| Hi Friend
Happy day after a holiday to you!
Right now my wife and I want more naps, but unless we go for a drive or a longer stroller walk during the middle of the day, they're not happening. We casually joke that the world conspired to take our naps away by scheduling so many events during nap time the last 2 months, that our daughter finally said, "Fine! You don't want me to sleep, then I won't sleep!" a la sonny from A Bronx Tale's famous line, "you guys don't want to leave, well now's yuze can't leave!"
So we want more naps, but it doesn't look like they're going to happen, so the next best thing is to get stronger, more enduring and smarter. Before I share why we chose those traits, let me share some background.
Here are 2 general rules, I live by:
1. When life stress goes up, training stress goes down. 2. When you want more, you have to become more so you can do more.
Well, you use #1, when kids go back to school, when December hits, when it's finals, when someone dies, when someone you care about is going through a really tough time, when you're moving, when you relocated, when you're switching or starting a new job, when there's construction, when there's any major life stress and you're either going to do nothing (not ideal) or you could do something super simple (ideal). In this case do something super simple that makes you feel good (like walking or stretching or 1 round of body weight strength training or rolling, etc...), even if it's easy and insulting to how awesomely athletic and commited of human being you are. You're still moving forward and getting better because you're still training during a major challenge in your life.
You use #2, when you want something, big. You want to get the girl or the guy. You want the promotion. You have an event coming up you want to peak for. You want to start something big & new. Anything that's exciting or scares the sh*t out of you, and requires you to be greater than you are now. That's when you have to become more, so you can do more, so you can have more.
We want to survive the lack of a nap time and a child that's presently going bananas, because of all the change in her life (school, no naps, and less time with mom & dad), so we need to get stronger, more enduring and smarter. That means we need to become stronger emotionally & physically to endure and thrive all day long with our favorite little bunny and smarter so we know the right parenting strategies to help Vivi through this transition and the transitions to come.
Well, we've been rocking meditation, gratitude journaling, morning wake up workouts (corrective exercise for me, Qi Gong for Vanessa), planning our day and getting ourselves ready all before Vivi wakes so we can present our best selves. That helps us to be emotionally stronger.
Vanessa will strength train during school and I'll strength train b/w clients. We're doing pretty good on cardio minutes (as in hitting our goal), but we'll add 1-2 more sprint based workouts (more like 1, plus running w/ stroller to school) on top of those minutes. We must be consistent with these workouts or we'll suffer during the lack of a nap time. You could say we're motivated.
The smarter part is the part where we're reaching out to people who've been there and done that. Vanessa is leaning on the parent group and teachers to learn what others have done, what strategies they've used and resources they recommend. She'll teach me what she learns and we'll implement it. I'm reading How to Talk So Your Kids Will Listen and Listen So Your Kids Will Talk per Vanessa's recommendation so I can fix whatever I'm not doing so every body can feel better. Man, that book is brilliant if you haven't read it. It's like Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People or Stephen Covey's chapter in 7 Habits of Highly Effective People about, "Seek First To Understand, Then To Be Understood", which means, No One Cares How Much You Know Until They Know How Much You Care. We've already started using the skills and they work and they'll work with everyone including adults, not just kids. I'm trying to read as fast as possible to figure out all the situations I see that I haven't yet learned to problem solve in the book. In any event, we're motivated.
So to summarize, when you want more, you have to become more and when you become more you need to do more. You read our pain, our motivation and our plan. Now we need to continue executing it 1 day at a time.
How about you? Are you in a high stress period of life, in which your training stress is going down? Are you in a wanting more stage of life, in which you need to become more, or are you in the quiet period, the in between stage, in which you're not pushing forward or pulling back, only executing your plan everyday?
What phase or stage of life are you currently in? I'd love to hear about it. Reply and let me know. And if you want more help with the becoming more, let me know that as well.
Learning & burning,
Coach Mike
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