The Secret from My 3rd Grade

When I was a kid I was very relaxed. And I mean in school. I never worried too much about it, yet I managed to get the highest grades in my class. Even my teachers were aware about my apparent passivity and they “blamed” my success on my natural skills: a fantastic memory, they said. I was a good kid in school because I was blessed with a fantastic memory. And not because I was diligently studying. That was my secret, or so they said…

The more I think about this, the more confused I am. I did have a good memory as a kid, but not something way above the average. In fact, I think every kid has a far better memory than an adult. I didn’t read much about this so I’m not backing up my assumption with some scientific research, but I think our memory, as a cognitive function of the brain, is more developed in the early years, when we have to absorb a lot of new information and somehow decreases in performance as we grow, to make room for other brain functions like flexibility or information processing.

The Secret

Whatever. The truth is I wasn’t a good kid in school because of my memory. I was a good kid in school because I didn’t care much about it. How come?

Well, I almost never did my home assignments at home. I used to do them at school, just before the class. There was a 10 minutes break between classes and I almost always used this short break to write my homework. Sometimes I didn’t even know I had a homework, so I had to react pretty fast. In 90% of the cases I had better assignments than my colleagues. The rest of 10% I didn’t had any assignment at all because there were situations when 10 minutes weren’t physically enough to do it. But the vast majority of time, 10 minutes was just about enough to get by.

I didn’t improvise at all, while I was quickly writing my assignments. I was pretty sure about what I was doing. In fact, the mere fact of having to do something in a pressuring context seemed to made me act faster and more focused than usual. Every time I knew I have to face a challenge, being it the challenge of finishing my home assignments during the break, my mind was like crystal clear. I really enjoyed during my homework.

Somehow related to this feeling I also remember the feeling of excitement each morning I was going to school. What challenges was I up for that day? What unexpected things were waiting for me? What small victories was I ready to conquer? What tiny but relevant roadblock would I overcome? Would it be a new assignment? Some new math problem that I have to solve? Some essay that I have to concoct in less than 10 minutes?

I confess I loved school. But I loved it not because I was successful at it, I loved it because it gave me a playground for my risk taking abilities. Am I going to finish my homework during the break? Am I going to learn something new? Am I going to get caught?

Even when I was getting caught without my home assignment (those 10% were emerging quite often, so to speak) I had to come up with something. I had to deal with the situation. Either by inventing an excuse, either by facing the consequences upfront. Ok, I will have to do twice the volume of work for the next time. I will come earlier to school and finish the double assignment, no big deal.

And finally, I remember the feeling I had each evening before going to sleep. Yes, today was a good day. I did great at school. I confess that each morning I was a little bit confused and even frightened just before getting into the flow of events, but once I was there, acting and doing stuff, everything felt into pieces. And almost every single day at school was a fantastic day for me.

Playing It Safe

Maybe you’re wondering now why I’m writing about my 3rd grade home assignments. That’s a good question. I’m writing about that because somehow, along the way, I lost those feelings. I lost the thrill of not knowing what homework did I have to do, the excitement of doing it under pressure, the satisfaction of doing a great job and the incredible feeling of self-confidence I used to have every day before going to bed.

Somehow, I started to play it safe.

I started to plan in advance everything, to make sure every single situation is covered. I started to do my life assignments at home. Even in advance. I think I started to spend more time doing my homework than actually learning and living.

Sometimes, I miss the thrill of not knowing what will happen tomorrow. Most of the time, I already know it. I have appointments in my agenda and tasks to be done.

I miss the self-confidence feeling I had each night while I was looking back at my school victories. Because I don’t really have any important victories to be proud of nowadays: every little task is done according to the plan.

I even miss my confusion and fear in front of something unknown and challenging because, even if my day is made out of difficult tasks, there’s nothing really unknown or challenging.

At some point, life became boring. Our fight for immediate survival made us create a highly predictable universe. The more predictable the universe we’re creating, the easier the life we’re living. We’re having a job which will provide money every two weeks. We have a partner who will fulfill our physical needs twice per week. We have a house that we’re going to really own in thirty years, after we’ll finish to pay our mortgage. And that’s for sure. Because we took every single measure to be sure. We’re constantly making our life assignments at home. At safe.

Maybe it’s the society. We have to survive. We have to push harder and become richer so we can pay our mortgages, get a bigger and fancier car and spend our holidays in exotic places with names that we couldn’t really spell. We have to provide and be accountable for our own contribution.

Or maybe we just get scared. Maybe it’s the fear of death which makes us surround with beautiful and shiny distractions just to avoid the very dreadful thought of physical destruction. By playing it safe we’re creating the illusion of security and predictability.

No Risk It, No Biscuit

Alas, there is no such thing as security. There is no such thing as predictability either. Security is an illusion invented by  insurance companies.

Fact is we’re vulnerable. We’re exposed to dangers every single second. Our life is not predictable, although by starting to do our assignments at home we’re creating this illusion.

You may wake up one day to realize that planes aren’t flying anymore because of a big volcano with an impossible name from a country half frozen. The sky is filled with smoke. The sky is not safe anymore.

Or you may wake up learning that your partner is not the person you though he/she was. Just like that, in a split second, you realize you invested yourself in the wrong partner. Your emotional life is not safe anymore.

Or you may learn from your bank that inflation made your life savings worth a nickel. Or nothing. You thought you’re covered for many years, but all of a sudden you have to start doing your money assignment again. Your financial life is not safe anymore.

And, as surprising and difficult to accept as it may seem, that’s the beauty of it.

The truth is life is what’s happening while you’re making plans. The secret we’re constantly forgetting is that life is what happens on that fragile line between defeat and victory. Life is about taking risks, embracing challenges and overcoming limitations. And you really can’t overcome limitations if you’re playing it safe. Doing your assignments at home, far from the noise and surprises of the real life, trying to prevent bad things to happen or desperately predicting every single bad outcome and avoiding it, will not make you more alive. This will push you deeper and deeper in the illusion of security, while constantly weakening your risk taking muscles second by second.

Until one day you realize you’re not excited about life anymore. You lost that secret along the way. You’re not going to bed happy about the victories you had during the day. You’re not starting your mornings eagerly waiting for some unexpected challenge. You’re not experiencing the thrill of coping with unknown assignments, focusing with a crystal clear mind and getting better and better.

Every time I get these feelings of boredom, limitation and frustration, I simply recall some of my 3rd grade victories. Now you know my secret.

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.

Assess – Decide – Do For Relationships

Assess – Decide – Do is a simple life management framework. Emerged from some limitations of productivity methodologies like GTD, and constructed with a flexible approach, ADD comes handy when you face difficult or pressuring contexts in any areas if your life. At its core, ADD is overwhelmingly simple, it’s entirely up to you to create your very own implementation in whatever area you want to improve.

In today’s post I’ll give you some outlines on how I think ADD can be used for relationships. It’s  my point of view, which may or may not be congruent with yours. And that’s the beauty of it: being so simple, ADD gives you a lot of room on how to implement it for a specific area, as long as you respect 2 simple rules:

• at any time you can be only in one realm, being it Assess, Decide or Do
• the quality of the implementation is given by the Flow, or by the smoothness you achieve in traveling from one realm to another.

If you’re new to my blog, or never heard about ADD like this before, feel free to read the introductory series here.

What Kind Of Relationships?

We’re social animals. We cannot function outside relationships, outside a social paradigm in which we interact with other individuals. Quite often, when you read something about relationships, it’s  about couple relationships. But the fact is we have far more interactions than our love relationships, and this approach will be geared towards this more general perception pf relationships. It’s true, love affairs are quite close to our emotional being, so we tend to give them precedence. Sometimes by ignoring other types of relationships.

Your social behavior is sculpted by everything you do, with everybody, not only your couple relationship. It really doesn’t matter if you have a great couple thing, if you’re socially impaired. And it wouldn’t help you much to be the funniest guy at all parties, if you can’t settle in a long term relationship. Besides living in a couple, there are many other levels of social life: friendship, relatives, work, incidental relationships.

The goal is to have a consistent relationship approach to everything, not just to your intimate behavior. Creating a manageable approach to every single interaction is what gives you balance, not excellence in one single area.

Assess For Relationships

The first thing you have to assess when in a relationship (again, being it a couple relationship, a friends relationship or a work relationship) is its dual nature. There are always two levels:

• you, as individuals
• relationship, as an entity

The way you interact as individuals is one thing, but your relationship expands beyond this. The relationship as a single entity has an impact on the outside world. Every single action inside this relationship will create something outside the reach of each of you.

I have to admit I never thought of that until I started to learn a little bit of astrology, and heard about synastry, or composite charts. By studying the charts of two individuals you can extract a lot of meaning for the relationship as a whole, and that relationship is usually different from what you would expect just by looking at the 2 partners. There is no 1 +  1 = 2 in relationships. It’s 1 + 1 = more.

Energy Exchange

Another key point in assessing a relationship is the energy exchange: do I give? and do I receive? You can give a lot of stuff: your time, your money, your knowledge, or you can just give love. It really depends on what type of relationship this is. For instance, if you’re having a working relationship, you’re giving both time and knowledge. If it’s a friendship relationship, you’re giving your time, your understanding, your listening capabilities and love. And perhaps some more.

The same goes with what you receive. You can receive money, time, knowledge, experience. Or, of course, love. If it’s a working relationship you receive most of the time money and experience. If it’s a friendship relationship you receive understanding, guidance, compassion or love.

The biggest obstacle for assessing the existence of a real energy exchange is the status quo. You may think: “well, he was always my friend, even if I don’t get much out of this relationship”. Or: “we’re married, what can I expect more?”. Or: “I’m not getting too much out of this job relationship, but I cannot change it”. Status quo is the biggest enemy of your relationship, because it makes you keep that relationship going, even if the energy exchange is not there anymore. If you can’t challenge your relationship at least every 6 months, you’re in a status quo.

The thought that you may get something unpleasant out of this assessment may also make you avoid the whole process: better stay as you are than to realize you’re not well.

Hopefully, applying an ADD approach will make things a little bit easier. You’re in the Assess realm, and one of the most important characteristics of the Assess realm is that you don’t have to decide or do anything. The Assess realm is giving you the freedom to see things as they are, without taking a decision. You may stay in the Assess realm as long as you want, without deciding anything, if you don’t want it.

Is This Better Or Worse?

Another thing you will usually do while in the Assess realms is what I call the quality assessment, an evaluation of what makes you better – or worse, for what it matters – by staying in that relationship. It’s a very important assessment, and it’s usually the very next after the energy exchange check. Since you already had an energy exchange, and decide it to pursue it, now let’s see if it’s good or not.

It will depend a lot on your personal values system, so there’s no rule that says: “this will be good for your relationship”. I don’t encourage anyone to buy ready-made opinions about what is good or bad about them. Instead, I encourage people to think for themselves and reach to their own conclusions.

Knowing if you’re getting something good or bad out of your relationship can be difficult. Things are changing, you are changing, the partner is changing. What was ok yesterday may not be ok today. Will see more about the time constraint in the next paragraph, but until then, let’s note that it’s very important to find a way to realize if it’s good or bad for you.

As a rule of thumb, if you can be relaxed in a relationship, this is usually a sign of positive energy exchange. If you’re uptight and feel pressure, probably you’re getting some bad vibes. But there are exceptions to this: for instance, if you’re having a challenging partner at work, that means you can learn and grow faster, although it will cost you a little stress. And you can feel relaxed in the company of a deceiving person who’s trying to fool you. It’s really your job to see if you’re getting something valuable or not.

The Time Constraint

Is this relationship temporary? Is this going to last more than a night, or a train conversation, or a temporary assignment? There are a lot of relationships modifiers based on how long the relationship have to last.

If you’re having a conversation with somebody you don’t know, about a problem you must solve, this is going to last until the problem is solved, no more. From several minutes to several hours or days. It will require a different amount of commitment than a relationship meant to last for a year.

I consider the time constraint very important in assessing a relationship because we tend to act on auto-pilot: we learned several approaches and we tend to apply them without thinking too much. So, we end up giving too much attention and commitment to insignificant relationships, while ignoring other, allegedly more important ones.

Let me explain: if you have a relationship at work with somebody who’s repairing your computer, you don’t have to give him flowers at the end of the job. A simple “thank you” will be enough. But you may want to give flowers to your wife every other day, in order to feed a longer relationship. We tend to take the longest relationships for granted, while new, intriguing things are far more appealing. Taking those intriguing relationships through the time constraint always puts me on the right track.

Decide For Relationships

As you may already guessed, this is not a guide on which decision you have to make in order to improve your relationships. It’s more like a general approach, leaving the implementation details up to you. However, there are some things which are specific to relationships, things which can dramatically improve the effects of any decision, making it work faster or deeper.

Transparency

Whatever decision you’re taking, in a relationship this must be transparent. It’s so simple, yet so often forgotten. It comes down to this simple word: “talk”. Talk with the partner about your decision, talk about what made you took the decision, talk about the effects of that decision.

If you’re not transparent about your decisions, you can’t have a relationship. It’s simple: if the other one is not aware of what are you up, can’t help you. Can’t disturb you either, that’s true, but that’s exactly what I said: this isn’t a relationship anymore.

Lack of transparency is very often the root cause of any bad relationship. Being it an intimate relationship, a friendly one or a work relationship. Just talk it out loud.

Challenge

Another specific point in the Decide realm for relationships is that your decision will be most likely challenged. The other one will hear you – if you were transparent about the decision, of course – and will respond. Sometimes will agree, sometimes not. That’s the nature of a relationship, there are more than one people in it and in order to function properly, everyone must agree.

If you’re a strong headed individual, that will hurt. Having your decision challenged can be a real pain if you’re not used to it. But once accepted, the benefits of this constant challenge will be fantastic: you’ll actually start to function on a new level, in a relationship. You’ll become part of something bigger than you, no matter the type of the relationship.

If you’re not having your decisions challenged, the relationship is either not working, or not worth continuing.

Do For Relationships

Again, the Do realm won’t teach you how to make a friend from your boss or how to avoid a weekly fight with your wife. You’re already smart enough for that. But it will show you instead some of the subtle differences of the Do realm when it comes to relationships, as opposed to other areas of your life.

Doing Means Receiving

Whatever you chose to do in your relationship, there will always be a receiving part of it. Since you’re in a relationship, you’re not only giving, you’re receiving too. The energy exchange you identified in the Assess realm will still be active in the Do realm, so better take it into account.

Like the transparency thing, this is also forgotten big time. One must be prepared to receive as well as to give. Not receiving from the other part (not listening, not doing required stuff, not accepting gratitude or love) will block and eventually drain the energy exchange.

Doing Means Completing

In a relationship you’re going to support, more than achieve. As an individual, you’re mostly achieving things, but in a relationship you’re forming alliances, you’re creating shared values, you’re implementing strategies. Keep in mind that whatever you’re doing, in a relationship your actions must complete the actions of the other partners, in order to have a working environment.

This comes often to a sense of oneness, a higher level of human interaction. Relationships are born from a need and as you’re satisfying your needs through that relationship (security needs, emotional needs, material needs) the other part must do this too. Whatever you do, keep in mind the other and his needs.

***

As you can see, in this ADD exercise, the biggest part is the Assess one. It’s not a surprise, since many relationships are broken because of hasty decisions or immaturity, which are both signs of an incomplete Assess realm.

Assessing what you’re giving and receiving through the energy exchange and putting it into a time perspective are not rocket science. They are simple actions which can be converted to habits and streamline your relationships approach. Other key points are that every decision will be transparent (must be, since it will affect other persons) and challenged. In the Do realm, expect to receive from and to complete your partners.

Any other ideas on how to implement ADD for relationships? Would love to hear about that in the comments.

Raw Food Primer

It seems that I’m not the only one interested in keeping a raw food habit around here. Not only the twitter reactions I got after publishing my last article on raw food, but even a comment on my blog seem to show quite an interest on this topic. So, I decided to write a post in which I’ll describe the basic requirements for starting a 30 days raw food challenge.

Please keep in mind that I’m not a nutritionist, I’m only sharing my personal experience here, which may or may not apply to your situation. If you are going to start a raw food diet in order to overcome a medical condition I highly recommend you to consult a doctor first. In this post I’m assuming that you are already a moderately healthy person, with a normal emotional balance who’s trying to improve something in his eating habits. This disclaimer in place, let’s get started.

Raw Food Goal

If you’re starting a raw food challenge please make your goal really clear. Not only in terms of duration, but also in terms of raw food / cooked food balance. I am on a 100% raw food diet, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to have it the same way. Maybe you’ll want a 75% raw – 25% cooked diet, which may be a little easier in the beginning.

The milestones described in this post are for a 30 days challenge on a 100% raw food diet, so feel free to adjust them downward if you’re going to have only 20 days 100% raw, or 30 days on a 75/25 diet.

Having a clear raw food challenge goal is very important. You’ll know every moment how far or close you are from the finish. You will also know how to evaluate the changes.

This goal will include the initial assessment of your situation. This assessment contains a realistic image of your current eating habits (all meat, lacto-ovo-vegetarian, etc) and your current health condition, including your current weight. It will be important to re-evaluate your assessment after the challenge. Take the time to write this in a secure place, even if it will take you an hour or two, it will pay off well in the end.

Raw Food Gear

Eating raw doesn’t mean you don’t process your food. You just don’t cook your food by exposing it to high temperature. But you will cut it, blend it, mix it, whatever. And for that you will need some gear. It’s possible to make it without those modern appliances but it would be quite difficult.

You will need at least one big blender for making smoothies, and a mixer for chopping roots or sauces. I call blender the one with the knife inside the recipient, and mixer the one with the detachable knife and handle. Maybe they have different names in your culture, but I guess you got the idea. You can also use an all-in-one tool, as long as you can chop, blend and mix together fruits, water and vegetables. You will also need a juice maker, but that’s pretty straightforward.

You don’t need to have super professional tools, but keep in mind they will be used a lot so if you don’t have them yet, please buy on the higher price scale. It’s easy to get caught in a “this juicer is broken again, I won’t continue this silly raw food diet, coz I don’t have the tools” pattern, so make yourself a service and buy good stuff.

You will also need a lot of storage space. Eating raw means eating fresh and eating more. I had to bring in another refrigerator after I realized I won’t go back to cooked food, only to accommodate the produce for my own meals. I also conquered around 1 square meter from our kitchen space for storing fruits and gear. (more…)

90 days blog challenge

Since I restarted the activity on this blog, a few weeks ago, I managed to write two extensive posts. One about my top 13 iPhone applications, which slowly become one of my most popular posts, and one about an online GTD system, 43actions.com. Both posts were fun to write, and fun to read, according to my stats.

But during my Easter holiday I realized that in the last month I only wrote two posts. It’s not much. To be honest, is almost nothing. When I restarted the blog, my intention was to make it at least what it used to be after I left it, in August 2007, and that was a good resource for GTD and productivity techniques.

So, I decided to start a personal challenge, as part of my personal development strategy. I want to write a post per day, starting from now, until July 30th this year. That will make 90 posts for 90 days. The main reason for doing this is to get back on my writing speed track, which seems to be lost somewhere in translation.

The main topics will not change, I will still write about GTD, productivity techniques, achieving and maintaining success, mind mapping, Mac and iPhone, and all the other topics that made this blog quite popular last year. The challenge is not to have 90 database entries with some random text, but to blog about my thoughts, experiences and know-how in a consistent way.

I had 90 days challenges before, and I have to say that they are a very effective method for changing habits. I was trying at the beginning of this year to create a micro-habit related to my personal view of the world, which involved several short reading sessions during the day. The reading consisted in 3-4 short motivational sentences and my purpose was to seed some new attitude in my behavior. I did this for 90 days, each day, regardless of the specific context in which I happened to be. The results were good enough to make me try this again.

The challenge method is quite used in many personal development courses. Also, some popular blogs use this extensively, such Steve Pavlina’s 30 days raw food diet challenge.

So, here I am. And yes, that post count as number one in the series .