#7 A book, some yoga and a pen on a page
Three things with significant impact on my wellbeing in the last year.
Good morning,
We spent some time away over the MEA weekend. Thanks MN. It’s fantastic to shift locations, coffee shops, grocery stores and views every so often. Also there were great sunrises and sets too! Thanks Wisconsin.
This morning I decided to figure out why one of my calendars was setting an auto default 10 min alert to every event added, after I added it. It’s been bothering me for over six months that it does this. I’ve looked into it before with no luck. Turns out the setting was deep inside Google, not my desktop or mobile app. The magic was found under a special three dots on a specific desktop view. It was not intuitive. But, I found it!
I’m pretty sure I added the alert years ago in some fit of triumph that included a fist pump. Every event had an alert. Yet, these days I just want a rough reminder of things on the calendar and to have hard alerts for select events (not everything). Times change, eh? Anyway, I succeeded in adjusting my settings and encourage you to stick with it, whatever that pesky thing is you want changed. Put the time and maybe on your 12th google search you’ll find the answer like I did today.
Ok, for this week, let’s look at a few resources that have had outsized impact on my live in the last year. None of these are calendar alerts. The three resources that come to mind are Positive Intelligence, Yoga, and Morning Pages.
Bit #1
The book was originally published in 2012. It’s comprised of content from lectures Shirzad Chamine gave/gives at Stanford regarding his research on how to achieve professional success and personal fulfillment with the assistance of “mental fitness.”
I was introduced by way of an executive coach. I hemmed hawed about joining a course based on it. Now, I’m glad I did. A six week introduction and a twelve week experience applying it to life has been measurably impactful.
Wins: More able to detach from situations vs. get triggered by them. Sensitive to escalation of tone and intensity in myself and surroundings. Proactive in adjusting course vs being tossed about. Able to recognise when heading down a well worn but unproductive or unhelpful mental path and intercept it, redirect it. Able to flip proactive positive much more frequently and to do so because of a will to do so. Able to leverage more self control in mental, physical and emotional dynamics than before.
I have concrete examples of each win above. If you’re interested, I’m interested in expanding via phone, etc. Let me know. At min, I recommend the book as a place to start if you’re curious about more control over your mind, attitude and direction in life.
Bit #2
Yoga.
I played a lot of tennis this summer. So good. It’s great to get out and sweet, to feel competition and to goof-off playing doubles. This is a joy I’m only in my second year of understanding. However, the toll tennis can make on legs can be aggressive. I’m also finding that I want to move faster and more nimbly to get balls. And the best thing I can think to do was NOT to ride the bike more. So, I started more yoga videos.
I’m doing 10 min and 20 min yoga classes on the Peloton app a few times a week and it’s paying off. I’m moving faster. I’m getting out of bed with fewer aches. It’s taking less time to recover from tennis. And, there is a dude, Dennis, who teaches classes doing things I can actually do as a dude. Perfect.
Consider some yoga. Really. It’s had a much wider impact on my overall sense of control, mobility and tone than I thought it could or would.
Bit #3
Morning Pages (2:38 sec video).
The book The Artist’s Way is Julia Cameron’s content focused on teaching artists to unblock themselves. That sounds good! Everyone is an artist in her view, BTW. I agree. So, let’s be unblocked.
Julia developed the ideas and 12 week experience in the late 80’s. The first versions were self-published via Xerox because she could not find a publisher. It went on to become a bestseller and put in the Self-Publishing hall of fame (it now has a publisher and is in a 25th anniversary edition).
The book prescribes and describes how to do two things, Morning Pages and an Artist’s Date (frivolous time alone which has been taking photos for me lately), on a regular basis. Both have been very impactful for me this year.
Maybe the pages are just journaling. However, I’ve found the three pages of stream of consciousness writing done first thing to be a really potent practice on my ability to create the rest of the day in a way that “journaling” never has. In a way, the practice blows the carbon out of the mental engine so it runs better for the whole day. It’s remarkable, really. And, reading the companion book next to the experience makes for a much more valuable and easy guided learning.
I grabbed the 12 week journal where each week corresponds to the book and each page has pull quotes from the chapter that week. Maybe the same makes sense for you? There is also a workbook. I’ve not tried that yet.
To say that I have less avoidance of creative pursuits now than I did last year is an understatement. I’ve sought them out in the last months. It’s been so good. Maybe it’ll be good for you too.
Sum
There we are. Three bits of positive this week. Two books and some yoga. Results may vary. Hoping your experience with these has been or will be even better than mine.
Change
We make a habit of using the sauna every day at the cabin. This time we also spent time in the lake for a cold plunge too. The water is somewhere in the low 50’s and very rewarding to be able to manage. I’ll be doing more messing around with cold exposure as a result of the experience.
Growth marketing. I’ve had a few positive conversations in the last week. One of them is to play a role in building a curriculum for growth marketers. The best way to learn something is to teach it. This might be my chance to learn it that way.
I think I can verify, by data off Whoop, the difference in my sleep impact from wine vs scotch/whiskey. Spoiler… wine is so much more kind on recovery as well as heart rate over time! Mixed drinks need to be consumed during HH and maybe no other time for me.
Grabbed a pair of the new FB Rayban glasses. So far the app and the file type are so much easier to use than the Snap versions. Further, the killer feature are the speakers in my view. So fun. The fit is a bit strange. I’ll try on a few other pairs here before committing.
Gift cards are hot on Vivront.com. People are buying more of those than sharpening for themselves in recent days.
On Your Way
I had the chance to see a sunrise over a lake last weekend. The eagles were zooming. The were loons diving. The lake was smoking. It was something else.
I stood on the dock and shot stuff like this:
And then when I walked off the dock, because my toes were too cold to stay any longer, this happened:
Enjoy yourself some nature again soon!