Category Archives: Personal Development

Happy Monday

I want to start this week with an idea that many may find difficult to grasp; that, by and large, happiness is a choice.

I’m following on from a posting on Six Degrees Of Inspiration on this topic as it’s something I’ve believed myself since my mid-thirties. At that time I was living with an ex-girlfriend because he house we’d bought together had so much negative equity we couldn’t sell it, our business had gone bust and we were in serious debt. I was far from happy.

Then I can distinctly recall one morning thinking to myself, “I am not going to put up with feeling depressed anymore”. In that instant of choice my depression lifted.

The reason why I’ve added a caveat “by and large” to my statement above is because whilst I believe it’s a choice to be happy I don’t believe that everyone is in a position to make that choice. Some people (and someone I’m very close to) suffer from clinical depression which is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain. Do these folks have the luxury of a choice in this matter?

Finally the post on 6doi.net has some excellent quotes and I’m going to take the liberty of reproducing them here;

Happiness is a way station between too little and too much.

Channing Pollock (1880 – 1946)

Happiness is a present attitude… not a future condition.

Hugh Prather

Happiness is the only good.

The time to be happy is now.

The place to be happy is here.

The way to be happy is to make others so.

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833 – 1899)

All these seem to be saying to me that happiness is Now!

Setting Myself a Goal

This is a time of upheaval in my life with my permanent job coming to an end at the end of May and I’m in the process of reviewing all areas of my life. In GTD terms I’m doing a full review at 50,000 feet.

One of the areas I’ve really let slip over the years, if I ever had a grip on it at all, is my overall fitness level and in particular my weight. Some time ago quality pair of scales, the sort that tell you your fat and water percentages; but when I got on them yesterday I realized it was about 12 months since I last weighed myself. No need to tell you that I had put on weight!

So my current weight is 197lbs and my ideal (target) weight for a man my height is 173lbs. That’s 24lbs I’ve got to loose. Ouch! In fact I’m only 0.8 Body Mass Index (BMI) points away from being obese (double ouch).

OK, this is getting depressing. Let’s move on.

This goal is intended to contribute to the overall goal of improving my fitness and loosing those 24lbs. Note that I’m not defining the weight loss goal here as I have to do some more work defining that one. This goal is to start me back to gaining some sort of fitness as well as making a small contribution to losing weight.

The goal is to walk for 20 minutes, unencumbered, 3 days a week for a month.

This may not seem like a very arduous goal to achieve; but in the past I’ve set goals like this that were doomed to failure from the off because they were over ambitious. For example; walk for an hour 3 times a week. An hour for me is a long time to fit in around all my work and personal commitments and it was very rare for me to actually get away from my desk for an hour.

On the other hand 20 minutes is just 10 minutes outbound and then home again. This I’m sure I can do and part of the idea of doing this for a month is to establish the walking goal as a habit. The “unencumbered” bit is to stop me from hanging my camera and / or binoculars round my neck which are guaranteed to slow me down. This is walking for exercise sake and nothing else.

The intention is that if I can achieve this for a month then I increase the time to 30 minutes for a month, then 40 minutes and so on; but let’s get this month over with first.

So I have tomorrow marked as the first day and the end date is 7th May.

Here goes….

Back To Work Stress

Here I am, back from a week off work. The week away was great; but the return to the grind is less so.

I don’t imagine I’m the only person who suffers from the back-to-work blues; but my stress levels are off the scale today. It’s a bit like walking along enjoying the sunshine when BAM! You walk into a lamp post. Ouch!!

What is causing all this stress? Stress originated in the ‘flight or fight’ response system; we get stressed when we’re getting ready to either run away from a situation (flight), or to face it head on (fight). This was great when the situation was a wild animal; but these days is this an appropriate response to daily domestic or work situations? I don’t think so. OK, I agree that some stress is a useful thing; but often I get stressed over things that are inappropriate, or my stress level lasts longer than is appropriate.

If you do a search for stress related stuff you’ll find masses of it on the net. Trying to read all that would really get me stressed out. However there’s a few pointers that I’ve gleaned from an initial scan of some of the material:

  1. You can alleviate stress once you’ve got it by using relaxation techniques (I guess we all knew this) but…
  2. It’s better to learn not to get stressed out in the first place and so…
  3. I have to learn what my stressors are.

So this is one area of personal discovery for me; find out what causes me stress and learn how not to get stressed out. I’ll report back how I get on.

The first step…

All journeys begin with a first step and so this is mine. As I’m writing this the first of my colleagues are preparing to leave the company for good as the site winds down. Some have been here for nearly 20 years. There’s much laughter; but underneath it I can feel the tension, uncertainty and fear of the unknown.

I myself don’t leave until the end of May. I shan’t be the last one out the door; but not far from it. Next week will be difficult as the building will seem so empty with half the staff gone. So the purpose of this blog is to chart the last two months of my time here and where I go from there. As the title says this is a personal journey. This is my opportunity to step out of my familiar cozy surroundings and experience things from another perspective. While I’m on my way I’ll most certainly post up things that annoy me and things that delight me (hopefully more of the latter).

So there it is; my right foot planted firmly in front of my left foot and I’m on my way. Here’s to a safe journey.

Cheers

David