The Come Alive Project

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  • Energy Bite 348 – Finish Strong

    I’ve been brainstorming some ideas about the best way to begin the New Year as we move into the final quarter of 2020. The thinking gave way to writing and I decided to use some of the writing for this weeks article. Change my first person sentences to fit YOU.

    2020 has been a unusual year and we still have three months to go. We have all been affected in some way by a the Covid 19 “thing” as well as naturally disasters and other outside happenings that we don’t have immediate or individual control over.

    So I decided to make 2021 one of my best years ever, to make it into a legacy year of productivity and activity. As I wrote above, I was brainstorming the best ways to begin the New Year and create that legacy year. We all plan ahead for that great New beginning on January 1st, don’t we. Why wait? Why not start now?

    So, what if, instead of waiting until New Year’s Day to start that legacy year, I could end up final quarter of 2020 with so strong a finish, that by the time January 1st rolled around, I was already well on my way into that legacy year.

    What if I got my body into such good condition that I had the physical energy and enthusiasm, at age 80, to follow through with all the plans.

    What if I came up with new thoughts for a new direction that would make the previous years look like amateur hour. What if I didn’t wait to January 1 to implement plans, but instead started them in a big way during the last quarter of this year.

    What if I made my attitude so positive that by the time the New Year started, I became unstoppable.

    What if I learned everything I needed to learn in the next three months so that I didn’t have to wait until later to start doing the new things I want to do in 2021.

    And what if I used the rest of THIS year to make it all happen, no matter what our circumstances may be on New Years Day.

    So as I said, I’ve been spending the last week or so brainstorming answers to those questions and figuring out ways to make 2021 happen the way I want it to.

    I know that I can take the next several months getting my own physical, mental and emotional act together so that I am fit to take on 2021, no matter what individual or collective circumstances we face when January comes around. A physically fit person with a positive mindset is much more likely to survive changes and face what comes with Courage, Strength, Energy, and Enthusiasm.

    By taking steps right now and finishing strong, I will be  building momentum, mindset, habit and discipline to be well on my way when the New Year arrives.

    Remember Muhammad Ali’s famous admonition to “start fast and finish strong”. Adjust that philosophy a bit and start 2021 “fast” and finish 2020 “strong”. And, as for circumstances, I am reminded of what Bruce Lee so famously said, “Circumstances? Hell, I make circumstances!”

    Thank you for reading.

  • Energy Bite 347 – The Three Stages of Flabbiness

    At age 80, I am searching for ways to “put more life back into my life”, a way of eliminating the boredom and malaise that emanates from this “quarantine” that we are enduring, and to find a way to re-generate the excitement, energy and enthusiasm that is a part of my life, as we come out from under it.

    To that end, I found myself reading a fascinating book called The Doorstep Mile: Live More Adventurously Every Day by Alastair Humphreys, a British Adventurer. I recommend that you read it and maybe even implement some of the ideas and concepts you will discover within the pages. (Note: I am not an affiliate and do not make a commission or receive compensation if you choose to buy the book).

    The chapter reproduced below (with permission) stood out as reiterating some of the principles I have written about in these Energy Bites. I think you will find it interesting.

    From the book:

    THE THREE STAGES
    OF FLABBINESS

    There are three stages of flabbiness in life, I realised years ago. The unsettling epiphany led to me deciding to walk from one coast of southern India to the other, through Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala.

    Each stage of flabbiness is more restricting and stifling than the one before it. They creep insidiously over me like vines until it takes one hell of a struggle to escape their clutches. If ever I feel the saggy symptoms of flabbiness snuffling up on my life, then I know it is time to make some changes or hit the road. Only once I acknowledge the problems am I able to take the first small step towards fixing them and getting back on track.

    The first stage of flabbiness, and the easiest to fix, is physical flabbiness. It begins when busy schedules, dark winter days and eating too much win the devil’s footrace against the part of me that knows that exercise isn’t a waste of time but actually makes me more efficient, alert and happy. Despite knowing this, at times I am still sufficiently idle to let my standards slip and my fitness slide away.

    Fitness is like chasing a shoal of fish: difficult to get hold of, so easy to lose. If I don’t go running for a few days, I feel cooped up and ratty. Leave it a few more, and the habit is broken. I know I need to run. But I can’t be bothered. Flabbiness has begun to set in, slowly, invasively, like cataracts. Before I know it, I am easing out my belt buckle and blaming my sloth on the effects of age.

    The second stage is mental flabbiness. Give up exercising, stop forcing myself out the front door for a run, and inevitably my mind starts to sag too. I used to feel alert and inquisitive. I used to read lots of books. But one evening I come home tired. Flopping down onto the sofa, I reach for the television remote instead. I realise how pleasant life can be if I stop thinking about it.

    It is much simpler to exist than to live. I’ve got a dishwasher and a coffee percolator and I can drink at home with the TV on. I flick round and round the channels until I have frittered away enough of my life that it’s time to go to bed. If I don’t snap out of this quickly, then I’ll soon be on a slippery slope towards the third, terminal, stage of flabbiness: moral flabbiness!

    Each day brings me closer to my death. No matter how aware I am of this, it is sometimes difficult to believe my days are numbered. I burn carelessly through weeks, even months, unable to restart living fully.

    I don’t know when I will die, so putting important things off to an indeterminate date in an un-guaranteed future is pretty daft. There are so many places I still want to see, so many interesting people to meet, so much to do. And there is so little time. Before I know it I’ll be dead, and what a bloody waste that will be if I’ve just been arsing around.

    By the time I have succumbed to the debilitating onslaught of the first two stages of flabbiness, I am already well on the primrose path to moral flabbiness. Not only have I conceded my physical health and settled for candy floss in place of a brain, but I have also accepted that this is good enough for my life.

    This is ridiculous because I know that I am happiest when I have a sense of purpose. Instead, I have become comfortably numb. I have decided that scrolling through social media with a Chinese takeaway is sufficient return for the privilege of being born – healthy and intelligent enough – in one of the wealthiest, most free countries on the planet.

    I have a passport to explore the world. I will always be able to find some sort of work. I will never starve to death. It’s hard really for me to come up with any decent excuses.

    The choice is all mine.

    Life is too brief and too magnificent to tiptoe through half-heartedly, rather than galloping at with whooping excitement and ambition. And so I explode with outrage just in time. I need to get back into the wild. It is time to live deeply once again. It is time to sort my life out. This can be done in two ways. I either jump in the nearest cold river for a bracing swim, or I make a plan, set a start date and, come what may, begin.

    FROM: Humphreys, Alastair. The Doorstep Mile: Live More Adventurously Every Day (pp. 132-135). Kindle Edition, PC.

    At the end of the chapter, Humphreys asks you to evaluate your own symptoms of each stage of flabbiness that are an early warning of a deeper malaise. Perhaps you have found yourself in one, or all three of these stages of flabbiness as we slowly emerge from the cocoon of quarantine.

    Thank you for reading.

  • Energy Bite 346 – What Holds YOU Together?

    I was in a toy store recently and I saw one of those toys which is a figure of a person on a pedestal. When you press a button on the bottom of the pedestal, the body collapses. Sometimes they are called “push puppets”. Many of us have seen similar toys.

    It collapses because when you push the button on the bottom, you release the tension on the strings which hold the figure together. When you release the button, the tension on the inside strings is returned and the body goes back to normal. When you push the button slowly, the figure collapses slowly.

    Compare that string to your skeleton, muscles and the other internal structures of the body that hold YOU together. When those internal bodily structures collapse by pushing the button of aging, you start to fall apart.

    Our muscles and bones are like the string that holds the toy together. As we get older, we start to lose the tension on our internal support system. It’s our job to keep our muscles, bones, joints, etc in good condition so our bodies continue to hold together.

    As we age, the body’s internal structure tends to weaken. Muscles atrophy and get smaller and weaker, bones become brittle, circulation slows and body fluids pool. We weaken and ultimately collapse into a shuffling, bent over, struggling ghost of our former selves.

    One of the goals of exercise is to strengthen the infrastructure that holds our body together. The takeaway? Start an exercise program that strengthens your muscles, keeps your joints moving smoothly, and keeps your bones dense. This involves resistance exercises for the muscles, weight bearing exercise for the bones, full range of motion exercises to keep the joints mobile, and some aerobic exercises to keep the fluids circulating and the lungs strong. You will grow older much more gracefully.

    There are plenty of opportunities to get exercise. At home. At the gym. With friends, with a group, or alone. Any and all exercise will help keep your old body young.

    Thank you for reading.