Weekly Ramblings – Remaining Centered Despite Life’s Little Surprises

Tags

Calmness, Centeredness, Emotional, Meditation, Spiritual Exercises, Unconscious

I just got back from my Sister’s home after being there for a few days. It’s always a nice change of pace from the day-to-day. I visit my sister each month for a long weekend to hang out, get some good food and binge-watching TV shows or whatever she wants to do. This last trip we went to a comedy show, featuring Rocky LaPorte and Ron White. It was hilarious.

During this short stay, we also experienced a vehicle break down, which resulted in the replacement of a tire on my car. I was wondering how to react to these little-unexpected experiences. How do we stay in balance when something out of the ordinary happens we had no warning of?

I think the best way to handle the unexpected is to be proactive about those things we know may happen but may not. How do we prepare? We have insurance to protect against an accident, insurance for our health, even insurance for our life. We make sure we have an emergency kit in our car and home in case someone gets hurt. We make sure we have a good spare, jack, and other equipment needed to change the tire. We save some of our money to prepare for any potential emergency.

I contemplated about this over the weekend, after it happened, and realized that the key to dealing with the unexpected is to remain calm and balanced as well. It is so easy to be thrown off balance when the boss hands us a job we aren’t ready for, we get sick unexpectedly, or a car breaks down. Any number of things can happen to us or the things we own with little or no notice. Remain calm. Remain balanced. There is no reason to get out of whack when one of these things come to pass. Use your creative imagination to solve the problem once you’re hit with it. Remain calm. Remain balanced.

I practice meditation daily. My religious path calls this practice a spiritual exercise. Spiritual exercises come in all shapes and sizes as most meditation practices. The key is consistency and to have a purpose or goal when doing them. In Eckankar, we strive to practice these spiritual exercises with an open, loving heart. Sometimes, this is hard, particularly when one of these out-of-the-blue emergencies happen. We are freaked out, scared, nervous, the whole emotional gambit. The practice of meditating or spiritual exercises counter these feelings by slowly building a foundation of calmness and centeredness, both of which allow us to remain in control, despite what is happening around us.

Have you ever heard the statement: “He was so angry, he couldn’t think.” Thinking or mentalizing on something is really difficult if your emotions are out of control. The calmness allows us to think, to critically analyze our situation and get to work on solving the current dilemma. What happens when we have internalized solving the kind of problem we are hit with? This solving goes to a higher level. It is literally unconscious, which is what happens when we know how to solve a particular problem without thinking about it. Do you see?

Emotions, come before intellect, which comes before unconscious execution. If one of these is out of balance and control, they make the others that follow impossible to use. If we are too emotional we won’t be able to think about a solution—the emotions won’t allow that. If we are too caught up in mentalizing or thinking about a problem, our ability to apply what we already know is impossible.

By meditating or doing a spiritual exercise every day, we build up an internal centeredness and calmness that becomes more and more difficult to upset our natural balance. Thus, we have access to the creative imagination that would normally be blocked off by a stressful situation. You can find a great wealth of material available about meditation online or read about spiritual exercises at www.eckankar.org.

Have a great week!!

See you next week…

Daily Ramblings – Workout Log

Tags

Documentation, Goal Setting, healthy living, Life, Random Events, Unexpected Situations, workout

Living Your Life

Folks, as you’ve probably noticed, I’ve not been working out this week. I’m afraid my Mother’s issue last week, through my schedule out of whack. Since she’s come home, I have to help with cooking, run more errands, and help my Dad out with some of his appointments (he no longer drives a car).

I know some folks when they begin a workout routine do not want to let anything disrupt their routine, but frankly, this is not realistic. Life happens and you will be disrupted by it because that’s just the way life is. Life is one big dice roll and it is better to ride the wave than fight it.

I’ve decided to kick in my routine again tomorrow, now that my Dad’s appointments are knocked out. This leads me to my next topic–documentation.

Documenting your Workout

I cannot tell you how important it is to document what you do (or don’t do) in the gym. This should be done while you’re there, so you don’t miss any weights you are using, or any special things you learned that day. Your body is a terrific teacher. It will tell you when it is stronger, weaker, or just plain tired. It will tell you that it’s ready to go and will also tell you to take one more minute of rest.

The only way to truly hold yourself accountable is to document what you do. You pretty much track the things you eat and the weights you use for each exercise, along with the number of reps you complete. If you do this, it will be very easy to pick up right where you left off.

Setting Goals

Realize the body will do what the body will do. You need to be careful when setting goals because if you push yourself too hard, you will burn out and stop going to the gym. On the other hand, you don’t want to set your goals too low either. This will only result in you doing what I call as “sandbagging”. Sandbagging is doing less weight that you need to be doing. Don’t let yourself fall into this trap.

The only way you gain muscle mass is by increasing the loads you work with or the number of reps or a combination of both. If you are not pushing your limits each time you go to the gym, even if it’s only a 2.5lb increase in weight or maybe one or two more reps, you will not see the improvements you seek, but I digress.

Let’s talk about the goals you have. My goal is simple. I want to remain healthy, increase my muscle mass, maintain my bone density, and have good endurance. Muscle mass is gained very slowly. The changes in your muscle mass and body composition are so minute that you will not see them instantly. They improve over time. The easiest way to gauge yourself is to take a photo of yourself at the beginning of every routine you begin and one at the end. You can also track your weights. The more weight you are pushing, the bigger that muscle is getting, even though you cannot see it yet.

I’ll get into more specifics tomorrow. Hope everyone has a great Thursday!!

See you tomorrow…