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The July Project: Number 23
I’m thrilled when people comment on my exercise regimen—or my blog—and say that I’ve inspired them, or that I make it look easy. But I wonder sometimes if “making it look easy†is doing a disservice to people who are working hard on their own projects for self-improvement. So tonight I want to come clean—it ain’t always easy.
I spent an hour last night trying to come up with a blog post. It was the end of a very long week with mountains of work, many hours of writing, two rowing classes, and a workshop to finish preparing …[MORE]
The July Project: Day 22
Tomorrow morning I’m teaching a workshop to about a dozen participants. The topic is using new online resources to grow an audience and communicate effectively with it. I know the subject matter reasonably well, and I’m confident that my expertise is at least a little greater than that of my students, so they’ll learn something of value. Even though a lot of the specific details are tools and techniques I’ve only learned recently myself, I know that I can teach with authority because of years of experience with design, communications, marketing, personal computers, and so on.
Contrast that self-confident attitude to how I spent my evening: the second Learn to Row class at the Greater Houston Rowing Club. Tonight I climbed on an Ergo rowing machine and worked on stroke technique until my arms were ready to fall off, and then we started playing around with actual boats. We stepped through picking up the “shells†and carrying them from the boathouse to the dock, swinging them down from shoulders to waist to water …[MORE]
The July Project: Day 21
I headed to the park for my walk early today because my first Learn to Row class was tonight. I arrived there around 3:30, the hottest part of the day. I didn’t have to wait long for relief from the heat, though. The sky clouded over, and then about halfway through the first lap, it started to sprinkle. It didn’t rain for very long—maybe about 10 minutes—just enough to get me miserably wet. Then the sun came back out and turned all the fresh rain into a layer of hot steam that hovered over the trail.
It was too humid to dry out from the wetting, but it didn’t matter, because another one was coming anyway. As I got to the last half-mile leg of the 6½‑mile walk, the sky opened up. This time, it was more than a sprinkle. The torrential rain continued until about the time I arrived back at my car …[MORE]
The July Project: Day 20
I received a note this morning from a Facebook friend who’s struggled as hard with weight loss for most of her adult life as I have. She asked, “Can you send me some of you exercise motivation magic? [I’ve] fallen off the wagon…. The battle never seems to end.â€
I wrote back to say that I know the feeling very well, but that somehow it’s helped to stop thinking about fitness in those terms. I’ve tried to make exercise part of who I am—not a short-term project, and not a battle, either. Her words stayed with me all day: the battle never seems to end.
Last weekend I happened to catch an interview with Valerie Bertinelli on CBS News Sunday Morning in which the 49-year-old actress talked about losing 45 pounds, and about her efforts to come to terms with why she gained the weight in the first place. She mentioned plans to run a marathon, and the interviewer chose to sum up the story …[MORE]
The July Project: Day 19
I’ve written elsewhere about my exercise rules and about the idea of making a game out of achieving goals.
I play a lot of games in my exercise routine. I make up arbitrary rules and give myself extra points on an imaginary scoreboard for achievements above and beyond the normal daily routine. I’m not always sure whether these tricks help keep me motivated, or just give my idle mind something to do.
Here’s a rule I made up tonight:
- Extra points are assessed for walking on a day so humid that you finish the outing dripping wet from head to toe …[MORE]
The July Project: Day 18
In 2008, I attended a lecture by Dr. Henry Lodge, one of the authors of Younger Next Year , a book that purports to offer ideas to help men fend off some of the physical symptoms of aging. The central theme of Dr. Lodge’s talk was a point that might seem counterintuitive: that we need more exercise as we get older, not less.
In the question-and-answer session that followed his presentation, someone asked Dr. Lodge, “So how much exercise is the right amount?†He replied that although no one has nailed down a precise, scientific answer to that question, a good rule of thumb might be four days a week in your 40s, five days a week in your 50s, and six days a week from your 60s on …[MORE]
The July Project: Day 16
I’ve written a couple of times before about Rule #2: Everything Counts. Today will be one of those days when I invoke Rule #2. I put in a long work day, then packed my bags and took off for Galveston. I didn’t get here until after 10 p.m., ate a late dinner, and then settled in to write. As soon as I publish this post, I’ll go for a walk. It’ll be after midnight, so I only plan to walk the four blocks down to the Seawall, then maybe a few blocks along the beach and back. That’s okay, because in this game of getting some exercise every day, everything counts.
I don’t entirely grasp the psychological mechanisms at work in Rule #2, but I know that it works …[MORE]
The July Project: Day 14
It takes a thought to make a word
And it takes some words to make an action.
—Jason Mraz, “Life is Wonderfulâ€
For two weeks, I’ve been kicking around a draft post about mantras. I approach the topic with trepidation, because I don’t ever want want to sound like I’m trying to spout “wisdom.†(Somebody please kick me in the head if I ever start believing I’m wise.) I have no wisdom except what I’ve borrowed from other sources, so I can only add my two cents—the results of experiments that I’ve carried out in the search …[MORE]
The July Project: Day 9
A few days ago, I mentioned the rules of the exercise game that I’ve been playing:
Rule #1: Do something every day.
Rule #2: Everything counts.
On Wednesday, someone who’s been reading this blog lately said to me, “I just can’t exercise every day.â€
I replied, “I’m not saying that you should …[MORE]
The July Project: Day 8
Someone once told me, “Happy and successful people tend to be surrounded by other happy and successful people.†If we assume for a moment that it’s true, what are the implications? If you don’t find yourself in the company of people who are thriving, how are you supposed to get ahead?
- Trade in your friends for new, better ones.
- Keep your friends, but add a few higher-quality ones to raise the average.
- Concentrate on what you can do to improve your own life.
- Leverage your happiness and success by focusing on the well-being of the people around you.
It seems that answers C and D might be two sides of the same coin …[MORE]
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