Give Yourself the Room to Grow
This week, I was tired—really tired.
This was the second week of my second 4-week challenge of the year—row for 20 minutes a day (2 days on, 1 day off).
Having not been actively using my rower since Fall last year (a Concept2 Model D for any of you rowing nerds 🤓 out there), the process has been akin to riding a bike uphill, against the wind, in a perpetual rainstorm.
My times have paced noticeably worse than before.
My arms have been taxed to their limits like stretched out taffy.
My days have felt slower as my body tried desperately to keep up.
Give Yourself Room to Grow
After I noticed a significant drop in my creative energy levels after working out, I knew I needed to give this challenge some extra space.
Back in January, I made it my mission to write, publish, and share a new piece of writing each day.
Now, facing a new challenge, I recognized that I needed time to acclimate to my physical challenge. I needed to prioritize the new path and give myself adequate room to grow.
It doesn’t mean abandoning our previous work. It means accepting that each challenge will have its own unique qualities that need a particular kind of attention in order to succeed.
How to Build Space into Our Lives
Whether its attempting a new challenge or giving yourself a break from an ongoing one, here are three simple suggestions to help you out:
Put things on hold that are “non-essential” — Going to work, paying your bills, eating properly, and sleeping enough count as bare-minimum tasks for our lives. Watching three hours a day of Netflix is not one of those things. Ozark may be a fantastic show, but it will still be there after you work on yourself.
Plan out your week — When the moment comes, and you need to do the thing that you’re trying to change, that’s not the time to plan how to do it. I typically use Sunday afternoon as a check-in for the week to come. From my peaceful Sunday, I can see all of the possible pitfalls that await me and plan around them. If I wait until the pitfalls happen, it’s far more difficult to navigate my way through. Planning is how I recognized I needed a change this past week in the first place.
Check In with Yourself Daily — Write down in a journal, a notepad, or on your phone how things went today. Talk through things out loud and record your thoughts. However you choose to do so, get the words out of your head and into the world. Once they have become more tangible, they’re less likely to cause us anxiety and dread.
We all need some room to grow into the people we want to become.
Half of the journey is simply a matter of giving ourselves that space and using it wisely.
Be kind and fair to yourself. Change is hard.
Until next week, here are links to what I’ve been working on and treasures I’ve found out in the creative wilderness.
Enjoy!
Recent Finds
The Minimalists — The Cluttered Mind (Podcast) | Minimalism is often associated with physical things. The Minimalists (Joshua Fields Millburn & Ryan Nicodemus) often recommend removing the items from our lives that don’t bring meaning to us. There is salvation in the simplification. I enjoyed this recent podcast episode in particular because it dealt instead with the reduction of our “Mental Clutter.” How can we reduce anxiety, improve habits, and find focus when our minds are full of such clutter? This episode, with guest author Dr. Amishi Jha, was a deep dive to answer just that.
Ali Abdaal — 20 Podcasts that Made Me a Millionaire (Video) | I love podcasts, and apparently, so does productivity YouTuber Ali Abdaal. Ali does a wonderful job of summarizing the podcasts that have influenced him and the categories of your life each can help you in. I was happy to know that we listen to some of the same podcasts such as the Tim Ferriss Show and Impact Theory. But I was even happier to find some of his other recommendations I’ve never listened to before.
Brett and Kate McKay — How to Fall Asleep in 2 Minutes or Less (Blog) | I’ve struggled with not only carving out enough time to sleep, but sleeping effectively. This post has some insightful logic for how to get sleep in short order as well as how to relax your mind. Since reading it, I’ve noticed that my ability to relax has improved. I may not be falling asleep in 2 minutes flat, but it’s still far better than tossing and turning.
Quote of the Week
“The meaning of life is to live a meaningful life. What you consider meaningful is subjective—nobody can tell you what is or isn’t—but you’ll spot it when you get that feeling that your efforts are resulting in progress that feels deeply worthwhile and fulfilling to you. ”
— Steven Bartlett
That's all for now.
Stay creative, my friends—and have a great week!
