Positives and Negatives

Today I have realized how much it means to have a positive attitude, not just for the people around you, but for yourself. The pursuit of happiness can never be accomplished when you can't keep a positive attitude. I believe that money by no means can but happiness. Like the car I got for my sixteenth birthday, that car means nothing if I don't have the people around me to share it with. Positive attitude goes farther back than just simply staying happy in the toughest of times, but finding ways to cancel out the negatives, by finding more positives. Its like a magnet that has electrons on one side, and neutrons on the other. When a positive charged side of the magnet touches a negative side, they cancel each other out and bind together. I have a very high belief that if your magnet is constantly flipped to its negative side and is only looking for the negative portions of problems, you will result in never finding happiness in your life. We spend all this time screaming and fighting with each other, but deep down do we remember that our only goal in this world is to be happy? At times our magnets become unbalanced, we think we are lifting heavier burdens than others. We tell ourselves we are unhappy lifting others weight, but the only person that determines that unhappiness is ourself. We may even be giving more positives than recieving, but its our minds that determine this. There is no manual on how to live your life, but if there was, what would be in it? Believe it or not, there are people on this planet who have more negative than you and I, but are still happier than both of us combined. The only thing logical that would be in that manual was happiness. Just to simply be happy. On the other hand, some people are constantly fixated on how they can have they least amount of negatives. Why aren't they more focused on how many positives they can produce to get rid of those negatives? Using this way of thinking, no one is perfect, everyone has negatives, but its what we do with those negatives that defines us. Are we going to try to perfect ourselves or just find more positive ways to make they.situation better?

Shoes

Mom,

I hate writing letters. I don’t want you to think that everything that I write in this letter is something I can’t say to your face, but I can tell you right now that’s not true.  So I have been thinking about some clever way to make this letter somewhat entertaining. But as you have mostly likely figured out by now, running has been on my on my mind quite frequently.  When I was running today, I was trying to find ways to compare running to life, and I had a thought. I know my thoughts are crazy, and sometimes extremely irrelevant, but bear with me with this one. I was trail running when I thought of this so, I am comparing it to trail running.

 As we are running on the trail of life, sometimes we come to a fork in the road, which causes us to choose one path or the other.  Most of the time while I am running on a trail, one of these paths will be harder or more uphill then the other. This can become a very complex decision for me and my two companions running with me. Because when you think about it, if we take that uphill trail, we will become stronger but it will be more of a challenge. But if we take the easier path, we won’t get stronger, but it will be easier. I think that sometimes in life we take the easier path because we are scared that we would fail on the other path or we are too tired to push harder. There have been times where my buddies and I took the way we thought was easiest, and we came to an extremely steep slope. At times running up hills like this got so hard; we would stop and take a breath. Sometimes our trials in life come when we think we are on the easiest path. And while we are on our easy path in life and we come to unexpected points where we have to stop to breathe, that’s when we notice the view from above and how grateful we are to have it.

Now comes your role in this, I compare my mom in my life as my shoes.  Shoes come in all shapes and sizes, and you use them for different purposes, just like moms. Our shoes protect our feet from the trail we call life. When you’re wearing your shoes, they don’t decide which path you take them on, instead, they tag along with you no matter what.  My shoes sometimes get caught on the rocks causing me to fall and gain more bruises to my legs. But every time I fell, it made me open my eyes and realize that I needed to pay attention to my path. It also becomes challenge when your shoes become untied, even more so during a race. But every time that my shoes became untied, I tied them a little tighter each time.

But what would running be without its shoes? What would my life be without you? Sometimes I want to say I hate you because you might give me some blisters along the way. But through every blister, bruise, and hard fall, I came out stronger than before. I know that sometimes I can be so mad at you, but how would I finish my race without you. When runners finish their race in first place no one says “It’s because of their cool shoes.” You don’t get enough recognition for what you do for me.  I need to remind myself more often of how grateful I should be to have you. Some runners on the other side of the world don’t have shoes. Some even have multiple pairs, but I am grateful for the pair I have today.

My pair of shoes is strong, they are durable, and make me stronger each step I take. They are fit just for me. And without them I don’t know where I would be. My shoes give me support no matter what path I decide to take.

I love you mom, I have loved you from day one. You are the best support system I have. You helped me not only follow my dreams, but chase them down. Sometimes our shoe laces become untied, and in some cases we trip and fall. But with every fight or disagreement we have, I take something new from it, we tighten our laces tighter than we have ever had them and move on. I know that there will come a day when I will go my separate ways. But I want you to know that I will never get rid of my running shoes, I will carry a piece of them in my heart forever. They will get older as I get older but I will always remember the memories I had with them, and the places they took me. You will always be in my heart, and don’t you ever forget how much I love you.

“Give a girl the right pair of shoes and she can conquer the world.” – Marilyn Monroe

REAL CHAMPIONS

 Last week I had the great opportunity to go to UtahState's cross country camp. I met some great people there and I also learned a lot about myself. I had 6 girls in the same dorm as me, they all had very different personalities, most from different teams, but we all got along very well. I went with Kaden, Ky, and Ryann, and it was always great to have them by my side. This camp was not easy, and there were many times that I had to dig down deeper and pick my head up and keep pushing. We had a few speakers that came to talk to us. And one really stuck out to me, he was one of the first to talk to us. By the time we got to him, we had just barely had dinner, and we were all very tired, and no one really cared to listen to him. I kept telling myself "stay awake Jerra, just stay awake." One of the girls at the camp was named Lucy. Lucy holds a state champion title, and she also holds a national title I believe (she runs a 4:35 mile.)

      The first thing that this particular speaker talked about was who a champion is. He asked us to shout out one word answers to what we thought a champion was. Words like determined, hardworking, stubborn, and committed came to my mind at first. As kid by kid replied their answer, they were all naming answers similar to mine. Finally one kid said "A champion on and off the track." When he said that, I didn't really put much thought to it, it was a topic that seemed pretty cliche to me. The speaker replied back to the kid "that's what I was looking for."The speaker continued talking, he mentioned that out of the dozens and dozens of athletes he coached, the athletes he remembers most weren't the state champions, they were the kids that raised their teammates up. He said that a state champion title means nothing, if you don't have the attitude for it off the track. As he continued his speech. out of the corner of my eye I saw Lucy, someone who I admired very deeply at the time. Lucy had her head laid on the counter, not even paying attention to what the speaker had to say. I looked around the whole room, and I also noticed that  ALL the runners that had done so well on the run that day, weren't even paying attention or were talking to their friends, not much respect on their part. As we continued on with the camp, I continued to notice the same things happen, the kids that weren't even that quick had the most respect for the coaches and their teammates. We got to one of the final workouts of the camp, called the Amazing Race. This was where we were split into teams to do certain tasks and find certain locations. I had four people on my team, three boys and two girls. One of these boys was named Dillon, Dillon was a very special kid. He had been the outcast for the whole camp, and he was by himself quite frequently. He also had some autism. As the race went on, we came in last for every event. There was nothing much we could do, as Dillon often times would get tired and start to slow down. Me and Kaden stayed back with Dillon and kept encouraging him, I wanted to at least be a champion off the track. We came up to our last event, and the coaches (being generous to the losing team) gave us a head start. We started off the last event running uphill as fast as we could, and Dillon was doing a great job. But out of the corner of my eye I could see the winning team starting to catch us. One of the boys on this winning team who everyone called Carlton, was a three time state champion in three distance events. As Carlton came up to Dillon, he did something that blew me away. He grabbed Dillon's team bandanna out of his pocket and threw it into the bushes. Right then and there is when I realized how little worth a state title is if you can't even treat those around you right. Real Champions are the kids who not only have a great running record, but are also an all around great person. I don't want to be remembered like Lucy and Carlton were. I don't care if I am remembered as the state champion, I want to be remembered as the girl who was nice to everyone. BEING A CHAMPION ON AND OFF THE FIELD.

The dorms were a party!!

The highlight of the trip had to be the amazing dinner and great chocolate milk :)