As promised, here’s my weekly progress picture for 9 WEEKS OUT!
Impressive, right?! So, I was totally grounded this week with the stomach flu. I got super sick on Monday and couldn’t move and haven’t been able to eat more than 1 can of soup per day for the past 5 days. Needless to say, no gym. I know there are some badass mofo’s who like to show up the gym sick and puke in the bathroom and spread their dirty germs all over the shared equipment, but that’s not my jam.
I did pretty well on keeping focused on my intentions I set last week. As I stated in my last post, my intentions for this prep are to keep my life as simple and streamlined as possible and not take on any new commitments. Which I thought would be easy. But I’m constantly coming up with ideas. This week I heard a good friend of mine speak on his spiritual practices and I was like, “I know! I’m going to set up a workshop and have him speak! I’ll organize and host the entire event!” I stopped myself, thankfully, and stored the idea safely on this awesome To-Do List/Project Organizing app I use (ToDoist) and set a reminder to follow up on that idea in 2 months.
As for my meditation, I’m going to count the hours I spent sick, rolling back and forth in bed, moaning and wailing, as my practice for this week (that’s what I do when I’m sick- I roll around and moan and cry, as if I were slowly dying — even if I just have a cold). That was the best I could do. However, now that I’m amongst the living, I’m going to focus on using this new app a friend recommended called Insight Timer. It’s free and has thousands of guided meditations from all sorts of gurus and teachers. You just tap to play and listen.
I’ve also decided to stop listening to the news! Which, if you know me, is a pretty big deal. I listen to NPR or KFI or KPOC in my car on my way to work, coming home from work, running errands, at my desk. I’ve realized it only contributes to my becoming sour and cynical and frustrated. A bleeding deacon, if you will. Even worse, I love political documentaries and I follow a bunch of conspiracy-theory doomsday-type blogs – which, let me tell you, takes you down a dark rabbit hole real fast. I read this excerpt from Walden by Henry David Thoreau that helped me make this decision:
“I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper. If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter — we never need read another. One is enough. If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and applications? To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip.”
I think all of this unnecessary negativity is a real drain on my inner resources, and for the next 8 weeks, I need to tap into whatever I can that motivates, empowers, uplifts, and supports me. I’m going to listen to either music or this new audiobook I downloaded called “The Rise: Creativity, The Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery” by Sarah Lewis. I found this book by listening to the author on NPR’s Ted Talk podcast. Here’s a little gem from the podcast titled “Champions”:
“Masters are not experts because they take a subject to it’s conceptual end, they’re masters because they realize that there isn’t one. We build out of the unfinished idea, even if that idea is our former self. This is the dynamic of mastery: coming close to what you thought you wanted can help you attain even more than you dreamed you could. Even if we created utopias, I still believe we would have the incomplete. Completion is a goal but, we hope, it is never the end.”
Lastly, I’ll leave you with a new recipe I’m going to try out tomorrow morning for breakfast:
Ingredients: Rolled oats, chia seeds, fresh fruit, almond/coconut milk, greek yogurt, some fresh berries, protein powder (optional).
Here’s a link to the original blog post: http://www.theyummylife.com/Refrigerator_Oatmeal
