by Max | Sep 8, 2023 | Writing
1 full week since my last post! Tsk tsk, not good.
I went to a wedding out of town last weekend and I think I just finally recovered.
It’s incredible how easily thrown off I get from routine, and the difficult habits (often those with the highest reward) are the ones that get tossed first.
I learned a couple of things from this hiatus:
- There’s no reason that I couldn’t have blogged while at this wedding weekend or while recovering. Even to write about those topics themselves would have been sufficient. My inspiration for this blog is in large part Seth Godin‘s blog. His posts are often quite short – just a few sentences.
- I like to let loose and party, but I’m starting to reach the age where the bad feeling I have from missing workouts and blogging for a few days is worse than the good feelings of partying. And are they even that good? There was definitely a way to have fun at the wedding and stick to my commitments to myself.
- This return to the page has helped me synthesize the above thoughts about this. And that is a lesson in and of itself. The page helps. It’s helping me think, and moving me forward. Long live the page.
by Max | Sep 1, 2023 | Health, Mindset
I slipped a disc in my back a couple of years ago. I had been exercising every morning for years and was in very good shape. The disc completely fucked me up – couldn’t walk, horrible nerve pain.
In the last couple of years I’ve bounced back. I can move around normally and I’m more flexible and my core is much stronger than it ever has been. But I would still get some sciatica every time I’d work out.
I’d try to work out a couple of mornings in a row but my sciatica would flare up and then I’d take a week off. I think subconsciously I was scared and discouraged by the pain. Nerve pain is fucking brutal. Now mind you I was still doing jiujitsu and salsa dancing and bicycling to get around, so I was active – but that every morning workout regimen really fell by the wayside.
I’m proud to say that I’ve recently picked that regimen back up, and I feel incredible. There was some sciatica at the beginning but I think I’m over the hump. Movement is the way out of that kind of stuff and I was subconsciously limiting my movement. You have to lean into the pain to overcome it. I started doing 5-10 mins of stretching at night as well.
The effects of this regular exercise are more powerful than I remember. I can function on less sleep. I can wake up, do my morning gratitude and meditation routine, go to the bathroom, and exercise without having coffee. I feel much more alert and alive.
The original title of this post was “The Power of Exercise” but I think the lesson here is about leaning into pain. The only way out is through.
by Max | Aug 31, 2023 | Life, Mindset
Not such a cheery title, but it’s true. And thinking about it can help us live a better and more present life.
It’s from Marcus Aurelius’s “Meditations“, which is chock full of stoic wisdom.
He says something to the effect of, “The river is flowing. Everything is dying.”
I felt it today getting started on a morning run. Boy were my muscles sore.
I felt it today in the blustery morning, Fall whispering to us, leaves already beginning to drop, foreshadowing the turning of time.
I’m hearing it in a friend who’s stressed about having to care for her aging parent. Soon we may be the parents, and eventually the ones who need care.
We are currently in the Hebrew month of Elul, the month leading into Rosh Hashannah and Yom Kippur, the holiest days of the year for Jews where we take stock of our lives this past year and set intentions for the coming year.
There are poems that are read on these days in synagogues around the world, framing life as a passing shadow, a disappearing cloud, a fading flower.
It seems morbid, but every time I read something like that or think about it, it instantly makes me present and grateful. I say the ‘river is flowing’ thing every morning as part of a gratitude practice and it works.
Try it. Wake up to your life and the fact that it is ending.
by Max | Aug 30, 2023 | Mindset
Sometimes I wonder what the hell I’m doing even writing this blog.
I don’t think it furthers my ‘dreams’.
Tangent: Amazing that I put dreams in quotations. As if it’s embarassing to have dreams and I need to protect myself from people finding out that I have them.
And I hesitate to even write my dreams here. But I am going to do it. The trick to realizing your dreams is admitting that you have them. Kind of like alcoholics admitting they have a problem. Only with addiction, you admit you have a problem and have no control over your problem (although you then promptly try to take control by stopping to use the addictive thing). For dream realization, you’re in complete control. It’s all you. You just need to start chipping away at it one step at a time.
And really that first step is to be able to say what you want and what you want to do.
People’s identities are so tied up in their dreams. I feel embarassed to admit a dream I have because I have not accomplished it yet. My identity of being a person who one day could achieve this dream is threatened by the fact that I have not yet achieved it. So then who am I if not the guy who will eventually achieve this dream.
It’s even scarier to take a tiny step towards that dream. What if that step is a misstep? What if I fail at one of those steps? Now that’s really threatening my identity and scaring the shit out of me.
One of the exercises in “The Artists Way” is to write 10 times in your journal, “I am a talented and prolific ______”. The blank is whatever you want to be. For many reading that book it’s ‘writer’ or ‘filmmaker’. For me, it was ‘entrepreneur’. Which is embarassing because I’m not currently running a business that I’ve started. So technically, I’m not an entrepreneur.
But the exercise is incredible. It makes you so uncomfortable to write it. And if you pay attention to all of the little voices and doubts in your head that pop up as you write it, you can start to dialogue with those critics. You can rebut their critiques.
It’s powerful. Just as powerful as it is writing on the internet that I want to be a deeptech entrepreneur and take an important environmental technology out of a research lab and commercialize it into a startup.
So if that’s my dream why do I take precious time every morning to write these lame posts when I could be taking steps to further that dream?
I guess the practice of putting it out there, on the internet, and silencing those inner critics is/was the next necessary and important step.
by Max | Aug 29, 2023 | Health, Mindset
This morning I REALLY didn’t want to do the workout I had planned.
My body was achey. I had planned to do suicides on the basketball court near my apartment. Suicides are where you sprint to touch each major line of the basketball court, returning to the baseline in between each line touch, until you’ve sprinted the full length of the court. They’re brutal.
I’m trying to get my VO2 Max up. VO2 Max is the maximum rate of oxygen consumption your body can use. And pushing yourself as hard as you can is how to improve it. I don’t have a fitbit or apple watch so I don’t actually measure the number, but having a high-intensity workout day is now part of my mix.
Suicides are awful, and they hurt. In general, VO2 Max day is one of the more uncomfortable workout days in my regimen. You’re working as hard as you can, out of breath, and in pain.
I really felt resistance to walking out the door to do this workout today. And that’s why I had to do it.
I’ve started to pay attention to when I feel that resistance. Saying something to my partner that I’m afraid to say. Speaking honestly about something that’s bothering me. Doing that task that’s been on my To Do List for weeks that I REALLY don’t want to do.
But the reality is – you do them, and then it’s over in a flash. Just like almost everything in life.
And our mental resistance to it is an opportunity to prove to ourselves that we can do hard things, and those things are often the best things for us.
One way to practice this is to stand under the cold water as your shower warms up. Especially in winter – it sucks. But then it’s over. It’s a small daily way to practice doing uncomfortable things that are good for you.
Overcoming that intertia is the hardest part. I haven’t quite figured out a recipe for overcoming it. It sounds trite to say, “you just gotta do it”, but that’s the truth. Just sense the impending pain and discomfort, and then put yourself on autopilot mode and get it done.
Once the ball is rolling….once you’re standing in the shower under the showerhead before you’ve turned it on, you’re already there. Once your shoes are on and you’re out the door, it’s already begun. I think it’s kind of like getting a heavy ball to roll at the top of a hill. The first couple of pushes are difficult and require strength, but as it starts to gather momentum, the ball becomes hard to slow down.
Get that momentum going, and don’t look back.
