Finding Life's 'Perfect Moments'

Slow down! Time

“I want everything to stop. I want to remember”

This quote from Ken Dryden’s brilliant biography/philosophy on his professional career as an NHL goalie for perhaps the sports greatest all time time has been jangling around in my mind since I read it. He’s describing the feeling of realizing his final months of his final season as he’s chosen to retire and now wants the hands on the clock to show mercy on the brutal truth of the consequences of his decision.

The heightened awareness of the passing of time, it’s relentless pace, and the unforgiving nature of our experience of it slipping away through our fingers is a universal. It’s part of the bittersweet reality of existence.

The more time we get, the more time we want, because we know more what to properly spend that time on, but now it’s just less and less time, with less and less ability to be able to spend that time. What’s the saying again “Youth is wasted on the young.” Prescient.

So what do we do? Throw our hands up and become a victim to time itself, letting it ravage our souls with this bittersweet realization that we can’t slow down the wheel, in fact we’re tied to it like some medieval torture device.

I’m not willing to go down without a fight.

Here’s what I told an athlete I coach yesterday about slowing down time to help find the best moments and hanging onto those experiences as precious memories that stretch beyond the immediate moment in time.

STOP. THIS WILL HELP YOU REMEMBER.

Finding the perfect presence in the present

I’ve been coaching this athlete for a while, but intensely for the past 6 months and one issue we’ve worked to get over is ‘perfectionism.’ This is a high achieving dude, who has lofty goals for himself, and wants to maintain a standard of excellence in his family, career, and athletic life moving forward. But too often the idea of ‘being perfect’ made him stop entirely because he recognized perfect too often isn’t on the table as a realistic outcome, especially in a world with imperfect conditions.

He’s made tremendous progress and just welcomed his first child into the world, a perfect chance to talk about slowing time and preserving memory.

I wanted him to understand that perfection is possible, but only fleeting. It’s an idea taken from the Ancient Greeks about the value of athletic competition. The athlete trains hard, diligently, struggling and sacrificing, competing, only to breakthrough in a moment of athletic perfection.

It’s the idea of ‘that play’ or ‘that moment’ or ‘that record’ that stands out clearly from the rest. A perfect catch, save, goal, shot, jump, or run. PERFECTION.

But it’s just a moment in a constellation of other non perfect moments. But what brings about the ability to HAVE one of those moments? It’s the process of the athlete, the training, competing, iterating, adapting, learning through the failures, growing through the challenge, determining to improve at all costs, and finding courage and willingness to risk it all.

I told my athlete to think of perfection LIKE THIS, as little moments in time that emerge directly out of his overall process of training and living by his values. In fact, if you begin to live through that process, you end up being able to highlight more and more ‘perfect moments’ in your day.

Most important is the daily training. Why?

Because this is your space to re assert control over time. To truly lock into the present moment. It’s a place of ‘sacred time’ where the ordinary rules of the clock don’t apply anymore. And the presence of your effort, through pain and physical struggle, help you SLOW DOWN TIME.

Do it daily, for years and years, and suddenly you have a reliable path to at least for a moment, bend time to your will.

Even better, if you train in way that highlights and supports your core values, you’ll being to slow down time towards the things you value most, giving a chance to dive deep into the specific experience, and create lasting memories of perfection to last through all your days.

What is your perfect?

Let me give you a specific example yesterday from my life and then I’ll point out some ways you can start training and living this way on your own.

Yesterday was HOT so I wanted to take my kids to the beach afterschool. It’s one of the new opportunities we have now that we’ve moved to the North Shore suburbs of Chicago. My kids go to school five minutes from Lake Michigan and there’s a beach we can belong to in between the school and our house, PERFECT!

I needed to run and time slipped away due to the popularity of the beach on a hot day and I was only able to run for about 30 minutes before heading to pick them up and max our time together after school.

My training SUPPORTS my ability to serve my family, that is a core value I hold. So I’m not going to run extra miles, then rush my kids and their time. I’ll make the right sacrifice and burn all my gas in a shorter run. That gave us the most time to soak up the sun and swim in the cold fresh lake together. PERFECT.

On the way home, after many little perfect moments together already, the MOST perfect moment emerged. Sun shining into the car, windows wide open, wind blowing through our damp hair to help cool us off from the heat, a song my kids love blasting loud as we dance our way through the suburban streets on the way home from the beach on a random Wednesday afternoon. In that moment I recognized that it’s a perfect moment.

I’m able to do that because of the fast run I took 90 minutes before. I slowed down time through my exertion, I aimed the session at my core values, and through my process a moment of pure perfection materialized as if out of my will and determination to REMEMBER.

If you want to start living through a process that helps you slow down time and find the perfect moments in your life here’s the two things you NEED.

1.Explicit Articulation of Your Core Values

When was the last time you wrote down your core values? It’s time.

Write out all the values you want to define your life, then RANK them.

Once you have this list it becomes easy to make decisions that align towards them, you’re conscious of what they are and can visualize and actualize living by them.

2.Train daily and play a sport you love

You need to be discipling yourself towards your values daily. You need the arena of sports to be able to shift into a different experience and conception of time.

Experiment, find a way of exercise that you love and want to get better in because you enjoy it. Make it habitual, a routine. A part of your lifestyle.

That pure enjoyment will help you crystallize those values because you’re activating your spirit and giving it life and courage.

BONUS: Write

Writing is the key to this all, being able to articulate and reflect on your experiences.

If the best moments of your life are like balloons filled with air that blow up in the present but then untie and let the air out too quickly, writing allow my to control the flow of air out of the balloon, to release it slowly at my own comfortable pace.

Take up a writing habit that’s linked to your exercising. Helping you deepen your experience and understanding of self through the training.

If you do these things, you will have more perfect moments occur in your life than you ever dreamed. And isn’t that a sacred gift we could all use in our tragic fight against time we are all sure to lose in the end.

Just as I helped this athlete, I’d be honored to help guide you towards and through this process if you wish to live this way but aren’t sure how to start or even if you’re capable. Send me a message using the button below and let’s start crafting the perfect life through these moments of perfection together.