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July 2 - August 18, 2022
There are two main ways to integrate movement into your life: You can set aside a protected time for physical activity such as walking, running, cycling, swimming, gardening, climbing, dancing, going to the gym, or yoga. You can build movement into the regular flow of your day.
Move your body often, sometimes hard; every bit counts.
between the two movement conditions, though. During the simulated workday that included repeated five-minute walks, the participants
Creatives, intellectuals, and those who work in a traditional workplace should consider working in intervals: focus hard for a period of time; take a short break during which you engage in some sort of physical activity; rinse and repeat.
When you feel yourself getting stuck on a problem or thought, instead of continuing to lean into it, use that feeling of being stuck as a cue to lean out and take a short break, during which you move. Not only does the research support this, but my guess is that your personal experience does, too. Think about when you tend to have moments of insight. Do they happen when you’re actively working on the problem you are trying to solve? Or do they happen during a break, when you are doing something else?
Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard wrote, “Above all, do not lose your desire to walk: every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness; I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it.”
the American Heart Association, recommend strength training at least twice a week regardless of age or gender. As with aerobic movement, in addition to supporting increased muscle mass, lower body fat, and better range of motion, research shows strength training also promotes sound mental health and cognitive performance.
experiencing cognitive dissonance is often a sign that you need to better align your being and your doing.
Following through on this shift is probably the least inspirational and invigorating part of making big changes. It is also perhaps the most important.
Following up. See M Goldsmith.
Make a list of the difficult conversations he needed to have, accept these would be challenging and awkward, and have them anyway. Stop kicking the can down the road. (acceptance)
Focus on no more than three priorities each week. For each priority, come up with a few key actions. Write both the priorities and actions on a notecard and stick it to his desk. Resist the temptation to engage in whatever novel opportunities arise—because they are always arising—and focus on the long game instead. (patience)
place of fear more so than from a place of love. She recognized that her expectations
habit energy, which refers to the personal and social inertia that shapes much of our everyday doing. Habit energy is the way that we’ve always done things and what the culture implicitly and explicitly promotes.
we need to water each of the seeds, or in this case, the principles we’ve been discussing—acceptance, presence, patience, vulnerability, deep community, and movement—in
BJ Fogg demonstrates that successful habits have three qualities: they have an impact, you possess the skill and ability to do them, and they are behaviors that you actually want to do.
This is the virtuous cycle of adopting a more grounded life. Every change supports the next. It gets easier as you go.
when it comes to realizing a more grounded kind of success there is no destination. The path is the goal and the goal is the path. The urgent, imperative, and at times difficult task is simply to stay on it.
We must do what we can to create lives that we are fully involved in—lives in which we cultivate acceptance, presence, patience, vulnerability, deep community, and movement. Ancient wisdom, modern science, and the experience of people who consistently prioritize groundedness show how these principles work in combination to underpin a happy, healthy, fulfilling, and truly successful life.
“The way practice works,” an anonymous Japanese Zen teacher once remarked, “is that we build up our practice, then it falls apart. And then we build it up again, and then it falls apart again. This is the way it goes.”
Practice means approaching an endeavor deliberately, with care, and with the intention to continually grow. It requires paying close attention to the feedback you receive—both internal and from external sources you trust—and adjusting accordingly.
Patten writes, “A whole life of regular, ongoing practice is necessary. . . . We are always reinforcing the neural circuits associated with what we are doing right now. . . . Whatever way we are being, we’re more likely to be that way in the future. This means we are always practicing something.”
A 2012 study published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin found that individuals who react to failure with self-compassion get back on the bandwagon more swiftly than those who judge themselves harshly.
We need to recognize and see clearly when we veer off the path. And we need to show ourselves the understanding and kindness required to get back on—again and again and again.
1: GROUNDED TO SOAR In the Buddha’s Words by Bhikkhu Bodhi The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching by Thich Nhat Hanh Selected Writings: Discourses and Selected Writings by Epictetus Meditations by Marcus Aurelius A Guide to the Good Life by William Irvine Tao Te Ching by Lao-tzu (translated by Stephen Mitchell) Letters from a Stoic by Seneca The Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben The True Believer by Eric Hoffer How to Live: A Life of Montaigne by Sarah Bakewell The Path by Michael Puett and Christine Gross-Loh The Sane Society by Erich Fromm 2: ACCEPT
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