Tag Archives: attitude

Change of plans

Before covid hit, I was scheduled for a Mediterranean cruise, with stays in Spain and Portugal. One of my daughters had a semester abroad cancelled. And we are not the only ones that have seen all kinds of changes in plans occur.

Today I took a discretionary day off to assist with a family member having surgery, only to learn this morning that the surgery was cancelled. That’s the nature of what the last couple years have been like… The best laid plans of mice and men…

After build-up and expectations, cancelled plans are tough. I think they are taking a toll on people. It’s not a big deal when one thing doesn’t go as planned, but when plans are cancelled again and again, when rules and expectations change again and again, it gets to be mentally exhausting.

We need to give ourselves the permission to be upset and disappointed, we need to allow ourselves the opportunity to be pissed off. And then we need to take a deep breath and move on. It’s not healthy to stay in a state of disappointment. The reality is that remaining in a state of disappointment accomplishes nothing, except maybe to make us feel crappy.

Living through a pandemic is stressful, but the alternative is worse. We’ll get through this. There will be more cancellations. There will be more rule changes. There will be more upset people acting irrationally. But in the end, we’ll persevere, and as long as we are willing to adapt, and be as thoughtful and safe as we can, we will be stronger from the adversity we’ve faced.

Sticking to what works

On New Year’s Eve I shared my Healthy living goals reflection 2021. In this post I essentially said that I’m sticking with my old goals, with just a couple minor adjustments. Since then, this decision has bugged me a bit. I have felt a bit like I should have been more ambitious.

But this morning I realized that my goals are great. I have worked hard to maintain a healthy lifestyle the past few years and I’ve done far better than I have for a couple decades before that. Why should I add to this and push myself in a way that makes it hard to meet my daily goals?

I need to realize that when it comes to self care, maintaining a good plan is better than constantly striving to do more. It’s better to stick with what works than it is to push myself to a point where it gets too hard to achieve daily. Working out can include tougher workouts if I’m inclined, but I just had a few workouts that were really hard, then my body was begging for a rest. The soreness actually affected my sleep. That’s not healthy.

I’m not saying I won’t push myself every now and then, but I do need to realize that maintaining a good plan is better than creating a too challenging plan that I’ll give up on. ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’.

My healthy living goals are really good. They have worked wonders for me for the past 3 years, and I need to accept that sticking with the same goals is an achievement, and not something I need to feel disappointed about because I didn’t add more to them.

Internal batteries

You are really excited. A friend you haven’t seen in years is coming into town, and you can’t wait to connect. Three hours before the visit you get a phone call, your friend is very apologetic, but can’t make it today. A future date is set, but the gas is gone from your talk and you feel sad, even defeated, for the rest of the day.

—

You are upset. You just had an disagreement with a friend. You are stuck in your head, wondering how the conversation could have been better, but you aren’t thinking clearly. Anger, upset, and disappointment drain you. Then the friend calls. You suddenly feel better, you realize your faults in the earlier exchange and start to apologize, but you are interrupted by an apology offered by your friend. The conversation ends and you feel great, your tank is full and you are full of energy.

—

In neither of these cases did you add more energy into the system, you didn’t eat, you didn’t increase your heart rate and tap another energy system stored in your body. No, you just changed your perspective … or rather you had it changed for you.

Maybe sometimes we should spend a bit of thought, time, and energy changing our own perspective.

This time of year people get gifts where ‘Batteries aren’t included’, but your batteries are always there, and you’ve got the means to charge them anytime. And even if you feel you can’t, you probably know someone that can help. It doesn’t matter where the charge comes from, what matters is knowing that the battery tanks are there, and they can be filled at any time.

“It’s not what happens, it’s what you do that makes the difference.”

Sometimes all you need to do is change your perspective.

πŸŽ„πŸŽ„πŸŽ„πŸŽ„πŸŽ„

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! May these times bring you a much needed battery charge… enjoy the time with your family.

Living in renovation chaos

We are close (and yet not close) to having our entire main floor empty… Boxed and tucked away in our basement and garage, to start our renovation of our main floor.


I have no idea if our plan of a kitchen/living room in our basement (with hot plate and laundry sink) while sleeping upstairs is going to work. Will we have to exit the basement door at the back and walk around to the front door to go upstairs? Or will we drag dust and renovation dirtiness with us as we enter and exit the under constitution main floor?

Permits are ready, and we just need a couple inspections and we are under way. We’ll get the last bit of the main floor cleared even though the last 10% feels like it doesn’t end, and then the chaos begins for a planned 5 month reno… which by everyone’s experience with renovations before me actually means seven months.

No matter how I look at it, there will be no ‘normal’ happening in my life for the next half-year. I just need to remember and focus on the end result and the chaos will all be worth it.

Here comes the rain

It’s dumping outside this morning. That will happen when you live on the edge of a rain forest. It will happen a lot more as we creep into November, which is probably the wettest month in the Vancouver Lower Mainland, or maybe that’s February? The point is, we are heading into a whole lot of wet in the next while.

But today I have a walk up the Coquitlam Crunch trail planned with a friend, and we have a goal to do this trail once a week, at least 34 times, this school year. Today will be #3.

https://youtu.be/oMRU28bY14I

That will mean a lot of hikes in the rain. While it’s less than 30 minutes to the top, it’s almost an hour long. That’s long enough that if you aren’t dressed appropriately you are going to get soggy and cold. And I hate being cold!

So, I’ll bundle up, get sweaty in too many layers, and be happy to be outside with my buddy. Because when you live where we live, you either go outside and get wet, or you coop yourself up inside for several months of the year. It’s time to get wet…

50 is the new 30

When I was a kid, I’d watch TV and the grandmother in her 60’s would be hobbling with a cane, and grandad wore a hat that only old people wear.

When I was 25, I moved to Vancouver. At the time my dad was 46 or 47 and I used to call him ‘my old man’.

Today my brother-in-law turned 50. He and my sister have always been the young, hip family, and now he has joined us ‘old folks’ in their 50’s. But they are still young at heart… and so are we! Although my hairline might disagree, and I’m now needing glasses to look at my phone and read the already-too-large font, I have a hard time seeing myself as old.

50 is the new 30. Does this sound cliche? Yes. Do I care? No.

My in-laws are celebrating their 60th anniversary in a few days. My wife and I celebrated our 23rd yesterday. As we look at old photos and reminisce, I don’t look back and think the best years have happened already. Life may be short, but that doesn’t mean we can’t fill the time we have left with new adventures, joy, and activities that keep us feeling young.

—

Update for those of you that watched Three’s Company growing up: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMR66HGfT/

Aches and pains

I do a lot to take care of myself and for the most part, I feel good about my progress. But today I feel old.

I usually take in the attitude that age is just a number. I’m as young as I believe that I am. Today my age wins.

Saturday on my 5km walk with my wife, she decided to jog for some of it. I enjoy jogging at my wife’s pace and thought nothing of it. I will run on my treadmill faster than this, and for longer than the two sections we jogged for. Sunday after my archery I did an 8 minute leg workout that I usually do, and added about 4 reps of an assisted pistol squat, because I’m very slowly trying to get myself to the point that I can do these.

But by Sunday night my knee was hurting. I don’t know why, but think it might be running on uneven terrain rather than on the treadmill, or trying the pistol squat after my 8 minute workout, when my legs are fatigued. Then I got a hip cramp that night.

After this my shoulders and back tightened up and for the first time in several months I felt shoulder pain. I only did one exercise with my arms that was slightly different than my usual routine, and I intentionally did it with light weights since it was new. Besides, it was a bicep exercise, not a shoulder one.

This ache caused me to tense up my upper back and the tension between my shoulder blades was so tight, I had to push my back into doorway jams to work the kinks out several times during the day… basically using the corners of the doorway to massage the knots out of my upper back.

Old. That’s the feeling this morning. I feel like the rust has formed on my joints, and the whole machine is seizing up. This morning I’ll ride my stationary bike for 20 leisurely minutes, do some stretching, and that will be my workout. Tomorrow I have a massage booked and it will be a painful one. A lot of deep tissue work on my upper back, and hamstring work because my tight hamstrings tend to be the root of my leg and hip issues.

Maybe after that I can remember why I work so hard to take care of myself, remember to spend more time stretching, and start to feel young again. Maybe I need reminders like this to refocus me. When I don’t exercise, my back pain becomes chronic. But I have to say that it’s not fun to ache in several places at once, and while exercise usually keeps the rust away, right now this machine feels old and rusty.

This morning my age is getting the best of me… but I’m not done feeling young. I’ll work my way back to healthy, and oil these joints back to fully operational again. The alternative to this is being lazy and letting myself fall back into a life of daily pain, and feeling even older than I do today. No, I’d rather keep active and find my way back to feeling young again.

In a rut

My mind is a flutter. I seem to be hopping from idea to idea. At work my secretaries and I joke about me having a squirrel brain when I get like this. I start a task, get interrupted, and then don’t remember the task until much later. A student comes to ask me a question, and I can’t remember what I was doing after they leave.

Today I had to redo my meditation because I fell asleep. Then the second time the 10 minute session ended I realized I completely failed to listen to the last few minutes or focus on my breathing, and had to go back to it again.

I don’t like when I get like this, because it’s like I’ve had too much coffee, and am overstimulated. But rather than fight it, for today’s post I’ll try to embrace it and I’ll throw ‘this and that’ out in a stream of verbal diarrhea, here goes:

I got my personal best score in archery, beating my old record by one… then repeated that score. I should be thrilled. My accuracy is way up. Yet I’m mad at myself because I started both record-breaking scores with two of three shots being 8’s. And in my second round, I ended with an 8, or I would have beaten my new record rather than tied it. Oh, and I’m also mad at myself because rather than celebrating my personal best, I’m upset about these things and can’t seem to let myself celebrate the success.

Workouts are still floundering, even now I’m writing this later than usual and will have to rush my morning routine. So much for getting back into it like I’ve shared here recently. I tell myself I’ll push harder, but I really don’t. I think I need to try something really different to break this cycle. I’m usually someone that can self-motivate, but right now I feel like I need someone else to light a fire under my ass.

I finally finished a 28.5 hour audio book. It was a wonderful story but it still took me almost three months to listen to, despite enjoying it. I listened to so many books the last couple years, and this year I’m listening at a snail’s pace. I’m also behind on podcasts. I just don’t squeeze the time out of the day like I used to.

I’ve been ‘working on’ a visual that puts together some of the things we do in order to share the Heroes Journey of a student at Inquiry Hub… except I’ve been too busy at work and am actually not working on it. It’s more of a decoration on the whiteboard behind me in my office than it is a work in progress. I look at it, I haven’t really added much to it recently.

My eating habits haven’t been great. My sleeping habits haven’t been great. I’m clueless as to what’s going on in the world because not only do I not watch TV, but I’ve tuned out of social media too.

I sound like a basket case reading this over, but I’ve caught up on my email backlog, and have been tackling my ‘to do’ list at work diligently, even if sometimes lacking focus. I’m functioning pretty well, yet focused on the things I’m not doing rather than the things I’m doing well. I haven’t laughed enough recently. I haven’t felt a sense of real accomplishment. I haven’t even enjoyed my distractions.

Yet, in the grand scheme of things I’m being productive, I’m staying healthy, my family is healthy, I’m listening to good books, I’m meditating, I’m improving my archery skills. There should be a lot to celebrate, or at least appreciate. Cognitively I understand this. But I don’t know how to give myself a break and appreciate all these things?

Well, I better get my butt to my home gym and go through the motions of working out. I’ll listen to a podcast while I do, and maybe some motivational music. I’ll get out of this rut soon, but for now I’ll just go through the motions, which is better than letting myself slip.

Customer Service Attitude

Recently, I went to a higher end grocery store that I don’t usually go to. I went there because I heard that they put together a food basket I was interested in buying. After looking around I went to the meat counter to inquire. This lovely lady said, “I’m not sure? I think we do something like that, let me check.”

I followed her, and on route to where she was leading me, we passed an older employee, in a bright shirt with a Supervisor button. He was doing something with a small tablet device. The lady helping me said ‘Excuse me’, and asked about my request. The Supervisor looked upset and said, “That’s produce, you know I’m not produce.”

The lady responded, “Yes, I know, I just thought you might know if we have anything like this?”

“That’s produce,” the Supervisor said condescendingly.

“Thank you,” was her response, in an honest politeness that I’m not sure I would have had. She then led me to produce, asked, and it seems they no longer provide this service. The lady helping me apologized and asked if she could help me in any way, I told her ‘no thank you’, and that I appreciated her help.

Next I went to buy flowers instead. I decided to add a couple large Kinder Eggs (hollow chocolate with prizes you assemble inside) for the kids in the family. When I went to the station to have them wrapped, I was told I had to pay first. So I did. I then asked can I get the eggs added in?

“Oh, I don’t think they’d fit.” Was the response. So my flowers were wrapped without the eggs, and when I got to the car it took me 2 minutes to loosen the string on the wrapped flowers and add the eggs in without crushing any flowers. Simple.

What a contrast in service! The First lady was absolutely wonderful. She was polite even when her supervisor was a rude jerk to her in front of me. Whereas the annoyed Supervisor payed no attention to me as he verbally scolded the employee for daring to ask a question about another department. And the flower attendant couldn’t take a simple request without making it seem like I was asking for too much.

I wonder if the nice lady will remain nice in an environment like that, or will the ‘no-can-do’ culture wear her down? I wonder how a supervisor gets to the point where he thinks that behaviour is ok in front of a customer? I’m not going to find out any time soon, that’s not a store I plan on visiting again any time soon.

Lessons from a 97yr old

This 2.5 minute video is an absolute gem! Meet Charles Eugster:

I’ve been on a fitness kick since the start of 2019, and I feel younger than I did in 2018. I know I won’t win the battle against old age, and that my abilities will decrease. But, I also know that I can live more vibrantly in my old age if I keep this up… and quite frankly the alternatives suck.

There are so many take-aways in this short video. Watch it again. Think about how Charles’ attitude could benefit you, no matter how old you are.