The Daily - Monday, September 17, 2018

Writing Challenge- Day #19

HEALTH & FITNESS

The rain stopped and I finally got to use those old ASICS shoes that I wanted to try again. I had a nice 2.1 mile jog this morning. It is so good to be back on the road! Today's session was to the tune of Podrunner's "140 BPM - Swift Kicks." Indeed, it kicked me a little about mile marker 1.75, but I pushed through it and ended the session feeling strong.

And I finally achieved a full fitness day. I was able to put a good 35 minute workout this afternoon at the fitness center. I did not get a chance to finish the whole workout I had planned, but it was better than nothing.

GOALS, DREAMS, HABITS, RITUALS

Rather than listing all the streaks I am tracking (which you can see below), I am going to focus on one habit per week. I will share my struggles and triumphs as I try to make each activity a ritual, a part of my daily behavior, so that it can become a habit and then help me achieve a goal or series of goals.

This week I will focus on the habit of having a daily exercise routine that includes cardio, strength training, stretching and meditation. In a very real way, those four components are discreet and individual; as a whole, they form the daily habit I want to develop. And this brings up a good point. Complex habits/rituals that have sub-components do not have to be done in sequence. For example, there is nothing wrong with doing cardio first thing in the morning and stretching just before going to bed, with a session of weight lifting in the afternoon and some meditation throughout the day. However, habits (helpful and harmful ones) are formed when we do a certain thing immediately after a trigger happens. For example, we wake up and hit the snooze button — that may not help us achieve our goal. What if we wake up and splash water on our face and do ten push-ups? It is likely that we will not go back to bed then, thus kick-starting our day. The trick is to replace hitting the snooze button with splashing water on our face and doing ten push-ups. Once we do that enough times, the ritual will be established and a new habit formed.

A critical aspect of self improvement is to make small changes. Trying to change everything at once is a sure way to struggle. When we make small changes in the things we do we will, in the long run, achieve far more than we would otherwise. This is one of the reasons people struggle with "diets" — trying to modify our whole lifestyle suddenly will simply increase our natural resistance to change.

If you have followed this blog recently, the one component I have missed consistently is strength training. I do not have a gym at home (just a few dumbbells and a resistance band, which should suffice) nor a gym subscription to a facility near my home. I usually try to do strength training regularly when I am in the office because we have a great fitness center there, and it is free. However, the key word there is "try" — many days I let other things pull me away from working out. These things can be anything from feeling tired to work meetings. Most of them are, in reality, excuses.

I find my biggest challenge for strength training is when I am home (weekends, vacations). I am going to establish a sensible trigger that would initiate the process to do a strength training workout. I will keep you posted.

PERSONAL GROWTH

The fewer-browser-tabs challenge went well today. I feel I was more productive having less tabs/windows open. In many ways I pushed myself to finish one thing before moving to something else. There was a lot less jumping around and a lot less confusion. I like it!

STREAKS - For the record

Current list of streaks:

• Writing: day 19
• Blood Pressure Readings: day 6: excellent reading of 117/79.
• Logging to SparkPeople: day 8 (starting to get more consistent in entering data)
• Intermittent Fasting: I am abandoning tracking of this habit. I have been doing fairly well without having to track it. I will remove that app from my phone now.
• Daily Exercise Routine: Day 1
• Cardio: Jogged 2.09 miles
• Strength Training: 35 minutes
• Stretching: Yes
• Meditation: Yes, 30 minutes overall in 10-minute intervals.
  
  (In order to count this one, I am making it a bit challenging. A day will only count if it contains at least 30 minutes of cardio, at least 30 minutes of strength training, at least 10 minutes of stretching, at least six hours of sleep, and at least 10 minutes of meditation.)
• Meditation: day 6 (all-time = 40)
• Number of tabs open: day 2 (down to two tabs open for more than a few minutes. All other tabs either closed or stored in "Read Later" (see "Personal Growth " below).