February Mind Challenge

It's good to be back behind the keyboard, adding a post to the blog. It has been a couple weeks, but that discussion is for another blog post. Tonight I write to bring you the February Mind Challenge.

I would like to start by having you think about the words that you use, and the meaning that they convey. When we are children, our vocabulary and grammar is limited. As we mature, we learn new words, and develop what I would refer to as a density to our language. By learning the perfect word for each situation, we hope to convey a deep texture of concepts with phrase that we choose. There is a complexity of subtle meanings and contexts that we can use to try to paint a very specific picture of what we want to express. I would challenge though, that by trying to control the precise meaning of our words that we may, in fact, remove the soul of our idea. If instead we used simple words and allowed the listener to make their own interpretations, that we would communicate more, and drive much more innovation.

As an example, this evening Q and I were discussing the enjoyment that we get from children's books. What we both have seen is that we often get more depth from these books than from those written for adult audiences. I wondered if it is the power of imagination. Q proposed that perhaps the bigger words lack depth. Maybe it's just that the author, in working from that child like portion of their mind, can tap into something much more natural and inherently deeper.

This month I would challenge you to come at this concept from both sides. First, to continue the Haiku theme, I would ask you each to journal your Hope Challenge experience to date in Haiku. Three lines, seventeen total syllables. Then, I would like for you to journal the same information as if you were telling a story to a child. Please post these on-line. Leave comments as to how each experience was for you as an author. Also, read the postings of others and think about which version conveyed more to you. You don't need to leave feedback on the actual content from others, but rather your experiences reading it in the different forms.

Movie quote philosophy

Tonight, after dinner, I decided to relax with a movie. I had TiVo'ed a few, and decided to go with "Gone Baby Gone". Something about 'Boston underworld' was resonating with me. Perhaps it was my recent trend of hitting dive bars in the area, but that's for another discussion. The movie opens with a short monologue that didn't quite resonate with me, and I thought that it would make a great post for this blog. These were the words from the movie, as best as I could discern:

I always believed it was the things you don't choose that makes you who you are. Your city, your neighborhood, your family. People here take pride in these things. Like it was something they'd accomplished. Their bodies around their souls. The city's wrapped around those.

While I certainly agree that our environment has a significant impact on how we develop, I refuse to accept that it is independent of our choices. Many might believe that they cannot change the world around them, or that they are ruled by their surroundings, but I believe that this challenge has taught us otherwise. We *have* the ability to learn from the world around us, to see who we have become, and to lay the foundations of a path to improve who we are. Over the past years I have learned a lot about how I became the person that I did. Once I identified the rules and boundaries that I constructed and felt confined to, I became empowered to see that they were self-fabricated and, in fact, not real. There are natural laws that I believe we should all obey, but so much of what we perceive as limits or limitations are imposed by our environment. Take a moment and think about the things you did today, and why you did them. Did you have lunch at noon, or did you eat when you were hungry? Did you go to church because it was Sunday, or to try to connect with your notion of God? Did you say 'Hi' to people on the street, or ignore them because they were strangers? I would love to hear about your thoughts in the comments.

One full week complete

Introduction
As I wrote the title I realized that although I have completed one week of the challenge, we're really a few weeks in. I had a delayed start, but I did start. I think that's important. No matter what happened for you this past few weeks, it's never to late to start working to improve yourself. That mirrored my experience at Peet's coffee this morning, which I think is worth sharing.

Lessons from a latte...
This morning, like I do many Saturday or Sunday mornings, I delayed my breakfast and took myself out for a casual brunch. Many times that means a walk down to Andy's Diner, but today I decided to hop the 77 bus down to Harvard Square. Last night's snow was still covering many of the sidewalks, and there were still a few flakes meandering down from the skies. The air, however, felt a bit warm and it was a great morning for wandering. After enjoying a breakfast of ham, eggs and toast at Leo's Place, I decided to stop by Peet's for a beverage before starting to make my way back home. The outside benches were still covered with snow, so rather than enjoy the park, I stayed indoors and found myself a chair by the counter that looked out to the street. While sipping my latte, I watched as the trickle of people and cars passed by. The snow was still coming down, but not quickly enough to do more than keep the pavement wet at this point. It seemed like a great opportunity to pull out my journal so that I could reflect on the week and plan my day.

Upon reading my journal entries, I noticed that one of my proposed activities had been fully ignored. Not by malice, or by oversight, but rather as I was waiting for the weekend to have time to focus on it. This task that I had proposed was to do something artistic each week. Each day I had told myself that I would take some time during the weekend and do some sketching. Well, now it was the weekend and I had paper, pen and free time. I found a blank page in my journal, clicked my pen, and began to look around at the scenes from the window. And then, finally... nothing. I saw great images... artistic... that I could capture, but... didn't. I just sat there, looking. I knew what I wanted to do, but I felt frozen looking at that blank slate. I just didn't know where to start. This went on for nearly ten minutes. I would look at the scene, feel inspired, and then look at the paper, and freeze. Finally, I drew one line. From there, I knew where to draw the second line. A moment later I had drawn the sign on the back of the pole. I kept going. It was not my best work, and I didn't stay with it long, but I was past the hurdle. In natural studies I've heard it called the wall of green. Where people are so intimidated by figuring out where to start, that they don't start at all. But, if they picked one thing a day... a leaf, or a flower, or a squirrel... and just studied that, they would already be one step closer to their goal.

I'm sure that many of you can relate to this story. The point that I want to drive home is simple. If you haven't started yet, don't worry. You don't have to have perfect goals today. Just pick one thing... anything... and start there. You can pick another tomorrow, or fix this one if it's not working out. Just start... you won't believe how good it will make you feel.

Update on Goals
Body Tasks:

• Prepare dinners at home at least 4 times per week
  Success: I was able to prepare 5 meals at home this week.
  
• Brown bag lunch at least 3 times per week
  Fail: I only had lunch at home once, partially due to planned group lunches.
  
• Exercise for at least 20 minutes, at least 4 times per week
  Fail: On Monday I slipped on ice and hit my back on the cement steps. I finally got back to exercising today.
  
• Do pushups everyday, each week doing at least two more per day than the week before
  Fail: As above. I was able to move to 14 pushups today in a single set.
  

There was obviously not a lot of progress made here. Now that my back has mostly healed, and I don't have any training sessions or holiday parties, I expect to have much better results. I was able to lose a half a pound though, and those four extra pushups are a good start.

Mind Tasks:

• Read a chapter in a book at least 5 times per week
  Success: I read almost every day from the book, The Way of the Craftsman.
  
• Write a short journal entry at least 5 times per week
  Success: I have five new journal entries in my notebook. I found as the week went on that the entries got longer.
  
• Do something artistic every week (sketch, play guitar, etc.)
  Success: I spent time today sketching the street signs near Peet's coffee.
  

I feel really good about my progress on my Mind tasks. In addition to the above, I played Bookworm a bit to try to help push my word skills.

Spirit Tasks:

• Actively meditate (short or long form), conducting work, at least 2 times per week
  Tentative: I only have done one mediation this week, so I am planning on doing a second tonight.
  
• Identify and attend a local church at least once a month
  Pending: I have identified a church, but have not yet attended.

Although the tasks do not reflect much progress, I did have a much more spiritual focus this week than last. I would certainly count my activities at Lodge on Thursday, and at Grand Lodge on Saturday, as well as my time at Peet's today.

Final Thoughts
Well, this has been a very long update, but I appreciate your sticking through it. Although I did not achieve all the goals that I might have hoped for this week, I feel that it was a very successful week. Most importantly, I started. That may not sound like much, but if you read this whole post then I think you will appreciate what an achievement that can be. My other main achievement was that for every facet that I focused on, I improved myself, whether or not I actually did it in the way that I had planned on. The bottom line is that I am closer to meeting my goals than I was a week ago, and I am proud of that.

Body Challenge

Last week as I spelled out my goals, I found that I had the easiest time coming up with goals for my Body. When we think about physical things such as our weight, or our strength, they can be relatively easy to measure. I know that last week at this time I weighed 200.2 pounds and could do 10 push-ups. They were simple facts. I set some simple goals based upon this. I wanted to lose 10% of my weight, and be able to do five times as many push-ups. While this is all well and good, there are several facets that I haven't addressed. First off, just thinking about the push-ups, is it better to be able to do fifty push-ups, or better to be able to do five sets of ten? Is it better if I can do those push-ups in two minutes, or if I do slow push-ups that take me a full five minutes? Should I have my hands facing forward, or pointing in or out? Should my hands be close to my body, or further out? On the way up should I be breathing in, out, or whatever feels natural? What am I thinking about when I do my push-ups? What is my mood?

My challenge for you is to look at your plans for your goals this month, and see how you might adjust your activities. You don't have to change the plan, but think about how you could, and consider playing with some of your ideas. Does these changes make the activity harder or easier? Do you feel like the results are the same, reduced, or amplified? Is the activity more or less enjoyable? If you feel you have some interesting results, I would love to hear about them in the comments!

Does this post taste a little aquamarine to you?

A few moments ago I sat down at the computer to prepare for this week's progress update blog post. I still had Google Reader up on my screen, so I took a moment to review a few of my RSS feeds. In there, I found this article, which I thought you might all find interesting in relation to the Mind facet of our challenge. I've always been intrigued by those who mentally experience concepts in very different ways than I do. To be able to associate an image, sound, feeling, smell, taste or color with a word or number is an very interesting concept. I associate tastes with colors, but that seems to be the only crossover of senses that my brain experiences. Well, actually... now that I think about it... I also associate shapes and textures with emotions. And numbers... they do have a "feeling" that goes with them, but I don't know how I would describe it.

I'm curious now... leave me a comment and let me know if your mind has associations that might seem unintuitive. Don't only think about ones that you might have already noticed. Take a moment and think about the number three, and compare how you feel when you think about the number four.

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Hopefully the president elect has a sense of humor about logo parody...

A new beginning

Introduction
Today I am sitting down to begin my work on the Hope Challenge. If you haven't heard of it, check it out here. Basically, the Hope Challenge is a chance to reflect on who you are, and who you want to be, and to start mapping a path between the two. We focus on three main facets that I refer to as flesh, force and spirit. For clarity I will refer to them here as body, mind and spirit. By focusing on these areas, and journaling the progress, we can endeavor to make ourselves better, and more complete, individuals. Today I will lay out my basic goals, and then the real work will begin.

Inspiration
For me, this challenge comes at an auspicious time. Over the last year, quite literally, my life has gone through dramatic changes. I started a new job, moved to a new state, and asked my wife for a divorce. Any one of these alone can be quite overwhelming, but I have gone for the trifecta. This has put my life into a state of "loosely controlled chaos" that I have not truly experienced before. Now that things are beginning to settle down, I am ready to reintroduce good habits into my life and to get back on track.

Body
With everything going on in my life, diet and exercise have gone to the back burner. I am now 200.2 pounds lightly dressed. Given my height of 5'7", that's a BMI of 31.42, according to the Wii. I've also been eating out a lot this year. Partially due to the great selection of restaurants, partially because I've been wanting to get out of the house. Finally, I haven't been getting any routine exercise. I do walk a lot more here in the city, but I haven't done any strength training or real cardio. Just now I tested myself and could only do 10 push-ups. In an effort to get back on track, I am setting the following goals:

• Decrease weight by 10% to 180 pounds
• Increase push-up count to 50

To reach these goals, I am assigning myself the following tasks:

• Prepare dinners at home at least 4 times per week
• Brown bag lunch at least 3 times per week
• Exercise for at least 20 minutes, at least 4 times per week
• Do pushups everyday, each week doing at least two more per day than the week before

Mind
In general, I have continued to work to keep my mind sharp. Work has been new and challenging, and I play Sudoku and FreeCell every day. My failing is that my focus has been almost exclusively on logic and numbers. I need to expand myself in the areas of language and art. To work on these, I propose the following goals:

• Read for pleasure routinely
• Write more routinely
• Practice art routinely

To reach these goals, I am assigning myself the following tasks:

• Read a chapter in a book at least 5 times per week
• Write a short journal entry at least 5 times per week
• Do something artistic every week (sketch, play guitar, etc.)

Spirit
Although I routinely maintain a level of spirituality in all my actions, I have not been actively working on mediation or participating in a formal religious group. My goals for this area are:

• Mediate routinely
• Participate in organized religion routinely

To reach these goals, I am assigning myself the following tasks:

• Actively meditate (short or long form), conducting work, at least 2 times per week
• Identify and attend a local church at least once a month

Final thoughts
To keep track of my progress, I will be journaling on paper daily. In addition, I will post a follow-up entry on this blog every week. By the end of the challenge in June, I should have completed each of these goals. Looking back at my list, I see that the goals got more vague as I proceeded. I suspect that this is due to the increasing separation from the physical, rather than simple laziness on my part. Wish me luck as I begin the work of hope.