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Self-Control: There’s Only So Much To Go ‘Round

I used to be a fairly neat person when it came to how I kept my personal living space.  Nothing was ever left out.  Everything had its place.  I’m not going to say it was to the level of US Army basic training orderly, but it was pretty darn good.  Ahh… those were the days!

Fast-forward to 2010.  As I gaze across the space that is my condo, those days of borderline military precision are loooooong gone.  It’s not like my place is dirty and grimy – far from it.  But tidy?  Neat?  Umm… no.  No, my friend, it is not.  Oh sure, if friends are coming over, I kick myself into gear and the place is spic-and-span in no time at all.  Hell, that seems reason enough to invite people over to my house, especially my female friends.  Every dude on the planet will go a little bit extra for the women in his life than the men when it comes to the cleaning routine.  It’s just science… err… or something.

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All of this navel-gazing today over my cleaning habits today stems from a pretty interesting piece I read on the Fast Company web site by Dan Heath called “Why Change Is So Hard: Self-Control is Exhaustible“.  The piece is about how in a psychology experiment, 2 groups of students come into a lab where there is a bowl of chocolate chip cookies and a bowl of radishes.  Some students are allowed to eat the cookies, but no radishes.  The other group is allowed to eat radishes, but no cookies.  The researchers then leave the room which is basically an opportunity for Team Radish to sneak some cookies… but none of them do.  Keep this in mind.

A bit later, the two groups are then asked to work on a logic puzzle and seek to solve it.  The catch?  It can’t be solved.  Damn scientists with their game-playing and whatnot.  Figures.

Ahh… but here is the interesting part.  The chocolate chip cookie group?  They gave up on trying the puzzle after 19 minutes.  Not bad right?  The radishes group?  Well, they lasted a mere 8 minutes with about half as many attempts as Team Cookie Deliciousness (and yes, I am making up these names as I go along) at solving the puzzle before throwing in the towel.

The conclusion of the study was simple: Self-control is actually a finite resource.  Team Cookie Deliciousness didn’t have to exercise any self-control prior to the puzzle because… let’s be honest… who’s really fighting an insatiable urge to chomp down on radishes and ignore cookies?  Team Radish did have to exercise it and thus had less resources to persist at the unsolvable puzzle.

The easy thing would be to use all of this as an incredibly convenient excuse to give myself a pass on the pile of clean laundry sitting on the floor just 10 feet away from me, but that’s not my intent.  Instead, I think this study serves as a valuable reminder as as self-check for what you have going on in your own life.  If you find certain things slipping that normally wouldn’t slip, think about why.  If you feel lazier than usual, what’s changed?  What is it that’s taxing upon your own personal reserves and what are you going to do about it?

For me, it’s a stark reminder of the effects of stress in my life.  I run a little more tightly wound than most and that necessitates self-awareness about what is causing my stress and (more importantly) what the heck I plan on doing about it.

So fear not, my friends!  That pile of laundry you continuously neglect to fold and put away?  Or those bills you just seem to keep putting off another day?  Or the cookies you cannot resist?  Perhaps it’s time to consider all of these things anew as something beyond mere failures or weakness in your willpower.  Perhaps they are the signs to stop and consider what thief in your life is sapping that self-control you need to manage yourself each day.

One man’s shortcoming can be turned into your personal guidepost.  Embrace it as such.

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Transatlantic Musings: Accents, England and Unexpected Perspective

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It seems I’ve finally found some time to do some blogging on my trip to London… and that’s during my flight back from London.  Funny how that works out.  Actually, I probably did have time a few others points in the trip, but the jetlag decided to open up a full case (and not just a six-pack) of whup-ass on me by the time evening rolled around each day.  I was able to stumble through some Twitter and Facebook posting and that was the extent of my… *ahem*… intelligent discussion and contribution to the social dialogue of the planet.  Go me.

So here at 36,000 feet above the Atlantic Ocean, I find a few moments of respite to think back on my trip while my Boeing 777 chariot whisks me along back to the U.S of A.  What keen, penetrating insights have the gods unveiled to me during this sojourn to the land of tea, crumpets, cricket and tiny cars?  Sit back, relax with a nice cup of Earl Grey and let the magic unfold, my friends.

YOU are the one with the funny accent. As an American, it’s always great to get out of the country and spend a bit of time letting your ear adjust to the accents of people from other countries.  The work conference I was at had people from England, France, South Africa, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Spain, Russia, Poland, Sweden, Slovenia and I’m sure other countries that are now completing slipping my mind.  Usually if you go to a foreign land, you can adjust generally to the accents of the people within a day or so because it will be a (generally) uniform set of accents.  This conference was different in that I was with accents, sentence pacing and colloquialisms from a wide range of places.  I never got the chance to let my ear settle in with a single accent… and, quite frankly, I enjoyed that.   It also makes you realize that most of the people at the conference likely looked at me and my other American colleagues as the ones with the funny accents.

I love the fact that international travel (or even domestic travel to different areas of the country) forces a little extra open-mindedness on me.  Perspective, people… its good for the soul.

England is a place of dramatic, yet understated, surprises.  If that’s even possible. Due to its rather cozy size, but incredibly rich history, I’ve always found England to be the kind of place where you can suddenly happen upon really cool stuff.  OK, I was hoping to come up with a more creative, inspired and dramatic word than “stuff”, but honestly, isn’t stuff a perfectly good word too?

Anyway, I digress, yet again.  So last night I went out to dinner in… umm… truth be told, I have no idea what town it was.  I think it was actually technically parts of London.  I sometimes think of London like Boston – lots of different areas that are considered part of the greater city, but you’ve never quite sure when you are in the city proper.  As we head out to dinner and get out of cab, BOOM!  Right there looming behind the restaurant was Windsor Castle.  Like THE Windsor Castle.  Home of the Queen and such.  It just struck me a bit how we just happened upon it in almost the same manner you would seemingly run across a Starbucks in the States… just with more royalty, less condescending baristas and less completely useless drink size names (Venti?  Really?  I mean… that’s what we’re going with?  I think I’m asking for a Venti Gulp the next time I hit up 7-11).  Unless they put a Starbucks in Windsor Castle… which would blow my mind.

That being said, it’s that kind of unexpected moments of “Wow” that I love about England.  You get it in New York City as well, actually.  You are just randomly walking down a street, look up and BOOM!  World famous landmark right there in front of you.  It’s a little humbling and can make you feel a little bit small, but I never find it to happen to me in a bad way – it tends to be more of a way to appreciate what you encounter a little more deeply.  For instance, it’s a bit hard to be too self-involved when you have moments like this happen and Lord knows I really need moments like that.  Hell, I think we all do.

When I’m on the shelf, I am TOTALLY on the shelf. Before I left on this trip, I had decided I was putting myself on the shelf to stop all lifting and exercising while allowing the anti-inflammatory steroids I’ve been taking to do their job and to let my neck heal.  I wrote about all of that right here.  The only exercises I’ve really been doing are neck retractions and a lot of focus on having dramatically better posture.  The combination of the steroids, rest and the exercises are really doing an excellent job of making my neck feel just so much better.  Happy Kev.  But there is a dramatically ugly side of this break period and it’s not the first time I’ve noticed it when I’ve been on an off-week or break.  See, when I put myself on the shelf, I go at it full tilt.  How so?  Well, let’s just say that when I’m not lifting, pushing my Prowler, swinging the sledgehammer and all of the other magical tomfoolery that is part of my training arsenal, I’m also eating a ton crappier than I normally would.  A logical person might think, “Well geez, Kev… just because you’re not training doesn’t mean you should let ALL good health habits go to waste.”  To that logical person I say, “Technically true… but here’s the thing… bite me, hoser.”  And yes, I just channeled my inner Mackenzie Brothers there, so take off, eh.

I have a good enough sense of self-awareness to know the truth said that said logical (and totally wet blanket) person speaks, but it doesn’t change the fact that I seem to go full on or full off.  It’s what one of my favorite authors on training and powerlifting, Dave Tate from EliteFTS, describes as “Blast” and “Dust”.  He approaches a lot of things in his life with the notion that he is either going to do it with complete gusto and passion or not at all.  I can well appreciate that fact since I tend to be the same way.  I am shooting for a better middle ground with some balance, but I am mostly wired in an all-or-nothing mindset for many things.

Thankfully, I am going to be going back at it on the bright tomorrow morning as I get back to eating right and totally rocking the Prowler for some fun.  Parking lots of Connecticut, beware… I got some steel with your name all over it.  And anyone who wants to join me is totally welcome… just remember… this is not a spectator sport.  You show up, you push.

So those are some of the thoughts I noticed in one of my favorite countries besides my own – jolly old England.  Thank you, Britannia, for the time to grow a bit, stretch my mind a little bit more and gain a little better insight into myself and the world through which I travel.  May I put it to good use every day.

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Analysis and Attitude – Coaching Through the Tricky Parts

While I cannot speak for all other bloggers, I know one of my complete obsessions with my own blog is checking out Google Analytics to see how my blog is performing: how many visitors I am getting, what sites they are coming from, how long they spend on the site and what keywords they have used to reach the site.  It’s pretty cool how you can slice the data a bunch of different ways to see what in the world made someone: (a) come to your site; (b) stick around and (c) look at some particular pieces of content.

Outside of the sheer numbers piece of total unique visitors (I love this one and just want it to go up all the time), I really love the keywords.  It never ceases to amaze me the searches someone used on a search site like Google to find humble little Fierce and Mighty.  For instance, for the time period between May 26 and May 31, I’ve had people come to my blog for “dealing with toxic people”, the “prowler” and a variety of connections for people looking for guides on handling youth baseball.  I think my favorite youth baseball one is “youth baseball moms how to deal with crappy coaches”.  Umm… I’m hoping that wasn’t a parent of one of my players… but then again, ya gotta admit it would be pretty funny if parents of some of my players came to my own site for advice on how to deal with my (ALLEGEDLY) crappy coaching.

IMG_1213_2.JPGSo let’s get back into the coaching piece for a bit, mostly since I am really enjoying doing posts on my thoughts on being a youth baseball coach.

I think if there is one huge challenge any youth coach faces, more than teaching skills, setting rosters, structuring drills or managing an actual game is setting the proper tone and attitude of the team.  You really need to get to the kids early and stay utterly consistent in your message to them from the first practice to the last moment of your final game.  But how exactly does one do this?  I think I’m finally seeing what it takes to pull this off after a lengthy period of trial and error… and this is probably something that applies more generally to teams than just kids… but for now, I will focus on our getting our precious little angels to stop yammering for 10 seconds to pay attention to the baseball game.

  1. A common theme, shared among all. The coaches really need to be on the same page with what the approach they want to take with the kids.  My brother and I have a pretty good idea of how we want to approach our team, so that does help.  We want them to improve and play well and have fun.  Do we want them to win?  Of course, but only towards the bigger goal that they will get more excited about the game when they are doing well as a team.  The pure accolades associated with winning a “title” or something at this age is not our real goal.  Sure, it would be nice, but I will take the kids having fun over that any day without even a 2nd thought.  To some nutjob coaches out there, that makes me a loser.  To all those nutjob coaches out there, I would simply respond… with nothing.  Y’all ain’t it even worth the effort of my fingers to type something.
  2. The more, the merrier. This is one I almost cannot stress enough: the younger the kids, the more coaches you need.  Period.  I will not debate this.  If you are dealing with all teenagers, 2 coaches can probably be sufficient because, at that age, the kids can actually stay semi-focused at practices and in games.  But coaching 14 or so 8 and 9 year olds?  You need to have at least 4 coaches to make things close to workable.  The reason for this is simple: they have incredibly short attention spans and are always looking to act like goofy little lunatics with their buddies.  While this is sometimes kind of funny, if you don’t keep it on a short leash, things become unworkable for the whole team VERY quickly.

    With a group of coaches, it’s easier to divide kids into groups and minimize the amount of standing around time or “SAT”… ok, there isn’t really a true acronym for that, but I made it up… umm… and may never use it again.  I just felt like doing it.  Cut me some slack.  But as coaches, you simply need to be proactive about getting other parents involved as either coaches for practices or just to help monitor the kids on the bench during games when you are trying to focus on the actual in-game coaching.  The alternative is spending all your time telling  Reggie to take the gum off his nose, Charlie to stop kicking the dugout gravel into coach’s glove and Thomas that throwing the empty gum wrappers behind the bench was not what you meant when you said you didn’t want trash in the dugout.  I want to point out that while the names were changed to protect the… *ahem*… innocent, all of these things happened last game.  I kid you not.

  3. Getting it back when you start late. This is one I feel like my brother and I seem to focus on too much in that we don’t get the attitude set the way we want early and consistently and then struggle a bit to bring the boys back to the task at hand.  Now believe me, it is not that hard to lose the kids if you are not following the first 2 tips, but that being said, I am not making excuses.  Just an observation.  So what do you do when you find yourself 5 games into the season and your exquisitely crafted plan of 9 year old baseball domination falling apart before your very eyes?

    I’d like to say I have an easy answer for this one… but I don’t.  It really is a matter of acknowledging that at any point in the season, you can say “OK, enough is enough” if you really and truly mean it.  Our teams have always tended to bloom a little late because it took my brother and I a little while to get everyone back on board.  The funny thing about that is that even if it happens late in the season, it’s very cool when it happens… not because your exceedingly fragile coaching ego has been saved from further bruising, but when the kids finally do “get it”, they begin to play well and have fun.  We actually had a bit of this happen in our last game.  The opposing team came out swinging against us and knocked the ball all around the top of the 1st inning.  How did we respond?  Hell, we came out and knocked the ball all over the place in the bottom of the 1st.  Was this because they saw it was possible?  Was it some secret bit of magical coaching pixie dust that got us back into the positive end of things?  Damned if I know… but it was fun… and the fun is what counts… keep reminding yourself of that.

OK, that’s enough for now.  I started this post at JFK yesterday before my redeye flight to London, got less than 2 hours sleep, rolled right into my conference, finished that up for the day, had dinner and I am now attempting to finish this post with a semblance of rational thought.  I have no idea how that went – you be the judge.  I gotta get to sleep… but I do have a few thoughts I plan to share soon on this trip to London and also on my non-baseball playing nephew.  He needs some blog love too.

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Memorial Day 2010 – Reflections, Thoughts and A Swift Kick in the Rear

Today is a doubly reflective sort of day for me.  First and foremost, it’s Memorial Day and secondly, I’m getting ready to travel to London on a red-eye out of JFK tonight for a work conference all week.  Memorial Day makes me reflect for what are, I think, fairly obvious reasons and travel always makes me reflect because I know I will be encountering new places, peoples and experiences.

In thinking of Memorial Day, it can be a lot of different things.  It’s a day of rest (well… at least it should be) and BBQs and taking a few minutes to think about the ultimate sacrifice that over a million Americans have made to protect freedoms that most of us just flat out take for granted.  That last part almost sounds cliched, but it probably sounds that way because sometimes the things that are just so obvious tend to get slapped with that kind of unfair tag.  But honestly… how often do any of us think about that?  I mean genuinely and honestly stop for a moment and reflect on the fact that people have died so that you can I can live a fairly uneventful life where we get to raise our kids, go to work, enjoy our weekends and be who we want to be without a lot heck of a lot of interference.

I took a look at the source of all knowledge… Wikipedia, obviously… and found this entry on total U.S. combat casualties over the course of our country’s history.  It’s sobering stuff to look at, especially when you see the Civil War estimates that the war claimed the lives of 2% of the entire population of the country – 625,000 people with close to 600 dying every day.  If that doesn’t give you a moment to pause, then there’s nothing a whole lot I can do to help you at that point.  Just take a moment… even just a quiet 30 seconds… to appreciate the gift of the freedom you enjoy if you live here in the United States.  We are very, very far from perfect, but you would be hard-pressed to find a place much better.  I believe that with all my heart and want our country to stay that way.

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But I also had a slightly less lofty moment of reflection today that had less to do with our freedoms as a people and more to do with what Memorial Day has meant for me personally the last few years.  As a baseball coach, Memorial Day was the day every team, club, organization and such in the town I coach would get out and march.  It’s complete mayhem, but also a lot of fun… except I’m not there this year.  Rather, I am in the midst of doing a bunch of last second packing, e-mail checking and planning before leaving on my trip to London and so I missed the parade this AM for the first time in 4 or 5 years… and I hate that fact almost more than I can say.

There was really no good reason, excuse or explanation for my not being there.  Yes, I really am pulling a whole bunch of things together right now to prepare for my trip… but seriously?  That couldn’t have been done Saturday?  Or yesterday?  And this frustrates me to absolutely no end because that parade is now a bit of tradition and I’m missing it for just no good reason at all.

And all this for one simple and unassailable reason: I just need to do a better job of getting my act together.  Period.  Oh sure, I could go into a very grand and verbose post about how I am a classic introvert who recharges my batteries with alone and quiet time or that I have been very busy with work and blah blah blah.  Those things would have been both true statements… but also really and truly piss-poor excuses.

So in some ways, the fact that I do a better job of reflecting when I travel is probably a good thing so I can reflect myself into fixing my little red wagon and not missing out on things that are most important to me in life… because that often ends up being the end result.

But fear not… this is not a post about wallowing in self-pity and whinging over what has gone before.  I can only take that in myself for about 5-10 minutes before I find it annoying, so Lord knows none of you should have to soak up any of that a second longer.

Because on this day of memorial and day of reflection… I am putting myself back on track with 2 things more important than any little silly gripe I may have:

1) That when people have given their lives so you have the luxury of blogging at home with your feet on the table, it’s best to take that solid shot of perspective with a quiet nod of sincere thanks; and

2) That as long as there are nephews in the world who get a kick out of walking in parades (and hitting bodybuilder poses while waiting for them to start), then there is some real good in the world to make you smile.

And a smile is spreading across my face right now.  Happy Memorial Day 2010, everyone.

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Big Leaps, Little Leaps and All Kinds in Between

Themes sometimes run through my mind and because of that, they also end up on this blog.  The post I had from Friday was all about the Global Corporate Challenge and how, despite my initial snobbery at the notion of 10,000 steps a day making any kind of difference to super-fantastic and ridiculously awesome ME… well, I am finding benefits in spite of myself.  Go figure.  Well, that theme of steps continues today on this beautiful Sunday over the Memorial Day weekend.

It’s obvious that my interest in health, fitness, exercise and diet exceeds being just a hobby for me – it’s something I feel strongly about both from the standpoint that far too many people seem to neglect the gift of their health and also because of the unbelievable carry-over to other parts of your life you get from being active and healthy.  That’s one of the biggest themes of this blog – how the elements of mind, body and spirit interplay with each other and bring transformative benefits to each other.  A strong body can give you confidence.  A determined spirit can push you through in the gym.  A sharp mind will allow you to think through problems that would otherwise stress you into a bad physical state.  You get the idea.

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So yesterday I decided to take a leap, the length of which I leave to you, gentle reader, to decide upon.  I dropped a decent chunk of cash for all of the study materials I would need to prepare for the Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS) certification from the National Strength and Conditioning Association.  The CSCS is considered one of the most respected certifications if you are interested in working with and training athletes.  There are equivalents for personal training as well, but this was the one that jumped out at me most because of its reputation and because of my own personal belief that you can taking the specialized training of an athlete and adapt it to the general population (provided you don’t act like a complete lunkhead and assume a 53 year old business executive wants to play middle linebacker for a NCAA Division 1 football program).

All of this was a bit inspired by some e-mails and comments I’ve been going back and forth with the author of the blog, SlackerMom. Jessica has recently take the leap from the big law firm world into being a massage therapist and has been documenting a lot of her process of working through that on her blog (which is very good – I recommend).  In one of our notes back and forth, she talked about how she needed to make some firm steps in order to get herself going towards her own goals – they didn’t need to be massive steps, but there had to be some definitive action with sacrifice and consequences.

I had been thinking over ordering the CSCS study materials for quite a while decided to get off my lazy behind to do it yesterday.  So I dropped a bit of a chunk of cash and the training manual, audio CDs, practice tests and all of that good, happy fun should be arriving soon.

The larger question is what I will end up doing with all of this… well, besides the obvious of studying for and, hopefully, gaining my CSCS certification.  Assuming I get it… then what?  Truthfully, I don’t have an answer to that just yet, but it feels like the right step for me on a few levels.  First, I just find this stuff interesting and want to truly learn it.  Back in college, I was so freaking grade focused, I occasionally wonder what I would have really learned if I was a little more concerned about the process of understanding and absorbing what I studied as opposed to a jazzy report card with lots of A’s all over it.  Second, maybe I will end up training people one day in some context.  I can’t tell you the date or time of this, but it feels like something I will explore soon.  It might only be to help along some friends and family and that really may be more than enough, but I’ll never know how much I like it until I start doing it in earnest… so why not be as best-prepared for that as possible?

So, yet again, my own personal ego is foiled and that’s probably a good thing.  Friday was about admitting via YouTube that I don’t have all the answers and even counting your daily steps has unexpected benefits.  Yesterday and today were about thinking through how to continue the steps and movement towards something positive and having a chance to learn and grow a bit (God forbid).  And that’s my “leap” of the weekend.  It’s not exactly some kind of massive sea change… but as I keep coming to realize… the small, but consistent steps, truly do add up.

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Small Things Matter – Eat Your Ego

For a small change of pace, I decided to fire up a video blog for today instead of the typical typed post.  Why?  Change of pace.  Not in the mood to type.  A chance for all of you humble people to soak up the handsomeness that is me.  Just a little post about how my own ego sometimes gets in the way, but I end up learning something anyway.

Also, feel free to check out my new Facebook page for the blog right HERE.

Acerbus et Ingens

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Your Pathetic Little Box

It’s a place each of us knows to one extent or another.  Maybe you have been there your whole life, always struggling to peek out and hoping to find a moment to break free.  Maybe you have broken free, only to return to its dispiriting, but oddly comforting enclosure.  Or maybe you have freed yourself from it and only look back on it as a constant reminder of where you will never stay.

That place?  The place I’m thinking of is that box of expectations people try to place you in and keep you in.  You know the box I mean.  The one where your boss expects you to play the dutiful toadie, when deep-down you know you have ideas that can make a difference.  The box that your parents tucked you into when they told you that girls don’t play tough sports or get sweaty.  The box that your high school English teacher steered you into (maybe with only the best of intentions) to pursue a career in some safe, generic career that you wake up to each day, staring at the ceiling and thinking, “My God… do I really have to go in there today?”

Your all too comfortable, but still pathetic, little box

To one extent or another, most people will spend some amount of time in their lives in that box.  It’s pretty hard not to.  Very few people are completely comfortable with living 100% outside of the expectations of other people – it’s pretty much human nature.  Sure, it may be on small things such as not wearing your Marilyn Manson “Antichrist Superstar” t-shirt to Christmas dinner because, as much as you love the alter-ego of super-nerd Brian Warner, it makes Mom horribly uncomfortable and she just wants to have a nice holiday.  But that is a small concession for the greater good of family unity.

What I’m thinking of are the greater concessions… the ones that nag and claw at your conscience… the ones that, when you give into them, you feel beaten, broken, used or just flat-out fake.  The concessions to the views of others when, even if those expectations come from a good place, you personally know they are not right for you… and you still go along with them.

I hate that box… and as I sit here typing this post and looking back on all of the “you’s” I just used… that could just as easily be replaced with “I” in many of those spots.  I do it – I know I do it… but I don’t like it.

So that’s where my little epiphany came from.  It’s not exactly Jonas Salk and the polio vaccine, but this one is mine and I think it might be handy, so take it down a few notches, people.

I am going to find a cardboard box and slap my name on it with a Sharpie and then write all over it.  What will I be writing?  All of the things that other’s seek to impose upon me as their expectations that, truth be told, I either just don’t believe in or just don’t want.  The purpose of this box is twofold: (1) I want to get out in a tangible medium all of those errant expectations and (2) I find I need physical/visual reminders of things I am trying to stay mindful of.  I tend to fall a little too easily into the trap of having a good idea and maybe even writing it down, but not having it in a place of seeing it all the time to keep me on track so it becomes habit.

The 2nd step after getting the box all ready is one that can vary by person, but it’s too display the box in the most prominent place you use when you need a moment to break out of expectations.  For someone aspiring to be a writer instead of an accountant, maybe the box is at home next to the spot where she writes her short stories.  For me, it’s my home gym because I am such a firm believer in transformation of yourself in mind and spirit through pushing your body.  I want to see it to remind me all the time of the things I am looking to work past and leave very much in the dust.  Hell, I may even give that stupid box a swift kick across the room every time I set a PR.

I am doing all this because with each passing year, I have a restlessness that only increases about tolerating that damn box and I want that box nearby so I never, ever forget.  Does this all mean I am somehow getting braver? Hmm.  Not too sure… but I am definitely getting more defiant about who I am and what I want to be and the notion of not being authentic to how I truly see myself is just becoming more and more unacceptable.  I can’t be fake about who I am and I can’t just let it slide when someone is looking to force me into being something I’m not.

So I will create my box and I will set it where I will always see it.  This may work great.  This may be hokey as hell… but then again, anyone else finding this hokey is trying to put me back in that damn box… so I just don’t care anyway.

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On The Shelf, None Too Happy… But Possibly Maturing

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What you see above is the reason for the title of this post… because I will be up on the shelf for the next few weeks as I finally decided to do the smart/mature/wussy thing and take a little time off from lifting.  Why oh why am I doing such a thing?  Above are the results from my MRI this morning on my neck.  On the left are some of the scans from the profile for my neck and above is the cross-section view.  The two I have my fingers on are shots of the area around my C5 and C6 vertebrae.  It seems I have a delightful double-whammy of bone spurs on my C6 vertebrae (which, oddly enough are not really causing my current issue) and a slight bulge with the disc between C5 and C6 that is narrowing the nerve canal on the left-hand side.

And what does all of that get you… err… me?  Pain, tingling on my left forearm and hand and a loss of strength in my left arm.  Woo-freakin-hoo.

But you know something?  2 things occur to me:

  1. In the grand scheme of things, this is not the end of the world and totally pales in comparison to the kinds of health battles I’ve seen several people close to me have to endure.  I think of those fighting leukemia and getting stem cell transplants and going through seemingly endless liver surgeries.  Me?  My neck has some pain and with steroids, physical therapy, rest and a dose of smarts, I will be just fine.
  2. On the smarts notion… I am a little surprised I am exercising them.  Seriously.  I tend to get irrationally stubborn, at times, with pushing myself through situations where I really shouldn’t.  Somehow, I didn’t do that this time and I’m shutting down my lifting for all of this week and all of next.  I hate it, but I’m doing it.

Maybe this will mean more consistent blogging for a chunk of time… and wouldn’t you, oh favored reader of mine, be just so lucky for that?  Umm.. right?  Maybe?  Ok, take a few to think it over.  The blog will still be here when you get back.  Don’t forget me… I love you.  Umm.. too desperate?  That was too desperate, right?  Damn it…

 

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Group Think and the Creative Leap

I don’t read the newspaper all that much and when I do, it’s usually when I’m traveling since I find it as a nice way to clear my head, pass the time and catch up on a few nuggets of interesting news.  My favorite newspaper is definitely The Wall Street Journal, hands down.  I’m not a finance nerd, but I just find the other reporting across the paper to be truly excellent.

During my travel back from Florida to Connecticut, I bought the Saturday/weekend edition of the Journal on my Kindle and there was a very cool piece entitled “Humans: Why They Triumphed“.  The intro of the essay starts off as follows:

Human evolution presents a puzzle. Nothing seems to explain the sudden takeoff of the last 45,000 years—the conversion of just another rare predatory ape into a planet dominator with rapidly progressing technologies. Once “progress” started to produce new tools, different ways of life and burgeoning populations, it accelerated all over the world, culminating in agriculture, cities, literacy and all the rest. Yet all the ingredients of human success—tool making, big brains, culture, fire, even language—seem to have been in place half a million years before and nothing happened. Tools were made to the same monotonous design for hundreds of thousands of years and the ecological impact of people was minimal. Then suddenly—bang!—culture exploded, starting in Africa. Why then, why there?

The reason was the notion of the “collective brain” through the exchange of culture, ideas, trade, etc. In places where there were increased amount of human interaction (especially across a wider cross-section of people), there was the chance for a greater or even a sudden leap forward for humanity, even after millions of years of little or no progress.

I think this has a very telling from the standpoint of our own personal creativity and how it can flow in our own lives – the exposure to different people, thoughts, ideas and creations. Each of these things can serve as a catalyst to new thoughts for each of us.

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What I find most interesting is how this can relates to the overall idea of diversity.  Often the discussion of diversity in our modern life talks only in terms of how we need to be exposed to people of varying races, creeds, socio-economic status, religions, etc. but never gets to the true WHY we should do all of that.. Without the why, the effort becomes di

minished because it takes on a presctive air of holier-than-thou guilting into doing what is right… and doing so without questioning. That gets us nowhere and makes us intellectually poorer to boot.

For me, the why comes from creating a fertile ground from which new, electric and creative ideas can sprout. Are all ideas and thoughts equal? Oh, hell no – but they should all have the chance to be vetted. They never have been and never will be, but without the chance for cross-pollination and open discussion in the marketplace of thought, we could very well miss out on some of the best ideas. I don’t know about you, but I’m not comfortable with the notion of missing out on those potential diamonds of change and intellectual curiosity.

And think about any time you were engaged in a judgment free exchange of ideas. You can practically feel a crackle in the air. It’s intoxicating… but far too rare.

Which is why we need to encourage these moments to happen and cherish them when they do... you know, just like our ancestors 45,000 years ago.  Obviously.

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Overcoming Our Intellect

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Greetings from 35,000ish feet.  I’m on my way back from Florida and despite the cramped conditions in coach here on Delta Flight 1580 from Atlanta to Hartford, I figured I would bust out my laptop and have at it.

 

As I wrote in my previous post, when I am out of my regular locale and on the road, I tend to find myself in a different (and oftentimes better) mindset than I had prior to my trip.  The effect of the change in my physical surroundings in the way my mind thinks is always noticeable.  What’s also noticeable is the fact that I probably don’t take advantage of this phenomenon often enough when I really need a kick in my creative behind.  It’s not like I need to hit up the beaches of Tahiti every time I need to reawaken my artistic muse, right?  I could just take a drive to someplace an hour or so away that I never go to and I should be able to reboot nicely.

But there it is again… that trend I often find myself slinking back into when my vigilance wanes… that trend of knowing things I like or things that do good for me, but then not actually taking much time to do them.  Habit is a funny beast, my friends, and it needs on your lack of awareness and any scrap of apathy that may fall off the table of your life.

Do you feel it as well?  That sense that you know the good for your life, want to pursue it and then find yourself on a proverbial (or maybe even literal) couch with 2 empty bags of pork rinds and a 3 liter jug of Mountain Dew carelessly tossed at your feet?

In that way, I find our species to be a peculiar one, where the gift of our vast intellect often works in direct opposition to what is best for us.  I mean, think about it for a second: how many other animals (outside of those damn cliff jumping lemmings) will engage in behavior that doesn’t serve it’s own good on this kind of scale?

We seem to do so because we can rationalize the bad choices and decisions with all kinds of fluffy excuses about why we didn’t hit the marks we really wanted.  Ain’t having the most advanced brain of any critter on the planet just grand sometimes?

But hey, I’m not one to get myself too mired in the negativity, but I do like to use this as a vehicle to keep myself honest and perhaps allow you to have that moment as well… because that’s what this blog is meant to be: an honest assessment of where I am, where I need to be and how I can help others in that exact same journey forward.  It’s not always going to be smooth and perfect, but every step of it is mine and that I really do like.