Tag Archives: reflection

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!

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?

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!

Back to archery and a focus on process

Yesterday I took a hacksaw to the combination lock on my compound bow case. It has been about a year-and-a-half since I shot any arrows with this bow. I did shoot some arrows one afternoon this summer, but that was with a recurve bow, for 45 minutes. Other than that, I basically shelved my new hobby for way too long… obviously to the point that I couldn’t even remember the combination to the case lock.

Today I was lucky enough to be able to shoot a few arrows, and get some (safe and socially distanced) coaching. I was expecting to be rusty, and to have bad form, but I shot surprisingly well. Then I got some key coaching around my thumb release that helped me shoot the most consistent I’ve ever shot!

Reflecting on how well things went, I think that I am fortunate to have a few things going for me. First, I’m still fairly new, so I don’t have years of ingrained bad habits. Second, I had some decent coaching early on, and my bow hand and anchor (where I place my draw hand against my face) are things that came back to me really easily. Third, I’ve kept myself really fit, and having recently recovered from an shoulder injury, a few of the exercises were also excellent for improving my archery strength as well. And finally, I had excellent coaching!

I started archery in the summer 2016. I was recovering from 6 months of chronic fatigue, and realized that if I didn’t start this hobby I’ve wanted to start at this time of renewal, I never would. Then in 2019 I made an intentional decision not to spend time on archery when I rededicated myself to being healthy, but realized to make certain commitments, I also had to make some sacrifices. Now, as 2020 comes to a close, I’ve decided that archery is something I really enjoy and want to get back into.

My favourite part of archery is that it is all about process. Yes, I want to shoot well, and yes the ‘end result’ of where the arrow lands is important. However, once I’ve released the arrow, there is nothing I can do to change that shot. If it isn’t as good as I had hoped, I have a choice of letting it affect my next shot, or I can focus on the process and shooting ‘fresh’ and probably better the next time. It is a mental game that forces me to to ‘let go’ of results and focus on being present. It is a form of meditation, of being in the moment. And for someone who tends to be ‘in my head’ a lot, archery doesn’t allow me to escape from ‘the now’.

I’m excited about returning to this fun hobby, and I’m sure that I’ll have more lessons to learn from, and reflect on, in the coming months.

Last school day of 2020

Tomorrow is the first day of Christmas holidays, making today the last school day of the 2020 calendar year.

It seems like ages ago but back in February, I had just finished 2 years of running 3 schools. It was absolutely exhausting and I was, for the first time since becoming an administrator, ready to quit. It was too much. Thankfully my job was adjusted and I knew that I could stay on and feel for the first time in a couple years that I could do my job.

Then the pandemic hit, we went to remote learning, I had some responsibilities to support others added to plate, and I found myself in online meetings for over 4 hours each day. It was overwhelming for everyone, and my crazy schedule continued. It felt like I couldn’t catch a break.

Summer finally came, with the cancellation of a trip to Europe. We still had a good summer, but it was nothing like we had planned.

Since September things have been better at school, with students coming daily, but the stress of the virus is ever present .Things still remained off kilter and very busy. There has been nothing normal about this calendar or school year. Nothing.

I know we aren’t out of the woods yet. It will take several months to get the vaccine out and schools are not the initial priority. But in my head I have been telling myself, ‘Things will get better by January 2022,’ I have been preparing for 2021 to be ‘2020 Part 2 – The Sequel’. I didn’t think we’d see vaccines start to role out until summer, or even September ’21.

So, while hoping for things to go faster, I’ve been preparing for another whole year of this. Seeing the vaccine already out before the end of 2020 has filled me with enthusiasm about how much better than expected 2021 can be.

Yes, we must proceed with caution. No, the pandemic isn’t over… but 2020 feels over. And while I throw a metaphorical middle fingers at the year, I will look back at it over this break and try to find the silver linings this year has brought us. What have we learned? What can we carry forward? What can we value and appreciate more as we slowly head back to normal? I am happy to see the year end with optimism for the future… optimism that I did not expect to have.

Salvador Dali - clock

Fast and Slow

How is it that time seems to go by really slowly day-by-day, but months and years seem to just race on? I recently celebrated my 53rd birthday. As a kid, 53 was old. Ancient.

My youngest daughter turns 19 in a couple months. How did that happen so quickly? It sounds cliche, but where did the time go?

I heard an interesting perspective on time recently: When you are 12, 4 years of your life is 1/3 (33.3%} of your life, that’s so long! When you are 52, 4 years of your life is 1/13 (7.7%) of your life… much less significant. The older you get, the less significant a set amount of time is relative to how long you’ve lived.

Time doesn’t just march on, it marches on at ever increasing speeds. It’s up to us to slow it down by making our days worth living. What will you do to enjoy life today, rather than just let that time slip by into an ever-decreasing amounts of significance?

Resilience Revisited

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!

Here is the post:

December 31, 2019

If I were to pick 2 words for 2020, I might pick “Growth Mindset”, but if I’m only choosing a single word, it would be:

Resilience

The world needs this word right now. Here are some specific places I see a need to pay attention to this #OneWord in 2020.

In Schools:

Student anxiety seems to be on the rise, and anxiety lowers resilience and the willingness to try new things. Words seem to ‘injure’ students in ways that victimize them rather than make them stronger. This is not to say that students should tolerate bullying or inappropriate language or slander, rather they should speak up, defend themselves, and report poor behaviour. Instead it seems that they feel wounded and do not act. This is a sensitive topic, but one where I’ve seen a greater awareness of adults who want to support students and at the same time I see students allowing words to hurt them deeply, giving too much power to the transgressor.

In Politics:

I said this in Ideas on a Spectrum, “In a civil society, dialogue is the one problem-solving strategy that should be sacred. To do this, free speech is essential. But right now there is a culture of ‘attack the opposition’ that is very scary.“ – We need to be resilient when hearing opposing views, and understand that, “…we must be tolerant and accepting of opposing views, unaccepting of hateful and hurtful acts, and smart enough to understand the difference.” When we can’t have conversations with people that have different political views, we don’t grow as a culture or as a society.

In Online Spaces:

People will make mistakes online. They will say things that are unintentionally hurtful, or blindly offensive. This is different than someone being intentionally biased and rude. If the slander is intentional, it should be reported. If it is unintentional, even to the point of ignorance, we need to be more resilient about what our responses are. When every transgression is treated with an attack, the most severe/bigoted/rude/biased transgressions are not given the heightened alarm that they deserve. With lesser errors and mistakes, we need to let people have a venue to recognize their errors and invite conversation rather than damnation.

Growing up, I heard the playground retort to taunts, “Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never harm me.” We are past the era of letting nasty people say whatever nasty things they want, and just turning the other cheek to pretend we are not hurt. This is a good thing. We want to live in a world where that behaviour is not acceptable. But it does not serve us well to treat the attacker like they can not repent or be sorry. It does not serve us to let the words said hurt us too deeply. By being resilient we can speak up, clarify our perspective, and engage in conversations that help us feel empowered rather than victimized.

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.

The battle beyond

Yesterday I wrote, ‘The battle within‘ and said,

“The battle within is greater than the battle beyond.“

And while I firmly believe this I am seeing countless tweets from educators and educational leaders across different districts, provinces, states, and international borders, talking about the overwhelm and exhaustion of their role in a pandemic. The challenge ‘beyond’ is taxing the battles ‘within’ and burnout seems endemic.

I’ve seen comments like:

“I can’t sleep thinking about how much I have to do.”

“I have no time to exercise or take care of myself.”

“I have to take the weekend off.”

“I asked for help but it isn’t coming fast enough.”

“I’m in my second year teaching and I feel I have to quit.”

“I’m tired of just doing an adequate job.”

“This is unsustainable.”

“I won’t make it to June at this pace.”

“My students deserve more, but I have nothing more to give.”

Here are a few suggestions I hope can help:

  • Take care of yourself. Busy times are exactly when self care matters most. Everything you do for yourself during these times will give you the energy to help and provide for others… but more importantly, you will just feel better!
  • Ask for help. It’s ok to let others know you need support.
  • Collaborate. Find others who can share the load, and find energy by working with others.
  • Reduce your own expectations around work load. What can you do to reduce marking, or to provide assessment that is student rather than grade focussed? Example: Instead of giving a test that takes 10 min. each to mark, give a 1-1 assessment that takes 5-10 minutes. You and your students will both get more out of the experience.
  • Take body and brain breaks. Have fun, while recharging yourself and your students.
  • Turn off work for a set time each night… be militant about this. Go for a no technology walk with someone. Put a block of time in your calendar. Play a board game.
  • Do something creative.
  • Meditate daily.
  • Get to bed early.
  • Exercise. Suggestion: Try to do a quick workout early in the morning… get your heart rate up for 20 minutes to start the day.
  • Pack healthy treats that you enjoy, so that food breaks are rewarding in more ways than one.
  • Connect with friends digitally. Your digital bubble need not be small just because your face to face one is.

This is a time when the battle beyond can overwhelm the battle within… so make intentional efforts to care for yourself and not only you, but those around you will benefit!

The battle within

The battle within is greater than the battle beyond.

It is challenging to realize that our ultimate enemy is ourselves. Our vices vary. Our demons come in different sizes. But they come from within, not from outside.

In today’s Daily Calm meditation, I heard this quote worth contemplating, “You can close your eyes to the things you do not want to see but you cannot close your heart to the things you do not want to feel.”

Anger, frustration, jealousy, hurt, upset, sadness, embarrassment, pride, guilt, shame, fear, regret, anxiety… These are all things that we can not simply close our eyes to when we feel them. We rarely have complete control over how deeply we feel them. But we can decide how much we fuel them. How much we let them burn us up.

I chose my words carefully when I said, “We rarely have complete control over how deeply we feel them.” If I feel sad, I can not easily make the sadness disappear. Just like when you shut your eyes in direct sunlight, light shines through your eyelids, so too does an emotion like sadness seep in as you try to block it out.

Sometimes it’s better to feel than it is to block emotions, even if they are negative. Embrace the emotion and let it come over you. But how long do you allow this? At what point does the emotion take over? At what point does a feeling like sadness or anxiety or grief become an enemy within? At what point does it take control of you?

‘Don’t be sad.’

‘Don’t be anxious.’

There are few words that can be said with good intentions that could be worse than saying one of these phrases to a person feeling those emotions.These worlds only magnify the emotion’s hold on a person, who desperately wants to escape the overpowering feelings that are burning inside.

So if it is a battle within, how does one fight it? I’m not sure I have an answer that works for others. What works for me is to play with the ideas that bring those feelings to me. I imagine the emotion being first worse and then better. Not just worse but horrific. How much more could it hurt, how much worse could it feel. I take it to places further than it could possible go. Then I weigh how bad I really feel. Then I think about how I could feel better.

That’s how I battle. I shine the light brighter than I can look at it, then look away and the brightness seems so much less intense. I don’t try first to look away, I look more intensely, and then I choose to look away. Then it feels less like a battle to fight and more like something I have fought and moved on from. But I also don’t pretend it’s gone, I simply care less that it is there.

I don’t pretend this always works, I don’t imagine it would work for everyone, but I seldom spend time on battles I see others struggle with… and I’m sure some of my battles within are battles others could handle with ease.

I think it’s true for most everyone that the battle within is greater than the battle beyond. But I also believe that these battles need not be as big as we make them.

How are you doing?

Really, how are you?

What are you doing to take care of yourself?

Who are you making an effort to connect with, to call rather than text, to see on video rather than just hear on an audio call?

What are your eating habits like?

Are you following an exercise routine? Going for walks?

Are you getting enough sleep?

Are you asking for or seeking help if you need it?

We have more to offer others when we first care for ourselves.