Madonna and Motivation

Sometimes a song gets into your head and you can't shake it. I'm going to out myself here as a listener of what some call "bad" music, but I think the indiscretion is worth it.

Last week I found myself listening to a lot of Madonna. I started with some classics and then quickly moved to, can we call them, deep tracks? According to Billboard, Madonna has garnered 12 no. 1 hits while 38 of her songs have reached the top 10.

Not amongst those 38 songs is "White Heat" from the True Blue album. Totally B-side antics, IYKYK. I'm not sure I had even heard of it before last week.

But there are lyrics that connect with me and carried me through a few some early morning workouts. Specifically, the phrase "get up, stand tall" is used no less than 12 times in this dancehall ditty, and what can I say, it spoke to me.

Whether we're starting a new business, looking for work, or are trying to figure out whether our current job is worth holding onto, we're always in transition. Sometimes when we're sorting through the mile-long list of things we want to get done in a day or week, it helps to acknowledge the intangibles. Especially those that really are gifts. It's that combination of skills and talents that are uniquely ours, and that often propels us to succeed, even when we forget about them or take them for granted.

One of my gifts is that I'm fairly tall at 5-10. That makes me the shortest kid in my family, but I'm still 8.5 inches taller than my mom. She says she has tall kids to reach items off the top shelf for her. I guess that's a good enough reason. It might help that my dad and his side of the family are tall. But that height is much more than a family gene, it contributes to a sense of confidence that I have something to contribute to my team. I may be quiet and unassuming, but you better pay attention!

More times than I care to mention the past three years, I have changed gears, backpedaled, and pursued new professional and athletic goals when I wasn't sure I could succeed. Three years post-PhD and post-teaching, I'm still sorting things out, to be honest. I'm slowly building my business while working for a non-profit.

In February I was thinking about running a 50-miler out West in June. The cutoff times were going to be tight for me, and my husband was worried I would be crushed if I was forced to stop due to time constraints. I understood his concern, and a year ago I might have agreed, but my thought was to at least try. It was more important to me to set and stick with my training schedule and see what it brings.

As it turns out, I have a best friend who is a record-setting open water swimmer in Ireland and she threw a wrench in my running plans by suggesting I give swimming a try. She opened me up to the possibility that my quest to run 50 miles wasn't really about running, but about the quest and the process.

I've never competed in a swim race aside from some backyard brawls, but I was ready for something new. So, I've been swimming Greater Lowell Y three days a week in preparation for a 1-mile open water swim next month on Cape Cod.

Part of the appeal of this race is that I will be swimming in deep open water, which has always scared me a little bit. The distance is manageable, but I'm wondering how I'll react when I'm way off the shoreline. I feel like I'm ready as this pandemic threw my professional life into the deep end. Sink or swim. And if there's anything I know about myself, it's that I'm definitely a swimmer.

As Madonna says, stand tall, even if you're standing at a horizontal slant.

In My Research

"During my time in Ethiopia I began a running streak that has continued for more than 10 months. In my fieldnotes I had lamented that I was no longer competing athletically for a myriad of reasons. “I don’t compete anymore because I’m scared to fail. Because I haven’t tried in a while, and I’m out of shape. Because I’m getting older and I don’t want to disappoint myself. None of those are good reasons. I think that I need to find something in which to compete, not just participate. Because sports were never about participation for me. Sure, it’s important if you think of participation in its simplest sense. Participation is wanting to be part of something, maybe even contribute to something, but it doesn’t sound particularly competitive. There are limits to participation, and oftentimes those limits are self-imposed.” - A Mixed Methods Exploration of Girl Athletes' Development of Voice Empowerment in Wolaita Soddo and Bekoji, Ethiopia: A Three Article Dissertation (K. Ralls, 2020).

Take Her Word for It

"Taking a different approach, best-selling author, entrepreneur, podcaster, and public speaker Tim Ferriss suggests in his TED talk that people should define their fears first, instead of their goals.

“Humans are very good at considering what might go wrong if we try something new,” said Ferris. “What we don’t often consider is the atrocious cost of the status quo—not changing anything.”

Ferris cites the ancient philosophy of stoicism and its potential as an “operating system for making better decisions.” He suggests people consider what they can and cannot control and work on focusing on what they can control. In this way, people decrease their emotional reactions to challenging situations."

Women's Sports History

Speaking of my record-breaking friend, here is a piece The Belfast Telegraph ran on her a few years ago. Lauren is currently training for a 30-kilometer swim this summer.

"A Co Down woman has swum the North Channel as part of a six-person relay team - the latest extreme endurance event she has taken part in.

Lauren O'Malley and the rest of the Global Trident team completed the 21.6-mile swim from Donaghadee, Co Down, to Portpatrick, Scotland, in a total time of 11 hours, 54 minutes and 17 seconds.

She took part in the one-way relay after team captain Chrissie O'Brien, from Carlingford, invited her to join Darran Cusick, Dominic Mudge, Francie Haughey and Louise Darlington, who came from Pennsylvania in the US to join the effort.

Lauren completed the Marathon des Sables ultra-running event in the Sahara desert in 2017. She said her body felt "as bad if not worse" after the North Channel relay as it did after the 156-mile run in the Sahara.

She added: "The Marathon des Sables still takes the top spot, as it is such a prolonged period of suffering." - The Belfast Telegraph

Hopefully my swim race won't conjure the same feelings!

At KR LLC, we believe women athletes are perfectly positioned to be standout leaders.

And if you want to relive a little bit of your glory years, we’re here for that as well!

www.kathleenralls.com