Today is the last day of January, and I have to say my initial resolution of the year has gone pretty well so far. I haven't exactly batted 1,000 on working out three times a week, but there hasn't been a week that I haven't gone at least twice. For a new habit, and one that's been begun in the coldest month of the year, that's not too bad. After all, if a goal was easy to reach, it wouldn't be much of an accomplishment when you do get there. I'm still shooting for thrice weekly, and all signs point to continued progress to that end.
Other positives of the month include my finding a yoga class at the Y that really does challenge me, well beyond the simple stretches of their introductory classes. My cardio health is the one I haven't worked quite as consistently, but I've pushed up my 5k goal and now fully intend to contest the Fight for Air Climb in March, a 36 story vertical stair climb event. And I've formed a team for Live Healthy Iowa, a way for my coworkers and me to log hours exercising and holding one another accountable. As I said above, it's a really good start.
So what next? I've set goals for my physical self, and am on my way to reaching them. And though my body is a good start to Be Greg, it's a very small part of who I really am. Without my mind, this same physical body wouldn't be the Greg that everyone knows. In fact, as a kid, my brain was really what defined me. I wasn't terribly athletic, was fairly reserved, and wasn't amongst the social elites of the school, but everyone knew that I was pretty smart. I'm not sure that I necessarily make that impression as strongly anymore. So I need to work on getting back to the me I once was. To follow in the great Jesse Ventura's footsteps, now that we've covered Greg "the body," it's time to move on to Greg "the mind."
This is a really tricky area to cover, actually. Trying to balance work-related with outside mental activities left me somewhat stumped. For though my work requires a fairly detailed understanding of aerospace structures and analysis softwares, the actual steps I undertake on each project are essentially the same. In six years of college I became accustomed to pounding my brain with new information and knowledge, but today I can largely get by with what I already know. I'm concerned that no longer pushing myself that hard is a poor choice in the long run, and just as I need to extend the limits my body can reach, so too must I for my mind. Here's what I've come up with for this month:
1) Read a book a month - This idea was born over Christmas break at home, when my sister suggested that she and I have a book club of sorts, where we read the same book and discuss it later. Unfortunately her class schedule has been busier this semester than last, and I finished The Devil in the White City before she'd even had the chance to begin. So our club may have to wait for summertime, but in the meantime I still do want to get back into reading. I read like a maniac when I was younger, then it tapered off, and only since my semi-recent discovery of Goodreads.com have I really gotten back into it. If I put my mind to it, I can easily finish one book per month. This is good for building vocabulary, probably some memory retention, and just general mental happiness from the escape. I have one down, and at least eleven to go.
2) Learn to meditate - I have always been an innately nervous person. I could never sleep the night before school started, I clench my jaw while I sleep and grind my teeth, and get jittery when anticipating any sort of big event. There could be a myriad of causes to all of this, but one thing that certainly isn't helping is hanging onto mental stress. Exercise helps a lot with relieving this stress, but for times when I can't work out, having some sort of meditation technique in my back pocket is a great option. I've tried meditating before, but didn't really know what I was doing and didn't see any results. Well, like any activity, you get better with practice, and there's a whole wealth of information out there: books, internet, you name it, for me to consult for guidance. It might be hard to perfect, but it should be very easy to begin. I'll likely start small, with something like a simple focused breathing activity, but in some way I'm going to work on meditation. I'd like to make it daily, but recognize that I'll probably miss a day or two here and there.
3) Watch something educational semi-regularly - When I was a kid, we simply didn't watch television, with a few exceptions. My Dad watched football and old movies, and I watched along. We were allowed to watch Star Trek. And almost anything educational, meaning PBS in our cable-less household. Now with the wonders of satellite TV, I have PBS, various Discovery family networks, multiple cooking channels, and yet I'll end up watching dopey Seinfeld reruns when I don't have anything specific to watch. Not that there's anything wrong with TV for entertainment, but I figure it should be targeted. Mad Men, Dexter, Weeds, etc. from Netflix, sure. But when I'm bored and flipping around, I should try to learn something every now and then. Netflix also has numerous documentaries that I should work into the rotation, and PBS still has some awesome shows. Some recent random viewings of Nature yielded fascinating discoveries about the alien-looking Salar de Uyuni in the Andes and the fascinating intelligence of ordinary crows. There's so much out there to learn, I can surely work in one of these every week or so.
4) Do some mind games - I hesitate to even mention the words "games" and "work" in the same sentence, since it's one of the many keywords that our nanny-web-blocker doesn't allow, but doing some mental games during my lunchbreak at work seems like a good idea. I've always enjoyed crosswords and old-fashioned logic puzzles, plus websites like freerice.com and the occasional sudoku. Lunch is hardly ever social at my office anyway, and I usually spend the time browsing the local newspaper online. But then I get sucked into the overly negative shouting matches in the comments, which really isn't a useful or happy expenditure of my time. I end lunch simultaneously bored and depressed with the state of the world. But scrapping that for a logic puzzle, and I should feel sharp and ready to go. As an added bonus, it gets me away from my screen for a bit, so I feel a little less like an automaton. I'm going to get some puzzle-y books and bring them to the office. If nothing else, it gives me the option to exercise my mind during the day, even if I don't always take it.
There you have it. In order to really be Greg, I want to get myself into shape. Physically, I'm on the right track. Mentally, I'll admit I've been a bit lazy, and it's time to change that. The great thing is that none of these is really a chore; they're all things I'd love to do if I had the time and volition. And most of the time I do have the time, but I get easily distracted and don't push my mental limits. Working a few of these goals in should make a real change in that area.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment