Back on the Road Again, Part 1

       About two months ago, I began running, again, for I can't tell you the how many hundredth time.  For the past five years I have had one false start after another. After a few weeks I always began to get twinges (or worse) in my feet, ankles or knees.  It was so frustrating!  I'm way too young to stop moving. So I'd give it some time off and begin again. Today's post is about sharing one of the things that made my current 7 week running streak possible.

       I have very tight muscles (and no, a fifteen year yoga practice has not yet completely overcome my uptight personality).  Now, my theory was that these muscles were causing imbalances and hence my aching ankles.  The worst moment was when, less than a half a mile from our house,  I had to flag down my neighbor for a ride home.  Daily massages were not an option and no stretching regime had worked.  At left find the Sunpentown Healthy Swing Machine with Swivel Disc, my personal live-in masseuse.
      I must admit, I thought it was absolutely ridiculous when I first saw it. Really, swinging the legs such a short distance, how could it help?  What I did not understand was what a persistent little bugger this is.  It just keeps swinging for as long as programmed.  At first it just moved my feet, but as the session progressed it moved up the body.  As each lower region relaxed, more and more movement happened, until at the end, I can usually feel the gentle rocking all the way up to my neck.  If you figure $60 an hour for a massage, this has paid for itself six times over in the three months I've owned it.
         One day I forgot to use the machine before I took off for my jog.  I had to go even more slowly than usual to warm up and never really felt very good.  Let's just say I've not forgotten again.

In No Particular Order...

     In the past few months I have read so many books, it was hard to decide which to write about.  One book, however, has really made an impact.  It is not so much the deep research or useful metaphors, though the book has them aplenty.  Rather, it is the material is so simple to grasp and utilize it makes me wonder how I could have ever not known it.  The book is called Hardwiring Happiness: The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm, and Confidence by Rick Hanson.
       The core idea is stated simply in the introduction "HEAL: Have a positive experience. Enrich it. Absorb it. Link positive and negative so that positive soothes and even replaces negative. (The fourth step is optional.)"  How easy, right?  The key is to notice being happy and roll around in it like a dog in the grass. Like the old song, I think the book could be renamed "If you're happy and you know it."
          So you could just read the introduction and be done with it, but then you would miss all of the interesting metaphors and unique ways to remember things gleaned from years of practice as a neuropsychologist and teacher.  Here are a few that I really liked:
 -    "Imagine that your mind is like a garden.  You could simply be with it, looking at its weeds and flowers without judging or changing anything.  Second, you could pull weeds by decreasing what's negative in your mind.  Third, you could grow flowers by increasing the positive in your mind."
-      "Since neurons that fire together wire together, staying with a negative experience pat the point that's useful is like running laps in Hell:  You dig the track a little deeper in your brain each time you go around it."
-       "(Since the parts of the brain have developed over time), it helps me to think of my own mind as containing a kind of lizard, mouse, and monkey related to the avoiding, approaching and attaching systems.  We meet our core needs for safety, satisfaction, and connection when we -metaphorically- pet the lizard, feed the mouse, and hug the monkey."
            There are many exercises and practices later in the book to teach the reader to enrich and absorb the positive experiences we all have.  I think the most important gift to us all from this book is  the knowledge that we are in the driver's seat of our happiness bus.  "On average, about a third of a person's strengths are innate, built into his or her genetically based temperament, talents, mood, and personality.  The other two-thirds are developed over time.  You get them by growing them.  To me this is wonderful news, since it means that we can develop the happiness and other inner strengths that foster fulfillment, love, effectiveness, wisdom, and inner peace.  Finding out how to grow these strengths inside you could be the most important thing you ever learn."

Lessons from frustration

It begins...

  Each year we hide a pickle ornament on the tree and the child who finds it first gets to open the first gift.  It was something that our eldest son heard about in school years ago.  We started by hiding a real pickle in a plastic bag.  Later I found a blown glass pickle ornament and the game was on.

Dad looks on and laughs

I'll shake it out of you!

    What the boys did not know when they started the tradition, was how good their father is about hiding things in plain sight.  At first, when they were small, we made it easy.  Let's just say last year took 25 minutes and they still could not find it...

    The search brings out such intense frustration, Christmas Eve they tried to find where I had hidden the ornament through the rest of the year so that Dad could not hide it on the tree.  What makes this even funnier is our tree in only four feet tall.  There are not that many hiding places.

found at last!

      Even with teamwork Christmas morning (and a major hint) it took 15 minutes.  He looks like he is making fun of finding it, but let me tell you, there was a lot of relief...  In watching them struggle, it reminded me of so many things in life.  We start something not knowing how it will turn out.  Most of the time we know life's risks, but we really depend on things going how we hope they will, rather than weighing the statistical probabilities (for a good explanation of this I recommend Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, the law of small numbers chapter and more...).
    As reality rears it's ugly head and our hopes become tempered with reality (or with past memories) our reactions are out of proportion to the situation.  We get frustrated faster and internally give up.  May this be the year of releasing frustration and finding that which we are looking for (and many presents under the tree!)

Judge Not: or... Careful of that New Year's Resolution

I've been working on a post but have had too much going on to finish, so my first New Year's gift to you is from Cyanide and Happiness, 2012.  The best part about this comic strip is I have been on both sides of this joke, both the judgee and the judged.  Maybe this year we'll stop worrying about how other's choices make us uncomfortable enough to judge them... Enjoy the New Year!