The title of this post “Work diligently, work intelligently, work patiently and persistently” is a powerful line from S.N. Goenka that is part of magnificent blog post by Ben Casnocha titled Reflections and Impressions from a 10-Day Meditation Course.

On July 18th, Ben wrote a post titled Something I Think I Could Fail At: 10 Day Silent Meditation Program , promptly went to Northern California Vipassana Meditation Center, and went off the grid for ten days. He resurfaced today. His post about his experience is awesome – go read it now.

Amy has done several ten day silent meditation retreats with Goenka. The first time she did it was the longest we had ever not communicated – an entire ten days of zero contact with each other. When she got home, she proceeded to spend five hours telling me everything that had happened over the preceding ten days. I like to tease her about it, but it was fantastic to just sit and listen to her replay her experience.

Ben’s first paragraph sets the tone for the entire post.

It was during the 8-9 PM meditation session on the 8th Day — by then I was 80 hours into the 10 day, 100 hour meditation course — when I experienced something remarkable. I was partially kneeling and partially sitting on a small bench in the meditation hall with about 45 other meditators, doing breathing techniques (anapana) and scanning my body for sensations (vipassana). Shortly after starting the session, my mind became as sharp as I’ve ever felt it in my life. I was in complete control of a lucid, concentrated mind.

I let you read it and I challenge you not to be inspired by it. Not by the amazing accomplishments of Ben during the ten days, or the magical breakthroughs he had, or the powerful new insights, but merely in the experience of how he worked diligently, worked intelligently, worked patiently and persistently at something he thought he could fail at, but he succeeded.

Powerful stuff Ben. Thanks for sharing and inspiring.

I’m not a huge sports fan – in my house I’m the sports widow during football season since Amy is a total football fanatic (although she’s pretty down on the new Broncos quarterback.) So – I sit downstairs with her while she watches sports and I bang away on my computer.

We are watching the Olympics today. I always get sucked into the Olympics especially individual sports like swimming, tennis, and track and field. As I was watching the heats for the 400 IM and pondering Phelps and Lochte I suddenly realized how inspiring the Olympics are to me.

I’ve felt flat the last few days – I think I picked up a small cold when I was in Boulder on Wednesday and Thursday and I finally got tipped over by a hater yesterday. I’ve got a bunch of writing deadlines in the next week so I’m in that classic “grind to ship” mode on a couple of fronts while trying to stay on top of everything else going on in my world. I’m in Boulder all next week and scheduled wall to wall with stuff and my running training has increased steadily over the past few weeks.

Basically, when I woke up this morning, I felt really flat. I got up early, did the dog thing, and then crawled back into bed for a few more hours. I’ve spent the morning catching up on email, watching the Olympics, and pondering punting my workout (an 18 mile bike ride.)

A few minutes ago I finally lit back up and decided to do my bike ride. At the same moment, I somehow shook off the malaise that I’ve been feeling the past few days. I paused and tried to figure out what had changed. It was that I was watching the Olympics and seeing the incredible individual achievement of these athletes who were totally giving it their all after years of disciplined training.

If you are feeling down, do yourself a favor – get comfortable, turn on the TV, and watch the Olympics for an hour. I challenge you not to feel inspired.

The phrase “it comes with the territory” is one my dad said to me when I was a kid. I can’t remember the context in which I heard it for the first time, but I internalized it to mean that whenever you are trying to do something interesting or amazing, there will always be people who try to tear you down, lob random insults at you, or just do and say things that make no sense to you. I’ve also observed many times (and experienced) the steep curve from obscurity to hero to goat to re-emergent hero that the media loves to play out over and over again. And my day is filled with random interactions – many of them interesting and stimulating – but plenty of them hostile, negative, and troll-like.

I’ve had a weird surge of being on the receiving end of hostile stuff from random people I don’t know the past few weeks. I pondered this a little bit last night on my drive back from Boulder to Keystone after a long, wonderful conversation with an entrepreneur I haven’t talked to in a while. This morning, after trying to have a rational email conversation (again – who I didn’t know) with someone who was just incredibly hostile to me because I didn’t agree with his perspective on “the value of an idea” Amy asked “Why do you bother?” I responded “It comes with the territory.”

I’m fortunate that I get to choose who I work with and am surrounded by awesome people. I’ve also decided philosophically to try to be responsive to any entrepreneur who is looking for help or feedback. I can’t spend “30 minutes on the phone” or “have coffee” with everyone, but I can respond by email to quick specific questions or requests, and I try to respond to all of them. When things go off the rails, which they do occasionally, I’ve decided the only approach is to completely disengage.

I find the noise, anger, hostility, and misinformation spiking up again. I speculate that is has something to do with the election cycle, the general warmth outside, or some new sunspot thing. Regardless, as my dad said when I was young, “it comes with the territory.”

Amy - we have been married for 19 years today. Some of our friends chose today to get married such as my partner Seth and his wife Greeley. Other close friends are celebrating anniversaries, including Fred and Joanne (25th yesterday) and my parents (49th a few days ago).  We are in good company even though we are still newlyweds compared to them. And, as a bonus, 19 is a prime number as is the sum of the digits of the date (06/21/2012).

When I reflect on my life, getting married to you is the best decision I’ve ever made. The great moments – which are frequent – are awesome. When we have issues we always work through them. And figuring out why we had the issue in the first place makes us better partners.

I’m your biggest fan, and I know you are mine. I can’t imagine tackling things like doing a marathon in every state without your support. I’d never be able to sustain the pace of my work if I didn’t know you were there for me. The victories and celebrations are so much sweeter since I get to share them with you.

Whenever I’ve been down, broken, defeated, or depressed, you’ve always been a safe person for me to be with. You listen when I need to talk, and you let me hang out in my man cave when I need to be alone. You know what makes me tick better than any other human on this planet and never make me do things I hate. As a bonus, you do things you hate, like clean up the dog poop when accidents happen, since you know how devastatingly difficult it would be for me to have to deal with it.

Last summer we got to spend 60 days in a row together – the longest stretch we’d ever been together so far in our life. It made me want to spend even more time with you and I’m having such a blast spending the whole summer with you this year.

I can’t imagine life without you. I love you and look forward to many more anniversaries together.

An hour ago I received a phone call from one of my closest friends who has been a hugely influential mentor of mine that his wife had passed away. She was a close friend also and they’ve had an enormous impact on my life. She’s been ill for a while so this isn’t a surprise and when I saw her about a month ago I knew her time was coming. But it’s still incredibly hard to process, especially knowing how close they were as a couple.

I had a longer post queued up today but it’ll have to wait for tomorrow. For now, I’m going to just let my emotions be whatever they are, feel love for my close friend, send him as much good karma as I can, and remind myself to live every moment of life as though it could end tomorrow.