Have you noticed that you seem to go through cycles with your fitness routine? Do you feel extremely motivated during the summer, but lose motivation during the winter? Or does it vary month to month? I saw this article on The Outside Blog and thought it was really interesting! The Emotional Calendar doesn't just address fitness cycles, but writer Aileen Torres has highlighted some of the thoughts the book addresses to help us stay motivated in our fitness routines throughout the whole year. Sounds good to me!!  Dr. John R. Sharp, who teaches at Harvard and UCLA, has been practicing psychiatry for two decades. He brings his wisdom to the masses with The Emotional Calendar, a book of case studies and advice on recognizing and understanding the annual cycle of your emotions in relation to the four seasons. Here’s a re-cap of the Doc’s main pointers and how to tailor them for a healthy, active lifestyle throughout the year.Motivation: It’s hard to get yourself out the door to train in the dead of winter or the dog days of summer. When you feel a lack of motivation, acknowledge it, identify how the weather outside affects you, then figure out how to make yourself accountable for getting a move on. A simple way to do this is to set up regular training dates with a buddy. Thought patterns: When you start thinking you can’t, nip that thought in the bud. Defeatist thinking naturally happens when we’re tried physically, mentally, or emotionally. It’s important to notice when these thoughts pop into your head so you can counteract them with self-motivating, positive thoughts. Simply put, tell yourself: "Yes, I can." And believe it. Stimulation: It’s easy to fall into a rut physically and mentally if you do the same activity every day. Bring excitement back into your training routine by switching what you do day-to-day. For example, you could alternate the type of workout you do every other day, vary your routine from week to week, and/or incorporate a new activity into your routine every month. If you need ideas, sign up for one of our interactive training plans at outsideonline.com/fitnesscenter.  Mindfulness: Take a cue from the Buddhists and start practicing mindfulness. It’s a meditation technique that encourages the act of paying attention. Learning to pay attention to what’s going on in your mind, body, and external environment will foster self-awareness. And being self-aware is critical to a sound mind and body. If you’re feeling down, figure out why so you can isolate and address the cause. Same thing if you’re feeling good; figure out the cause so you can use it to trigger those good vibes when you need to in the future. Attitude Adjustments: This goes with mindfulness. Monitor your thoughts and moods throughout the day to see what triggers negative and positive emotions. Once you recognize how you feel, try to pinpoint the cause, then work to control your thoughts so that you actively choose how to respond to your internal and external environment, instead of reacting blindly. Social Awareness: Pay attention to how others affect you. Other people’s moods and attitudes could influence yours, and your mood could affect your physical performance and even your attitude about training. Try to find a workout partner with equal, or more, motivation as you. If you prefer solo workouts, try keeping up with the latest on athletes you admire to get inspired. Work/Life Balance: It’s good to work hard. Balance that out with play. If you work 40+ hours a week, it’s easy to be overwhelmed with your responsibilities. You can combat work-related anxiety with leisure time. If you like to play hard, even better. A good workout will give you that endorphin-high and re-set your mind and body so you can be more focused at work.  Diet/Nutrition: What you eat can help or hurt your health. Eating foods with high nutrition value at proper moments in the day will fuel your workouts and everything else you have to do. Food also helps with mood. If you’re cranky, eat something. You’ll feel better. For more on diets, check out John Bradley’s Man vs. Food. Sleep: It’s common sense yet often overlooked. Getting your eight hours of z’s every night is crucial to good physical and mental health. Your body and mind need that time to process your daily activities and re-charge. Homeostasis: We all have natural comfort levels, and we spend a lot of energy trying to maintain that homeostasis. If you’re at your natural level, you feel both rested and energized, and you’re pretty much in your happy place, which enables you to do what you need and want. It’s up to you to determine what that happy place is and what gets you there so you can re-balance yourself whenever necessary. For more fitness tips, check out Aaron Gulley’s Train Your Brain in our March issue. --Aileen Torres |
Hi, I'm Mark, and I'm a pathological second-guesser. I spend a tremendous amount of time questioning my own decisions, to the point where I resemble Buridan's ass, who died fromhunger and thrist after being unable to choose between two equally good options (a pail of water and a bale of hay) equally distant from it. I can't tell you how much time I've wasted walking or driving around because I keep flipping between eating out and eating in, meanwhile growing hungrier every minute. And that's just the tip of the iceberg—today, I'm considering pulling out a conference later this year, after being accepting on the program and buying the plane tickets.Clearly, this a problem. (Or is it? Yes, it is... but wait, maybe not...) But what kind of problem is it? There are many ways to characterize these problem, but I'll pick a way that I've discussed before in the context of procrastination: a lack of self-respect. In an earlier post, I talked about how procrastination, or weakness in will in general, betrays a lack of self-respect in that such a person fails to respect the choices and plans she committed herself to in the past.
For example, if Judy decides to learn to play the violin, but then repeatedly puts off practicing, she is letting herself down—and even though there is nothing inherently ethical (or unethical) in learning the violin, there is a lack of character evidenced by not following through with your deliberately made plans. We can assume Judy spent some time choosing whether to learn an instrument and then which one to take up, and she made that decision for certain reasons. If those reasons still hold, she should respect her earlier decision and maintain a regular practice schedule. More easily said than done, of course, but she owes it to herself to try.
But what if Judy's failure to practice isn't a result of procrastination or weakness of will? What if Judy decides, just as deliberately and reasonably as before, that playing the violin isn't what she wants to do? This is what philosophers calls rational reconsideration, and we definitely don't want people to avoid this type of reconsideration—but we have make sure Judy is really engaging in the rational kind. Perhaps she discovers that learning to play comes at some unforeseen cost, such as unexpected physical pain, or simply that she doesn't enjoy playing as much as she anticipated. These may be cases of rational reconsideration; if she had realized these things when she originally chose to take up the violin, she may have made a different choice.
What typically doesn't count as rational reconsideration is when you change your mind for the very reason you made the commitment in the first place. Another example: John decides to give up eating donuts because they're bad for his health. He makes this commitment to himself because he knows how much he loves the taste of donuts, so he has to exert willpower, or use some external coping mechanism, to keep away from donuts. One day, he decides to give in and have a donut because they just taste so darn good. This would not count as rational reconsideration, because his "rationale" was precisely what he made the commitment to fight against! On the other hand, if he had decided to have a donut because his coworkers were all having them and he didn't want to stand out, that may be rational reconsideration (insofar as this motivationis sincere and not just a rationalization), since that is a unique situation and one that merits revisiting the original choice.
The same concept can be applied to second-guessing decisions that don't seem to rise to the level of commitments per se, such as whether to eat out for lunch today. Let's say I decide to go out to eat, for any number of reasons: it's a nice day, I haven't eaten in a while, there's only so many ways to dress up a Pop-Tart, etc. But halfway there, I start to rethink this decision: maybe I don't need to go out, I could just sit by the window, I haven't tried deep-fried Pop-Tarts yet, etc. According to the same concept of self-respect mentioned above, I shouldn't be second-guessing a decision I made for sound reasons before, especially if nothing has changed that would have affected that judgment. If circumstances had changed—it starts to rain, for example, or a friend calls to invite me out for dinner later that day—then those are legitimate reasons to reconsider (similar to rational reconsideration). But second-guessing the decision I made earlier, on the same grounds on which I made the original decision, even though nothing had changed—that shows I have little faith in my judgment.
For the depressed, especially those suffering from manic depression, this becomes even worse. Negative thinking is very commonly associated withdepression (in different ways depending on the school of thought), and this can include having little regard for your own judgment. "Sure," Jennifer thinks to herself, "I decided to go to the movies tonight, but was that really a good decision? Did I take all factors into account? I probably didn't, did I? Maybe I shouldn't go... it was a bad idea from the start." And for the manic depressive, decisions made during high points, when the person feels good and life looks relatively promising, are subject to reconsideration during the low points, when things look bad again, and then again during the next high point. So Jennifer may well bounce back later, change her mind, and decide to go to the movies after all. Until, that is... well, you get the idea.So there are times when second-guessing is appropriate, namely when some circumstances or standards have changed, which represents good reasons to revisit the original choice. But second-guessing is not appropriate, and is likely to be detrimental, when nothing has changed to invalidate the original decision, and the reconsideration reflects a lack of faith in your judgment and reasoning. Try to remember that you made that original decision for a reason—and trust that it was a good reason—and follow through with it. And if it proves to be the wrong decision, take that into account and make a better decision next time. As they say, the only truly bad decision is one never made, and therefore never learned from.
