It was a record-setting warm day in Buffalo yesterday. Yep, we don’t normally touch the mid-to-upper 60s in January and while it was a pleasant temperature for my long run there were still natural elements I had to battle. This time, it was the wind. The sustained speeds made me feel as if I were actually doing a unique resistance workout instead of an easy-paced run while the surging gusts made me feel as if I were a cartoon character, spinning my legs but going nowhere. At one point, I laughed out loud. Because really, there was nothing else I could do.

It was during one of these gusts when the word “abundance” popped into my head. I wasn’t quite sure why. I didn’t know how it was appropriate in that moment. But there it was. Abundance.

As I turned down my street to polish off my long run, I heard a very loud, and very annoying, CAW. It wasn’t too difficult to spot the one crow perched on the rooftop of a neighbor’s house. I smiled, remembering that the previous day my friend Mary and I went for a walk in the woods and encountered a very noisy, and annoying, crow convention. The crows, rather en masse or one single bird, often took my focus away from the present moment. The “caw” was distracting and seemed to serve no purpose other than annoying the crap out of me.

How many times am I distracted by the caws of my own gremlins? How often do I allow them to drown out the other possibilities? What if this run of ups and downs, good miles and tough miles, was exactly what I needed today? What if I am exactly where I need to be in training for my spring half marathon?

This is where abundance comes into play. Because what if instead of coming from a place of thinking of all the things I lack, all the things I’m afraid to lose, all the things I’m afraid I’ll never have, I came from a place of abundance? What if I believed that I have plenty of everything I need to achieve what it is I really want? What if I believed that was true for everyone? What if there is enough good stuff to around?

What if I didn’t need to get to abundance? What if I only needed to recognize that I already have abundance?