Live from Juneau, AK: "Don't sacrifice what you want most for what you want at the moment"

Glad to say I can officially cross Alaska off my list of states I've never been too. Granted, I'm in Juneau, not quite the bulk of the state but its still Alaska none the less. I wish it wasn’t so cloudy and rainy; seems as if It’d be a spectacular scene if the clouds ever decided to lift or burn off. 

Work has been busy the first 48 here and don't see it letting up as I am only here for a week and there is quite a bit of work to be done. I was able to get a solid workout in today after an 11 hour work day at the local gym, Alaska Club located here in Juneau. I thought it was a decent gym, but was appalled to find out a membership was close to $100 a month...

Anyways, lately with work being as crazy as it is, I've been thinking about how we as people tend to get so stuck in the moment that we lose sight of the bigger picture, or how small that relative blip of time is compared to our lifespan. It a natural reaction in times of duress, and I would admit that I have had my struggles over the past month or so with all the hours I've been working and other non-work related thoughts.

It wasn’t until I found a quote that really helped to ease my anxiety during this time:

"Don't sacrifice what you want most for what you want at the moment" 

Deep huh? I thought so. It immediately resonated with me the moment that I saw it. Considering the internal struggles that I had been going through, it was exactly what I needed to see. 

To me that quote isn’t about just looking at the big picture, but about having discipline and self control to know where you want to go and to not get distracted by the little things that might arise and get in the way of that. 

At 24, I have pretty good idea of how I want to live my life and the kind of people I want to enjoy it with. But the reality is, I can’t execute that at 24 for the most part. I have to put in the work now if I want to live like that later on. Knowing and reinforcing that is very empowering and motivating to me personally. I actually made some note cards with that quote, among other various quotes that I pull out first thing when I wake up, and about 10-12 times during day to keep my head in the grind and out of the clouds. I will say after a few weeks it has made a profound difference in how I approach my career and other various aspects of my life. It felt as if I stopped spinning my wheels and remembered what I was working towards, and what I needed to do to make that a reality. 

So my challenge to you would be to find what you want to have in your life on a big picture scale. It’s tough to have an exact idea, but at least have something general to strive for. If you want to avoid that feeling of spinning your wheels, you have to have an idea of where you are going or where you want to go. 

Without that direction we can easily be distracted by the things that pop up in the moment and essentially lose sight of what we want the most. 

So try it out. Have something to strive for, make some motivational note cards, and pull those out first thing when you wake up and right before you go to bed. Don’t let the small stuff get in the way of your big picture. 

-Colin 

 

 

2/15/13 Goals Update

I would like to say I have officially accomplished one of my goals this year and can subsequently cross it off my list.

Granted it wasn’t that hard of a goal to accomplish, but officially filling and registering Peakless as an LLC gives me a motivational boost to stay on top of the blog and get things rolling on the business side to generate some revenue.

Big win or small win, a win is a win.

 

-Colin

Valentines Day #ForeverAlone Travel Workout

I definitely should have made sure to post this actually on Valentine’s Day but after I got off work, and through the workout I had to pack for my flight back to Portland today. 

Given yesterday was Valentine’s Day, and I was in Missoula without a Valentine, I thought the name would be jokingly fitting in a few ways:

1. It’s Valentine’s Day, without a date, on the road, safe to say that "forever alone" feeling was probably present.
2. After actually finishing this workout, I'd prefer to be alone to give myself some time to catch my breath and get some blood back in my brain.
3. By finishing the workout itself you put yourself one step closer to being in better shape, boosting your confidence and resulting in a newer self to increase ones chances of not ending up forever alone. 

Without further ado, the Forever Lonely Valentine’s Day Workout:

4 Rounds Total 

• 100 Air Squats 
• 75 Sit ups 
• 50 Sky Jumps 
• 25 Pushups 
• 20 Rear 
• 10 Hand Stand Pushups 
• Run 1/4 mile on the treadmill. 

Overall it’s a tough but satisfying workout. Like I mentioned before, not a lot of Hotels will have the ample amount of free weights so to counteract this, workouts must have and maintain a high intensity.

Additionally Montana was fun for what it was. I'm not sure if I would go out of my way to comeback aside from seeing Yellowstone, but it was nice to be able to cross it off the list. Not sure I agree with a lot of the locals who told me it was just like Portland (LOL) but they were good people none the less. Although I think this picture would be a good indicator of how quiet this place actually is:

-Colin

Travel Workout - Chest

Being physically fit is very important to me. Working full time now, I strongly believe that being physically fit and mentally fit are highly correlated. Growing up and playing sports though high school, the stubbornness in me neglected lifting weights for the sheer fact that I was able to rely on natural talent and felt as if I didn't need to do anything more because I still achieved All-League and All-State honors in my respective sports.

Man, how far I have come from my 16 year old self...

Currently I'm in Missoula, MT helping out the Montana office because they are a little short on staff this time of year. I was able to fly down to Denver for the weekend and experience my first two Crossfit workouts at Crossfit LoDo in Denver, CO. I will give you my overall impression on Crossfit later but here is a chest workout I did this morning in the hotel fitness room:

4 Rounds as fast as you can of:

• 10 Dumbbell Bench presses (I used 50 lb DB's as that's as high as they go)
• 25 push ups 
• 20 Sky's (Jumping high as you can off  2 feet and exploding back up as soon as your feet hit the ground)
• 10 Standing Cable flys (25 lbs each side)
• 10 Burpees 
• 1/4 Mile on the treadmill on highest speed 

Overall it was a great workout and worked up a solid sweat to get me feeling right to start the day. Personally, there is nothing better than working up a sweat before most people get out of bed.

The key to workouts like these, using more body weight than free weights is to keep the tempo and intensity high. I don't think I fully caught my breath until I was back in my room getting ready for the day ahead. Its hard to do because you have to push yourself when nobody else is watching, but once you do it a few times and see that you do in fact survive and begin to see results it can become very addicting.

" Ain't nothing to it, but to do it"
                       
-Colin

My Goals for 2013

My goals for this year are relatively simple. They aren't small by any means but I feel that if I put in enough time and effort I will be able to achieve them.

I personally like to break my goals out by the segment of my life that I know I need to work on. Currently I have broken mine out into: Career, Financial, Peakless, and Personal. This isn't necessarily an all inclusive list, however I would say it highlights about 90% of the things I would like to accomplish this year at this point in time.

2013 Goals 
 Career Goal-
 Pass all sections of the CPA exam by August 14th, 2013.
This is something that is vital to my personal career, and doing such by the date above will provide some nice financial incentive courtesy of my employer. Its a long term goal and I know I will need to make weekly progress towards if it I want to accomplish this.

Financial-
Make more than $10,000 outside of my regular employment.
I really want to focus on having multiple income streams this year. One is great and I feel blessed to have it, but I want to break out of this notion that we should only be satisfied with what we make at our regular day jobs. nothing is promised in this world as we all should be know and if I were to get laid off tomorrow I want to know I am able to fend for myself financially in this world without the help or structure of a corporation.
  
Peakless-
File Peakless as an official LLC 
This goal should be easy to achieve but its meaningful to me because I think with the official registration it will be the official start of something very fulfilling and something I can craft the rest of my life.

Sell more than 100 copies of my various e-books
I have great knowledge in certain areas because I personally have experienced or lived them. I feel this experience can be put into words and serve as a guide to help others reach goals that I have reached in my past. Topics for these books will be coming out as soon as busy season is over and I have some more free time on my hands.


Personal-
Travel to a foreign country and vacation for a week. 
Growing up my family and I traveled quite frequently around the nation, but not so much outside of our country's boarders. Canada or the Caribbean are my two options. If I'm going to do it I'm going to do it right. The only catch, is I'm not trying to go solo, and that's another goal in itself.

Build meaningful relationships with 5 new people
This may be new girlfriends or new good friends, but the main goal is to put myself out there. I will be the first to admit that I have been hesitant to really let people get to know me and I really want to change that. This might be the toughest of all my goals as funny as that may seem to some people but that's because it will be the one that will get me the furthest outside of my comfort zone.

I encourage you to make a list of things you want to accomplish this year. I'm not going to preach they must be "SMART" but at least find a way to measure them. That's the most important part, did you achieve them or not? Make it clear what you want to accomplish. If anything try to make yourself uncomfortable. Do things you've never done before, step outside of your comfort zone and into a better/more conscious you.

"Life begins at the end of your Comfort Zone"

-Colin

Welcome

I'd like to think of this post as my first real introduction to this blog and site. Over the past year or so I have been gathering information, compiling my thoughts and trying to find something that I could substantiate and put into words on paper. It wasn't until this past weekend that I realized that I was possibly over thinking what this "should" all be about.

This is Peakless.

Peakless is about always trying to improve something in your life one step at a time.

We ALL know what we aren't happy about in our lives, and to some extent we know what we need to do (If not then that's another story but we will eventually get around to that). But for whatever reason, stepping outside of our comfort zone and putting the energy into making changes or improvements are more difficult than we realize and we stop short because it seems like its going to become more work than its actually worth.

I've had my internal struggles, just like anyone else. Nothing in life is promised, but we can control the way we handle certain situations or the effort/energy we put into different tasks.

So here we are. I am finally about to quit delaying this and make the changes I know I've needed to make the past year or so of contemplation.

So with all that said I'd like to spend the next posts telling you more about myself and the things that I plan to accomplish in the near future and the things I would love to help you accomplish in the near future as well.

-Colin