Day 11 - Movie 4...

If you live in central Canada, you will know that we have endured a rather sudden and extended cold snap. I mean, Snap! It's Cold!

Outdoor activities have been limited, at least a little bit, so our after-work routine is now almost wordless. Except today when I basically forgot until my wife reminded me - "Aren't you doing kettlebells today?"

How could I forget that?

Easy.

But when she reminded me, my first thought was, "Oh man, the rest of the movie! How could I forget that? I'm mid-way through my fourth movie of the February challenge.

For me, the biggest challenge with doing a bunch of kettlebells is boredom and distraction. After a few years at it (well, a few Februaries, anyway), I can almost say that I actually look forward to my movie-watching, rather than trying to muster up the motivation to do kettlebells.

So, if you have chosen a wellness activity that is, shall we say, physically demanding, it is nice to sweeten it up with something that you enjoy. And build it in to your wellness activity so you also get something fun out of it.

Be sure to reward yourself with something enjoyable at a healthy enough dose to make the challenge worth it.

Should finish the move next workout, then... on to Movie 5.

Day 10: Return On Investment

You are probably familiar with the concept of ROI, or return on investment. Embedded in that concept is the view that an input of some kind - money, time, effort, etc - will result in an output of some kind, and the net result is generally that you end up with more than you started with.

Most people, from my experience, do not guarantee a positive return. That is the purpose of the fine print. However, I think it is fair to say that most people pushing investments are quite happy to let you believe it's a sure thing because you are likely to invest more.

As I am in the habit of doing, I like to turn familiar concepts on their ear, mostly for fun, but also because it forces me to consider their real meaning. So, my twist today is... what if we instead use the phrase, "Investment For Return". I even made an acronym:  IFR (sorry, pilots).

So the idea behind this IFR is that we focus on our investment, rather than our return. The PR folks in the audience just groaned and accused me - accurately - of sucking the glamour out of the idea. The "spin" of what you're going to get* can be intoxicating, so why on earth would anyone focus on what you have to invest?

Seriously!  Investing is basically voluntarily agreeing to give something up for a period of time with the view that, when the time is up, you will get back your investment* and a sizeable return* along with it. You'll be ahead of where you started, and the cost to you was merely the inconvenience of doing without that initial investment. I would argue that we really need to shift our focus from the sometimes-elusive returns* and instead focus on this dry-toast reality: investing in our own wellness costs us.

The true positive return on our personal wellness investments is entirely different from what we may have previously thought. It is a level of mental toughness which, once gained, can simply be used anywhere in our life. If you ever experience self-doubt, you are familiar with the negative mental conversations where you highlight your failings but cannot identify anything to argue them away. Well, consider this:

Once you have tried something - done something, made an effort - to invest in your wellness, whatever that may be, you have ACTIVATED yourself. Those actions, however short-lived or seemingly insignificant, immediately smash the glass of good intentions that sound so wonderful but are really just puffery. You have acted. You have made an investment. You have done whatever you needed to do to move beyond intention to action. And as non-glitzy as that may be, I consider that to be the true return.

The investment IS the return. The moment you activate yourself and do something to improve your wellness, you have achieved what I believe is the least-known and hardest-to-market return:

Agency - "the capacity, condition, or state of acting or of exerting power"

- Miriam-Webster Online Dictionary

In my view, we have largely lost the concept of our own agency, the idea that we are decision-making beings who can plan actions and execute them... that we can make things happen.

So, go make things happen in your own wellness journey. Invest for return.

I've just been ticketed by the Italics Police, so it's time to wind this down.

 

*Returns in your case may be smaller than they appear.

Day 8 - Have Some Fun With Your Wellness!

I had a fun weekend which ended yesterday (but today as I'm writing it). I can't tell you who won the Superbowl, because it's just starting in a few minutes as I write. But I can tell you that we had a great weekend, and that all started last week when we decided to host an hors d'oeuvres party for Superbowl. In all honesty, we didn't know who was playing, but the fun part was actually having a plan to have some fun. Like, before it happened.

In this quarantine season, we made a plan. Something fun to look forward to, to actually get ready for. Even though we couldn't have company over or go to friends (our usual Superbowl tradition), we would at least get to enjoy 3 different hors d'oeuvres, because we each "brought" something. To our own house!

And we tried making our own hoagie rolls this year.

How does this relate to the wellness challenge? We intentionally created some wellness by planning something that would be fun and that we could actually anticipate, which I have been doing all week. In fact, during the last kettlebell set, I was thinking ahead to the nachos, guac and jalapeno poppers.

So, we had fun planning. We had fun coming up with recipes. We had fun getting ingredients together. We had fun watching dough rise (well, I kind of did). I could go on, but I'm about to have more fun FINALLY EATING THIS STUFF.

Mix it up!  Have some fun!

[Monday Update:  the hoagie rolls were a hit]

Day 7: It Ain't Fancy, But It Works

Part of me used to get sucked up into the appearances of wellness - new equipment, a fancy workout space, and all the latest accessories. A whole industry [opinion alert] caters to not only those who seriously want to work hard and perform, but also to those who want to appear to belong. I learned about this a long time ago, but one of my kids actually put it into concrete, measurable data (did I mention I'm a data analyst?).

He did a science project to measure hockey stick performance based on the price/quality of the stick and the experience level of the player. [Pretty clever, I'd say]. In a nutshell, what he found was that, for a low-experience player, the quality of the stick made no difference to performance. The interesting finding, though, was that, in the hands of an experienced hockey player, the stick does make a difference; a skilled player will get significantly better performance from a high-quality stick.

Here are some things I draw from that:

• EXPERIENCE and DILIGENCE (the hard work) generate the potential for high performance. They don't guarantee high performance, but they make it possible.
• High-end equipment does not automatically confer high performance on the user, but it can make you look good to other fancy-equipment devotees.
• The true significance of this little science project lies in its conclusion that there is an interaction between skill level and equipment quality. Top-end equipment only makes a top-end difference in the hands of a person with top-end experience and diligence.
  

And so I'd like to share my slightly tongue-in-cheek equipment setup with you as encouragement that you probably don't need anything fancy if your objective is to be active (I'm not training for the Olympics).

This is the bike I use to spin for a few minutes to warm up before the KBs. My bike is a Supercycle 10-speed road bike which I "procured" from our local landfill.  It was missing pedals, but it had a tall frame so it fits me. Had a great awkward moment when a salesman at a bike shop in the city asked me where I got my bike. Nothing says impressive like Supercycle from the landfill...  Also, I have a wind trainer for the bike, which also sounds impressive until I tell you where I got it. Yes... the landfill.  It was missing a bolt.

Because I've done quite a bit of cycling, I got some aerobars for comfort (and aerodynamics!!) and then put mountain bike bar ends on as grips.

My oldest son (of hockey stick experiment fame) observed: "Dad - your bike looks like a moose." Okay - I have to give him that one.

Point being, it ain't fancy, but it works. And I can rest easy knowing I did not overbuy my equipment.

All of this is to say that you don't need fancy stuff before you can work on your physical wellness. Grab what you can find and, as long as it is safe, use it and get active. If you really want to develop skills in that area, put in the time and effort required to truly benefit from the top-end equipment.

So grab your old shoes, or whatever, and hop to it.

BE WELL!!

Final thought: I would love to hear from you if you have comments about the blog, or about your wellness journey. I'm feeling a bit COVID-deprived... :)