Tag Archives: lifestyle

The long game

Playing the long game is often referenced in sports and revenge. ‘Wax on, wax off’ for the Karate Kid, with thousands of repetitions leading to skill improvement.

Or one of the best ‘long game’ movies I can think of, Fresh, where a young kid makes strategic sacrifices to get him and his sister off of a dangerous path.

It’s 3:30 in the morning and I’ve been up for a couple hours. My plan to stay up and adjust to the new time zone after my long trip to Barcelona failed. And so after 2 days of travel with no exercise I decided to work out. 5 sets of 20 pushups, leg raises, and crunches. Then a meditation. Right now I’m writing this listing to some 432 hertz music and I’m going to try to go back to sleep for a few hours.

I decided to write this first because the meditation I did on the Calm App with Jay Shetty was about perseverance, and while I listened I could see my reflection in the glass balcony door. In the reflection I saw my shoulders, trapezius muscles, and physical outline clearly, while my features were less visible in this not-so-perfect reflection. I noticed that over the last 4 years I have really transformed my body.

Four years. Not 3 or 6 months, not even 1 year, four. I started my fitness journey with a calendar on January 1, 2019. This was my reflection after a year. The path has been a tiny bit bumpy, but overall extremely consistent and without any significant injury as a result of my fitness regimen.

So often people (including me in the past) go on fitness binges and/or eating diets. It’s a race to see results. And while results can come from these brief attempts to improve, unrealistic fitness plans and unsustainable diets eventually lead to a point where they can’t be sustained.

I’m not trying to run ultra marathons or have a bodybuilder physique. I’m actually going to let myself let loose and eat a bit more gluttonous while on vacation. But I’m also going to find time to exercise, I’m going to return home and be more thoughtful about my diet after my vacation. I’m going to keep playing the long game and not worry about minor fluctuations in my schedule. Because while there will be fluctuations, I’m going to keep a schedule of writing, meditation, and exercise. I’m not looking for quick gains, I’m just working on staying on a healthy path, knowing positive results are still to come… in time. Perseverance and the long game are the path I’m on.

Unfashionable

I don’t have a lot of fashion sense. I never have. My sisters used to ask me if I was really going out the way I looked. When I got married I’d be heading out the house to go to an event and when I’d get down the stairs with my outfit on, my wife would just point up the stairs. Up I’d go to look in the mirror to figure out what wasn’t right and change. Sometimes she’d come with me to make suggestions. I’d listen and try to learn, but it was and still is a slow process.

Combine this unfashionable eye of mine with my complete dislike of shopping, and now, 24 years into marriage, I don’t own too many things I’ve purchased myself and my wardrobe is much nicer and easier to coordinate. But I still make choices that my wife and daughters suggest I change… and I usually do because they aren’t wrong.

I’ve seen this trend where people buy uniforms for work. They basically buy one colour of pants, then a single or up to 3 similar shades of shirts to wear every day. They just completely remove the guesswork from what to wear and they have just one outfit that they wear every day.

I would be happy doing this. I’d eliminate a choice that I don’t find easy to make. But that would involve shopping and I’m probably not going to do this any time soon. However if some time in the future you see me in the same clothes 3 or 4 days in a row, know that I’m not being unhygienic, I’ve just finally taken the plunge and reduced my wardrobe to a single or a few very simple options… but then again, my wife will still probably choose something else for me to wear. 😁

Going through the motions

I’m trying to commit to stretching more as part of my morning routine. I know this will help me feel better in the long term but I’ve never enjoyed the process. I now have a 10 minute routine that I regularly do, but many days I go through the motions without really pushing myself.

This is something that also sometimes happens with my workouts. I go through the motions but I’m not really working hard. For example, I do a set of pushups and I stop when I can do more. I reach a nice even number, like 20 or 30 on a set and while I could probably do a few more physically, I mentally hit a wall. Or I choose a speed on my bike or treadmill that’s less challenging than I’m capable of.

There is a balance that’s hard to find. Yes, I’m proud of the commitment I’m putting in, but I am beating myself up about the effort. I know that greater effort with less commitment would not be as effective, but doing both is hard. Even now, I procrastinated too much this morning and I’m writing this while on my stationary bike. My speed is respectable, but I’m not breathing too hard. I’m going through the motions.

It’s not realistic to be pushing myself to the maximum every workout, and that’s not what I’m trying to do. I just think I get into slumps where I don’t remember how to really push myself. It’s in these slumps that I tend to be too hard on myself. I think part of it is that I’m externally motivated, and I no longer have a team or event I’m training for, and I mostly work out alone. So, sometimes I need to accept that just doing it is enough, even if the effort isn’t really there.

Food and fuel insecurity

Since the pandemic started we’ve seen shortages in both consumable items and merchandise, which we haven’t seen before in my lifetime. I recently paid over $2.40 per litre of gas, and can remember being upset at having to pay over $2 not that long ago. Early in the pandemic it was toilet paper that was scarce to find, but that was driven by fear of shortages. More recently I’ve seen the back of empty shelves where I have not seen them before, ranging from items in the butcher section, to baking items, to well known products that usually seem to have an endless supply.

And I think things will get worse before they get better.

Parts of Europe are being deforested by concerned citizens collecting firewood, by people uncertain if they will be able to afford heating fuel in the coming winter. Food banks are reporting record number of people needing their service. And certain items including basic food items will be both in short supply and more expensive than ever before.

This is not fear mongering, and it’s also not all doom and gloom, end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it, but life in general is going to get more expensive with less purchasing power and choice for a while.

How will this pan out over the next few years? It’s hard to guess because the issues of inflation, money devaluation, questions of war, and a shaky stock market are far beyond my understanding. What I suspect is that this global economic downturn is not something we will just have to deal with this winter, but something that we will deal with through all of 2023 and beyond.

We can live without our favourite brand of cereal in our grocery stores. We can wait longer than we hoped for an appliance or a new car to arrive after ordering it. What we can’t do is sustain gas and food prices that make it impossible for lower-middle class and poorer families to sustain themselves on their inflation-diminishing salaries for an extended period of time… while grocery stores and oil companies generate record quarters of profits. At what point do large corporations recognize that their record profits will fall when a significant part of the population has no buying power?

My fear is that it has to get a lot worse before significant system change will happen. In the mean time, prepare to watch your purchasing power fall over the next year and beyond.

Good doesn’t have to be enjoyable

I said this to my massage therapist one day when she had her elbow pressed deep into my back, “Good doesn’t have to be enjoyable”. It was uncomfortable. In no way was it enjoyable. But it was so, so good! She was working out a knot in my upper back very slowly, with a whole lot of pressure. The feeling verged on pain, but it was really good. I knew that in the coming days I would feel a lot of relief thanks to my muscles being worked over in a slow, hard, methodical way.

I think it can be easy to forget that some things are good for you, even if they aren’t fun. Ask any athlete who is stuck just below the skill level required to do a challenging move. Ask a student who is stuck on a concept, but keeps working to figure it out. Ask someone new to a an enjoyable job but the work itself is challenging to do well. Ask a person in the gym working a muscle group to fatigue and their spotter pushing them to do 3 more assisted reps, when their body wants to quit… good doesn’t have to be enjoyable.

There are many things in life that are good to do, that involve some level of uncomfortableness or discomfort, yet are absolutely worth doing. Difficult conversations are another excellent example. Very often people avoid hard but necessary conversations and the lack of communication either allows discomfort and upset to continue or actually makes matters worse. It really isn’t enjoyable having hard but necessary conversation and yet it is so valuable to have these conversations rather than avoid them.

Enjoyment isn’t a necessary byproduct of doing something that is good for you. Immediate enjoyment might not even be desirable. Sometimes it is valuable to take pleasure and enjoyment out of the equation if you want to push yourself to do something that is good for you in the long run.

I think sports is a good place to learn this as a kid. Running faster helps you play better, but that means doing tiring drills. Repeating an action over and over again can be boring, but when you use that skill properly in a game you are rewarded.

Mottos like ‘Just do it’ and ‘No pain, no gain’ come to mind. Doing something well or that’s good for you doesn’t always have an immediate reward, and so it might not be fun to do, even if it’s good for you.

Listen up

I’m currently listening to two books and a long form podcast, and when I have down time I tend to be listening to one of these. Watering the garden, having a hot tub, doing the dishes, walking, riding my exercise bike, each of these are done with headphones on.

I rarely read anymore, I listen. Sometimes it’s hard to pay attention, but I actually found reading harder. First of all I’m a painfully slow reader. And secondly, the slow pace makes me more susceptible to being distracted. I would often read a book and then realize I wasn’t absorbing what I was reading. After catching myself being distracted, I could often look back 3-4 paragraphs, or even a couple pages, and not remember reading any of it. While I can be distracted listening, it’s usually only when the task I’m doing requires me to think a bit, like when I’m driving.

The first year that I started listening to books rather than reading them I went from reading 3 books in a year to listening to 26. This year I’ll likely surpass 30. Looking at my Audible stats, I listened to an average of over 3.5 hours a day in July.

Since downloading Audible, I’ve listened for over 2 months, (over 1,400 hours). There is no way that I would have read for a third of that long in the same amount of time!

And that’s just my books, not podcasts, which I listen to for a few hours each month. I don’t watch tv, other than an occasional series with my wife, and I don’t follow sports. I listen. Summer was all about fiction, now I’m getting back into books that I learn from. I find fiction too much of a distraction during the school year. When I listen to books I learn from, I get more value out of reading and out of work. But if I get a good novel recommendation, I occasionally switch up and treat it the same way someone else would treat a movie.

Audio books have transformed they way I consume books… I read them with my ears.

Living a younger life

“Aerobic exercise saves your life, strength training makes it worth living.” ~ Dr. Henry Lodge, ‘Younger Next Year’

A few days ago I wrote,

“It’s my goal that I can be like Gabor, one of the guys on the the Calgary team we trained with. Gabor is 74, healthy, and sharp. I can tell in the short time I met him that he is healthy in body, mind, and spirit. I want my current lifestyle to allow me to get in and play water polo with guys my current age [54] when I’m his age.”

I was intrigued by Gabor. I’ve met 74 year olds that can’t walk without a cane, and who seem weak and unstable, and others who are vibrant and healthy, but not one that can play a tough sport like water polo with people a lot younger than him. So I asked him what his secret was.

“Have you read ‘Younger Next Year‘?” Gabor asked me. “No? You should.”

I’m about 1/2 way through the audiobook. The premise is that anyone over 40 should exercise religiously, 6 days a week. 4 of those days should be dedicated to cardio, using a heart monitor to ensure you are pushing your heart rate above 70% (and sometimes more). The other 2 days should be dedicated to strength training. Do this and you can live vibrantly well into your 80’s.

Our last 1/3 of our life can be active and full of activities we love to do now, feeling young and vibrant. Or we can live a life of slowly feeling older, less agile, and sedentary. A commitment of working out 6 days a week might seem to be a lot, but it’s not and to put it into perspective: We spend 40+ hours a week working to give us the financial means to do what we want… why not put in 6 to 9 hours a week to ensure we can actually do what we want for the next 25-30 years?

It’s time well spent to ensure the time you have left is well lived.

Valuing Sleep

After a wonderful summer, I’m starting to get up early again as part of my routine. It’s not a huge adjustment because almost all summer I was out of bed before 7am and often woke up minutes before an alarm set for 6am. But, I’ve found trying to get up between 5 and 5:30am a bit tough the past few days.

I have never needed a lot of sleep. Back over a couple decades ago when I was a fairly new teacher, I used to routinely sleep for 4-5 hours a night for 3-5 nights a week. Then I might feel tired and need 6 or 7 hours a night for one night before starting another 3-5 night streak of only getting 4-5 hours. This worked for me. Once a colleague told me I was going to die 10 years younger because of my lack of sleep. That night at 1am I sent him an email that said something like this: ‘So, I did the Math… if you live to 80 and I live to 70, I will have been awake for more time than you.’

I have definitely started requiring more sleep and looking back, I do think there were times my sleep pattern wasn’t healthy. For me, now, I think 7 hours is my ideal but there are times I can’t get to bed at 10pm and so I make do with between 6 and 7 hours sleep. That seems to work for me, but sometimes on weekends I will try to get a bit more. What I won’t do is get much more than 8 hours on any night. If I sleep for much more than 8 hours in a night I get a headache and my back will ache as well.

I know that averaging a little less than 7 hours per night a week will seem like not enough sleep for many. I also know that sleep is an important part of being and staying healthy. So while getting very little sleep was like some sort of stupid badge of honour for me when I was younger, I now appreciate how important it is. I will start going to sleep earlier and trying to keep my average sleep time at 7 hours a night… and after getting to bed after midnight and having my alarm go off at 5:30… that will have to start tonight.

In preparation

How much time do we spend in preparation for something that is coming up? A simple example is a meal, and all the prep work that needs to be done before the meal is made. There is also tidy up time before guests arrive, reading to do before a meeting, personal grooming, and travel time. It occurred to me that we spend a lot of time preparing for events, and in some cases we spend more time in preparation than we do at the actual event we prepared for.

Two thoughts come to mind. First, we ought to find joy in preparation. Cooking is an excellent example of this, it’s not just the consuming of the final product but the joy of getting all the ingredients cut and cooked that we can savour. Can a fun event start for us as we shower and shave, and get ourselves ready? If we are going to spend so much of our lives in preparation for something upcoming, how can we find more joy in this time?

The second thought is about daily exercise. When we aren’t athletes training for, preparing for, an upcoming event, how do we perceive such activity? Exercise is really just preparation for a better tomorrow. It is the accumulation of a healthy lifestyle that pays dividends in the future. It is the preparation for a future life that is more active and vibrant than a sedentary life would promise.

We spend a lot of time in preparation for something else, this preparation time is an opportunity to find joy, to feel accomplishment, and not just a chore to get through on the way to something else. Cooking prep isn’t work, it’s putting love into the food you make for people you care about. Workouts are work, and if done right they are hard, but you can find joy in pushing yourself to new goals, and feel the endorphins a good workout can bring. Life is not about preparation for other things, life is found in the preparation.

24 years ago

On the 26th of August 1997 I proposed to my wife. Today we celebrate our 24th wedding anniversary. If I were to pick something as my best life decision my proposal to Ann would be it. I remember when we started dating, I was talking to my mom on the phone and told her, “I think I met the girl I’m going to mary, she just doesn’t know it yet.” And while I try to be the best husband I can be, my wife is giving and caring in a way I always aspire to be.

I am blessed, and I hope the next 24 years bring as much or more joy to me, to us, that we have had in the last quarter century. We live in an amazing country with fantastic opportunities for us and our kids. We have two amazing kids that are delightful to watch grow up, and who have grown into fantastic young women. We have great jobs that we love, and a beautiful home. And we have great friends that we both enjoy being around.

Today I don’t just celebrate my anniversary, I celebrate the wonderful lives my wife and I have built together.