Mindful problem creation

I am reading Antifragile at the moment by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

The book is about systems that actually become stronger through adversity and stress. They thrive and grow from it - the opposite of being fragile (and not to be mistaken with being robust or resilient).

In taking a year off during a difficult period of my life, this is one of the things I have learnt. That through difficultly I actually become better and stronger. There is a lot of common wisdom around this, and we hear it in phrases such as 'necessity is the mother of all invention' and 'when life gives you a lemon make lemonade'.

I am so grateful for having been placed in a situation of stress and difficulty, because it woke me up. I was comfortable and safe in my life, my job, my salary. I knew that something was not quite right, but I was not going to do anything about it until I was forced to confront it.

In taking a year off and being forced to be with myself, I managed to find my purpose and the corrections I needed to make.

Which makes me think about how I can practise putting myself into difficultly so that I force myself to grow. As an old manager of mine use to say, create a problem for yourself so that you extend yourself to find a solution.

I recently did this by publishing my podcast before I had all of my ducks in a row for launching. In launching before I was ready, I stopped myself from procrastinating any longer, and had to quickly find ways of learning all the things I needed to do.

I call it mindful problem creation.

There is no need to change it all at once

I read a blog post today about how to feel better about life. One of the suggestions was to make the bed in the morning - get those small wins on the board!

When I think about improving my life I sometimes do the opposite, almost rushing to make every change I think I should make. 

A better approach I think is to change a one, or maybe a few, things at a time. This way you can feel encouraged as you are successful, and can also get a good gauge on whether the change you are introducing is actually improving your life. 

At the moment I am trying to change my entire exercise routine at once. I know that I want to do some strength work (like cross fit), some flexibility and mindfulness work (like yoga), and a social/team sport (like park soccer or basketball. I can't work out a way to do all of these things at the moment, so I have decided to get cross fit happening once a week, gauge whether it is of benefit, and then try to incorporate a weekly yoga session. 

Small wins.