Wowee!
What a bikey weekend. I did 10 miles bicycling on Saturday and then 35 miles on Sunday. Not 35 in a row, exactly, as I would bike somewhere, do things, and then bike somewhere else. The biggest stretch in a row was like 12 or 14.
Add to that some barefoot running on the beach (mostly chasing my really fast nearly-3-year-old daughter) and I got LOTS of good fitness effort out of this weekend.
Tomorrow’s a 3.5 mile Boston Corporate Challenge run. Besides the fact it’ll be nearly 90 degrees and stifling humidity, I think it might be fun. : /
Mentally/Spiritually, I started working on a “centering” methodology, where I do some visualization and some focusing and some breathing to try and give myself a starting point, “my house” from where I can approach various challenges. I tried it against some low-level challenges and found it worked well. Basically, I used a visualization of myself sitting cross-legged on a polished hardwood floor looking out an open wall from a very small room with a roof (basically a small “house” with an entire wall cut out for visualizing what’s outside). From there, I’d use the visualization to center myself when a challenging event happened. Let me make one up.
Event: My daughter throws a fit and flattens herself onto the concrete.
Typical reaction: get cranky and force her to do what I want her to do anyway.
New method: center, flash the words/image in my head “my house,” and that reminds me to consider what I want the outcome of this interaction to be. Then, make a better response, such as saying, “You’re really frustrated. I know. I’m sorry you’re frustrated. Come up up and let’s figure this out.”
It’s applicable to anything. If you’re running and want to quit, center around your visualization, and then ask yourself what you want the outcome of the challenge to be. If you’re about to eat something you might not want to eat, same deal. How about at work? Someone really bug you and set you off all the time? Try this.
The goal is to stretch the perceived alotted time between stimulus and response, thus giving one’s self a better chance to choose one’s own response to the stimulus.
I’m trying really hard to learn this “whole person” paradigm and apply it in as many ways possible to all areas of my life. It certainly helped me ride all those miles yesterday, and it’ll help me get ready the larger events I have planned for the fall. What do you think about when you read this type of stuff?
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I think you’re nutty.
Just kidding.
I actually do something similar, except that fundamentally I’m too lazy to draw on a whole visual. I just count to ten. It sounds stupid but it works, 99.9 percent of the time. I usually only get to 6 or 7 before I’m ready to get it done.