The good Karma machine

“The good Karma machine” is the third post in a series about the human side of dailymile: How We Succeed. As a part of this series, dailymilers write about their experiences as athletes struggling to overcome obstacles and solve problems with the help of their friends on dailymile. Being an athlete makes our bodies stronger, but having the support of a crowd of athletes makes our minds stronger. This series highlights the side of training that requires more than muscle power. To submit your story, email the editor.



For me, last year will always be remembered as the year my business failed. Two years of economic recession slowly pushed my business to the edge of a precipice and right over into the abyss by October 2010. The failure was particularly difficult for me, because I spent nearly 20 years training/preparing to work in my field, and in deciding to do it in the private sector, I had closed the door on several other possible career paths. The experience could have wrecked me entirely, and perhaps it would have, but something else quite wonderful was happening simultaneously. Looking further back in time, when the economy started to crash, I was still absolutely certain my business would continue to grow, so I set about losing weight and getting in shape to handle the work that would surely come. Unfortunately, the work never really arrived, so I found myself pouring more and more of my energies into my health and fitness because intellectually I knew the mental/emotional benefits of exercise and eating right.

So, I lost a lot of weight, bicycled 1000 miles between the first and last day of summer in 2009, and started to run. As I did so, the business situation became steadily worse, however, and it became difficult to stay focused on being healthy. That is, until January 2010, when good friend @Shelly J. and I somehow discovered dailymile while we were exchanging links by instant message to pass the time. At the time, I was working on recovering from an iliiotibial band syndrome flare-up. Because I had been logging my workout data in a very complicated spreadsheet, I didn’t see much reason to sign up with dailymile at first, but Shelly and I began to become interested in some of the people on dailymile, and soon both of us had signed up.


I had enough business to remain hopeful during the first half of 2010, and my involvement in dailymile increased steadily during that time as well. It was addicting, literally. Not only because so many dailymilers offer unsolicited support and encouragement; not only because there are so many inspirational stories and experiences related through posts on dailymile; not only because dailymile posts can be so entertaining or so informative; but also because these other things encourage us to become more involved in the dailymile community AND even more importantly in my view, they encourage us to become more involved in our own lives and the lives of others in our actual local communities.

We often think of Karma incorrectly. As if it means if you do something bad, something equally bad will happen to you eventually, or vice versa with something good. That’s not how Karma works, however. It’s not tit-for-tat. Karma is actually just intentional action. When we act with good intent, karma doesn’t say that something equally good will happen to us in return. It simply says that we make the world an incrementally better place, and by doing so, we all share a little bit in the spoils (it also says the converse is true, but I don’t want to emphasize that). To me, the dailymile community is a sort of self-reinforcing good karma machine.

My experiences on dailymile have helped me cope with the failure of my business in constructive ways during 2010. They have brought out the best in me in sufficient quantity to balance and offset the negativity stemming from my business failure. They have enabled me to set and achieve physical goals, which have allowed me to experience a series of real successes when I might otherwise have dwelled on the business failure. They have helped me maintain the confidence I needed to make some pretty big professional decisions quite easily. They have even shown me some professional alternatives that I hadn’t previously considered viable career options. I have been surprised, enlightened, overjoyed, saddened at times, but always encouraged by the range of experiences shared freely by dailymilers.

As things begin to turn around in my professional life, I feel I owe a debt of gratitude to the many encouraging words from other dailymilers I have come to know (virtually). They have been patient with me during brief moments of despair, given me spiritual, emotional, professional, and even material support at times. I only hope that what I offer in return is as important to other dailymilers as what they have given me over the last 12 months.