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3 Good Things


27 May

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Hola!  I hope this finds you well.  My week has been stellar.  More on that in another post.  For now I wanted to give a quick “Hell’s yes!” for a suggestion I took from the Action for Happiness website and Martin Seligman, Ph. D, the father of positive psychology.

The suggestion is simply this – For one week, at the end of the day take 5 minutes to get out your journal (or a piece of paper, or a text document, if that’s what you have or prefer) and write down three good things from your day.  Then take a moment and jot down a line, or two, about why each of those is a good thing.  That’s it.  Dr. Seligman asks that we try this for a week and see what the results are  for our general level of happiness.

I don’t know what your result will be, but if it’s even remotely like mine, Do It!  NOW!

Here endith the preaching.  ;)

Cheers!

PS – If you haven’t read Authentic Happiness by Dr. Seligman, I highly recommend it.  You can pick it up here.

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Learning With You


21 May

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I love learning! I have an absolute passion for it.  It makes me feel alive, engaged and like I’m evolving.  Learning rocks!

When I first started teaching Aikido something very cool happened.  My own Aikido mastery took a quantum leap forward.  I learned that I learn more from teaching than I do from learning.  It took me a while before I connected the dots and saw that as a teacher I am also a student.  I learn a great deal by externalizing what I have internalized and expressing that successfully to another human being.  That then becomes a reflection back to me as I learn what’s really effective in the outside world as opposed to what I have taken as effective in my internal world.

Some statistics on how we retain information:

  • 20% of what we hear
  • 30% of what we see
  • 50% of what we hear and see
  • 70% of what we discuss or do
  • 90% of what we create or teach

To me this indicates a virtuous circle.  We learn so that we can teach so that we learn, and as we learn, our teachers learn because of our efforts.  This seems to give lie to the phrase, “I want to learn from you…”

So, that’s my new distinction: I want to learn with you.

By the way, this is an awesome way to read a book – envisioning that you will teach a class on what you have learned some day to someone important to you.  Combine that with taking margin notes and liberal underlining and you can literally consume a book rather than be entertained by it.  Not that being entertained is bad, if that’s the goal.

[SPOILER ALERT: The following clip is both amusingly demonstrative, and the ending climax of one of my favorite movies.]

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A Small Conversation That Changed My Life


20 May

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A long time ago, in a body far, far away…

As you may know from my blog I am a fan of 1,000 day vows.  My first one was to do Tai Chi every day, without exception, for 1,000 days.  As you might imagine there were some challenges along the way.

The challenges came in many forms, but a little over half way through, 521 days in to be exact, I was feeling a bit despondent about the whole thing.  I was 22 years old at the time and at a party.  As I sipped my beer I spoke with a dear friend, confiding in her my feelings that it really didn’t actually matter.  I mused that if I stopped the only one who might notice was me. I was feeling pretty blue about the whole thing.

She offered several counter arguments, but the one that got me was this, “If you stop now you will lose all that time and you would have to start from day 1 if you ever decided to do it again in the future.” (That’s not an exact quote.  My memory is not that good.)

That got me.  It called on a central character trait I used to consider a flaw, but now consider a strength: laziness. It may not seem lazy to have decided to forge ahead for another 479 days of Tai Chi, but the truth is I never wanted to face another 1,000!

It got me through.  Of course I did do another 1,000 day vow later in life, but that was for meditation so at least I got to sit through it.  ;)

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A Little Dab Will Do Ya


12 May

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I have been reading Tim Ferriss’ The 4-Hour Body on my Kindle and loving it!

On great take away so far has to do with not sabotaging our exercise goals at the outset.  We have all had those moments (many times!) where we get pumped about getting fit and commit to an exercise regime we believe will get us into great shape. The trouble is that we often over-commit and set ourselves up for failure.  Let’s say we become convinced that walking daily would be the best thing ever.  (EVAR!!!)  We jump right in and promise ourselves that we will walk 30 minutes a day, every day, until we are lean and ripped and desired by everyone we meet.  We know, from past failed attempts, that externalizing that promise helps keep us accountable so we blog it, journal it, write it on post-its and stick them on the refrigerator door and the bathroom mirror.  We tell our friends and family and every stranger we can pin down for 2 minutes.  Then we get to it.  Right there we hit a problem.  Going from 0 to 30 minutes a day is a leap!  We aren’t clear on where to fit it in.  We had that thing to do, and that meeting, and we’ll need new shoes… etc.

In short – we bite off more than we can chew.

Now, I know that 30 minutes a day is not actually all that much.  Especially when compared to the benefits.  But, if we go whole hog out the gate we are asking to fail.

Tim’s advice on this matter is simple – Don’t set a time goal.  Set a frequency goal and then do what you can.  Walking intentionally every day is a really good idea.  Just start there, nothing more.  Put on your shoes, walk out the door, circle the block and come back.  5 minutes, no big whup.

Make a daily habit of doing X, not doing X for time interval Y.

Genius.

This is a much better way to set ourselves up for success.  It also allows for healthy variance.  We might not be able to get in 30 minutes on a given day.  But, chances are we can get in 2.  Just walk to the corner and back and then celebrate the awesomeness of you since you are, in fact, keeping to your goal.

This dove-tails nicely with my love of Wilson’s 23rd law.

Set yourself up for success.  Take a small nibble.  I am confident that in short-order you will be rocking that walking hard!

Cheers!

P.S. – I went out for a 5 minute walk today and enjoyed the heck out of my 24 minute stroll.  ;)

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Tip For Getting Out Of The Then


11 May

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A friend asked me this morning for a practice for staying out of thoughts about the past, and spinning out on hyper-analytical dissection of previous events.  In other words, “getting out of the then.”  I thought others might dig it and find it useful, so here it is:

Steps for getting back to here and now:

  1. Take a breath. A nice deep long one like all the books on relaxation tell you to.  Inhale slowly, pause for a heart beat and the exhale gentle and long and deep.
  2. Scan the body. From mindfulness-style meditation do a scan, top to bottom, or bottom to top of the sensations in your body, not your mind.
  3. Ask yourself, “What is actually happening right now?” Then answer the question with the first impression that makes itself known.  This morning when I did that the answer was, “Soft light coming in through the window.”

That’s it.  The real secret is to make this a habit.  When we have a habit of past-sifting or future-tripping, the solution (like for all habits) is to employ a counter-habit.  Use a practice regularly enough that it becomes something we do naturally.  Eventually, in this way, the new habit will overtake the old one.

We are creatures of habit, and we can use that to our advantage!

Find a habit you don’t like and give it the one-two combination of a conscious and planned counter-habit repeated many times.

Cheers!

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Travis Eneix

Dedicated to looking at the self.