Comfortably Dumb - part 2: Cold Comfort for Change.
If this degree of discomfort presents an insurmountable barrier, how do you think that type of self-limiting thinking will play out in your everyday life? Your brain is a learning machine, and this becomes a practised and ingrained behaviour - catastrophising anything that doesn’t fall inside your neatly drawn parameters.
Comfortably Dumb - part 1: The misery of eternal comfort
Comfort and convenience cocoon us but this is a reverse chrysalis, transforming us from butterfly to caterpillar. Instead of stepping outside your comfort zone - the mantra of all personal development - it's become far more likely you'll leave it only on a stretcher.
Walk the Line: Keeping your balance
Good balance and core strength go hand in hand, and any focus on quality of movement must also be 'balanced' - they can hardly be separated. Insurance from a fall becomes nothing short of life-saving as we age, but our skills here, or lack of them, extend well beyond these more obvious associations, to better posture, and less pain.
Everything In Its Right Place: Learning to switch off.
Soon enough, after repeated practice at ignoring our bodily cues, we lose all subjective measure of our true state of being. Any reference point to help us gauge what stress is, and isn't, has become skewed - as has our response to it.
Back to the why: On Missing the point
Given that we know the body responds to reality as we perceive it, we also know there are circumstances in which we do have a conscious choice. We can choose to see it in a manner that serves, or a manner that harms. This is a game-changer for physical fitness, not to mention a useful ledge to rest on when scaling the heights of any further cognitive or consciousness development.
Identity Theft: On acting your new way of being
Your present-self doesn't just get to call the shots, it also gets to put on a balaclava and make sure your future-self gets the message - anything from a gentle tickle to a psychological water-boarding.
Free Will Hunting: Who are you working for really?
A post in which movies Star Wars, The Matrix, The Usual Suspects, Fight Club and even Shakespeare all get a mention. What could be the common thread there, I wonder...
The Old School: Lessons from Antiquity
Valued in education, politics, law, music; all the cornerstones of the societal bigger picture, but equally so all the way down to the minutiae of the individual life, well-lived. Patience, persistence, honesty, determination, grit, responsibility. Physical fitness is evidence of all these things if for no other reason than the fact that there are no shortcuts. Reward is matched by effort, awareness and intent.
Once Upon A Time. Just once.
Only when your habit of exercise is established will you start exercising for effect. In getting the habit onside first, almost anything will work. If you don't, nothing will. When most people begin a program of exercise or any other sort of change, they do this backwards. And they do it many times.
Enter Sandman: The Forever Overlooked Game-changer.
Sleep remains largely a mystery, and any understanding we have of it's purpose, is divined only through what we are able to measure in it's absence - physical and mental decay.