Today’s newsletter is all about that pivot from the past into the future I mentioned to you last time. I'm going to start with lifestyle.
January sees newspapers and magazines running their annual ‘brand new you’ articles. We’ll be advised to get fit and go on miraculous eating programmes. Photo spreads of impossibly expensive spas in the Far East will show already-thin people doing yoga on the beach under palm-trees or sitting in the lotus position with mountains touched by dawn light behind them …
Yeah, right. We mere mortals wake up on winter-dark January mornings knowing we’ve spent the festive season binge-eating again. We might try that hot water and lemon cleansing drink. Then again, we might not. We might turn to the page in the hip-chef cookbook showing quinoa and pomegranate seed salads. Nice picture, we think. Then we slope off to bake brownies. We pick that inspirational manual off the shelves – you know, the one we bought last year because everybody was buying it, darling; we flick through pages describing the regimen that will bring our minds into disciplined harmony with our bodies, increasing our concentration, positive outlook and focus. Somewhere around page 36 our focus strays and we put on the TV instead for some easy passive entertainment. We go out for a bracing walk but find the weather a little too bracing, thank you very much and even the dog starts tugging on the lead to go home, so we don’t cover the three miles we intended …
We’re human, that’s the problem. We spend our lives poised between ideal and real, dreams and practicality, the aspirational and the viable.
Still, it is January. It is a new start to a new year and something deep in the human psyche responds to it, so let’s see what we can do before that fresh start descends into same old, same old.
What can we do, realistically?
We can indeed set goals. We can set achievable ones. We can set ones which are on a sliding scale and regard any position higher than zero as a win. Remember I talked about small wins in my last newsletter?
Yes, you may run a marathon this year or enter a triathlon. All credit to you if you do. I used to be able to run ten kilometres. A win for me used to be a training run of six miles. A win now is walking round the block.
When bodies let you down you get scared. So a small win is conquering that fear, listening to your body, but not letting it rule you. My small win, after several challenging months (hip and knee pain), will be to get out and walk round the block five days out of seven. I’m not setting any further goals than that right now. We’ll see how it goes. If it goes well, then I’ll up the stakes a little. But I will never run 10k again. That’s a given. I’m thankful to be able to walk. That’s a gift.
Over Christmas I have been mainlining chocolate, so another small win will be to wean myself off that level of consumption. But I’m not going to cut it out entirely because after a few days I know I’ll break out and guzzle loads, rebelliously: take that, oh Puritan!
I realise that over the past five years I have not slept enough. It started when I trained myself to write late at night, for a specific target I’d set myself. Part of our culture is based on pride in denying ourselves basic levels of sleep, downtime, stare-into-space-idly time. We see business gurus as heroic multi-taskers. The more we’re doing, the more plates we spin, the more we are to be admired.
At the same time, quite frankly, we’re killing ourselves. I feel like apologising to my brain and body for what I do to them. So a small win for me this year will be to get to bed at midnight or 1 a.m., not 2 or 3. To allow myself a day in the week where I read for pleasure, not research or ‘can I use this in a workshop’, where I visit the park or stroll around, just looking – I live in Oxford, for goodness sake, so there’s quite a lot to look at.
Apart from distractions of work and daily tasks, many of us are overwhelmed by stuff. We own so much these days! We want to preserve everything. We drown in possessions.
So a small win for me will be to tackle the clutter. Again, I’m not setting huge goals here: but if I can sort through five old newspapers or deliver some clothes to Oxfam or file some correspondence three times a week, I will in time achieve a semblance of order.
I’ve been talking personally but of course the aim of this discussion is to get you looking at your own lifestyles. Where are you being self-indulgent and addictive; where are you self-destructive? Take a half-hour to write down your concerns about your health, weight and fitness. Look around your environment and take stock of where the clutter is oppressing you and distracting you. (One sure sign of clutter, whether mental or physical, is when you simply can’t decide which task to tackle first!). Take a look at your day and its cycle of activity: how much sleep are you getting? Is it in a cluttered bedroom so that even unconsciously you are being oppressed? When do you eat? How often do you snack? What is your diet like? Are you getting Vitamin D? Are you getting, for that matter, all the other nutrients you need?
List your areas of concern and put them in order – which of these bothers you most?
Set down an action for each area of concern and make it achievable – that is crucial.
So, for instance you could:
- choose to put half a spoonful of sugar in your coffee instead of one and a half
- alternate coffee with herbal tea
- increase your fresh fruit and vegetable intake
- go to bed one hour earlier than usual
- ban electronic distractions like your iPhone or tablet for an hour before bed
- go for a walk – taking a different route from the usual, at least three times a week
- spend a half hour while you’re watching something fairly mindless on TV, sorting through three magazines
- cultivate increased ruthlessness: are you really going to wear that/read that/ take pleasure in that ever again? If not, get rid!
- feed your stationery obsession by buying attractive folders and magazine holders to tidy papers away in
- set aside a ‘me’ day each week where you do what you want to do, guilt-free: and if chocolate happens to play a significant part in that, so be it!
To sum up:
- Be kind to yourself
- Start to declutter your environment
- Believe that even the small wins are significant wins
Next time, I’ll discuss professional and creative goals for the year.
Warm wishes,
Lorna
P.S. You can still visit https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/2YSJDBV to help me plan future Fictionfire events - I'll be hugely grateful!
|
|
