Alexi Pappas’ Field Notes for Today’s Athlete: How to Move, Grow, and Trust Yourself

Plants don’t just grow every leaf and every flower all at once. They grow a stem, then a branch, then another. It’s a process.

Do what feels true to you. If you don’t know how, start with your clothes. Try opening your closet. Close your eyes. Tell yourself: there’s no threat, there’s no goal, and then open your eyes and decide what to wear. Wear what you feel magnetized toward.

Challenge your default setting, whatever that is. This could be with regard to data, devices, or the way you typically talk to yourself. Try something different and see how it makes you feel.

Be a verb, not a noun. Allow yourself to evolve and change infinitely.

Subscribe to a confidence that is earned. Moving through hard things gives you confidence.

Be curious. Pursue what you have a crush on, rather than prioritizing productivity. See where that takes you.

Don’t outsource your power. You might like the red top you walk by and see in the window, but it’s not going to be the thing that makes you run a personal best: you are. You’re the highest source of power in your universe.

Don’t outsource your comfort. Have a dialogue with yourself. When you feel a difficult feeling or a need, try to first meet it yourself. Asking for help is a superpower you should use too, but for those times when there’s no one there to pick up the phone, practice comforting yourself.

Remember, we confuse ourselves to protect ourselves. If you feel confused, dig into it, explore it, and try to understand it. Don’t stay confused.

Do what’s useful for you. If social media makes you miserable, don’t get your athletic inspiration there. If going on a new trail helps you when coming back from an injury, go find one.

Do not be afraid to be bored. You’re a thought machine. When you are bored, thoughts will come to you. They may be funny, sad, strange, or beautiful, but if you give yourself the space to embrace boredom, you will not stay bored forever.

Get outside and let the world inspire you. Do not try to sterilize your experience or control everything. The world is an endless inspiration treasure chest. Treat the outside as your third space.

Slow down. Give space between ideas and decisions.

Celebrate learning new things; you weren’t supposed to know it before.

View people as art, even the frustrating ones. You know the feeling of going to a museum and looking at a piece you don’t like or don’t understand? It’s still art. It helps you see the world in a different way and move past negativity with empathy.

Challenge your default setting, whatever that is. This could be with regard to data, devices, or the way you typically talk to yourself. Try something different and see how it makes you feel.

The roller coaster is not punishment. But there may be some rides you won’t even want to try, which is also fine.

Express through your performances, and also independently of performances.

Remember you’re here to learn and evolve, not just perform. One of our purposes on this earth is to experience it and let it change us and have an impact on the things we encounter, too. Interact.

Keep moving, keep making decisions. There are no mistakes, only more decisions. The only mistake is when you need to make a change and you don’t make it. Everything else is just a lesson.

Let sport evolve with you. You can evolve from a track runner to a road runner to trail runner. (I am.) Rather than retire, consider evolving.

Always see the universe as in your favor (an idea I now understand is called pronoia.) When hard or unfair things happen to you, you must see the world this way.

Ask yourself to try your best.

The goal is growth and progress.

Champion intuition.

Be honest.

Let trying be cool.

Let failing be instructional.