Fitness

Exercises / Fitness / Habits / Models / My Favorite Posts / SIDCHAs / Tips

A model for consistency: If you miss one day you can miss two. If you miss two it’s over.

[This post is part of a series on "Mental models and beliefs: an exercise to identify yours." If you don’t see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you’ll get more value than reading just this post.] Do you have trouble keeping a habit going? Today's model is my model for maintaining my daily habits. A model for consistency: If you miss one day you can miss two. If you miss two it's over. My friend who set this blog up for me told me this belief when I asked him how often he posted -- a few days a week, every weekday, or what. He said he posted every day and that if you miss one day,…

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May 12, 2013

Exercises / Fitness / Freedom / Humor / Models / Tips

A model to make you more intelligent and free

[This post is part of a series on "Mental models and beliefs: an exercise to identify yours." If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] I once spoke with a psychologist who specialized in intelligence. She told me that flexibility in how one sees the world is a major part of intelligence. At first I didn't see the connection, but then it made sense. The more ways you can look at a problem, the more ways you can try to solve it. By contrast, if you limit the number of ways you see something, you limit the number of ways you can solve it. Most people…

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April 27, 2013

Blog / Fitness

2013 New York City Marathon!

So many people apply to run in the New York City Marathon, you usually have to get lucky in the random draw to get accepted. If you apply and don't get in three years in a row, you get in automatically the fourth year, which worked out for me this year. So I just got my guaranteed acceptance to this year's marathon! I also just got my new Vivobarefoot running shoes in the mail the other day and started my first runs in months. I have a long way to go to get in good shape, so I'm looking forward to it. Anyone interested in signing up for  one of the best days of your life too? Here's a map from a previous year for…

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April 25, 2013

Exercises / Fitness / Models / Tips

How to win an NBA championship if you’re a 66-year-old grandmother

[This post is part of a series on "Mental models and beliefs: an exercise to identify yours." If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] Today's post illustrates yesterday's model instead of introducing a new one. It's one of my favorite illustrations from my leadership seminar. It shows that with flexibility in your beliefs and understanding your emotions you can bring anything to your life that anyone else can bring to theirs. Winning an NBA championship Say you want to win an NBA championship. What exactly do you want? It's not possession of the trophy, which is just a physical object. It's not even necessarily to…

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April 12, 2013

Awareness / Exercises / Fitness / Models / Tips

A model to motivate physical and emotional fitness

[This post is part of a series on "Mental models and beliefs: an exercise to identify yours." If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] Your body is the physical manifestation of your thoughts and behavior. Two starting points for today's belief. First, how do you decide what diet, exercise, and beliefs are right for you? Some people are more muscular, some are thinner, some seem happier, others the opposite. Diet and exercise books flood the market. How do you make sense of it all? Second, before your next shower, stop for a moment, look at yourself in the mirror, and think about the person you…

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April 10, 2013

Blog / Entrepreneurship / Fitness / Leadership

How not to overspend on things you don’t want

I can't resist reposting a comment I posted on the forum of one of my favorite other blogs, Mr. Money Mustache. I'm reposting it because two other readers rated my response highly, one giving my response this animated image, making me proud. The post I responded to Alright mustachians [the term for people in the Mr. Money Mustache community who practice his principles of not spending money on stuff that doesn't improve your life] I need your sage advice. In the last three months I have really cut down on my bad habits. I pack my own lunch to work every day. I broke up with cable. I stopped ordering books from amazon on a regular basis. I changed my eating habits from quick and…

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March 28, 2013

Blog / Fitness / Tips

How to avoid temptation

Today's post will sound like it's about food, but it's about a lot more. The other day I was at a party with a great spread -- rich, delicious food and a lot of it: cheese, crackers, chips, cake, ice cream, and so on. I liked eating some, but realized I didn't want to eat too much. But everyone was talking around the food table and I find it hard not to eat delicious food right in front of you that everyone else is eating too. So I used my favorite strategy anyone can use to avoid eating too much of what they don't want. I didn't try not to eat the rich foods. I didn't try to eat less at all. I found the…

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March 26, 2013

Blog / Education / Fitness / Leadership

More on John Wooden

I found a couple more videos on John Wooden, whom I wrote about yesterday. First, some thoughts on him by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, one of the top players of all time. He is the NBA's all-time leading scorer, with 38,387 points. During his career with the NBA's Milwaukee Bucks and Los Angeles Lakers from 1969 to 1989, Abdul-Jabbar won six NBA championships and a record six regular season MVP Awards. In college at UCLA, he played on three consecutive national championship teams, and his high school team won 71 consecutive games. At the time of his retirement, Abdul-Jabbar was the NBA's all-time leader in points scored, games played, minutes played, field goals made, field goal attempts, blocked shots, defensive rebounds, and personal fouls. Look at the…

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March 23, 2013

Blog / Fitness / Leadership

A few minutes on one of the best leaders in U.S. history

While searching for videos on Lou Gehrig for yesterday's post, I happened on a short video on John Wooden, one of the great coaches of any sport. According to Wikipedia John Robert Wooden (October 14, 1910 — June 4, 2010) was an American basketball player and coach. Nicknamed the "Wizard of Westwood", he won ten NCAA national championships in a 12-year period—seven in a row—as head coach at UCLA, an unprecedented feat. Within this period, his teams won a record 88 consecutive games. He was named national coach of the year six times. As a player, Wooden was the first to be named basketball All-American three times and he won a national championship at Purdue. Wooden was named a member of the Basketball Hall of Fame…

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March 22, 2013

Blog / Fitness

Choosing your beliefs; a life and death example

How would you like for your body to weaken for no reason and become unable to do simple things you once could; where you stumble and fall just jogging; to have your weakness on display to the world so everyone sees you deteriorate; then to find out your body will continue weakening until you can't use your arms and legs or any other muscles, and that you'll die in a few years? Would you feel lucky? Do you think you could if you wanted to? Lou Gehrig did. If you've never read or heard the speech he gave on retiring from baseball on July 4, 1939, you'll see his ability to create his beliefs at work. Some might say of course he feels lucky as…

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March 21, 2013

Blog / Fitness / Tips

One way to help prevent unhappiness

When people feel unhappy or depressed they often stop doing things. They don't feel motivated to work or go out so they don't. You know how when you're happy, you tend to smile? Most people also know smiling makes you feel happier, at least for a moment. Forcing a smile won't solve all your problems, but we can build on what it demonstrates. Not only does emotion motivate behavior, but behavior influences mood. While brief behavior influences emotion briefly, longer term behavior influences emotion long term. To keep your mood stable, keep up your habits consistently. It may not make your life perfect, but it helps a lot. It gives you a solid platform to build the rest of your life on. I've written about…

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March 16, 2013

Blog / Fitness

Redefining possibility again

Are you younger than 89? Can I ask you to think critically. Forget for a moment about logistics and if you have the time or interest to do it. Just ask yourself if you think it's possible. Do you think you could finish a marathon? Do you think it's possible? Many people I ask consider their finishing a marathon impossible. Not difficult but impossible. They explain why and their reasons never hold water for me, but they seem conclusive to them. Sometimes it's as simple as knee problems (note I asked about finishing a marathon, not running one, which would allow for using a wheelchair or crutches, both of which I've seen racers use. For that matter, seeing a blind runner in a marathon. Whatever…

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March 8, 2013

Fitness / NorthKorea

Video: Getting the block and game-winning goal in North Korea’s first Ultimate Frisbee tournament

I just realized I never posted this video of me getting the block and game-winning goal in North Korea's first Ultimate Frisbee tournament in August 2011 (actually, I posted it on a site I since enjoyed leaving.) I consider it one of the highlights of my Ultimate career not for the level of competition but for living out Ultimate's Spirit of the Game clause "Spirit of the Game. Ultimate relies upon a spirit of sportsmanship that places the responsibility for fair play on the player. Highly competitive play is encouraged, but never at the expense of mutual respect among competitors, adherence to the agreed upon rules, or the basic joy of play. Protection of these vital elements serves to eliminate unsportsmanlike conduct from the Ultimate…

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March 1, 2013

Blog / Fitness

You won the Tour de France as many times as Lance Armstrong

It's obvious, but still fun to say. Try it. Point out to a friend that you Tour de France as many times as Lance Armstrong. Why point this out? Credibility and reputation count for a lot in business and relationships in general. It seems to me that the credibility and reputations of people who don't cheat suffer if people who do cheat keep the same quality of credibility and reputation as they do. I feel compassion for him, but I also recognize he chose to do everything he did. I remain impressed with what he was able to achieve physically, but not impressed with his winning any competitions because I don't know if he ever competed for anything. He may have, and he may have…

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February 8, 2013

Blog / Fitness

Sports in the rain and values changing

The other day it rained and I skipped playing ultimate frisbee in Shanghai. It reminded me of playing in college and after. In the Northeast of the U.S., especially in late fall, leading to Regionals, it rained and snowed a lot. Weather didn't change that you simply went to practice. We practiced and played in snow, wind, rain, etc. I played disc the year I lived in Paris, taking a year off from school. We played on Sunday afternoons there. The fields, incidentally, were at a beautiful spot at the park in front of Les Invalides, pictured here: I remember one Sunday it rained like a monsoon. Huge droplets of rain, densely packed, falling straight down all day long. I showed up to the fields…

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January 29, 2013

Blog / Fitness / Tips

Exercise helps everything

Exercise helps everything. I can't think of any time or situation exercise doesn't help. Whenever I'm not sure what to do, I think, "exercise can't hurt." Even if all I do is a burpee or two, I find it clarifies my thoughts. I've never found a case where exercise worsened a situation. Even if I'm in an insane hurry, where I feel every second counts, a push-up or two barely takes time and often reveals to me that not every second counts -- feeling that way almost always comes from stress-induced myopia that is leading me to make bad decisions. Even a few seconds of physical motion relieves the intensity and gives perspective. It overcomes an empathy gap that works for you Even simple stretching…

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January 26, 2013

Blog / Fitness

Sometimes all you have to do is show up

This post is about one of the best experiences of my life. I couldn't have planned it, but looking back I realized I had spent years preparing for it. When you've prepared, sometimes you only need to show up. One fall in the mid to late 90s, when I was playing ultimate seriously, I was looking for a team to play with. A good friend of mine told me about a team he was playing with and invited me to try out. In New York City getting to practices is hard, so we had to get rides with people out to Westchester. When we arrived, the captain of the team, Matty J, one of the sport's greats, who helped New York win six of seven…

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January 14, 2013

Awareness / Blog / Fitness / Tips

Fooling yourself doesn’t help you

I can't help reposting a comment I put on another site. Readers here know that while I don't eat meat I don't consider avoiding it virtuous or better. I don't consider not eating meat any more healthy, virtuous, humane, delicious, or whatever than eating meat. I don't understand why so many people who eat meat call themselves vegetarian. What do they gain? As best I can tell they consider not eating meat better or virtuous. Or maybe they feel special. But then don't they feel bad when they eat meat, having told people they don't? Or when they start eating meat honestly again? Doesn't that make them seem flighty and lower their credibility, which, in turn, hurts people's impressions of them? To me, social skills…

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January 9, 2013

Awareness / Blog / Exercises / Fitness

What I think about when I exercise

[This post is part of a series on my daily exercise and starting and keeping challenging habits. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] Nearly everyone wishes they exercised more, or at least realizes doing so would make them healthier in mind and body. So why don't people exercise more? I can't speak for everyone, but I think their motivation plays a role. American culture, for example, values convenience and saving you work, which results in a lot of sloth. Few activities after high school require most Americans to burn calories. I've been trying to pay attention to my thoughts while exercising for a while.…

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January 6, 2013

Awareness / Blog / Fitness / Leadership

Understanding leadership, values, meaning, purpose, importance, passion — Interlude on writing on emotions and emotional awareness so much

You've probably noticed I'm writing a series of posts on the main themes of this blog -- the words under my name at the top: leadership, values, meaning, purpose, importance, and passion. If you've gotten the idea now that I'm relating these concepts back to knowing your emotions and emotional system, I'm glad. I thought I'd take a post to explain why. The vagueness people throw terms around with makes it hard to work with them. When the terms in question are values, meaning, purpose, importance, leadership, and passion -- well, those aren't things you just vaguely want to hope for in life. If vague is all you can do, vague is all you'll get. If you understand these things precisely you can act on…

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January 1, 2013

Blog / Fitness / Leadership

Vince Lombardi: What It Takes to be Number One

After a couple posts on sports, I'm putting up one of the great sports coaching quotes, by Vince Lombardi. According to Wikipedia Vincent Thomas "Vince" Lombardi (June 11, 1913 — September 3, 1970) was an American football coach. He is best known as the head coach of the Green Bay Packers during the 1960s, where he led the team to three straight league championships and five in seven years, including winning the first two Super Bowls following the 1966 and 1967 NFL seasons. The National Football League's Super Bowl trophy is named in his honor. He was enshrined in the NFL's Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1971. He never had a losing season as a head coach in the NFL, compiling an impressive regular season…

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December 23, 2012

Blog / Fitness

Burpees — the one year review

[This post is part of a series on my daily exercise and starting and keeping challenging habits. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] Today, December 21, 2012, marks the 365th day of my exercise regiment of daily burpees. They began with me talking to a friend about exercise, then deciding to do ten a day for thirty days, then expanded to a consistent long-term daily routine. I now do two sets of twenty per day -- one just after getting up and one just before going to bed -- and four stretches before the morning set. Do I claim doing only burpees is the…

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December 21, 2012

Awareness / Blog / Fitness

One of the most insidious barriers to getting hard things done, part 1

[This post is part of a series on empathy gaps. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] Did you know you undermine some of your best efforts to do challenging things, especially involving personal change? You do. We all do, through an effect that makes sense when you get it, but most people don't realize undermines them. The effect is this When you feel one emotion you generally can't conceive of your motivations when feeling a different emotion. Or more to the point When you plan to do something you feel one set of emotions, often enthusiasm. When you act on them you feel different…

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December 11, 2012

Blog / Fitness / Leadership / Tips

Common objection 1: I want to understand the root of the problem before solving it

[This post is part of a series on internal objections and blocks and how to overcome them. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] Objection People usually state this objection with something like I want to understand the problem before acting. I want to get at the root first. If I don't, it will just happen again. You can also call this objection Analysis Paralysis since it leads people to analyze over acting. Again, some problems require analysis, but I bet you'll find that the more you learn alternatives, like the ones below, the more you'll learn to solve problems faster. Example My classic example…

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November 21, 2012

Awareness / Blog / Fitness / Nature

Variety, choice, the manufactured illusion of it, and creating more yourself

Can we all agree processed food is unhealthy garbage? Yet people eat tons of it. I want to talk about one reason. And that reason is not just about cereal. It applies to many places in life. When I was a kid I loved boxed cereal. Didn't everyone grow up eating it? And as a kid you loved sugar cereals. Why not? Before some age you hardly knew or cared about nutrition. Over the years I learned about nutrition, especially how removing everything from a grain but the sugar ruins it. Then adding more sugar ruins it more. Adding some vitamins negligibly changes it nutritionally; it just helps market it to people who don't know better. This knowledge changed my experience walking down the supermarket…

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November 16, 2012