Taming Monkey Number 6 – The “Forcing” Lesson

It’s that time of the month, again. I’m talking about my usual report on the tamed inner monkey. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, go read the introductory post. Basically, I replaced my yearly resolutions with a yearly challenge: each month I want to tame an inner monkey. Some underdeveloped part of myself, a promise made long time ago but never fulfilled. Read more about what an inner monkey is.

The Running Challenge

Last month monkey was “running”. I wanted to reinsert running into my life. The measurable part of this challenge was “14 days of running”. Two weeks ago I already had 10 days of running. With a detailed running report and all. But now, 14 days after that report, I can only add 2 more days to those 10. So, technically, I didn’t meet my own expectations.

But realistically speaking, the monkey was tamed. I did reinsert running into my life and the benefits are as expected. Namely, amazing. I lost weight, I sleep less and better, my metabolism accelerated (I know because I can eat more but I’m not putting on). To make a long story short, the monkey was tamed.

But, as always, there’s a lesson.

The “Forcing” Lesson

I didn’t run 14 days and only 12 because my ankle got injured. Like seriously injured. For a week or so I could barely walk. It was swollen and hurting big time. I tried to run one day but I only managed to do it for like 10 meters before those ten thousand needles started to hit me all at the same time from the inside of my swollen ankle. So I had to take care of that ankle until I became “usable” again.

Took me around 9 days until I was able to restart my running. Technically, the first workout wasn’t really a run, but just a power walk of a few kilometers. Nevertheless, it put me on track again. Two days after I did another workoout, with 1.5 kilometers of running. I decided to run every two days from now on and not every day, because the strain was too big. I also decided to alternate running with other types of exercising, and I’m thinking at biking.

So, the lesson was quite simple: if you force it beyond your limits, you may damage something. It’s a pretty simple lesson but it’s very often ignored. Partly because there is this “go beyond your own limits” discourse that each and every self improvement guru will sell you in a nice candy coat. And we tend to really listen to it, like really going over what we can reasonably achieve. And partly because I have a real difficulty in identifying my own limits.

I don’t always listen to my “sensors“. I keep pushing until it’s either me or the wall. One of us must go down. No matter the price I have to pay for it. And, more often than not, I found out that the price I paid is not worth the result. Coming back to my running, if I would have run every other day, instead of each and every day, I wouldn’t have those ankle problems. My running reinsertion would have been much smoother. It’s still ok, the monkey was tamed, but I also suffered a completely unnecessary injury.

Trying to go ”over your own limits“, at the price of actually damaging your system is not a sign of a strong personality. It’s a sign of stupidity.

I guess it’s the same in business or in relationships. There is a point from where, no matter what you do, no matter how much time or resources are you going to invest, nothing will change. That’s a sign you have to find another approach. It’s time to stop and think things over. And focus on what CAN be achieved versus of what it CAN’T.

So, that was the most important lesson from the sixth month monkey.

Monkey Number Seven

I already had a monkey for July, but due to some unexpected changes, I couldn’t commit to it. Of course, I could’ve somehow push further and try to overcome those limitations and still try to do my initial monkey, but, as I just said, sometimes you gotta know when to change course. And that’s exactly what I did (with a little help from a friend, of course).

My July monkey will be astrological service. I know it sounds completely unexpected, and to some extent it was unexpected to me too. But, as each and every other monkey I had, it’s a thing that wasn’t taken care of. Let me get into details a bit.

I studied astrology and use it on a daily basis. I don’t make a lot of fuss about it. It’s just a thing I do. Sometimes, when we go out, I like to entertain my friends for hours just by reading their charts. In the last two or three years, I accumulated many unfulfilled promises I made about those charts. From the top of my head, I think there are at least 10 charts that are promised to be written and delivered to my friends but I never lived up to those promises.

So, for the month of July, I will try to browse through my collection of astrological charts promises and deliver. It may sound like a much easier task than running, and it may even be so. It’s not the “difficulty” that matter in this “taming monkeys” approach. It’s mainly the “live up to your promises, man” part that counts. The “promise” and the “deliver” part of it. So, if you’re one of the guys that I promised a chart reading from me, time to enjoy. It will finally be done.

Of course, the other parts of my life will continue untouched, or even with more energy. And I’m thinking specifically at iAdd, my iPhone / iPad productivity app (which was ported to iCloud and just waiting for the release of iOS5) and WPSumo, the youngest project I took over (and one of the most promising I had in the last few years, I have to tell you that).

7 Simple Ways To Unclog Your Pipes

The other day I was at an online industry event. I do attend from time to time to these events because it’s fun, you get to meet new people and sometimes you get a chance to see old friends. Oh, and also because I’m invited . The event was interesting and smooth and, after a short networking session, I was ready to leave. The location was somewhere in the old downtown, in a nice (and also huge) house, surrounded by narrow streets. So narrow that you could barely park two cars on both sides of the street and still leave some space for the third to pass trough.

As I was walking toward my car, parked on one of those sides, of course, I saw some orange flashing lights. Another car, apparently a bigger one, was completely blocking my car. As I approached, I realized that the car was made from complicated structures, pipes and curved reservoirs. On top of it it was indeed an orange flashing light, like the one that you see on oversized convoys. A huge hose was getting out from the rear, coming towards me and then suddenly stopping at the half of the street, like it was eaten by the ground. After a few more steps I realized it was eaten by the ground. Or to be more specific, it was entering a sewage hole.

It took me only 2 seconds to realize that they had to clean up the shit from some of the underground sewage system. And then I realized that the curved reservoir of that huge car was actually filled with smelly, brown and liquid human residual matter. I couldn’t smell it, of course, but I also couldn’t but notice how dangerously close to my car it was. I asked one of the workers how long it will take. “Well, we already finished the cleaning, we’re just pulling out the hose. 5 minutes, top”. 5 minutes couldn’t be that long, I thought. But the proximity of the reservoir was giving me the chills. A few other event attendees appeared on the street. They couldn’t pass either. We sat together, strangely aware of the big shit reservoir near us, until the workers pulled the house. A few more shouts and they were gone.

As I was entering my car, I experienced a strange feeling of relief. The road was clear. The pipes were unclogged. I could move again.

The Poop Is Real

We’re always facing these situations, but seldom as clearly as the one I experienced. As I drove home I started to understand the importance of our own psychological sewage system. The importance of our internal exhausting pipes. We do have those residual matters floating inside us somehow, until they block something. And we can’t always call for a big car with a dark hose to clean up our internal pipes. We just acknowledge a little bit of resistance, a little bit of difficulty and, maybe, we try to use another way. For instance, if I wouldn’t come by car at that event, I would most likely try to just use another street and head for the subway. This is how we circumvent our own psychological shit: we’re just picking another road, leaving the clogged pipe rotten full.

And most of the time we’re fine. Our internal sewage system is so cleverly designed that we can find new ways of doing things almost all the time. We recover after losing a job. We get back on our feet after an abusive relationship. We’re making it, somehow. But there are times when we are overloaded. When we have no other way of doing things other than cleaning the pipe. We cannot advance. We’re stuck and we have to do something.

Cleaning shit is not a nice job. Cleaning our internal, psychological shit is particularly difficult. Because we tend to think that we’re functioning without any residual matter. Which is entirely false. Everything we do has a little bit of leftover, some parts which are not processed and will never be. Those parts we need to get rid of.

The Alternatives

As I was driving home I tried to imagine a different scenario. What if the car reservoir couldn’t cope with the pressure? The whole shit would have spread over my car, over me and over the other people on the street. Or, if the underground pipe would crack, the whole street would have been covered in poop. Brown, liquid, smelling poop. Fortunately, my little encounter was a happy one. No one was covered in shit.

But our internal sewage system doesn’t work like this. Sometimes the poop explodes. Things that were accumulated for years will eventually find a weak point in your pipes and will explode. And then, just like in my alternative scenario, everybody will be covered in shit. I’m sure you’ve been there. You explode all of a sudden, saying or doing things you wish you wouldn’t. And, at the end of the explosion, everything is so smelly, that you can’t stand it anymore.

How To Unclog Your Pipes

Repressed feelings, anger, sadness, pessimism, all of these are residual substances generated by our day to day activity as human beings. We carry them deep within our emotional body and we’re gradually filling our pipes with them. Until, some day, we wish we have had them cleaned before they exploded. The good news is that we can prevent this from happening. Even if we’re facing some tough times, we can get through. As long as we’re accepting the fact that our pipes are clogged and we have to take action.

I’ve been there too. And not only once. Sometimes the shit exploded, some times not. Over the years I started to learn how to manage this process. Here are seven simple techniques I use in order to take care of my clogged pipes.

1. Write What You Cannot Say

Write a letter to the one who hurt you, but don’t send it. Burry it or just tear it down. But do write everything you wish you’d say to that person. You’ve been hurt and the consequences of that fact are real. Don’t try to hide them. Be as clear as you can. Just don’t engage in a real interaction with that person. Sometimes, this process alone is enough to clear the residual matter of that hurtful encounter. You cannot change the past anyway, nor can you turn things back the way they were. You can only heal yourself. The hurt will never be reversed. But you can be healed.

2. Recycle Aggression

Try to get involved in some very demanding activities. Some people are diving into work after a traumatic event. As long as they aren’t trying to fool themselves that they’re invulnerable, I think this is a good thing. Re-chanelling that aggression into some constant and fulfilling activity is way better than letting it grow inside, chaotically, until the whole system will be blocked. Accept that fact that you’re aggressive and that aggression is a normal reaction, but redirect it to a different context. Take up on some difficult projects. Finish them with glory and then just feel better.

3. Clean Up Your Lenses

You can’t always get it from the first time. You can’t get that promotion, that partner or that trip to India. You have to adjust, to adapt, to find new ways. This is very much like focusing your camera while trying to make a beautiful picture. You rotate the lenses back and forth, going through fuzzy and unclear phases, until you finally reach that crystal clear image you always wanted. If you accept this back and forth process of gradually approaching your goals, then all your failures will become acceptable. They will be part of a managed process. They won’t produce shit anymore.

4. Clean Up Your House

What’s on the outside is a mirror of what’s on the inside. Have you looked at your house lately? At the interior of your car? At your room? If it’s a place you wish you wouldn’t live in, then chances are that your internal pipes are clogged just as well. It’s just a matter of time until they’ll explode and then you’ll cover in shit everyone who’d happen to be around. And you wouldn’t even know why you did it. Well, if your surroundings are neat and clean, throwing psychological shit at others will become much less probable. Because you won’t have any shit anymore. You process it with every house cleaning session.

5. Exercise

Physical exercise, just like the technique above, will act like a mirror to your emotional body. The more you use it, the more fit it will become. Many times our emotional turmoils are just blocked within our physical body. They are finding a place in our organs and they stay there. Until you take action and help those parts of your body to properly communicate. Not to mention that physical exercise is in itself a great way of freeing yourself from frustration. If you don’t believe me, just try to do a kyokushin session with a sparring partner.

6. Get A Massage

That’s also close to the one above, only it requires another partner. Preferably one who really know what she’s doing. A professional masseuse (or masseur, for what matters) can make miracles with your body. And since your physical body is a container for your emotional body, that one will benefit too. One side advantage of getting constant professional massage is that your energy channels will gradually open. And, unless you’re living a really stressful life, they’ll remain open. On an open system, everything will flow smoother. It will be more and more difficult to accumulate residual matter.

7. Talk To Somebody

That’s the equivalent of the huge car with black hoses. You call somebody over. It’s the technique in which you are actually spitting out everything that bothers you. You throw away all what you accumulated. The listener can be a friend, a shrink or just a stranger. The last one being the most adventurous way of doing this, of course. But the mere fact of acknowledging that you have unprocessed stuff in your system and that you are willing to letting it out, well, that will start a much deeper process, in which the entire system will start to rearrange itself in a much more effective way.

***

The image of a life surrounded by horrendously bad smelling shit is not the nicest image you can paint on a blog post. But I did this on purpose. Because this is exactly what you get if you’re not unclogging your pipes. You may get used to the smell and start to ignore it after a while. But the poop will be there. And it will eventually overcome you. Drawn in your own shit.

How does it feel to read something like this? Bad? Really bad? You wish you didn’t start reading this in the first place?

Good. Because if this is how it feels to read this, imagine how it would be to actually experience it.

Go unclog your pipes before the shit will explode.

Healers and Hurters

Healers

Have you ever met a person who’s smile is instantly making you feel better? A person who’s talking about weather for 2 minutes but makes you happy all of a sudden? A person who’s doing nothing special but being around you and yet, his only presence is making you lighter and joyful?

I call those persons healers. Maybe they don’t even know they have the ability to heal other persons, or maybe they doing it only for the fun, thing is that those persons are like genuine positive energy islands where I anchor my ship every once in a while.

Healers are altruistic, happy and healthy. They laugh a lot, they make a lot of jokes and they’re usually surrounded by people all the time. People they’re unconsciously drawing towards them because of this ability: to offer unconditional (and most of the time unconscious) healing.

Hurters

Have you ever met a person who’s smile is instantly making you feel the deepest cold? A person who’s talking about the weather for 2 minutes but scares the hell out of you? A person who’s doing nothing special but being around you and yet, his only presence is making you heavy and sad?

I call those persons hurters. Maybe they don’t even know they have this effect on other persons, or maybe they doing it just for fun, thing is that those persons are like black, sudden storms that I avoid at all costs to be involved with every time I spot them on my ocean.

Hurters are egoistic, sad and, most of the time, ill. They don’t laugh nor do enjoy being around groups who are laughing a lot and they’re always in search for new people. People they’re using as an object for their abusive (even if unconscious) behavior.

Hurting Others

Hurting has this nasty habit of self-propagation. If you’ve been hurt once you feel entitled to hurt when your turn comes. Or even earlier, sometimes. Being hurt once is like a free pass to hurt others. They did that to me, right? Now I will did that unto others.

Hurting likes hurting. It’s like a sense of identity. If you see others being hurt you suddenly start to be part of a group, to belong. We’re all here to suffer, right, so I might just be in the right place if I’ll start spreading this along.

Hurting others is, as strange as it may seem, a twisted process of healing. Because you’ve been hurt  in the past, you try to let out the pain and the frustration by loading others with it. It’s like you can’t keep it anymore inside and open your safety valves letting it flooding outside without any control whatsoever.

Healing Others

Healing is perceived by many of us as highly improbable, so we tend to put more value in it than we put on hurting. Because it’s harder to find healing than hurting, that makes it precious. Based on what we experienced so far, we find hurting very probable, hence, receiving healing seems to be on the verge of the miracle most of the time. And that makes us perceive it as something beyond our control.

Healing is a natural capacity, yet the abundance of hurting makes it so isolated that we’re putting on the same level with super-natural. The downside of this is that we develop a rather shy relationship with healing. We’re not really expecting it to happen. We’re extremely happy when this is happening, but we’re not expecting it.

You may not know that, but you are capable of healing other people. Most of your relationships are based on this process. Your friends find something in you that helps them be balanced. Unless all your relationships are based on a domination / controlling pattern, you are already healing some of your closest relationships.

Hurting Yourself

You find it easier to hurt yourself than to heal yourself because hurting is so common around you. It seems like the right way to do. Everybody is hurt, so it must be something normal. Or natural. Or acceptable.

It isn’t. You have a choice. You can accept it or you cannot accept it. It’s up to you. Not up to the person who’s trying to hurt you. They may be in that twisted healing process of unloading their pain on others, but you still have a choice.

The moment you understand and accept that, you realize that nobody can hurt you anymore. Nobody, except yourself. You’re the one who allows things to happen to you. So every time you’re hurt, it’s coming from you.

And you can change that.

Healing Yourself

Healing is the mere process of enjoying your life. A healthy person is a person who find joy in life no matter what. It’s nothing more than that, but yet, it’s so rare around us that we often mistake it for a miracle. Something beyond our control. Something super natural.

Well, it isn’t. Enjoying your life means accepting and embracing it with all that it has to offer to you. How can you NOT do that? How can you still embrace hurting (both as a victim and a perpetrator) when smiling is so much easier? It’s so easy to start healing yourself this very moment by simply enjoying everything around you. It’s that simple, yes.

The moment you understand and accept that, you’ll realize that your own life joy and acceptance will soon start overflow onto others. The simple process of not allowing the pain to destroy your joy of life will make you become a healer.

And by healing yourself you’re healing others too.

***

Which one do you chose? Propagate the pain just because people are used to it? Or go the other way around and start enjoying every second of your life, letting your healing flow grow and eventually overflow onto others? You do have a choice, you know.

Which one is it?

30 Days Exercising Challenge – Days 5-7

The good news is that I’m still on the challenge, although I haven’t blogged about it in the last 3 days. The bad news is that I had to make some adjustments to it. Basically, I started to learn how my body reacts to various levels of effort, and made the necessary corrections. So, technically, it’s not bad news.

Friday

Woke up at 6:10.

• 1 rep 15 pushups.
• 1 rep 30 abs
• 1 rep 15 pushups

No stepper whatsoever during the day, basically because I’ve spent the last day of the week socializing. Or trying to. The pause was good. My body thank me by providing generous waves of energy throughout the day.

Saturday

Woke up at 7 Am.

• 6 Surya Namaskara
• 1 rep 15 pushups
• 1 rep 30 abs
• 1 rep 15 pushups
• 19 minutes on the stepper

Felt extremely well, my heart rate never crossed 125. During the yoga part, I felt some sort of energy relieve in the joints, probably my body was so tense because I was trying to impose a little bit too much on it, a little bit too fast. In the afternoon I did another isolated rep of 15 pushups.

Sunday

Woke up at 6:30 although I went to bed at 12:30. This waking up early pattern seems to be so far pretty common and I’m happy about it. Today I woke up at 5:30 without any alarm clock and without being tired at all.

• 6 Surya Namaskara
• 1 rep 15 pushups
• 1 rep 30 abs
• 1 rep 15 pushups
• 20 minutes on the stepper (felt almost like a pleasure walk)
• 1 rep 15 pushups
• 1 rep 30 abs

All on all, seems I’m doing much better with a single workout per day. My other activities are also much better managed if I’m doing this workout in the morning. I still track my weight but I  won’t blog about it unless there are very important changes. It seems to me that I need a body fat checker more than a weight scale right now.

I also noticed that some of the people who joined this are keeping their pace, which is something that makes me, in a very strange way, happy . If you are doing your own workouts, please feel free to share them here, along with your comments and other advice.

30 Days Exercising Challenge – Day 4

Woke up at 6 AM, in pretty good shape. My weight was weight 93.7. I’m starting to feel a little bit bored about this weight stuff, as I know it can be really misleading. You can have a huge amount of fat and hence be obese, or you can have a pretty important muscular mass, without being obese, of course. I know that muscle weights a little more than fat, so measuring weight alone can be misleading. I will do my best to find a way to check out my body fat, because I think I’m decreasing in fat and increasing in muscle at the same time, hence my overall weight is remaining the same. But without a body fat checker this is only a feeling.

Morning Workout

6 surya namaskara
1 rep 15 pushups
1 rep 30 abs
1 rep 15 pushups

18 minutes on the stepper

closing with another rep of 15 pushups

Heart rate at 135-138 almost never reached 140, so I guess my body adapted pretty fast. I will continue to increase the stepper time 1 minute per day until I will reach 30 minutes per session.

Total exercising time: 25 minutes.

Afternoon Workout

2 reps 30 abs
3 reps 15 pushups

18 minutes on the stepper (heart rate constantly at 139-140).

Total exercising time: 30 minutes.

Grand Totals

Total exercises:

90 pushups
90 abs
36 minutes on the stepper

Total exercising time: 55 minutes.

Things are shaping pretty well, although I do have a little bit of difficulty waking up in the morning. Today I woke up at 6 AM, but find it difficult to exercise. It was like my body begged me to make a pause. But more on that on tomorrow’s post, when today will be completely finished.

As usual, feel free to post your comments on your own exercising routine, if you’re doing one.

30 Days Exercising Challenge – Day 3

Day 3 went a little better than day 2, I was able to wake up at 6 AM, pretty energetic. Weight: 93.7 kilos.

Morning workout

• 6 Surya Namaskara
• 1 rep 15 pushups
• 1 rep 30 abs
• 1 rep 15 pushups
• 17 minutes on the stepper

Heart rate was 122-124 for the first 7 minutes, then 130-134 for the rest of 10 minutes, never up than 137.

Exercising time 24 minutes.

Afternoon Workout

• 1 rep 30 abs
• 2 rep 15 pushups
• 17 minutes on the stepper

Heart rate never got higher than 145, half of the time at 137, even if I tried some “sprints” or accelereations. After the stepper I closed with:

• 1 rep 30 abs
• 1 rep 15 pushups

Exercising time: 28 minutes.

Total exercising time: 52 minutes.

Totla exercise:

• 75 pushups
• 60 abs
• 34 minutes on the stepper

Overall, I felt extremely good, but in the evening my whole body started to cry at me. I couldn’t find any position on the couch without some pain in some of my muscle. Fortunately, when I went to sleep everything vaporized and slept like a baby.

Some of the people reading this blog are already doing their own exercising challenge and I think this is wonderful. I really look forward to share some results and impressions after this period. But if you feel there’s something you want to share about it, feel free to do it right now, in the comments.

30 Days Exercising Challenge – Day 2

The second day of my 30 days exercising challenge started a little bit odd. For some reason, I wasn’t able to do my morning workout, so I had to postpone it for the afternoon. I started around 17:00.

After an initial 2 minutes stretching I had 1 rep of 15 pushups. 2 minutes pause and then my first rep of 30 abs. After another 2 minutes pause I had one more rep of 15 pushups. The first part was finished with 16 minutes on the stepper. I decided to gradually increase the time on the stepper with 1 minute per day until I will reach 30 minutes. That way I will do at least 2 x 30 minutes = 60 minutes on the stepper each day. It just seem doable at the moment.

The second part of the workout was made of 1 rep of 30 abs and another rep of 15 pushups. After that, I started the second 16 minutes stepper session.

Heart rate went to 146-149 and stayed there for the first rep on the stepper. On the second, I had around 5 minutes in which the heart rate went over 150, up to 156, but never higher. The last 5 minutes the heart rate was 146 steady.

Weight: 93.5 kilos.

Total exercising time, including breaks: 50 minutes.

Total exercises:

• 45 pushups
• 60 abs
• 32 minutes on the stepper

I felt good although it was really hot and lost a lot of water. I hidrated myself in the beginning, during and after the workout. It seems that my body is starting to adjust, although is really early to tell that. I found it pretty difficult to fall asleep in the evening, it was like my body was still alert, but didn’t have any difficulty whatsoever in getting up at 6 AM. More on that on the blog post about the 3rd day.

I started to read some material on the topic (specifically, the book presented in this comment) and also started to look around for a body fat checker device, but I’m not in a rush.

If you’re following this challenge and starting some exercise for yourself, feel free to post a comment here.

30 Days Exercising Challenge – Day 1

First of all, the feed-back from the initial post announcing that I’m  going to start a 30 days exercising challenge was fantastic. To be honest, I didn’t see it coming. Thanks everybody for your tips, suggestions and precious advice. It seems that I really have to go through this, now that almost everyone is watching

Now, the first day wasn’t spectacular, apart from the initial, usual enthusiasm. I think I spent more time moderating and answering comments on my blog than actually exercising. Which, of course, is not a bad thing at all.

Body Measurements

Since I don’t have a yet a body fat checker I will just note my weight, which was 93.6 kg.

Morning routine

Wake up at 6:30. Before starting to exercise I had 4 series of Surya Namaskara, or sun salutation. After that I had 15 minutes on the stepper, set up at 5 (more on the stepper a little bit later). After that, I had a 15 pushups session. That was all.

Evening routine

I started to exercise around 7:30 PM. Had another session of 15 minutes on the stepper, followed by two reps of 15 pushups each, with less than a minute pause between them. During the 15 minutes session on the stepper my heart rate went to 148-150 after the first 4 minutes and remained there until I finished.

Total exercising time: 35 minutes.

Fitness Gear

My stepper is Kettler verso 107. It’s an entry level device, but it does the trick for me. It has 7 difficulty levels, and I usually work at 5. It does have a heart monitor but it doesn’t have any programs so I just set up the main exercising time and start running.

After the first day I felt good, especially in the morning, a lot of endorphins running through my body.  I write this the morning after, of course, and I do start to feel a little bit tired and a small ache in my upper back. I usually get that after I start doing pushups, until my muscle pick up. Today’s morning was a little bit compromised, so to speak, so I will have to move my exercise session in the evening.

As usual, feel free to post in the comments your own fitness routine.

Starting To Exercise

Seems like August is my favorite month for personal development challenges. Last year, on August 4h I started my raw food diet, which lasted for more than 9 months. After my trip to Japan, in April, my raw food diet ended and you can read more about that in the post raw food diet blog post. Now, let’s get physical.

I intend to have a 30 days challenge in the physical area. In plain English: I’ll move my butt and start exercising a bit. I don’t have a very strict goal. In fact, I’m doing this just to create a scaffold for my physical body, to give it a little bit of rhythm.

You see, other areas of my life are already benefiting from setting a conscious rhythm. For instance, I have this goal of publishing at least 3 articles per week in the blog. I also check Twitter and email first thing in the morning, and sometimes several times during the day. I spend time in the garden, wetting the flowers or doing some other type of small jobs. This creates a pattern. After a certain threshold, I’m doing those things with much more ease. I’ve integrated them. For instance, I come to the point when interacting with at least 10 people per day on Twitter is something trivial. In the garden, I’ve gone from planting my own flowers up to setting up a little vineyard. Out of those small things I do every day, some great results are emerging. I call this setting a rhythm.

Now, in the physical area I don’t have yet such a pattern, but I intend to create one. I feel a little bit disconnected on this level, I mean every other parts are moving ahead, but here it seems I’m a little bit stuck. Like I already told you, I don’t have a specific goal, but I do intend to measure this somehow. I guess the best way would be to count the time, but I will also include some other specific measurements.

Based on my previous experience with exercising, I intend to reach 45 minutes of exercising daily, in the next 30 days. As for the type of exercising, I will stick to something moderate. I won’t hit the gym, because I already have quite a fitness setup at my house. The only tool I will use though would be a stepper, for the rest I’ll settle with pushups and small abs. I also intend to integrate some moderate yoga postures. I don’t intend to break any world record here, just to feel a little bit better and fitter.

As I write this I already had my first 20 minutes session early in the morning and I feel great. I will describe the whole thing, including my evening session, in tomorrow’s blog post. I don’t know yet if I will have 2 sessions per day, one in the morning and one in the evening, at this point just seems natural to have it this way. I’ll see what happens and adjust.

The longest exercising period in my adult life (not including the times when I was playing basketball in high-school), was 6 months and it ended just before Bianca was born. It wasn’t something very strong, it was a combination of yoga, stretching and meditation every morning, but I felt really, really great. I remember very clear the feeling of balance I had during that period.

I will try to blog as often as I can about this, but don’t expect anything too strict. It may be one post a day or it may be one post a week.

If you want to join me in this, feel free to comment and post your own goals. I think sharing this goal to as many people as I can reach will increase my motivation level. And I think it will work the same way for you.

Solving The Wrong Problem

One of my oldest memories as a child is cleaning the house. I remember clearly how I started to use a broom – which seemed like a giant toy – and how I slowly gathered together piles of dust from all areas of our small apartment. It was something new and exciting. Although I was a kid (not older than 3, I guess), I know I wasn’t playing, because I had the task to take out all the dirt from the floor. I used the broom as a tool to get out all the dirt and did it consciously. At some moment, all the piles I gathered with my broom were loaded into a trash bin. I clearly remember how good I felt after the whole action. I eliminated the dirt. Did something by myself.

Fast forward 35 years: I’m writing a blog entry about one of the most subtle, yet incredibly important setbacks in our lives: inverse evaluation. The name sounds strange, but behind this name lies one of the most popular approaches in our world. It can be found at any age, in any culture, at any education level. It makes more bad than smoking and it’s more popular than drinking. Many people still consider it like something normal, although is one of the worst thing you can do to yourself. It’s the evaluation of things by the opposite of what you want to happen. Or, to be shorter: inverse evaluation.

It’s The Other Way Around

The best way to explain it is to analyze my first memory described above. As a kid, I felt this huge satisfaction when I took out the dirt from the floor. I finished a task and the result was great. I felt so good, that I was eager to repeat it instantly. Only there wasn’t anymore dirt in the house. I had to wait for a while until I was able to do the trick again. But when I did it, I had the same satisfaction. To be honest, the satisfaction was even bigger.

Now, suppose you’re trying to lose weight. You have something like 10 kilos over your normal weight. You start to exercise, control your eating habits, get slow on your sugar, and so on. In 3 months, you’re out of 10 kilos. Wow! What an accomplishment! You lost 10 kilos!

You run your own business. At some point, you want to cut some costs in order to streamline a little your cashflow. With a little bit of attention, you’re able to cut 5000$ from your expenses. Wow! Can you imagine that? I just cut 5000$ in expenses from my own business! Am I good or what?

Started to understand where I’m heading? Not yet? Then read on.

You don’t want a bigger pile of dirt, you just want your house to be clean.
You don’t want to lose 15 kilos next time, you just want to keep your weight at a normal level.
You don’t want to cut 7000$ nest time from your business expenses, you just want to naturally grow and maintain your business.

That’s inverse evaluation. You measure things by their opposite.

The real goal is to have a clean house, not to produce (and happily eliminate) more and more dirt. The real goal is to be healthy all the time, not to lose more kilos every few months (after you worked hard to put them on you, of course). The real goal is to provide value through your business, not to measure your success by your economies.

It’s the other way around. And still, we don’t get it.

Shift Your Course

Measuring things by their opposite is very dangerous. It’s tricky because is closer to us than the real stuff. This inverse evaluation is easier to understand because it’s measurable. It’s easy to understand that single atomic action of getting out the dirt from your house every two weeks. It’s so convenient. Every two weeks you get your dose of self-respect and satisfaction. Clean your life. Lost extra weight. You see?

Seeing things as they are is difficult because you’re inclined to get satisfaction from atomic actions. You trained yourself to react to small doses of actions instead of being part of a continuous flow. Keeping a clean house – as opposed to get the dirt out every two weeks – means making small adjustments all the time. You’re doing a little bit today, a little bit tomorrow. You don’t let the dirt to accumulate. In fact, you lose completely the notion of dirt, and you’re only working with the notion of clean. You don’t do single atomic actions. You’re in a continuum of cleanliness.

It’s the same in all other areas: be healthy (instead of focusing on weight), be successful (instead of focusing on money). And it can go all the way up, to the top of your life.

Let’s start another example here: suppose you have a lot of enemies and you decide it’s time to convert them to friends. In abstracto, this is a very healthy choice. It will be really good for your soul and it will win some karma points on the side. So, you start to practice compassion, you start to learn how to apologize and in a very short time you convert several enemies into friends. It feels so good, that you want to do it again. But, surprise: you’re out of enemies! You converted them all! Now what? You start making some new enemies, of course.

The real stuff means not having enemies at all, eliminating the very concept of enemy. Being friendly is the thing, not converting enemies to friends.

Indulging versus Being

Some of you may think already at concepts like polarization or attachment, in its buddhist acceptance. If you do that, good, it means you know where I’m heading. But knowing the concepts is a thing, applying them is another one. For me, one of the easiest way to alleviate my inverse evaluation episodes is to assess if I’m indulging or being.

Ok, let me explain. Indulging means you’re doing something to balance a situation: you come from work, you’re tired, you need some relaxation. Forget about the outside world, have a drink, a chat with your spouse, maybe some sex. Or a dinner out. Or a quick gym session for some endorphins. In a few hours your energies are back to normal. That’s indulging.

Being is different. You’re ok as you are. If you’re tired, that’s ok, you don’t need any reward, nor a miracle medicine for that. Just let the body recover in its own terms. If you’re stressed, let the stress dissolve by itself, don’t apply an antidote. If you’re happy, don’t think at something sad, to “balance” it. Just be happy. Don’t try to balance your current situation for the sake of equilibrium. There is no such thing as equilibrium, you’re moving all the time. If you really want to go to the gym, just go to the gym and feel good about it.

Don’t go because of something, go for something.

Indulging will always call for more and more imbalance in your life. Just being will take your life as it is.

Indulging will always create inverse evaluation: you’ll need more dirt to make your house even cleaner, more fat just to feel better about losing it, more enemies just to have more and more epiphanies of converting them into friends.

Where are you right now? Are you indulging yourself? Or are you just being, with all the good and bad of your life?

To Have Versus To Be

Our modern society has only two major mindsets, and those are: “to have” and “to be”. “To have” is the mindset which favors acquisitions, possessions, control, disruption. “To be” is the mindset which favors enjoyment, detachment, freedom and continuity. Throughout our lives we bounce back and forth from one mindset to another. At some point, “to have” seems more important and it’s preferred. Sometimes we chose more “to be” rather than “to have”.

The world we live in has a huge shift towards the “to have” mindset. Every social structure is designed in such a way that it will support acquisition or a form of control. Every definition of success is based on a number of possessions. Almost every form of value creation is based on a form of control and disruption. The “to have” mindset is ubiquitous. It’s so present that we forgot how “to be”.

Limited Versus Continuous

When you have something, you have it only for a limited period of time. The moment you started to have that thing, time will start its destructive action and the thing will start to decay. Every economic theory will state the fact that there is a devalorisation of things based on the time we’ve had possession over them. You can have a thing only for a limited period of time.

On the other hand, being is continuous. By choosing “to be” and not to have, you detach from the time bounding and enjoy your present second. If you obey to the “to have” mindset, you can have a beautiful thing for some time and then try to recreate the feeling by buying another similar one. But if you’re in the “to be” mindset you can be in joy regardless of any other external hook. You don’t need “to have” material incentives if you are just being. Happiness is not bounded.

Past Or Future Versus Present

When you have something you have it only in the past. You may have the illusion that you have it in the present moment but each second that thing will change. Mostly to decay. You cannot really have something in the present moment, it’s impossible. All of your possessions are in the past. All you have is in the past and all you will have is in the future. In the present moment there is only a presence, you.

When you chose “to be” you chose to live in the present. You can’t live in he past or in the future, you can only be in this present second. This second is all you have. You can’t be in the past, because the past doesn’t exist anymore and you can’t be in the future because the future doesn’t yet exist. Having something is always in the past, being is always in the present. (more…)