Author Archives: David Truss

My 2021 #OneWord is Thrive

Last year I chose Resilience as my #OneWord 2020. At the end of this post I said, “Resilience allows us to be strong, flexible, and engaged in a society that is the kind of society we want to live and thrive in.”

In October I re-shared the post adding, “Right now it seems like I chose the right #OneWord for 2020: Resilience. But as you read my last post of 2019, written before we learned about the impending pandemic, remember something… We are social beings and we are not incredibly resilient on our own. We need a community, we need friendship and love, we need each other.

Relationships, be they with family, friends, co-workers, student/teacher, and even pets, build our resilience, and our ability to not just cope, but to thrive.

Let’s support one another and show our resilience together!”

Reflecting on this now, I realize that resilience is a word like endure: We want to be able to do it, but we don’t want to have to do so more than necessary. I want to be resilient, I don’t want to be constantly needing to show you how resilient I am. I don’t want to continually demonstrate my resilience… like I and many others have had to do as the world deals with this pandemic. So this year I want my #OneWord to be something I actually want to do, and to show.

Thrive!

Thrive is the word I have chosen for 2021. I want to feel like I’m thriving with my healthy living goals. I want to thrive at work and watch our students thrive too. I want my wife and daughters to thrive and feel like their work and school experiences are not just about coping, or showing resilience, but about feeling successful and accomplished.

I know the pandemic is far from over, and that we must continue to be diligent, careful, and safe going forward. That doesn’t mean that we can’t also make the most of things and live our best lives. That doesn’t mean that we can’t thrive. This is a power word, filled with the promise of doing well, no matter our consequences. There are circumstances and things we must deal with that are be beyond our personal control, and there are things we have control over and that we can do to make the most of our circumstances.

May 2021 be a year where you stay healthy, and positive, and find ways to truly THRIVE!

Old home movies

Recently my wife had our home made DVD (digital) tapes converted to MP4 so that we could watch them on our computers. Last night we watched a few. The videos ranged from 15-20 years ago. With my daughters now at 21 and almost 19, it was a wonderful trip down memory lane.

Taking videos like these really dropped off after those early years. I think this was a combination of two things happening. First, the kids were older and in school, which made for changes in the dynamics at home. Next, the iphone came out and suddenly you always had a video camera available. However, as convenient as this was, it also made me less likely to record everyday activities, when I knew that I’d also have my recorder ‘right there with me’ the next time. So, video became reserved for happy birthday wishes, and graduations, and ‘special’ experiences like these.

When I was watching these videos last night, I was so thankful for the experiences I recorded. I was sharing snippets with my parents and siblings, laughing with my family, and making comments about how young my wife and I, and my parents and siblings, looked. Moments in time captured and then re-lived.

With the advent of 3D video and fully developed 360° immersive cameras, I wonder what home movies of the future will look like? Will we be able to put on some immersive goggles and enter a scene from the past? Will we be able to enter a scene, turn our heads and see the expression on our own faces as we take the video? What will the experience of looking at ‘old’ home made videos look like for our grandkids?

It’s exciting to think how the experience could be different in the future, but for now, I’m quite grateful for what we do have. It’s nice to have easier access to our old videos, and we are going to enjoy the fond memories for years to come.

What the new year does and does not bring

The new year brings an end to a difficult year.

The new year does not bring any tangible changes as a result of our planet crossing an arbitrary point in our rotation around the sun.

The new year brings hope, for a heard immunity against Covid-19, thanks to a number of different vaccines.

The new year does not bring any immediate relief from the spread of Covid-19, with a greater threat of spread due to a more contagious new variant coming out of the UK.

The new year brings resolutions and promises of self-improvement and ambitious goals.

The new year does not bring any promise of fulfilling these new goals without a dedicated effort to change habits and behaviours.

The new year brings a political and ideological shift in power in the United States.

The new year does not bring a promise of less divisiveness in the American people who seem too ideologically divided.

The new year brings inconsistent approaches to dealing with the virus, from being scarily too open to being confusingly too locked down.

The new year does not bring any promise of clarity about how best to deal with the virus while we wait for widespread vaccine distribution.

The new year brings continued paranoia and conspiracy filled misinformation, shared virally on social media.

The new year does not bring any way to meaningfully combat the spread of bad ideas.

The new year brings anticipation for a better year than 2020.

The new year brings promise of post pandemic world.

The new year brings opportunity for positive change.

The new year brings us more of the same, unless we choose to think, say, and act differently.

Let’s be different, better, more loving, kind, and caring… to ourselves, our community, and our environment. We do not get to choose the world we live in, but we do get to choose our impact on it and those in our community we share it with.

A step in the right direction

I used to hate the idea of new year’s resolutions. So much hype built into large and often unrealistic goals. But my healthy living goals have changed that. Today, I hit all my targets (literally with my archery goal as well as figuratively). And so I added my stickers to my chart, and am heading into my hot tub after writing this.

What matters though, as I have learned, is that I maintain my weekly goals when I’m busy at work. It’s easy to take a step in the right direction on the first day of the year, while on holiday. But this doesn’t prepare me for the year ahead like the first week back at school.

That doesn’t take anything away from my day, from the first day of 2021… it does remind me that habits are made when it’s hard to maintain habits, rather than when it’s easy. It reminds me that every step in the right direction is a good step to take.

I’ve made some great strides in meeting my healthy living goals in the past two years, and I believe I’ll do the same this year. It’s easier when I create goals that are actually attainable, and that make me feel better about myself. It’s also easier because I’ve created the time and space in my home schedule to meet my targets. The challenge isn’t doing what needs to be done, the challenge is consistently making time, and getting started. Consistently.

Healthy living goals, past and future

I shared my health living goals and results, and some helpful tips last year. And I think they are worth sharing again:

My healthy living goals year-end reflection, with 5 key tips.

Here is my calendar chart for 2020:

The one stat worth noting: Workouts

Last year: 63% (57% would have been an average of 4-days a week. I only did less than 4 days a week 3 times during the year.)

This year: 78.7% (288/366days or an average of 5.5 days a week. I only did less the 4 days twice and one of those was the week after I broke my patella.)

I barely missed mediation or a day of reading/writing. A difference of note to last year, I listened to 33 books in 2020. That’s up from 26 last year and included a lot more fiction than in previous years.

I was also consistent with intermittent fasting until I stopped doing this in October. I was dropping weight that I didn’t want to lose at that point. While at some point I might return to this form of time restricted eating, I think I’ve ingrained the habit of not snacking after dinner, but my early morning workouts leave me too hungry to do this when my last meal is usually done by 6:30pm. I’m over 25lbs lighter than I was 3 years ago and actually want to add some muscle mass this year.

Overall, I have to say that this has been a healthy year. Besides my accident, breaking my knee, I had a shoulder injury that was slow to recover, and my (chronic) back issues flared up only once for about a week. Besides that, I’d easily say that I’m the fittest I’ve been in 25+ years.

So where to now? Here’s my plan with my calendar and stickers for 2021:

Red: Exercise (continued) I know the visual of gaps in workouts pushes me. I will try to match this year’s average.

Blue: Meditation (continued +) I plan to continue to give myself a sticker for doing a guided meditation in the morning. But I also plan to give myself a second sticker if I can do a minimum of 10 minutes of unguided meditation sometime later in the day. I think for me to progress in my meditation I have to dedicate more time to staying focussed on my breath and commit to putting more hours into this.

Yellow: Writing. I don’t need to track reading anymore. I read (listen) during cardio and squeeze in more reading whenever I am doing menial tasks or driving alone. But I want to continue to advance my writing. So, one sticker for my Daily Ink blog post, and a second sticker when I do any writing beyond that. Let’s see if my sticker chart can inspire me to do more than just a daily post. At least to start, much of what I write beyond these posts may not be immediately public – so tracking with a 2nd sticker will keep me honest about how much of this I actually do).

Green: Archery. Goodbye intermittent fasting, hello hobby! After a year-and-a-half hiatus, I started shooting again and I’m loving it. It helps that I have a (socially distanced) friend coaching me a bit, and I’m seeing great results. To me this is a form of meditation. It’s also something that I started then watched get pushed asides due to being busy and not prioritizing. If I can get 100 days of shooting in next year, that would be amazing!

So while there are many reasons to throw 2020 the middle finger, I think that my healthy living sticker chart is not one of them. I know that without keeping myself honest with this system, 2020 could have been an abysmal year for my physical and mental well-being… but this charting and commitment to myself was a shining light in what was otherwise a very dark year. I hope to see equal success in 2021!

Easier targets

Today I moved my archery target about 2/3rds closer. Of course my shooting was much more accurate, but that’s not the point. With the stress of hitting a bulls eye at 20 meters removed, and the target itself being so much larger, I could focus on my release much more. I’m still new enough at archery that I need to think a lot about what I’m doing, and the one aspect of my shot that my brain wants to focus on most is my aim. Doing so, I often forget about my release and squeeze the trigger rather than using the back tension of my arm. So, 15 minutes after moving the target closer, I found myself hitting the bulls eye, and also doing the things I want to do with my release.

How often do we move the targets closer for our students who struggle? How often do we give them the chance to succeed on smaller tasks, on their way to more challenging ones? Yes, we often do this in Math. But where else is this strategy useful? How else can we move the targets closer, help students find success, then make the task progressively more challenging?

A hard realization

There are times when I think that I have goals and ambitions to do so many things, and other times when I have the time to do things… and I just don’t.

Is it a by-product of being in a pandemic or is it my nature to be more lazy than I wish I was? Is it that I don’t really have the goals I thought I did, or is it the priority I put on things?

I’m about to head into my home gym for a workout, I’ve done my daily meditation, I’m doing my daily write. I’m fit, I’m restarting archery and loving it. I’m spending time with family.

So, why do I still feel like I should be doing more? Why do I feel like I’m letting myself down for not starting a big project or hitting some other target I’ve created in my mind? Why does binge watching tv make me feel as much guilt as pleasure?

It’s a hard realization that no matter what I do, a part of me feels I should be doing more? What drives this feeling? What makes me feel this way? I’ll start back at work next week and I’ll be so busy that I won’t have the time I have now. Then, I’ll look back and think, why didn’t I do more last week?

Am I the only one that thinks like this?

Binge watching

Every extended break I end up doing this: I pick a series and binge watch a few seasons over a few days. I watch so little television of any kind regularly, that there is always something to catch up on. My wife totally sunk into The Handmaids Tale a while back and told me I’d love it. So here I am approaching the end of Season 2, her watching it again with me, and saying ‘One more’ after already watching two episodes in a sitting.

Margaret Atwood is a brilliant writer, and the series is very well done. I remember seeing her say in a video that she didn’t put anything into Handmaid’s Tale that wasn’t something that had already happened somewhere in the world. If I was watching this series in 2019, I would have thought less about this fact, but somehow 2020 has made me see the world quite differently.

Today I’m more keenly aware that fascism can rear its ugly head. I’m more keenly aware of how religious beliefs can be argued and leveraged to reduce non-believer’s choices. I am more keenly aware of how information can be misconstrued and manipulated to fool a large percentage of the population.

We live in a world where rulers can still rule for their lifetime; Where religious and cultural genocide happen; Where rights to basic food and healthcare are dependent on geography and luck of being born to parents who can support a child’s needs. This is a not a just and free world for many, and that can lead to unrest. It can lead to upheaval, and it can spark less democratic and more totalitarian regimes. Regimes that, while not necessarily similar to Handmaids Tale, can be quite scary.

On that solemn and dark thought… my wife wants to watch another episode, and I’m quite willing to partake.

Habit tracking – what’s next?

I’ve been reevaluating my healthy living goals over this holiday break. I’ve realized that I don’t need to track a few things that I was tracking on my healthy living chart.

The yellow sticker was originally for 20 minutes minimum reading (listening to books, not podcasts), and/or writing, which I didn’t do much of until the middle of 2019, when I started writing here daily. I don’t think I’ve missed a day of writing since, and I listed to 33 books this year. So, mission accomplished… and such a regular part of my day now that I really don’t need a sticker to track this behaviour.

Also, I started tracking intermittent fasting in 2019, and continued this year. I needed at least a 14 hour gap to earn a sticker. My original goal was 5 days a week with breaks on Friday and Saturday nights when I might have snacks or drinks after dinner. I think this is really healthy but I’ve been pushing myself on my morning workouts and actually struggling to keep weight on, after years of having too much weight on me. I am now my university weight and fitter than I’ve been in about 25 years. But I struggled once we hit September to go 14 hours on most days, and while I’d get close, tracking it seems moot, because I often felt self care was not the objective of holding off on getting some food in me and feeling strong.

My other stickers are exercise and meditation. I usually worked out 5 days a week, and I know that many weeks this year, when I missed 2 workouts early on, the lack of stickers that week really motivated me to exercise daily and keep going. So this sticker reward and tracking is really working for me.

For meditation, I have been doing 10 min. guided daily, and almost have a perfect record. There are some days when I would take too long writing and do a rushed workout and forget to meditate later, having skipped my morning routine. On this break, where I’m not getting up between 5 and 5:30am, I’ve remembered to meditate after 11pm on 3 different days. I think next year I’m going to try to meditate twice daily, once guided in the morning and once silently later in the day (at least 4 days a week). Then I’ll give myself a sticker for each, so I can contrast the amount of times I meditated twice, while also tracking if I skip both on a given day.

So where am I right now with my 2021 healthy living motivation chart?

Red: Workouts (continued)

Blue: Meditation (1 or 2 stickers)

Yellow: A writing goal that I haven’t figured out yet?

Green: I don’t know yet?

Starting this chart 2 years ago has been significant in me being able to create a healthy lifestyle that I’ve been able to monitor and maintain. It’s not a light choice to make, it’s a year of dedication with significant rewards to my personal health and mental well-being. So, over the next few days, I’ll have to solidify my last two targets… and there you have it, writing this has given me something new to track… archery. Now I just need to make my writing and archery goals specific and I’ll be all set for the new year!

Body and mind

Background:

I’m loving my return to archery. I now realize that when I readjust my healthy living goals for 2021, they will need to include finding time to shoot arrows. Just like I created time for writing and exercise over the past couple years, I need to carve out some regular time to shoot. Over this week the first thing I’ll do is figure out a way to do so indoors at home… that’s not just safe, but safe in my wife’s eyes.

These last couple of sessions, I’ve been working on my release. With a compound bow, the goal is not to squeeze the trigger with your thumb, but rather to pull your entire arm back and have the back tension of your arm and hand cause your thumb to trigger the release. To do this, your hand needs to be relaxed, your thumb needs to be securely around the trigger, and your back tension should cause the release such that the release surprises you. Being comfortable with this surprise takes getting used to, and so does the idea of not squeezing your thumb.

Body:

It’s interesting when you learn a new skill how easy it is to fill your conscious mind with everything except what you need to focus on. I want to be surprised by the trigger release, but my body is waiting, anticipating it, and taking my attention away from my focus on my release. I want to relax my sight, and let the scope pin float around the target center, but my thumb bounces on the trigger when I see the pin dead center. I want to feel my arm pulling back but instead I realize that my thumb pushed down… only after I’ve taken the shot.

With any new physical skill, I find that my body awareness is my biggest challenge. In the past, when I’ve gone to a core fitness class, the Physio guiding us would adjust my body during an exercise and say, ‘Do you feel the difference?’ Usually my response is ‘No’. I need to look at a mirror and practice the difference, but I don’t feel it.

And Mind:

With archery, I’m starting to feel the difference… but I have to be both focussed and relaxed: Focussed enough to be paying attention to as little as possible, honing in on just my release and not anything else that distracts me; Relaxed enough that I am genuinely surprised by the release, and not in a heightened state of preparation for it. The state of being simultaneously focussed and relaxed is not easily attained.

It’s about unifying body and mind. Having both act as one.