Alexandersmap

    Category: Lifestyle

    • Gratuitous Exercise

      “Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day.” – William James

      “All weakness is a weakness of will.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

      There’s no getting around it, I’ve been getting weaker – lacking the willpower to get on the erg or pick up the weights. This correlates exactly with work getting busier: more responsibility, more follow-up, and more sitting in front of a computer. That, friends, is no way to live a long and vibrant life. The science supports us: we must move to have a healthy mind and body.

      Don’t get me wrong, I’m hiking and snowshoeing and generally trying to be active on the edges of the day. But you know when you’re working hard and when you’re hardly working. A walk in the woods does the mind and body good, but you’ve got to supplement it with threshold-testing workouts. Through focused effort and honoring commitments to ourselves through exercise.

      I’ve been here before, of course. Burpees were kicking my ass until I started having serious shoulder pain. Rowing on an erg kicked my ass so much in college and CRASH-B’s that I have PTSD and have a hard time doing anything but steady-state on the thing. So what do you do when your worst enemy is yourself? You simplify and establish lifetime habits that brush aside the resistance with routine. It simply must be so.

      And so I’m returning to a workout program that doesn’t require spotters and doesn’t tolerate excuses. I’m returning to the kettle bell and dynamic stretching, and rowing on the erg to round out the challenge. You can take a kettle bell with you when you travel, you can break away from your computer for a simple workout that kicks your ass in minutes. And you can eliminate the excuse of time: Those optimistic long steady-state workouts written on the calendar that fall aside in the crush of work days. Habits build on themselves over time. Simply showing up starts the ball rolling.

      “No matter how strong you are, there will always be someone stronger than you. Using only a number as the litmus test of whether you are strong or not is self-defeating. You will get older. You will not be able to continue to set personal all-time bests forever. But you can continue to get stronger mentally. You can adjust to whatever the environment is and challenge yourself to push past wherever you are at the moment, in any way you can, and feel good knowing you just made yourself a better man or woman.” – Pavel Tsatsouline, Kettlebell Simple & Sinister

      Fitness is the ultimate objective, of course, but the why is to get stronger mentally. To build up your brain and push through excuses. To thrive on the faculty of effort and make yourself a better person. And this translates into everything else you do. If you’re making excuses on something as essential as your fitness, what else are you making excuses about? Mastery doesn’t happen overnight. But it begins with showing up and doing the work.

      “To master your mind is to master your life. There is no more worthwhile pursuit.” – Sir John Hargrave, Mind Hacking

      Gratuitous exercise implies frivolous or unnecessary. But there’s another definition for gratuitous, and that’s doing something free of charge. To exercise free from the burden of feeling like you have to do something and instead to exercise simply because it’s a part of who you are. Something you want to do. To simply do for the love of where it takes you.

    • Bucking Trends

      “Trend is not destiny.” – Shane Parrish

      Trends. Sometimes they seem so laughably predictable, other times so completely unreliable. Anyone paying attention saw the events of January 6th unfolding, trending towards violence. We all watched COVID-19 infection rates trend alarmingly upward a year ago, quickly turning our growing interest into immediate action. There’s clearly a trend towards people buying more hiking gear and bicycles, adopting pets and using technology to connect with loved ones. What will the end of the pandemic do to trends like these?

      Trends aren’t completely accurate predictors of the future, but they can be indicators of that future. There are trends indicating climate change, and trends indicating a slow move towards lowering greenhouse gas emissions and deforestation of the rainforest. Where do these trends meet? If you can’t reverse a trend can you slow it down enough? And what exactly does enough mean anyway?

      I’m trending towards old age, but that doesn’t mean it’s my destiny. A meteor could smash into my office even as I write this, nullifying both my life and that trend towards older in a moment. Or consider my tendency to lose 15 pounds every year when the weather got warm and I was more active outdoors. That trend was turned upside down in 2020, when some combination of pandemic stress eating and a slower metabolism stalled me at the same weight for most of the year. Is that a new trend? Or does the five pounds I’ve lost in the last two weeks indicate a new trend?

      What do we make of the trendy? People who seek out the latest styles, book reservations well in advance at the cool places, and live in the right neighborhoods. Being trendy is like surfing waves – you read the ocean and find just the right swell to ride out. I’d rather swim in the surf than fight for the perfect wave. Does that make me a laggard when it comes to trends, or an indifferent outlier on the bell curve? Depends on the trend, I suppose. Give me denim over whatever is trending in fashion at the moment, but I’m all in on the iPhone 12.

      The thing is, none of us really know our destiny, but we can adjust our trends to favor better outcomes. Don’t like the trend towards drinking and eating more? Eat less, earlier, and take a walk instead of sitting down to watch Netflix with a glass of wine. Don’t like the trend in pipeline for your business forecast? Double down and develop new opportunities. Trend is not destiny, it’s just the direction you happen to be going in at the moment.

      So, knowing the trends, are you going to change your destiny?

    • The Ultimate Competition is With Ourselves

      “Trust begins to emerge when we have a sense that another person or organization is driven by things other than their own self-gain...

      When you compete against everyone else, no one wants to help you. But when you compete against yourself, everyone wants to help you.“

      “If there were no trust, then no one would take risks. No risks would mean no exploration, no experimentation and no advancement of the society as a whole.” – Simon Sinek, Start With Why

      If there’s one aspect of my personality I work to change, it’s my inherent competitiveness in most aspects of my life. An underlying desire to get the upper hand in conversation. To come out on top in sports. To be atop the leader board in my career. That mindset limits you in what you can achieve, because as Sinek points out, if you’re perceived as pursuing self-gain, then you’re viewed as a competitor in a world of scarcity.

      The thing is, the world isn’t aligned against you at all. The world is doing the best it can to survive another day, put food on the table, to get through the awkwardness of an initial conversation and get back to what they were doing before they encountered you. Sure, some people are completely out for themselves, but they’re easy to spot after a few words or by reading body language. And what do we do when we read that? We recoil a bit and put up our defenses. Why would we expect others to treat us differently should we telegraph “ME” in everything they do?

      Competing with others distracts us from rising to personal excellence. It takes our focus off of our own improvement and onto others. We don’t achieve mastery without focusing on incremental improvement. Keeping up with the Joneses draws us away from our own inner voice and the things that must be done. But worse, it positions us against them.

      Competition has its place, of course. What would sports or chess or debate be without competition? A dull world of participation awards, that’s what it would be. Serena Williams or Tom Brady didn’t rise up to become the best in their individual sports chasing participation awards. They may have started with a personal chip on their shoulders that drove them to succeed at uncommon levels, but each is quick to pull up others around them too. You can be the very best without being an asshole. In reality, the assholes don’t quite reach the pinnacle anyway, because nobody wants to help them.

      Reaching mastery doesn’t mean standing atop the bodies of your conquered enemies, it means reaching deeper into ourselves and pulling out the brightest bits of our own possibility. And then turning around and lending a hand to those making the climb themselves. Trust and mutual respect are built in such moments. They, in turn, will turn to lend you a hand in your own moment of need. And together you can rise to greater heights than you might on your own.

      Trust in ourselves begins to emerge when we develop our own self-worth. And that comes in keeping promises to ourselves in the work we do. In the increments of effort that matter most, done with consistency and honesty. The ultimate competition is with ourselves, and once we begin to master that we view the rest of the world less as a threat than as a barometer of progress.

    • That Moment When Everything Changed

      “I wonder if I should have a change — a year in Europe this time — something new, something better, perhaps. A life has to move or it stagnates. Even this life, I think. It is no good telling yourself that one day you will wish you had never made that change; it is no good anticipating regrets. Every tomorrow ought not to resemble every yesterday…

      It seems remarkable to me at least that if I had not gone to Molo, I might never have seen New York, nor learned to fly a plane, nor learned to hunt elephant, nor, in fact, done anything except wait for one year to follow another… How can the course of a life be changed by a word spoken on a dusty road?”
      – Beryl Markham, West With The Night

      In this last year of the pandemic, with borders closed and wandering spirits limited to adventures of the local kind, it’s easy to throw your hands up in frustration at the “one days” that are postponed. Of one year following another with a measure of stasis unfamiliar and a bit uncomfortable. If we’re fully engaged we learn to make do, to thrive really, in those local adventures and appreciate what we have in our own back yard.

      You want a quick adventure? Click on the link above and read Markham’s book. Put aside the disgust of elephant hunting for this one (it was a different time) and immerse yourself in the perspective of an adventurous soul and a brilliant writer. Growing up in Kenya a hundred years ago, training thoroughbreds before pivoting to flying.

      Markham’s life changed when she met a man repairing his car who flew in the first World War and would soon teach her to fly. He sparked her imagination with possibility, and the rest of her life sprouted from that spark. She quickly charms you and makes you wish you’d met her in the brief time we breathed the same air. If I’d read this book at twenty I might have dropped everything and flown straight to adventure myself.

      So why not now? As with many adventurous role models, she makes you wonder; what is our own pivot? What is your moment that changes everything? It may not be a chance encounter, it might just be a small leap into the unknown. We’ve learned a lot about the world and ourselves over the last year. If there’s one clear lesson from all of it, it’s that the world was always trying to tell us something. But we were too busy distracting ourselves to pay attention.

      “The world does not act on us as much as it reveals itself to us and we respond.” – Shane Parrish, The Great Mental Models, Volume I

      How will we respond to the last twelve months that changed everything? And what shall we make of our future? Every tomorrow ought not to resemble every yesterday. Our one day can begin today. We don’t have to rely on some chance encounter with someone who teaches us to fly. That moment that changes everything can, indeed must, be this one. Flying requires summoning the courage to start down the runway and the accumulated experience to soar.

    • Coming to Light

      “If a man has any greatness in him, it comes to light, not in one flamboyant hour, but in the ledger of his daily work...

      ‘All the pieces are put together, and the whole is yours …’ A word grows to a thought — a thought to an idea — an idea to an act. The change is slow, and the Present is a sluggish traveller loafing in the path Tomorrow wants to take.”
      – Beryl Markham, West With The Night

      This coming to light through the sluggish Present, changing over years of work, is the tricky part. It’s the part you don’t always see in yourself and in the work you do. It’s the grind, the paying of dues, the 10,000 hours, the sweat equity of life. We gain experience in our work, and with a bit of luck, grow in prominence. But really we grow either way.

      Experience is a devilish word. We gain experience through doing the work, and we chase experiences outside of our work. Really, shouldn’t they be one and the same? Not to live for your job but to have your work be an integral part of your life. Writing a blog reminded me that the living part is every bit as important as the writing part. You don’t offer much in prose without experiencing the world a bit.

      The mistake most people make is in making the work their life, instead of an integral part of their life. “Working 9 to 5, what a way to make a living Barely gettin’ by, it’s all taking and no giving” as Dolly Parton put it. That’s not meaningful work, that’s checking your soul at the door and inserting your self as a cog in a machine. Trading life for dollars.

      What Markham writes about is different from what Parton was writing about. Markham saw that spark of light, imagined something bigger and built it for herself. That’s the coming to light over a lifetime. Of course, Dolly Parton did the same thing, her life hasn’t been the character she played in a movie. And neither is ours.

      And here’s the thing, the dream isn’t about work at all, it’s about the vision you have for yourself and the world around you. The work is what you do to realize the dream – not a trade-off of hours away from living your dream at all, but the building of it one small step at a time. It all starts with a spark of light, your “why”, and then filling in the work necessary to reach for the vision.

      “Without effort, your talent is nothing more than your unmet potential. Without effort, your skill is nothing more than what you could have done but didn’t.” – Angela Duckworth, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

      Duckworth jabs us in the ribs with that statement: what you could have done but didn’t. Don’t let your vision die on the vine. Whatever your vision – sailing around the world, hiking a summit or a list of summits, breaking a time in a marathon, building a company from scratch, writing a novel… it requires change and wading through the sluggish Present to get to that Tomorrow you want. Do the meaningful work that gets you there.

    • The Angel’s Share

      Take a tour of a Scottish distillery and you’ll see the black stains on the sides of buildings and wonder. This is the residual build-up from centuries of evaporation of the angel’s share, the percentage of scotch that evaporates through the casks to go where it will. I’ve often thought of this evaporation process and will offer up a bit more to the angels in my own particular life when having a dram outdoors.

      Yesterday I scanned my to-do list, drew an X in every bullet I’d finished and put an > to every bullet that I simply didn’t get to and had to push to another day. This process of organizing tasks is from the appropriately-named bullet journal method, which transformed my way of managing my to-do lists a few years ago. There’s something satisfying about drawing an X through a nagging bullet, getting it done and knocking that bullet to smithereens. Crossing off the bullet is a supremely satisfying way of patting yourself on the back without making the words disappear as they would if you’d simply crossed out what you’d completed. Why diminish what you’ve accomplished?

      X Wash the dishes (Done!)
      X Write and post the blog (Done!)
      X Row 5K (Done!)

      Simple, yet effective.

      But then there are the arrows (>). Tasks moved to another time, perhaps tomorrow, perhaps in a week. But they’re moved on anyway, to be written on another page.

      The punted tasks, like:
      > Call Rick to schedule meeting (punt)
      > Go to store for printer ink and paper (punt)

      Make no mistake, these punts tortured me for years. I simply couldn’t turn the page and let the day’s tasks be. No, I’d beat myself up for not getting everything on my list done. That voice inside your head that reprimands you for not being more focused, or not working hard enough on what was important… or whatever. Head noise.

      In reality, I tend to put too many things on the list in the first place. By learning to live with them, to kick them forward to another specific day, I’ve stopped beating myself up about what didn’t get done. More frequently now, I think of these punted tasks as the angel’s share. Sorry, internal critic, that one wasn’t meant for me today, that was the angel’s share. Or maybe a future version of me. But since tomorrow isn’t guaranteed we’ll call it the angel’s share.

      Either way I’ve learned to smile a bit and close the book on another day of tasks and events. I’ve done my part for today. And that, friends, is enough. Slàinte Mhath!

    • To Roam the Roads of Lands Remote

      “To move, to breathe, to fly, to float,
      To gain all while you give,
      To roam the roads of lands remote,
      To travel is to live.”
      – Hans Christian Andersen

      Good God I’m ready to roam remote lands again. Exploring faraway places in a world that has shaken off the pandemic and opens its arms in welcome. We aren’t there just yet, we know, but every day we get a bit closer. A year into this and I’m chomping at the bit for the quirky randomness of faraway travel.

      Such thoughts are low agency conspiracies, for the world is right outside, awaiting our arrival. Crossing borders to lands remote may be just out of reach, but crossing thresholds is still very possible. And so the question isn’t the roaming, the question is the focus. I can row a million meters away (and be a different person when I arrive) right in my house, I can time travel in the chair behind me, and I can fly above the earth on snowshoes just outside the door.

      The secret all along? To push through our own borders, wherever we are, is to live. To become by working through. To move. To breathe… to gain all while you give.

    • What Are You Waiting For?

      “Dare to be wise; begin! He who postpones the hour of living rightly is like the rustic who waits for the river to run out before he crosses.” – Horace

      When you really think about it, what are we waiting for? The right time? That river keeps on flowing by and never runs out. We run out.

      Of time… opportunities lost watching it all run by. So then what of this hour? What shall it launch?

      Begin. Do you feel the urgency of time? Do what must be done.

      “Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can” – Arthur Ashe

      Easy for me to say, right? Who am I to challenge you? Make no mistake, I’m dipping a toe in that water myself. For I have my own chasms to cross. The only way across is by putting action where words are and getting to it.

      I like a good challenge. Do you? What can you accomplish, see, or become in ten days? Focus on living rightly in each moment, getting across whatever your river is. From today to March 4th and written about right here on March 5th. Comment on that post if you’ve taken the challenge yourself. What are we waiting for? Hurry! For it’s already slipping away.

    • To Live is to Function

      “In this symposium my part is only to sit in silence. To express one’s feelings as the end draws near is too intimate a task. But one thought that comes to me as a listener-in. The riders in the race do not stop short when they reach the goal. There is a little finishing canter before coming to a standstill. There is time to hear the kind voice of friends and to say to oneself that the work is done.

      But just as one says that, the answer comes: The race is over, but the work never is done while the power to work remains. The canter that brings you to a standstill need not be only coming to rest. It cannot be while you still live, but to live is to function. That is all there is. And so I end with a line from a Latin poet, who uttered the message more than fifteen-hundred years ago, Death, death, plucks my ear, and says, ‘Live. I am coming.’”
      – Oliver Wendell Holmes (from a radio broadcast when he turned 90)

      This image Holmes painted of cantering after the race is over, living but not quite in the race anymore, lingers. I’ve seen a few people who’s cantering ended sooner than we all wanted, but bless them, they were cantering to the end. Their work was done, and they functioned as best they could until they left us. And whispered a reminder that soon our own race will end, so best run it well.

      The canter that brings you to a standstill need not be only coming to rest.

      My own race took me around a snowy loop in the woods again yesterday, snowshoeing in deep snow, following cross-country ski tracks in a quiet patch of woods that doesn’t see a lot of action from the conservation land walking crowd. Just me and a trusty map, making my way alone in the woods, working up a sweat with a brisk pace as I broke trail next to the ski tracks. This, the morning after, I stepped out of bed gingerly to test the legs and found myself doing okay. Looking back on February so far, I’ve gotten out to snowshoe or hike most days. For I’m still very much in the race, after all, and far be it from me to start cantering now.

      To live is to function – to be out there in the world doing. A challenge to us all from Holmes, all those years ago. To be engaged with those around you, to be charging around the track of life all frothy and full of joyous exuberance at full gallop. Holmes was a Civil War veteran, wounded in battle, a Harvard-educated lawyer who rose up to the Supreme Court and the oldest serving member of that court. A living link between Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He lived in Mattapoisett and Beverly, Massachusetts and by all accounts lived a rich, full life during his own time in the race.

      Death, death, plucks my ear, and says, ‘Live. I am coming.’

      How do you read these words spoken by Oliver Wendell Holmes nearly a hundred years ago? As a reminder to get out and live while you’re still in the race? Or as a dark reminder that death is coming for us all? To me the only choice is the former. To have Holmes quote the stoics near the end of his own life, well into his cantering years, is a wake-up call for the generations lining up for the races after his own. Fast forward to today and now it’s our race. So how shall we run it?

    • At That Moment

      “I felt at that moment that it was my chance to do one thing supremely well.” – Roger Bannister

      The extraordinary – mastery – starts with that feeling. That spark of excitement at the possibility that just maybe I can do this. And as they say, all it takes is a spark. True, but once the fire is lit, all it takes is fuel to make it roar. For it is just the beginning. There are more moments to come.

      The time before that moment aren’t full of sparks, they’re full of stumbles and awkwardness and frustration. The paying of dues. The long slog. The apprenticeships that turn novices into prospects and prospects into rising stars. All a precursor to that moment when you finally know that this, this is it. And once you realize it, you do whatever you must do to, well, realize it.

      “You have to expect things of yourself before you can do them.” – Michael Jordan

      All of us experience that other it. Those moments when you realize that this is definitely not it. Sometimes that it is our it masked by the long slog to get to it. But usually we know the truth of something before too long down the path. And the truth is that most its aren’t our it. So we try another it. And another. Many never find it at all. Plenty experience maybe this is it. And really, it might just be it, but the climb is long and the friends are calling to go out for a few drinks to celebrate the end whatever isn’t their it, and before pretty soon that maybe isn’t your it either.

      The relatively few who do find and fully realize their it may experience the extraordinary. For it, by definition, lies beyond the ordinary. Finding your it requires singular focus on achieving it. Which brings us back to that moment. And what you feel. And what you do with your chance.