My Proactive Life

This is a minor rant, so be warned!

I’ve had enough of people looking at health & fitness the wrong way.

Fitness (and that dreaded hanger-on “Diet” and his ugly sister “Weight Loss”) are not one-off things you ‘do’!

• Right now your fitness level is your fitness level. It can be better and it can be worse – it’s not fixed
• Your diet is your diet – whatever you eat today is your diet. if you eat differently tomorrow that becomes your diet – it’s not fixed
• Weight Loss is the result of taking other courses of action (such as increasing your exercise and changing your diet)

Many people see fitness/diet/weight loss as a one-off, thinking “once it’s done I’ll be awesome”, and then they can stop. I’m the bearer of a wake-up call to let people know that all of these are part of a journey, not a destination! Here’s the simplest way I can put this: Focus on becoming fitter. Do this through:

1. More exercise and
2. Eating better (note I did not say eat less…there’s a difference)

Focus on the act of becoming fitter! With this, you will need to change your diet; weight loss will happen.

Cycling does something great for me, and when I miss out, I feel bad (not for missing the cycling, BUT for missing out on the benefits – It relieves stress and makes me clearer in my thoughts and more resilient when things go wrong). It’s winter time here and getting out on the bike is hard(er) to do. I know I need the exercise in my week to keep me balanced! Make Fitness your focus through exercise and changing your diet and your journey will be more successful (I know, because this is what I have done!)

What are your thoughts on Fitness, Diet and Weight Loss?

Who are the 2 most important people in the world?

Here are some clues:

• If both of these people are present, you begin Connecting
  • Connecting is vital to our everyday lives; we are now part of the Connection Generation.
• Connecting leads to socialising
  • As we understand more about each other, we move beyond merely connecting into the realm of socialising – of gauging what this other person’s motivations are, their views, their thoughts on various topics.
• Socialising leads to Relationships
  • Relationships are vital to help us stay in tune with other people. I recently blogged that no one person can do it all on their own; we each have our foundation supporters and people we rely on; who keep the home running efficiently; who allow us to be who we are; who provide the support we need to do what we do.
• Relationships lead to Understanding
  • Relationships lead to a better understanding of the world, an better understanding of ourselves and a better understanding of just how diverse and similar we are.

Coming back to the question: Who are the 2 most important people in the world?

You and Me

Look after you; Look after me; the rest will look after itself

Here’s a quick summary of things I learned this week:

• Everyone you meet is on your side until you do something to annoy them or send them running
• Everyone you meet is fighting their own battle, so go easy on them (If they don’t go easy on you, ask them why.)
• Losing sense of yourself is a slippery slope
• Those who have good, strong friendships can weather any storm
• Riding a bicycle in the rain can be fun and takes me back to childhood when rain didn’t stop play!

And here are some questions I ponder:

• Does light have/is it affected by friction?
• If you are not self-aware…what are you?
• How far in this world someone can get TRULY on their own?

How about you, what are some of the learnings/observations/questions from you this past week?

There are a number of lists of “The three R’s”:

• Reading, Writing and Arithmetic
• Reduce Reuse Recycle
• Read, Write, Recite.

After a recent discussion at a North Side Coffee Morning (#nscm), I devised a new list of 3 R’s to help focus a little more on things that count (outside the realm of the academic education arena). These 3 R’s can be used in almost all aspects of life, and is something i am trying to instill in my children:

Respect.

esteem for or a sense of the worth or excellence of a person, a personal quality or ability, or something considered as a manifestation of a personal quality or ability*

Respect for yourself and others is an important trait to have. Not much can happen in this world without respect. If you respect the people that matter, it can take you far!

Responsibility.

One of the most important traits you can have is to be responsible: Responsible to yourself, your fellow man and the world you live in. Responsibility is an important part of life because it shows that you care about what you do and the impact you have. Having the fortitude to stand up and admit you stuffed up or hurt someone goes a long way. It’s also one of the cornerstones of trust, an important part of what makes the world go round.

Here’s one of my acts of responsibility I blogged about earlier in Taming the Ugliness.

Resilience.

This is a tough skill to learn. The ability to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and get back into it is one of the skills that will see you through many encounters in life, both good and bad! It’s quite a difficult skill to teach, however I have been trying with my boys to get them to understand that there will be times where things don’t go your way. It’s how you act when things are not going your way. It used to be called ‘character building’, but today I’ll call it resilience. Empathy with the ‘other’ side of the story or being able to see things from both sides can help.

Can you think of any other R’s that could make useful traits for life?

* All definitions from dictionary.com

The Blob

What is The Blob?

When you learn something new for the first time, you will take in a lot of information, and for the most part, will not yet assimilate it to the point of understanding or comprehension. I liken this new knowledge to a ‘blob’ – it’s a mass of new ideas, terms, concepts, rules and language which have been introduced to you, but may not make much sense (yet).

Digesting the blob of new information takes time

A lot of people mistakenly believe they understand something the moment it’s explained to them; this is not the case. Many may understand superficially what they have just read, heard or experienced, but it’s not until it’s assimilated in the brain does it truly become something you can use. More often than not we will take away what we can use from a training course/event; but only after we’ve had time to digest the material and let the brain work out the best way we will store/use that material in the future. For some people, this ‘context’ won’t be found immediately, nor the next day. Sleep is an important factor in helping to ‘cement’ this new information in such a way to be useful to you.

Hump Day is when the learning happens

In my previous experience teaching technical training classes, the first 2 days of a 5-day training class were not the most productive. The students had shown up to the class, but not much seemed to be taken in or assimilated. But, a strange thing seemed to occur on the Wednesday – not only did the student show up to class, but they seemed to be there – in the present moment, ready and eager to learn. From that point, the remaining days seem to fly past. Why was this? With little to go on except my own experience, two things were at play:

1. Inevitability: The students were not going to get out of the training course so they better get into it and enjoy the rest of it
2. They’d forgotten their daily work chores, let the phone divert to voicemail and didn’t ‘just check’ their email – in other words, they’ve made a conscious decision to learn
   

   Blob digested!

This usually happened on the Wednesday – there was a shift in reason for being in the class – the students had come into the class ready to learn and able to fully engage, not only with me (as the instructor) but also with the other participants. Collaborative Learning environments have been shown to be some of the best environments to help all participants assimilate new information quickly and efficiently (where the students are also seen as teachers in themselves, sharing knowledge and experience with the other students).

Learning anything new takes time, and requires time to help make sense of it all. If you’re learning something new, give yourself time to understand it. Not only that, you should also share your thoughts and learnings with someone who knows you well as they can help you make sense of it and apply it to your situation. Learning is a fundamental building block of life – give it the time it deserves!