It’s been a while, but house guests often stimulate the neural links to spark new ideas, or forgotten habits. So, with thanks to my temporary house guests Nigel and particularly Kristin, I have done both yoga and a one-mile run on the machine this morning.
Regular readers will already know that running tends to lower my resting heart rate and help me think more clearly, both of which would be useful at the moment given a range of really interesting cognitive challenges… ones which are largely positive in nature, but gnarly nevertheless 🙂
While I have your attention, I’d also like to report that I had a short mental break last night. It had been raining most of the day, and I’d had my head buried in my work, so I stuck my head out of the window to get some fresh air before bed and realised that it was really calm and warm outside.
So I went to sit in the teahouse for a while, with the sweet fragrance of the honeysuckle drifting across from time to time, and a short rain shower pattering gently on the roof for added effect. The photo below makes it look quite light, but by the time I headed back to the house it was difficult to see in the darkness. Overall, very calming 🙂
Recently I’ve been experiencing the Monday night blues due to a meeting that I regularly have at the start of the week. The effect of this has lessened over time, and yet it still surprises me when I reflect back on a Tuesday morning.
Exercise is often an antidote to low moods and my hope was that by having a run this morning I would get my mojo back for the rest of the week… we’ll see if it works.
In the meantime I feel happy that I’ve managed a run each week this month. albeit short and on the machine.
Sending you positive vibes to help you get past your low points 🙂
I woke up early this morning and have been reading whilst drinking two quadspressos. This involved dipping into a few of my books, and reviewing some of my teaching slides, in order to help connect my head to ideas around an interesting work challenge.
I had already planned to go for a short run so it was easy to get on the machine and go. Nothing spectacular, but it has been nice to see my resting heart rate come tumbling down over the last couple of weeks, since my first run this year, and I’m keen to help it stay relatively low.
The morning was cold and overcast, but the sun has now come out… I don’t have answers to my challenge, per se, but I do feel in a better frame of mind to be able to collaborate and help work the problem 🙂
Okay, so I’ve managed to get back on the running machine 🙂
Despite the lack of runs, I have been feeling generally fitter lately than maybe last year. One small indicator of this is that I park my car at the top of a hill at work, such that I get exercise when I’m going home. When I started parking in this location last year my legs were often burning by the time I reached the car, but lately I’ve been able to power up the hill with relative ease.
My work is often intense, with a seemingly constant flow of overlapping messy problems to break down. Most people will be aware that I love messy problems, but in the same way that hoisting too many juggling balls airborne makes it likely that they will all fall to the floor, there is a threshold where even a series of enjoyable cognitive pressures turn into uncomfortable stress.
Right now I feel as if I have four juggling balls in the air (which I can only manage for a short time, and then only as two pairs) and whilst I relish the challenge, I seem to be working in that place where just one more pressure will bring everything to the floor.
Outside of work hours I’m currently pretty brain-dead and whilst I know that running helps my mind to work more effectively, the motivation is often lacking.
My work colleague Chris gave my mind a gentle jog yesterday when he went out for a run at lunchtime, before making good use of the showers that hide somewhere in our labyrinthine building. It seems that I’m not the only one struggling to keep the running neurons in play by trying to weave in the occasional short run.
At a mile in 9.34 on the running machine this morning, my run was shorter and way less interesting than his, but I feel glad that I stepped up.
Now to cool down & shower before I get back to the extreme cognitive exercise that is my work day!
One of the challenges of the current remote-working zeitgeist is the potential growth of reluctance to venture out.
This was my feeling ahead of a barn dance last weekend and on one level I would happily have stayed home. However, the draw of seeing my best friends, en masse, won the day and I had a really fun evening.
Randomly flinging myself around is a good description of my normal dancing and it was nice to be on a dance floor where others had little more body control than me… and where that uncoordinated mess of misdirected human limbs was not just accepted, but was also being enjoyed! Oh my!… how we laughed!
A subsequent decrease in resting heart rate suggested that it was generally good for my health, although the exertion could easily have resulted in a heart attack, methinks!
Fast forward to this morning. Although I felt equally reluctant to go for a run, I had cleared the space around the running machine (yes, again, for those of you eagle-eyed readers who know that I did this only recently) and had just enough time to run and cool down before my meetings started at 9am.
A quick mile took just under 9:30 and I felt much better for it 🙂
I wasn’t super-enthusiastic about running this morning, but I had put the running machine ready last night and I couldn’t think of any compelling reasons not to get on it.
The feelings of coldness and stiff muscles soon evaporated when I started to run and my brain kicked in to dwell on some work challenges that I’m trying to solve.
One mile in just under ten minutes… and much warmer than when I started!
Those of you who know me will know that I like to read, especially in the morning at the start of the day, feeding my mind in the same way that a subsequent breakfast will feed my body.
This habit used to lapse each winter, when I prefer to sit in the emerging gloom rather than put any electric lights on. However, last year I inherited a Kindle and I have found this perfect for providing those few pages of insight in a backlit format. It’s also more discreet than the kind of chunky books I often read and doesn’t stand out in our pleasingly-minimalistic sitting room.
Later this week I’m running a workshop on Change to the wider Sussex Projects team and whilst I’ve already done the heavy lifting of designing the session and the slide deck, I do like to flip through the slides each day, in the run up to workshops, to ensure that I’m really familiar with the flow.
Reading before a run is always helpful to help my mind using the exercise time to assimilate and throw out new ideas, so this morning I chose to read my slide deck rather than the Kindle.
It was only a short 1-mile run on the machine before work, taking just under 9.5 minutes, but mind and body are now both ready for the rigours of the rest of the week 🙂
We’re lucky enough to have an in-house running machine, which hides in plain sight in the thoroughfare between the open-plan dining and sitting rooms. Regular readers will know that I’ve not used it for a while, but recently it’s been out of bounds and surrounded by the flotsam & jetsam of life and the paraphernalia of our recent house guests.
Last weekend we finally managed to clear enough space for it to emerge from the background of my subconscious as the solution to a short-term problem.: I’ve not been getting enough exercise recently and I know that this eventually results in my brain working more slowly… something that I can’t afford to do right now with the pressures of my exciting new role.
Suffice to say that the machine was fired up early this morning and a short run ensued. Just one mile in just under 10 minutes, but I know that one run of this nature each week would tip the balance in favour of a clearer head. As per usual… watch this space 🙂
I’ve been working hard to create a habit around running two times a week and this photo shows another five and a half weeks of success. Each run may be only one mile, but (combined with a small amount of yoga 4-5 times each week) there is no doubt that I feel holistically better as a result.
The other thing that has been on my mind for a while is posture. Those of you who know me will confirm that I’ve been ’round’ in the shoulder department since I was young… despite the number of people who have encouraged me to ‘stand up straight’ over the years. I typically ask for critical feedback at the end of workshops and one group was forthright enough to use those exact words!
When I started teaching presentation skills a few years ago I had to figure out how to explain to other people how to stand up straight (even though I found it difficult)… bizarrely I discovered that this requires only brief focus on your big toes and heels.
Later, when I was trying to sculpt the collar bones on an alabaster figurine (that’s another story, but the photo below shows the drawing on the original block and the finished piece), I discovered a further layer of insight… those people with great posture seem to have collar bones that are almost horizontal.
Put these two insights together and you have a simple recipe for improving posture.
The American organisational theorist, Russel Ackoff, suggested that there are three things that we can do ‘to problems’: we can solve, resolve or dissolve them. Solving is akin to curing a disease; resolving is managing the symptoms (like taking hay fever tablets); and dissolving is changing other factors such that the disease does not manifest (like staying inside to avoid pollen).
My sense is that the insights above are dissolving the postural problem… it doesn’t go away (at least in someone at my age) but by developing new habits elsewhere in the body, there’s a chance that the round shoulders will not manifest. Then the challenge is simply about keeping that basket of habits going until they become second nature.
I’ve been trying for a few months now and can report that its non-linear… nothing seems to happen for ages but the body starts to recognise the movement that is required, the muscles start to develop as they get used a little more often and that means that the desired posture can be held for slightly longer each time before it lapses.
Like my weekly runs, it’s about finding triggers that cause you to act with the least cognitive input, such as running Tuesday and Friday mornings before breakfast, standing up straight whenever I clean my teeth, sitting up straight when I first sit down and smiling each time I remember to do these things as a way to connect them to positive feelings.
Whilst I am eternally grateful for the positive attributes that I have been afforded, I often feel that I have learned way more through working hard to solve, resolve or dissolve one of my (numerous) flaws. One step at a time 🙂
