and it was showing.  That calmness was disappearing and soon was gone.

I started swimming again about a year ago.   Daily doesn't work 100% of the time but it is the one thing I find myself looking forward to, it is a need.  5 times a week is my goal (no backyard pool in Portland).   You see when I swim I find that I can easily loose the part of me that gets so focused on working that I see nothing else.   When I am in the pool with each lap and turn underwater there is a moment of such total silence that in those moments there is complete peace.   I now understand where that sense of calmness was coming from.  

My wish is that in reading this that you find what provides you with the release needed to be your most successful and happiest self.    What do you do #OutsideWork ?

#OutsideWork