Managed MomentsMusings on health, mindfulness, wellness, and bad-assery by Deirdre.
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Managed MomentsMusings on health, mindfulness, wellness, and bad-assery by Deirdre.
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My office is a 5 minute drive and a 10 minute bike ride from my house.
Going by bike is a more direct system and keeps me off the main streets. It also keeps me from getting worked up about traffic and when I say traffic I mean there really isn’t any. A few years ago I acquired a trailer to hook to my bike so I could transport my massage sheets back and forth. (It was because of transporting these sheets that I hadn’t previously been able to ride my bike to work very often.) However, I found that once I had the trailer I was still not riding my bike to my office. I had to think about why I wasn’t riding my bike and I quickly figured it out. This is what I was thinking: There is a big hill I have to climb to get back home. This hill is steep and long. This hill is almost impossible to surmount with a trailer full of dirty sheets hooked to my bike. I am tired after a day of massaging and felt riding up that hill was just going to exhaust me. I probably wouldn’t even make it home before I gave out completely. This is what I was thinking about riding my bike to work. I decided to check and see how accurate this thinking was. I rode my bike to work and back with the trailer full of sheets and paid attention to how steep and long the hill ACTUALLY was. I paid attention to how much effort I ACTUALLY had to exert to get up the hill. I paid attention to the time it ACTUALLY took to get from the bottom of the hill to the top. I paid attention to how I ACTUALLY felt while I was climbing the hill and when I got to the top of the hill. This is what I discovered: The hill isn’t that steep or long. The hill caused me to put out a moderate to strong amount of effort. The hill took me less than two minutes to climb. My legs felt strong as I climbed the hill and were not worn out when I got to the top of the hill. As a matter of fact once I get to the top of the hill the rest of my route home is flat or downhill. Default mode: Circumstance: Riding my bike to and from work. Thought: That hill is going to kill me. Feeling: Defeated. Action: Don’t ride my bike to work. Result: Continue to add to global warming by driving my car five minutes to work. Managed mind mode: Circumstance: Riding my bike to and from work. Thought: That hill is not that bad. Feeling: Neutral. Action: Ride my bike to and from work. Result: Get fitter and do my part to stop global warming. I have been riding my bike to work almost every day for the last three weeks. I continually catch myself thinking all those false thoughts about “the hill”, which means I haven’t stopped having them. I have stopped those thoughts from being unconscious. I catch them and then I change them to thoughts I now know to be true about “the hill”. Eventually, some bright day I will no longer have to catch these thoughts because I won’t be having them any more. Until then, I keep practicing!
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AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
September 2018
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