My Mantra

I have come up with a mantra that I tell myself each morning. It goes like this:

I am here to explore the mystery and wonder of existence.

I do this through connection and conversation.

I do this through consciousness and wellbeing.

I do this through creation, contribution, and curation.

A new baseline

I remember in the past achieving a certain level of health or fitness, and then falling away from that, and then achieving it again.

It was like I had a limit that I was aiming for, a reference to a time in my youth where I was at my peak.

What I am finding is that I have learnt so much recently about what is possible for humans, for myself, that I have a new baseline.

There is no looking back any more, referencing what I used to be or how I used to feel. I feel so much better than that now. I am learning how to look after myself and to explore the wonders of existence.

And the more I learn and experience the more I see that there is so much more to explore and learn. There is no more looking back, only taking where I am now as a new baseline and platform for exploring all that I can be.

Thoughts on food

Two things are changing in the way I feel about food and eating. 

The first is that I am going from a base assumption that I eat for pleasure and that good food is food that makes me feel good when I have it in my mouth. What I am moving towards is a base assumption that I eat for function, and that good food is food that makes me feel good for the day, week, and year after I have had it in my mouth.

Building upon this, the second is that I am being challenged about the quantity and quality of the food I eat, and therefore the amount of money I spend on food. Food has been an area I have tried to minimise spend on as much as possible. In moving to a different foundation, I realise that money spent on food is not money wasted. It is actually an investment in myself and how well I am able to show up in each moment.

I have no idea how to take my kids along on the same journey...but that can be a topic for another day.

Creation through expectation

'...all the data indicate athletes' expectations as important factors in physical performance, to be taken into account in training strategies.'  -- Placebo and nocebo responses, Fabrizio Benedetti

There is much talk about visualisation and manifestation and laws of attraction in some of the groups I hang out with. I see some of this in my own life - coincidences that seem too strange to be just that.

I read the article that the above quote comes from recently which talks about placebo, and how telling athletes they are going to perform well causes changes in the physiology, enabling them to tap into reserves in their energy and ability that are usually kept for crisis events. In essence if athletes have an expectation that they will do well, they will lift the cap on their physical limits, and perform better than they otherwise would.

I suspect that the same is true for other areas of our life. In relationships, work, wellbeing: if we have an expectation that we will do well, that good things will come our way, we will physically have more ability and more awareness of these things as we move through our days than we otherwise would.

The future of workplace design

As I see it, the workplace is a relic of a bygone era.

We are supervised to ensure that we are sitting at our desks for the hours we are contracted to work, as if it is the sitting that is the productive activity. This is the case when sitting at a machine which is part of a production line that only works when people do the right thing at the right time. This is not the case for a majority of the people working today in the office buildings of many downtown CBDs.

We are asked to work from 8:30am to 5:30pm, Monday to Friday, in places far away from our family and community life, in environments that ensure we need to spend additional time outside of work in the gym in order to recover the vitality sucked out of us underneath those fluorescent lights.

This somehow worked when there was only one person from each family working, enabling the other person to spend time with and bring up the children. This certainly doesn't work for the majority of families today, where either both parents are working these kinds of jobs and hours, or where the family has separated parents and one parent struggles to keep it all together by themselves.

Part of my mission is the help create places of work where people have more vitality, have more energy, and are more well, at the end of the day than they were at the start of the day. This is because of the conversations they have had, the food they have eaten, the space they are in, the way they have moved, and what they have created through their work throughout their day.

They don't need to go to the gym after work because they have moved their bodies during the day. They don't need to feel guilty or neglectful about their families because their work enables them to be with their kids according to their needs. They don't need to have a side passion to ensure they get some kind of satisfaction out of life because their work is in alignment with their interests and purpose.

I think these are the workplaces we need today, and I think think they are on their way.

Unfortunately I think I am vegetarian

For about a year I have had a suspicion that I am better when I don't eat meat. Not better in a moral sense, but better in a present, creative, energised sense.  

This started when I spent 10 days on a retreat eating vegetarian food. It was the first time I saw vegetarian food as a tasty and a viable alternative. I also started to notice how well I felt.  

I maintained this for about a month after the retreat and then started eating meat again. One year on, this past month I have become so aware of the impact the food I put into my mouth have on the rest of my being. 

Then I watched the film Unity , and I have struggle to eat meat since. Now it has become not only an issue of wellbeing for me, but also for all life living on the planet I am connected to. I feel I am doing my growing consciousness harm by eating the flesh of another being, so much so that I am beginning to be repulsed by meat. 

And this is unfortunate because I really don't want to be that person who is annoying at meal times. I really don't want to have to make that much of a scene. But it seems that negotiating ethics, consciousness, wellbeing, and presence is the situation I find myself in, and must embrace.  

In the end, its only me that knows what I need

Yesterday I crashed. After dropping the kids at school I lay in bed for more than an hour. Somehow I managed to get out of the house and drove to meet a colleague. This gave me a bit of a spurt of energy to get through the rest of the day, before going to bed at 9:00 and sleeping through to 7:00.

I think my body is telling me that it needs to feel some things, and I need to take excellent care of it so it can feel what it needs to feel. Many of these feelings are about processing what happened this time last year.

I think that is going to mean plenty of sleep, dropping the coffee, gentle exercise, and being sensitive to what my body is saying. Part of me feels guilty about this, like I need to be doing, and producing, and getting closer to making money again. However noticing how I feel today, in a much more relaxed and present state of mind, I realise that I must follow my own path. At the moment this does not look like much from the outside. But it is what I need.

Keep showing up...

Consistency seems to me to be one of the keys to success. I am thinking about my meditation practise. I am thinking about eating well. About exercise. About this blog.

Not that this blog is what many would call 'successful' at the moment. I am not sure that anybody else reads it. But as I write it (almost) everyday, I can feel something changing inside me. 

I was thinking about this as I start to hang out with a new group of people. These are the subtle disruptors of Melbourne, those who are starting to do meaningful, purposeful, mindful, disruptive things, often through business. I have managed to tap into a few gatherings that have been happening, and because I have been showing up consistently, people are starting to recognise me as part of that group. I am starting to build some genuine relationships, and who knows, maybe I have found my tribe.

Going hand in hand with consistency is building for the long term. I like the Slow School of Business's approach in this way. About building mindfully. Building well. At the start of a new journey, in health, in business, in relationships, I am keeping consistency and building for the long term front of mind.

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.