Alexandersmap

    Category: Health

    • The Way of Rain

      You have been forced to enter empty time.
      The desire that drove you has relinquished.
      There is nothing else to do now but rest
      And patiently learn to receive the self
      You have forsaken for the race of days.

      At first your thinking will darken
      And sadness take over like listless weather.
      The flow of unwept tears will frighten you.

      You have traveled too fast over false ground;
      Now your soul has come to take you back.

      Take refuge in your senses, open up
      To all the small miracles you rushed through.

      Become inclined to watch the way of rain
      When it falls slow and free.
      — John O’Donohue, For One Who is Exhausted, A Blessing

      I might go weeks without reading poetry. I may feel victorious in my efficiency and productive use of time. I can sometimes grind through my days in hopeful work, forgetting to walk outside to greet the day. These are days of emptying the bucket while filling the ledger with checked tasks. Empty buckets make a hollow sound. They demand to be filled.

      It’s not lost on me that I’m posting about taking time to rest at the beginning of another work week. When we go, go go! for weeks at a time, sometimes things like weekends disappear in a flash. We forget to see the small miracles we rush through in our mad pursuit of getting things done.

      Slow down. Step away. Find that which is calling you from outside yourself. The work will always be there, awaiting your return. Or maybe it was never your work at all. How can you know if you never take the time to listen?

      The days and the seasons roll on by, like waves to the beach. We only have so many days. Only so many seasons. We must learn to slow down and celebrate the one we’re in.

    • Observations From a 20K Day

      Sunday is supposed to be a day of rest, and I’d planned to do just that. There shall be no hiking or waterfall chasing for you, I told myself. But when you believe that we aren’t built to be sedentary beings, eventually those rigid thoughts of who we ought to be evolve into action. I wrapped my mind around 20,000 steps as a goal for the day, no matter what. What is the first rule with any goal? Putting ourselves in the best position to achieve that goal.

      The path to a 20K day really began a few years back, when I decided I was going to buy a push mower and walk the lawn instead of driving around on it. Would it be nice to sit on a cushy seat with a cup holder? Of course! But my work has me sitting entirely too much already. Mowing, trimming and leaf blowing the yard easily knocks off 4000 steps in roughly an hour. Is that the equivalent of hiking a 4000 foot mountain? Of course not, but it’s a starting point for an active lifestyle, and a head-start towards my activity goal for the day.

      I’ve hit 20K just doing yard work, but a change of scenery was in order. On a beautiful Sunday afternoon there were many choices available, but I opted for the local rail trail. As with beaches, I favor the rail trail when few people venture onto it, during snow or light rain, in the early morning or dead of winter. The rail trail in the middle of the day during peak season is an entirely different experience.

      A rail trail is popular because you’re safely removed from automobile traffic, but there are other hazards to consider. As on a highway, one must skate one’s lane and be predictable to avoid collisions. Hoards of cyclists, joggers and walkers descend on the trail, making it near impossible to be on a spot where there isn’t someone in your line of sight. e-bike Andretti’s zip past at breakneck speed, and clumps of independent teenagers on bicycles ride towards you shoulder-to-shoulder leaving you the choice of standing your ground or stepping aside (there’s magic in the moment they realize that you’ve—responsibly—put the choice back on them).

      In the off-season on this rail trail, I would immerse myself in the nature around me. There’s surely a lot more to witness when sharing the path with hundreds of people on a long walk. Inevitably, you begin to people watch. Humans are quirky. Fashion on the path runs from traditional breathable fabrics to bold statements of individuality. Of all the travelers, the e-bikers seemed to be the most outlandish, fully kitted with fishing poles or picnic baskets, small dogs poking out of backpacks, and fat tires announcing they’re about to pass you from 100 meters away. It was an impressive display, and reminded me of the parade of custom golf carts seen at 55 plus developments and campgrounds around the country. But I was here for walking, not powered transportation. There’s relative simplicity on a rail trail: you walk one direction for as long as you want, then you turn around and walk back.

      The thing about goal-setting is that we know the obstacles before we begin, but we don’t always account for them in our bold declaration that we’re going to do this thing. The only things that get in the way of completing a good goal are available time, resources (like health) and willpower. Hitting fitness goals usually comes down to simply beginning and not stopping until we’ve met our objective. On a day of rest I decided to hit 20K, not exactly a bold number but high enough that it required my time and attention. It also served as a reminder that I’m not ready to retire to an e-bike and backpack dog just yet. There’s still so much to do.

    • Breaking Free to Go Be

      I want to break free, I want to break free
      I want to break free from your lies
      You’re so self-satisfied I don’t need you
      I’ve got to break free
      God knows, God knows I want to break free
      — Queen, I Want to Break Free

      When does a great habit ground another habit before it can take off? Are habits mutually exclusive in this way, or can we stack them together into a meaningful routine? There’s no reason why we can’t have the kind of life we desire. We just have to break free of ourselves first.

      Meaningful routines develop from saying no to the things that steal our time away, and instead using that time for something better. I write almost every morning, no matter where I am in the world, and click publish before the world forces me to decide whether to say yes or no. In this way I’ve gained momentum and an overwhelming desire to keep the streak alive. When I’m sick or traveling or my day is otherwise upside down from the norm I still find a way to publish something. On those days, checking the box may not lead to my best writing, but it’s still one more vote for the type of person I want to become, as James Clear puts it. That’s a win.

      We know when we’re in a bad routine. Our lives feel unproductive and lack direction. We might have obligations we can’t say no to that are holding us back. The only way to break through that wall is with momentum. Small habits strung together and repeated regularly are the building blocks of better.

      We often imprison ourselves with self-limiting beliefs. Breaking free of these beliefs is essential to living a meaningful life. Nelson Mandela spent years in prison, doing manual labor during the day. His cell was barely big enough to move in, and yet he developed a routine that would keep him fit and focused for decades:

      “He’d begin with running on the spot for 45 minutes, followed by 100 fingertip push-ups, 200 sit-ups, 50 deep knee-bends and calisthenic exercises learnt from his gym training (in those days, and even today, this would include star jumps and ‘burpees’ – where you start upright, move down into a squat position, kick your feet back, return to squat and stand up). Mandela would do this Mondays to Thursdays, and then rest for three days.”. — Gavin Evans, The Conversation, How Mandela stayed fit: from his ‘matchbox’ Soweto home to a prison cell

      Environment plays a big part in the meaningful routines we create. For years I didn’t write, until I created the environment for myself to do the work. It’s the same with exercise and flossing and productive work as it is for binge eating or drinking or immersing ourselves in distraction: the environment we create for ourselves matters a great deal. If we want to fly, we must clear the damn runway.

      So how do we clear the runway? Designing a meaningful routine begins with asking ourselves, just who do we want to be? What does a perfect day look like for us anyway? Where do we wake up every morning? What does our first interaction with the world look like? Are we grabbing our phones and checking social media or are we jumping right into our first great habit? Those first moments matter a great deal, for they set the table for our day, and our days.

      When we look at someone like Nelson Mandela following through on his promise to himself despite the conditions he was living in, who are we to accept our own excuses and distractions? We’ve got to break free of our stories and get on the path to what we might become. It’s now or never friend.

    • To Be Joyful and Full of Love

      The longer I live, the more
      deeply I learn that love —
      whether we call it
      friendship or family or
      romance — is the work of
      mirroring and magnifying
      each other’s light.
      — James Baldwin

      We’re in the business of amplification, you and I. Our life’s work is accretive in nature. The longer we’re actively engaged in this world, the more we can contribute of ourselves to the greater good. But we must be engaged.

      Our children are a product of our presence or absence their lives, just as we are a product of our own parents engagement with us. This ripple extends to family and friends and those who become more than just friends. We’re each muting or amplifying the best and worst of each other.

      The last few years, I’ve seen some people change in profound ways. Maybe it was the pandemic, or maybe it’s their stage of life, or it’s the sum of everything the world dumps on us piling up inside. I remind them that we do have agency. We either shed ourselves of the bile or let it sink into our pores. Of course, we do the same with love. The question is, what do we mirror and magnify?

      When I find myself becoming angry and more cynical I find that person repulsive and force that tide of darkness to recede back inward. We all have reason to be angry in this maddening world, but we also have reason to be joyful and loving. Whoever we are will surely be reflected back to us. Choose wisely.

      Life is about building momentum. We see this in our careers and work, in our health and fitness, and surely, we see it in our relationships. When we are consistently present and offering love, we build deep relationships with others that carry us through the challenging times and amplify the good times. So reflect on this: we are the sum of our active engagement with others, and when we live well, that sum will resonate long after we’ve left the room. How do we live well? By choosing to be joyful and full of love.

    • Juggling Less

      “Work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. The other four balls—family, health, friends, integrity—are made of glass. If you drop one of these, it will be irrevocably scuffed, nicked, perhaps even shattered.” ― Gary Keller, The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results

      We all juggle so much in our days, and prioritize the things that feel most urgent in the moment. Sometimes these are the most important things too, but often they’re simply the most urgent. Living in a state of urgency is no way to go through life. Sooner or later we’ll drop the ball on something central to our core. Deep down, we know what we’re losing our grip on while we try to juggle everything else.

      Coming back to the central questions helps: what is our why? Why are we here? What is the point of our being, here and now? What are we building towards—what are we becoming? And in the process of becoming, what are receding from? For we simply cannot stretch in every direction, we must choose what to move towards and what to move away from.

      Taking the time to reflect on these things is a lens that clarifies what to prioritize. When we see what is most essential to us it makes our daily choices obvious. The chorus of urgent will always try to steal our time, our momentum, our health and our identity. We have to prioritize our essential. The answer may be less juggling.

    • What Can We Live Without?

      Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail. In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day, if it be necessary eat but one; instead of a hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things in proportion. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden

      Now and then I dabble in intermittent fasting. I can’t always control where I am and whether I can exercise, but I can control what I eat and drink. Fasts range from 13 hours up to 24 in general, but mostly I seem to do two or three per week of either 16 or 18 hours. My longest fast ever was about 48 hours. I’ve heard of some people doing seven days. You won’t find me pushing that kind of limit. Simply put, I like to eat, and skipping a meal or two is a good way to remind myself to ease off on the eating thing a bit. There are health benefits to intermittent fasting, ranging from healthy weight loss to long term resistance to degenerative diseases (I’m told). But mostly, I do it to control the conversation in my own head about when and what to eat.

      The question to ask of ourselves is, what can we live without? We soften ourselves with abundance: food, entertainment, friends of convenience, information… the list goes on. Removing most of this noise offers an opportunity to find that which is most essential to us in our lives. Food becomes fuel and not filler. Entertainment elevates to a highlight moment instead of background noise. True friends are true sounding boards and not frivolous back-slapping small-talkers. Information leads to a deeper understanding, not a sound bite with no substance. You get the idea.

      If there’s an irony to Thoreau, it’s his tendency to jamb a hundred words into a sentence just to get everything out of his head and on paper. For a man that preaches simplicity, we sometimes have to wade through a lot of word soup to get to the key message. But Thoreau lived a short life, and there was so very much to put out there in the world before he left us. We all ought to feel that urgency.

      A bit of temperance is good for us. A bit of solitude with our thoughts brings the truth to the surface. Life in the din isn’t all its cracked up to be, for we rapidly run out of time to find out who we really are. With a little less input, what might we put out there in the world? The more we say no to some things, the more we amplify our yes to other things. Choose wisely.

    • The Chill Lane

      “Those whom God wishes to destroy, he first makes angry.” — Euripides

      Commuting was never my thing, but sometimes you’ve just gotta do what you’ve gotta do. When I was not very much younger, I used to grow angry at the neat rows of brake lights in front of me. Likewise, a red light when there was nobody else at the intersection would drive me crazy. My bride rolls her eyes when I detour a different way to avoid some particular egregious traffic lights. I still have a deeply engrained habit of active avoidance of traffic lights, and have stated I’ll move out of the town I live in the moment they install them. I may just be posturing, but still, there’s a grain of truth in every jest.

      Really, it’s a control thing. Traffic and traffic lights are mostly out of my control, which hints at the deeper truth that most of life is out of our control. So what’s the solution? Amor fati — Love of fate. Simply put, focus on the things that you can control, accept the rest, and stay in the chill lane.

      Anger is weakness, displayed. It will be our undoing if we let it be. So don’t let it be. As we learn and grow we come to see the world differently, and see the folly of the angry life. To reach our potential in this life we must remain clear on our purpose and avoid the petty distractions some bad commute or bad civil engineering might stir up. It’s all relative, of course, and none of this matters when we look at the bigger picture. Amor fati, friend.

    • Art With a Spritz of Lime

      “Art is art and life is life, but to live life artistically; that is the art of life.”— Peter Altenberg

      A close friend has a flare for living well. He’ll spritz lime on a potato dish and make something extraordinary of what was moments before thought to be disparate produce. He’s always looking for the exceptional in an otherwise average day. And he drives many people mad as a result. Like that burst of citrus in a starchy dish, I find his perspective punctuates life perfectly.

      This business of living artistically is something to aspire to. Capturing moments with a bit of magic and moving through the ordinary with je ne sais quoi, these are the things that matter very much in a world that wants you to fall in line and fit right in. Certainly, we must do our job and do it well, but why always settle for vanilla?

      We each live on both sides of ordinary. It’s a gift to be human at a time and place when you can express yourself freely. We ought to use that gift and add more flavor to our days. Like every gift, we must choose to use it. Art is a deliberate act, expressed uniquely. What might we bring to the table if we have the gumption to try something new?

      We all know the expression: when the world throws you lemons, make lemonade. There’s another clever expression I once found on a kitchen magnet that adds a twist: when the world throws you limes, make margaritas. To this I’ll add, don’t forget to save some lime for the potatoes.

    • More of This

      As I publish this, it’s the 18th of March, or the 77th day of the year. Lucky sevens, if you will, falling just after St. Patrick’s Day. The luck of the Irish following us? Let’s hope for that, but get back to living with purpose just the same. For we make our own luck, don’t we?

      We can usually predict the future by looking at what we consistently do. With that in mind, I’ll likely be writing every day, barely keeping the Duolingo streak alive and will have read my share of books (though never quite enough). It’s easy to see those filling in from now until the end, whatever that looks like. But what of the gaps? The inconsistencies also predict who we become, don’t they?

      It’s clear I need to get a dog soon if I want to maintain a walking streak, as walking the neighborhood at night without a dog just makes me feel like the weird neighbor. I probably don’t need to enhance that reputation. Alternatively, I could move to a place where walking is just the most obvious thing to do with your time. Kudos to friend and fellow blogger Joe, who managed to find a job and home in close enough proximity to each other that he can walk or snowshoe between the two. Joe doesn’t seem to complain about finding time to walk, he just walks. He proves every day that we can create the situation that works best for us when we focus on it.

      Life can surely be unpredictable, but we can safely predict that our life will mostly be more of this if we keep doing the same thing every day. The question to ask is, is more of this okay, or is it carrying us to a place we’d rather not go? Almost a quarter of the way into the year, we can see the trend we’re setting for ourselves, can’t we?

      “You should be far more concerned with your current trajectory than with your current results.”
      ― James Clear, Atomic Habits

      When the year is over, it would be great to have written all I’d like to write, to have read all that I’ve got on my reading list, and to finally hold my own in a rapid-fire conversation in French. But it would also be great to be in better shape than I began the year, to have positioned myself for a successful year in my career, and to spend meaningful time with exceptional people. These are things we can look back on the blank spaces with regret, or we can celebrate as small wins strung together just so. More of this can be a positive statement, if we create the right situation for ourselves.

      So what’s the trajectory? Is more of this a good thing or bad? With this answered, we’ll know what to do next.

    • Selective Watering

      “Research increasingly shows that what is important doesn’t necessarily get our attention, but what gets our attention becomes important. This mirrors a concept in ancient Buddhist psychology that is often referred to as selective watering. In short, the mind contains a diverse variety of seeds: joy, integrity, anger, jealousy, greed, love, delusion, creativity, and so on. Buddhist psychology taught that we should think of ourselves as gardeners and our presence and attention as nourishment for the seeds. The seeds that we water are the seeds that grow. The seeds that grow shape the kind of person we become. In other words, the quality of our presence—its intensity and where we choose to channel it—determines the quality of our lives.” — Brad Stulberg, The Practice of Groundedness

      We know intuitively to focus on what is important in our lives, but focus can be challenging in this hyper-distracting world. The thing is, most of that hyper-distraction is self-created. We layer on all manner of apps and channels on top of the minutes that matter, and each promises something more fascinating, perhaps, than the sometimes tedious business of becoming we’re currently engaged in. We simmer in the stew of our own distractions while time relentlessly boils away.

      The concept of selective watering is a lovely way to consider what gets to grow in our lives and what we ought to let wither away. Writing this blog every day is selective watering, and so is my long-standing choice to eliminate broadcast news from my information diet. For each of us, our days begin with a series of habits selectively watered over time. We reinforce our identity as we follow through on these habits or eliminate others. Likewise, the beliefs we have about others are based as much on the way we look at the world, our biases, as they are from the acts of another. The seeds that we water are the seeds that grow.

      Knowing this, we can quickly see the breadcrumbs that brought us to this place in our lives. We are what we’ve repeatedly done, to hijack Aristotle, and so here we are; all that and a bag of chips. Assessing our current state, we may love who we’ve become or find that shell rather hollow inside. Either is an incomplete assessment, for we remain a work in progress to the end of our days. And this is our call to action! Active living is deciding what happens next. We ought to be very selective in our watering.