Tag Archives: attitude

Winter blues

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It’s still 17 days away to the shortest day of the year, but we are already at the point of seeing almost no sun outside of working hours. This is a time of year that I really wished I lived somewhere closer to the equator. It’s not just a trip to the shortest day, it’s also a trip to cold, wet, and sometimes snowy days for the next couple months.

This is when routines really matter, when motivation to exercise is really low, but the exercise itself is more important than ever. This is when eating well is challenging with Christmas festivities, and time off work for the winter break becomes an easy time to break your fitness and eating routine.

I’ve tried a new routine of writing at night so as not to squeeze my morning routine, but I didn’t really develop the habit and I’m back to writing in the morning. Except on weekends. Weekends are already slower and I haven’t written my posts on a weekend morning in weeks. Thus, I know the holidays will be a challenge to maintain my habits.

It’s a really busy week ahead, and I’ll be home late most nights. It will feel like besides my morning routine, the only things on my agenda are work and sleep… and dark, rainy, gloomy skies… and the cold. Yuck.

I need to remember to find moments of joy at work and at home. I need to make sure I’m eating well and taking my vitamins. And most of all, I need to remember that before I realize it, spring will be here. Every year seems shorter, faster, and so winter will be but a distant memory soon enough… the trick is finding, no creating, memories of this winter beyond the darkness, wet, and cold.

As my coffee mug says, “What a great day it is today!”

Do the thing

“Preparing to do the thing isn’t doing the thing.

Scheduling time to do the thing isn’t doing the thing.

Making a to-do list for the thing isn’t doing the thing.

Telling people you’re going to do the thing isn’t doing the thing.

Messaging friends who may or may not be doing the thing isn’t doing the thing.

Writing a banger tweet about how you’re going to do the thing isn’t doing the thing.

Hating on yourself for not doing the thing isn’t doing the thing. Hating on other people who have done the thing isn’t doing the thing. Hating on the obstacles in the way of doing the thing isn’t doing the thing.

Fantasizing about all of the adoration you’ll receive once you do the thing isn’t doing the thing.

Reading about how to do the thing isn’t doing the thing. Reading about how other people did the thing isn’t doing the thing. Reading this essay isn’t doing the thing.

The only thing that is doing the thing is doing the thing.” ~ Strangest Loop

It doesn’t matter if it’s a workout, a phone call, a challenging conversation, or even a blog post. The task won’t get done unless you actually do it. That said, if you want it done, it’s good to schedule it, it’s good to add it to your tasks, and it’s good to tell people and make the thing public. The quote above doesn’t dismiss doing these preparatory things, it just identifies that these aren’t enough.

The only thing that is enough is doing the thing.

Here comes the rain

Living in the Vancouver Lower Mainland, I miss the rainy season in Barbados. When the rainy season hits on this tropical island, it meant a morning rainstorm with water droplets the size of coins soaking you in seconds, followed by the cloud cover passing you and the rain stopping almost instantly. After that there was 20-30 minutes of uncomfortable humidity as the hot sun evaporated the rainwater. Maybe this would happen again later, but often it wasn’t until the next day.

Occasionally you’d get a cloudy, cool day that lasted the whole day with intermittent rainfall, but there might only be 5-10 days like that the whole season. Maybe I’m underplaying it, after all I was 9 when I left, but I remember a rainy season I could easily handle.

Today was a reminder that BC rain is nothing like that. I spent over an hour outside in misty rain, putting our above ground pool away. It was damp, and there was a constant drizzle or mist. It was gloomy. There was hardly a time during the day that I could tell you where the sun was due to the heavy cloud cover… And the season is just starting.

The worst two months of weather here are usually November and February. But the gloominess starts now. I’ll make the most of the grey days to come, even heading to and from work in the dark. I’ll continue to take my Vitamin D, and I’ll use my sunlight desk lamp at school. But I have to admit that I’d take the rainy season in Barbados any time over the rainy season in Vancouver.

Through what lens?

There is a saying that, ‘if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail’. We all see the world differently in different circumstances, but the same circumstances don’t always elicit the same reactions. Someone with a metaphorical hammer might see the world as nails… but another person might see the world as filled with fragile material and think the hammer is a tool of destruction. Another person with only a hammer, who sees the world as fragile, might be upset that they only have a hammer and feel helpless and limited.

In a world of hammers, while one person might see nails to be hammered in, another might see value in using the other end of the hammer to pull nails out… to remove them. Same hammer used to different ends (literally and metaphorically).

Moving from hammers to glasses. People really see the world through different coloured lenses. I think this is a good thing, but we shouldn’t be set on just one colour. We shouldn’t fixate on seeing the world in monochrome, but rather change our lenses frequently. A bad situation can be changed simply by changing our lens on the situation.

A traffic jam gives us more time to listen to an audio book. A miscommunication can lead to laughs. A mistake in an order can be a point of frustration or a moment to be gracefully corrected, or even an opportunity to try something new. What lens we choose determines our lived experience.

What saddens me is when people get stuck seeing the world through narrow, gloomy lenses. People victimize themselves, they see harm where no harm was intended. They feel the world is out to get them. They see the world through a lens of malice, hurt, and negative intent. They don’t see themselves as having a hammer, they see themselves as being nails. This isn’t a healthy way to live.

Still others get stuck seeing their past through just one lens. Trauma will do that to people. Recovery from an addiction becomes a lifelong battle, not something concurred, or replaced with new meaning. A moment in the past can define someone’s lenses in the future… limiting their future perspective.

How do we give ourselves more choice? How do we find more tools than just a hammer, and how do we see the world as not just nails? How do we change our lenses? Isn’t it interesting that we wear glasses to fix our focus, but not what we focus on… pick a good lens.

Energy flow

Some things take a lot of energy to perform, and some things give you energy.

Here are a couple opposing examples:

Meeting new people can take a lot of energy. There is the nervousness of not being sure what to say, the struggle to find common interests, the uncomfortableness of awkward silence. Meeting new people can be draining.

Working out requires a lot of energy output, but at the same time there is an endorphin surge that provides a positive feeling. The net energy you have after a good workout is fulfilling.

While both of these experiences require energy, one leaves you feeling depleted, sucking your energy batteries dry, while the other replenishes your batters and leaves you feeling charged and ready to go.

In a way, the cumulative sum of draining versus charging activities determines what kind of day you have. At the end of the day you can feel like the day wiped you out or it left you with some reserves.

You can do challenging things emotionally or physically (or both) and end your day feeling very accomplished or just exhausted. The big question is, did the day just happen to you, were you just a victim of the positive and negative energy flows, or did you help to determine them?

In other words, did you seek to perform more positive energy experiences than negative ones? Did you find moments in your day where you filled your batteries? Did you feed your mind and body with joyful moments that charged your energy reserves? Sometimes it doesn’t take much: a delicious meal, a shared joke, a 5 minute walk, a deliberate conversation, a compliment given, even a few deep breaths.

Simple, intentional things that bring you energy rather than drain energy can be the difference between coming home feeling accomplished and coming home with an empty tank. Be intentional in seeking out things that give you a positive flow of energy during the day.

Oh, can’t complain

Today on a stroll through a Saturday Farmer’s Market I passed an interesting character. He was on the obese side of heavy, in a motorized wheelchair, in loud checkered pants, and a colourful muscle shirt that revealed his diabetes monitor on his arm. Just as I was passing him, he bumped into someone he knew and I heard his response to her question, “Oh, can’t complain.”

I find it fascinating that people who suffer the most, and need the most, are often the most optimistic and generous. I worked in a school for very high needs students, many of whom came from very needy families, yet their parents were far more likely to donate their time to a shelter or volunteer kitchen than at any other school I’ve ever worked at.

My thought of the day, “Quit yer bitch’in.”

So many people have so much more to worry about and yet they live a life where they ‘can’t complain’… so really, what do we have to complain about?

Life is amazing, there is so much to appreciate, so much to value and cherish. Live, laugh, love, and for your sake more than anyone else’s… stop complaining.

Long slow road

I know it’s going to take time. I know I have to go slow. My herniated disc no longer hurts and I’ve been completely off meds for a week and a half. But I can tell that the pinched nerve in my neck is still an issue. My left arm is still very weak, and I get an annoying tingling sensation in my forearm that feels like a bug landed on me. It happens in the same spot every time and I still slap it like it’s a bug every time I feel it.

I’m back to doing my cardio. I’m stretching every day. But I was on a great path physically that was completely disrupted. I regretfully redistributed some weight that took me 2.5 years to get in the right places, and with my careful path forward it will probably be a year to year and a half to put it back where it belongs.

That’s a bit of a hard realization, although I know it’s the smart thing to do. Younger me would have been determined to speed that up. Younger me would probably have re-injured my disc in the attempt to ‘recover’ faster. The challenge now is to stay the course, keep my positive habits, and stay motivated even when the improvements are too small to see.

I am the tortoise not the hare. The road ahead is long and slow. And there isn’t a finish line as much as there is a healthy and hopefully pain free lifestyle to enjoy along the way.

Getting unstuck

I remember teaching Grade 6/7’s about Nigerian fables. One of them was about a greedy animal during hard times. All the animals had collected food and stored it in a clearing to share, but each night some of the food went missing. To catch the culprit they put tar around the food and the thief got caught in it. The next day after an apology the other animals started trying to pull the animal out. He was extremely stuck and they yanked so hard that they stretched this animal and ripped of its legs.

The fable is about not being greedy, but the title is something like, “How snakes came to be.” I love when the moral is not explicit in the storytelling.

I got thinking about this for a totally different reason, one I’m far more explicit about in my title… the idea of getting unstuck. Sometimes we absolutely have to step out of our current experience in order to see what’s possible beyond where we currently are.

The saying, ‘No matter where you go, there you are,’ has come up a few times recently in conversation. This is only true if you let it happen, if you stay inside of the tiny box you put around yourself. There are people who travel all around the world and they look forward to seeing a Macdonald’s, Burger King, or Starbucks. They look to keep their world the same. But travel can give you so much more than that. There are people who keep friends that aren’t nice to them, who dismiss an entire genre of music, who stick to a plan and never take side adventures. None of these people might see themselves as stuck but they are.

For me personally, I’ve been stuck in pain and/or drowsiness for a couple months and while I’m slowly recovering, I am also stuck in the way my days go. I’m not following any healthy routines to consistently workout or meditate. I can still ride a stationary bicycle without causing any harm to the bulged disc in my neck. Meditation would actually be great right now and I’ve let my daily habit slip.

I’m going through slow (admittedly often dizzy) motions of the day waiting for moments of clarity, but when they come I don’t necessarily take advantage of them. I need to see beyond my current condition. I need to see what I what to accomplish in the future and I need to do things now to support that. I need first to have goals that I want to achieve beyond where I am now, then I need to move towards those goals.

Sometimes it only takes baby steps, sometimes it takes a massive leap. But you don’t get unstuck thinking ‘No matter where you go, there you are’. The issue with this is not about geography, it’s about moving who you are to who you want to be.

Not Firing All Cylinders

When your body isn’t working as smoothly as it should it’s hard to stay motivated. My back and neck issues continue to plague me, and I find it hard to give 100% to anything I do. My workouts have become mostly cardio and stretching, but at least I can do this maintenance. However it’s not just physical, mentally the injury is wearing me down.

It’s hard to keep my attention on something other than the discomfort and pain I feel. Moments like right now are rare, where I’m not actually aware of my shoulder or arm. I feel normal. But I’m going to get out of bed and slowly the pain will creep in. Still, I’m lucky because yesterday pain is what woke me up, and there was almost no break from it all day.

I have such sympathy and empathy for anyone and everyone that deals with pain regularly. I’m approaching 6 weeks of this and I’m finding it very hard to stay positive. Yet I know this will eventually pass. I know I’ll get all my cylinders up and running again. The trick is to care for myself now, and let my body heal. But until it does, it’s hard to think about other things clearly. When the pain is deep, the pain becomes topical… it sits on my mind and reminds me of its presence… it stays on my mind and doesn’t let me do anything without a reminder that my body is uncomfortable. When my body isn’t running well, neither is my mind, it’s not like they are separate operating systems, they both need to be working well. And that needs to be my main focus.

Aware of blame

Today I was driving and I missed a light because the person in front of me was too slow to follow traffic speed. I yelled a profanity or two as I watched the yellow light turn red and the car before me finally crossed the line into the intersection. 6-7 minutes later, and one light from my turn-off the car in front of me was driving the speed of molasses on a cold day, and while cars in the left lane sped through the light, I was left yelling profanities yet again, while me and the slow poke in front of me slowed and stopped in our lane… while the light hadn’t quite switched to red from yellow yet.

It took this second over-the-top-loud-yelling-in-a-car-just-to-myself swearing of profanities to make me realize that I wasn’t that upset at the other drivers. No, I have been suffering back pain for two solid weeks and this is what was really getting to me.

It wasn’t bad driving, it was a bad back. Neither traffic event warranted my overreaction. Both were minor inconveniences rather than major affronts to common sense or to me personally.

It makes me wonder:

How often do we discount how much our mood can affect our reaction to events?

In this case I made a proverbial mountain out of a couple mole hills. And recognizing where the blame lay allowed me to rebalance myself so that I didn’t continue doing this for the rest of the day.