Last week was somehow more frenetic than any of the nine weeks that preceded it, despite generally not working the 11+ hour days that had typified the Cambridge project. Thus, when Saturday morning emerged, I was ready for a rest.
Hmmm… well, they say that a change is as good as a rest and since I’m not really one for sitting around, I opted for the former.
Kim and I had been looking for stone with which to progress the garden project and with a little desk research we found it… right on our doorstep!
I had been wanting to visit the local reclamation company Dorton for years, but it doesn’t have a particularly consumer friendly exterior. However, once inside there are friendly staff making sure that you can find what you’re looking for in this capacious Aladdin’s cave.
We found a metric tonne of rock… as you do.
With the rock ordered and the likelihood of dry days fading as autumn blows in, we seized the sunny day to prepare the ground.
Whilst I stripped the turf, Kim laid it back down in the new ‘working garden’ area behind the deck panel. It was back-breaking work for both of us, but by evening we had completed our task.
Fast forward to today and I was fully expecting to feel wrecked after all that hard work. But with the rain tipping down outside, all I could feel was really pleased that we had grabbed the moment.
I’ve been preparing for my Monday workshops on and off across the weekend and I finally reached an interesting inflexion point at a confluence of thought between the following two ideas… in the context of creating high performance teams:
- First, Rory Sutherland, of Ogilvy fame, who said that ‘the circumstances of our lives actually matter less to our happiness than the sense of control that we feel over our lives‘ (it’s well worth watching this TED talk!)
- Second, Albert Ellis, the forefather of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) with his ABCD model, which highlights the need to Dispel unrealistic Beliefs about Adversity to reduce the emotional Consequences that they would otherwise create.
I could see that there was a really important link, but I couldn’t quite grasp what it was… it was clearly a good moment for a run!
I hopped on the machine and set myself a 30 minute challenge like last week, this time donning trainers to protect my feet from the heat. I set the warm-up speed to 7mph and then increased it slowly after the first mile until I finally reached 8mph.
The run was harder work than last week, but the result was a little better too: 3.66 miles in 30 minutes, 7.3 mph average.
As I’ve noted before, I find it difficult to think clearly around 7 mph or faster, so it was actually a really great break from my cognitive challenge. Better still, Kim (a qualified CBT practitioner) quickly pointed out the connection afterwards… rather obviously, I guess, it’s simply belief.
I believe that we’ve had a fantastic weekend and that I’m now ready for another frenetic week! Have a great one!