Tag Archives: attitude

Effort over output

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On my fitness journey, I’ve learned that building up my strength with certain exercises does not progress evenly. There are times when I get stuck on a weight and can’t seem to improve, and other times when I see surprising progress. I hit plateaus as well as peaks. And it can be a bit demoralizing when I hit a peak and then can’t replicate it for days or even weeks.

What I’ve come to realize is that the personal bests don’t matter, what really matters is the effort. Today I couldn’t lift nearly as heavy as I have in the past. For example, in my morning workout I struggled to get 6 reps of 185lbs once (with assistance) on incline bench. Yet I did 3 sets of 7 reps just a couple weeks ago, with no assistance.

However, I pushed myself really hard today. My muscles got a good burn, and I feel like I left nothing in my reserve tank when I did that heavily assisted last rep today. If I tried another rep my spotter would have had to do more work than me.

Effort over output.

Some days getting to the gym is hard. Some days in the gym are hard. Today was hard, but in a different way. Today was hard because I couldn’t lift as heavy as I usually do. I felt I needed more rest between sets, and everything seemed more challenging than usual… and yet I still pushed myself. I put in maximum effort.

So leaving the gym I felt good. I know that I put in the best effort I could, and I realized that it would have been easy to be disappointed if I paid attention only to my strength during the exercises. However it wasn’t the strength output that mattered it was the effort input… and with that as the measure, I rocked it! I kicked @$$!

Effort over output for the win.

💪😀👍

Petty things

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I was listening to Michaela Slinger’s break-up song, Petty Things, this morning while on my exercise bike and began to wonder, what are the petty things I worry too much about?

Here is one example: The bad driver that does something stupid, making me swear out loud while in my car. Then this festers in my brain for too long, perhaps even to the point of mentioning it to someone later in the day.

But I’m not writing this as an excuse to share my petty grievances. No, that’s literally complaining about them while simultaneously re-grieving them. Instead I’m questioning what underlies the petty things that make them feel more than petty?

What are those points of anger, frustration, hurt, and aggression that trigger a petty response in a way that is an obvious overreaction? What’s beneath the surface, waiting for a petty excuse to be shared?

And can we do the same with joy? Can we (naturally) look for those wonderful occasions of happiness and delight to spring out at any given moment. Can we foster inquisitiveness around joyful happenstance as easily as we sometimes trigger petty thoughts?

I think the animal in us sometimes overrides our humanity. We look for the dangers, the warnings, the things that make life challenging as a sort of animal self defence. But when an animal escapes danger, it literally and physically shakes it off and goes about its life. Humans remember, hold on to, and relive the experience.

If we want to change that, we need to be intentional. We need to seek the positive things we want to live in our minds rent free… petty things already reside there, it’s up to us to vacate those thoughts by filling our brains with things we know will be more enjoyable, more delightful. When we do this our petty grievances start to feel a lot more petty… we start charging rent for negative thoughts, while joy starts to live rent free.

Positive Observations

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Have you ever noticed people‘s affinity to focus on the negative?

You say what a beautiful day it is to a stranger outside a coffee shop, and the responses you get is, “I hear it’s going to rain tomorrow.”

You say what a great price for eggs, (🇨🇦), and the response is, “I can’t believe how high prices all are these days!”

At coffee with a friend this morning, he commented that my ‘observations’ recently have all been positive:

‘Workouts are going great, and I feel stronger than I ever have.’

‘Things have been running really smoothly at work, and I’m enjoying connecting with students the past few days.’

‘I’ve felt a lot more present recently than I have in the last few weeks.’

Where I used the word ‘observations’ above, very often the term tends to be ‘complaints’… things that I notice which are not going as well as they could be, or even if they are going well noting afterwards how this is fleeting.

I’m going to bask in these positive observations for a bit. Let them soak in and appreciate them… I had the funny urge to say, ‘while it lasts’ but as funny as that might be, it totally misses the point. I’m enjoying staying positive, and I look forward to this feeling continuing!

Do it anyway

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I love this video I found on LinkedIn, shared by Soren Harrison.

“Discipline doesn’t care if you are tired. ‘You’re tired?’

Do it anyway. Right?

Discipline says ‘Oh you don’t feel good.’

Well do it anyway.

Discipline says ‘It’s raining outside and it’s cold. It’s windy.’

Do it anyway.”

It was miserable out today… an ‘atmospheric river’. There is flooding all over the Vancouver Mainland. My buddy Dave and I did our walk anyway. Our 149th Coquitlam Crunch since January 2021.

Excuses are easy. Discipline is doing it anyway… no matter what gets in the way.

Hey Sunshine

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One of my favourite nicknames to give someone is Sunshine. I call both of my daughters Sunshine at different times, and it makes me happy to call them that.

Occasionally I nickname a kid at school Sunshine. It’s usually someone who visits the office regularly and leaves the office staff smiling. Walking in with a happy disposition and leaving a little happiness behind when they go.

One of these kids, who graduated a couple years ago, just connected with me on LinkedIn. Sure she was an amazing student, Valedictorian and Spirit of Inquiry winner (more prestigious in our school than Valedictorian), but that’s not what I remember about her. What I remember is the delightful way she and a friend came to the office daily to spread a little sunshine.

Who spreads sunshine in your life? And are you someone who spreads sunshine?

Unexpected positive interactions

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I had to make a bit of an embarrassing phone call yesterday. I metaphorically dropped the ball. A parent needed permission to get a student signed up for an online course and had tried to contact me a few times. I never got back to her. She had a similar (but not the same) first name as another parent I was dealing with, and her son wanted a similar (but not the same) course as the other parent’s son. I still mixed them up, thought they were asking about the same issue, and only responded to the latter parent. The error was due to a careless error on my part… 100% my fault.

I remember the day last week when I dealt with the other family, then saw a message from my secretary after the fact and thought, ‘Oh, I just dealt with that’, brushing off the message rather than reading it fully.

Considering the first message from this parent was the week before last, maybe even the week before that, she’d been waiting quite a while. When I called at the end of the day today, I was expecting to speak to an upset person. I introduced myself and immediately apologized for my lack of timely communication.

The response I got was a parent happy to have finally reached me, and she immediately explained the situation. As it turns out, this was a situation that was clear cut and actually didn’t even need my approval. I explained how she could register, and gave the name and number of my secretary to connect with if she had any issues. I followed up with an email, and also let all my secretaries know that this person might call for help today, if she had any registration issues.

Yesterday was a long day of back-to-back-to-back-to-back meetings that left me with gaps of under 20 minutes of free time to get things done from 8:20am to almost 4pm. I did have a long and enjoyable lunch meeting in there, but that was also a working lunch, and so I couldn’t even look at my growing inbox the whole day.

Seeing the message about this parent and realizing my mistake was something that made me want to crawl under a rock as I sat at my desk at almost 5pm. But I figured this poor parent had waited long enough and I’d just take the complaint hit on the chin before heading home. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised to hear a relieved parent who recognized that I was going to help her son get registered for the course he’d been waiting for.

Interactions like this just want me to pay it forward. I’m left wondering how I can engage with someone else in a more positive way? How can I interact with someone in a better way than they were expecting? How can I provide an unexpected positive interaction with someone when that’s not what they’d expect from me?

Mindset Not Wet

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I spent last night camping with a few teachers and students. A larger group of us spent a beautiful sunny day at the lake, and then a smaller group spent the night in a campground, a 5km hike from the lake. (Camping gear was delivered by car to make the trek easier after a full day at the beach.)

After bedtime it started to rain. At 3am the rain was so hard everyone woke up. I didn’t realize that a couple tents got flooded and the students moved under the shelter that was at the camp site. This morning the rain continued and really didn’t stop all day. We had planned a 9km hike, but shortened it because of the weather.

We played up the change a little because we knew some students didn’t want to hike at all in the rain. That mindset can be ‘adjusted’ a bit by making the task shorter. My PE teacher wanted to be ‘bad cop’ telling everyone that we were going on the long hike, and I could be the ‘good cop’ that shortened it, although I originally suggested the other way around.

It’s amazing noting how the difference in attitudes and mindsets framed the overall enjoyment of students on this very wet hike. We had a student leading the way and pushing the pace, despite not being someone that hikes much, and we had the ‘Eeyore’ student who continually wanted to know how much longer, and decided it would be a bad trip before the hike started.

Our mindset matters so much. We enjoy or suffer the day we have partially by the circumstances of the day, but mostly from the mindset that we set for the day. So no matter the weather, do your best to ensure your mindset isn’t wet.

Frame of mind

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Yesterday I didn’t work out. I planned to but things just got in the way, including my lack of motivation. I don’t need motivation today because weekdays I have a habitual routine and I know that I’ll be working out after I publish this. But weekends are often off schedule and motivation is required. I didn’t have it yesterday.

That said, I’ve only taken one other day off in about a month, and two days are not a big deal to miss out of 30. I intellectually know this, missing my workout wasn’t a big deal. Yet because I intended to work out, I didn’t have the right frame of mind about my missed workout. If I woke up feeling awful like I did last week, head pounding, and needed a break, that’s ok. But waking up with full intention to do my daily exercise and then not doing so feels like a failure.

Yesterday I had to help my wife with a task on her computer. It’s something I’ve done many times but the setup on her computer was different and this simple process took 3 times as long as it should have. I was frustrated. I was speaking to the computer as if it was an animate object that could hear me. I swore. I got angry. I wanted to throw the laptop across the room. It was stupid, and worse yet the whole thing still only took about 5-6 minutes to do. I should never have let this minor slow down get to me, but I wasn’t in a resourceful frame of mind.

Yesterday I ended the day with a meditation. I lay down with headphones on in the spare bedroom and woke up 50 minutes later not having heard any of the last 1/2 of the 20 minute session. I didn’t even realize I was that tired, but the meditation was actually just a nap. Instead of accepting this, I was upset that I chose to lie down and allowed myself to fall asleep. I went to my bed but rather than falling directly back to sleep, I was up and disappointed about missing my meditation, and then was missing sleep as a result. That’s far from a meditative frame of mind, and certainly not why I meditate.

Each of these minor things could have felt different if I was in a different frame of mind. Each of these were unnecessary stresses that I allowed to build up in me. They really weren’t reasons to be upset. They weren’t moments that I needed to fret about. They were not things that needed to set a negative mood or to perseverate about.

Sometimes resourcefulness takes too much effort. It’s easy to beat yourself up rather than to frame things in a positive way. Sometimes the frames around your thoughts are rigid. Cold. Unkind. You would give anyone else a break, give them an opportunity to slip up, or not follow through… but yourself, no, you don’t give yourself the opportunity.

Get it right, or be disappointed.

Failure is not an option.

Mistakes are something other people can be forgiven for.

Results are required. Now.

This is not a healthy frame of mind. It does not provide any benefits, and it steals joy. It’s better to be gentle. All it takes is seeing outside the frame. I’ll push hard on my workout today. This morning I already redid the same meditation I slept through yesterday. And I see the futility of being upset at my wife’s computer. The poor framing is easy to see today, the trick is to see it in the moment, and to be kinder to myself when I don’t have the right frame of mind.

Don’t let the rain stop you

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I’m writing this at the edge of Allouette lake in Golden Ears Provincial Park, 8:30 PM Tuesday. I’m here with three teachers and 18 students who will be spending the night in the campground nearby. It’s pouring rain. Actually right now it’s a little on the light side, but it has been continuous and at times quite heavy since we arrived, five hours ago.

It’s starting to get dark and we will be walking back in just a few minutes, but I’ve got a little window of time to dictate this while I stand near the steepest part of the path leading to the lake. Three students didn’t want to come down this section I didn’t want to leave them behind so I’m hovering back as the other students return this way from walking along the shore.

On a miserable day like this it would’ve been easy to cancel the camping trip. The rain has been relentless, but in all honesty it hasn’t dampened spirits. When we get back to the campsite we will roast some marshmallows either on the propane fire or on the open fire pit if we can get one started there.

The message is simple, too often we cancel things because conditions aren’t perfect. We look for excuses when in actual fact it’s just laziness or thinking that because conditions aren’t perfect, the trip might be ruined. In reality, we can make many more opportunities work than we actually take. It just takes a little effort and a small shift in attitude. There were a couple cancellations made by students and/or their parents over the last couple days, and the forecast might have been one of the reasons. Those are the students that lost out. Not a single student here is losing out.

We live on the edge of a rainforest. If we think that rain is a reason to cancel something then we are really missing out on a significant part of the year when we can find joy in the simplest of things.

Camping in the rain might not be as good as camping on a warm, beautiful day, but that doesn’t take away from the opportunity we have regardless of the weather.

Kids are heading back this way now, and so I think I’ll end this right here. I need to be present and enjoy their presence… no matter what the weather looks like.

Be Fearless

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“It is better to negate the positive than it is to state the negative.” ~ Joe Truss

I had a fantastic conversation with Joe (my uncle) this morning. We discussed the importance of framing the things we don’t want in the positive. Our minds negate the ‘No’ in front of the thing we don’t like. We have no choice but to think about the negative action in order to know what not to do… and so we are fundamentally thinking about the wrong things when we are negating an inherently negative idea.

Instead of “No Fear!” -> Be Fearless!

To understand ‘No Fear’, we must understand Fear. To understand ‘Be fearless’, we must understand fearlessness, and maybe bravery or courageousness too.

So, negate the positive:

• ‘I hate this’ -> I am not in love with this.

• Don’t cheat -> Play fair.

• I am angry -> This doesn’t feel good, I am not at ease, or I am not happy with…

You will feel much happier if you do this little life hack, and so will those you hope to inspire, lead, and love.