CHARACTER BUILDING: Exercising for Endurance

Welcome back Viphilus*

Once again, let’s start with the Capacity Table, first posted on Nov.16.

So far we’ve looked at exercising to increase capacity in the character markers known as strength and flexibility. This week we look at exercising for endurance: physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually.

Physical endurance is about having sufficient physical energy to be able to prolong physical activity. The most common exercises for this are cardio, or aerobic exercises where a high intake of oxygen is required to ultimately build the heart and lung muscles to increase their capacity. Cardio exercises are anything that get the heart rate up (to at least 70% of maximum capacity … 80% is even better). The result of repeatedly doing this is that it trains the body that you have become a person who requires additional heart and lung capacity for greater oxygenation of the blood … so those two vital organs increase in size. The ultimate benefit is having a heart and lungs that permit physical activity to continue for longer and longer periods of time without fatigue setting in. There are other exercises for increasing duration but this post is not intended to be exhaustive … I simply want to highlight the importance of building endurance in all 4 basic areas of our being.

Mental endurance is about the capacity to sustain focus and concentration (on whatever you are intending to focus and concentrate on) for long periods of time. The generations behind me struggle with a frequently diagnosed malady called Attention Deficit Disorder (A.D.D.) … a term used to describe patterns of behaviour that appear most often (but not only) in school-aged children. The behaviors noted are the inability to pay attention, sit still, or attend to one thing for a long period of time; they may mask their dysfunction by appearing overactive.

I’m not a mental health professional, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have an opinion on a potential reason for the upswing in this diagnosis. Children can be found doing their homework in a room with a TV going, IPOD headphones firmly in place, and a hand-held device delivering them emails, FaceBook updates, tweets, instagrams, and a host of other second-by-second distractions. The relentless overstimulation has trained a generation or two that multitasking or task-switching is a good thing. It is not. It creates a highly diminished capacity for sustained attention.

If you want to concentrate for longer periods of time, the most sure-fire way of accomplishing this is to simply practice concentrating. You might last only 10 second before your mind wanders. That’s fine; don’t beat yourself up. Just gather your thoughts once you’ve realized your mind has started off-roading, and get back on track. Oh … and this is important: TURN OFF ALL THE DISTRACTIONS MENTIONED ABOVE (yelling by CAPS intended … to get your attention).  I always get push-back from young people on this … but the proof always remains in the pudding. Just try it and see if you don’t discover that I’m right.

Emotional endurance is about the capacity for patience … the ability to endure under difficult circumstances without acting on anger or other negative emotions. How the heck do you exercise this? Actually, this one is either ridiculously easy …. or ridiculously hard; it is a choice. Let me explain.

The impetus for increasing capacity is stress/strain … push the body or mind slightly beyond its limit, maybe even to the point of failure, and the body/mind learns to adapt to increased stress/strain. In other words, if you want more patience, simply look for or create opportunities in which patience is required … because that’s how you grow it. (remember the old humorous quip: “be careful if you ask God for patience because He will probably just send you something to test it.”)  This is where the choice part comes in. If the only way to grow patience is through trying times, then intentionally acknowledging that to yourself when things get tough will flip an important switch in your head that turns the challenge into a growth building event … one in which the aphorism will be true, “that which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”

Spiritual endurance is highly correlated to faith. I like the Biblical definition found in Hebrews 11:1: “faith is the assurance of things hoped for; the evidence of things unseen.”  There may be a crossover here to emotional endurance, but spiritual endurance simply goes to a different level … and I believe it is a much deeper one at that. Faith is “knowing” that things will turn out a certain way, even in the face of all evidence to the contrary. In many ways, faith can override the emotions and make the need for patience almost moot.

For some, faith is too irrational. Then call it a belief, or a conviction … it is an almost intangible hope that “I will endure.” And as with emotional endurance and the need for patience, if you ask for it you will likely be given an “opportunity” to grow it. One Bible passage tells us that even faith itself is a gift from God, but that passage doesn’t say whether the gift is packaged in the form of an instant capacity of belief-without-evidence or whether that gift package looks more like a challenging ordeal through which faith can grow. James says that it is through the testing of our faith that we develop perseverance (endurance). Finally, the Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Rome by saying that “endurance produces strength of character, which in turn, produces hope.” The posts this month have been about character building … and that can’t really happen without the testing of our spiritual resolve.

I hope to see you back next Monday for the final piece of this puzzle … exercising for resilience.

Blessings Viphilus,

Your friend, Omega Man

OCA Training

* Viphilus means, "lover of life"

CHARACTER BUILDING: Exercising for Flexibility

Happy Monday Viphilus*

Let me begin by reminding you of the Capacity Table which I posted on Nov.16.

Last week I wrote 4 different posts to cover the subject of exercising for the character marker known as strength. And as you see from the table, we need to consider our strength capacity: physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. This week is one post on exercising for character marker of flexibility.

Physically we do stretching types of exercises to train our muscles and ligaments to move in broader ranges of motion. I have a friend who is a physiotherapist and she says that everyone should do these types of exercises their whole life in order to maintain maximum ranges of motion in older age when the body tends to seize up. In particular, we should do stretching exercises in order to reduce our risk of injury and for overall greater physicality.

One of the biggest differences between strength training and flexibility training is the intensity level. In strength training the goal is to raise the intensity so that you fail. NOT SO with stretching exercises … for them you stretch to the point where you just start to fail … to the point of discomfort, not pain. The shift from comfort to discomfort marks the limit of your range of motion so pushing a wee bit beyond that makes the muscles and ligaments uncomfortable. When you hit discomfort, hold there a bit before letting go. Don’t push too far beyond this or you will injure yourself which could take months or years for recovery.

As for frequency and duration, depending on what you are trying to accomplish, something like 2-5 days per week, 5-10 minutes per workout, with 2-5 repetitions per stretch. There are lots of online stretching exercises … here is one. 

Mental flexibility is about our capacity to move between rational and intuitive forms of reasoning as well as the ability to hold multiple points of view (not multiple opinions … simply the ability to see and understand different viewpoints). Exercises for mental flexibility include reading from a wide bandwidth of perspectives. Don’t just read from authors who agreed with you … read from authors who have diametrically opposed viewpoints. The goal is not to become wishy washy in your viewpoints … the goal is to validate them and your assumptions, and if they need changing, then you can change them. As well, it is to be able to understand the perspectives of others for the purpose of empathy and community harmony.

If you want to ramp up the intensity of the exercises, engage in healthy ideological debates with others … but make such events openly-stated safe events in order for those involved to be free to make themselves vulnerable in the sharing of their opinions. Keep things from becoming emotionally charged by stating up front that that is a principle of engagement.

Emotional flexibility is about our capacity to move freely and appropriately along a wide spectrum of emotions without being either rigid or defensive. In some aspects, this is tied closely to mental flexibility because the more you can come to understand varying viewpoints, the easier it is to manage yourself in situations that might otherwise become emotionally charged.

But for the most part, emotional flexibility is about allowing yourself to experience the fullest range of emotions … not restricting yourself so that you don’t show those emotions to others (or even to yourself). Life circumstances might have led your to be emotionally-closed so that when you laugh you don’t let go and belly-laugh around others … or when you grieve you don’t let go and sob deeply … or when you get excited and joyful you don’t let go and celebrate with abandon. Get the point?

How do you exercise this? Sorry … no magic bullets here … this one is simply a matter or practicing. You begin by being intentional in some simple or easy circumstances and permitting yourself to emote. I suggest by beginning with something happy or joyous. If you are screaming inside to let go and be super happy about something … LET GO and let it out so that those around you can experience it too. Trust me … this will be a gift to those around you. When the world doesn’t come to an end because you have let some emotions slip out, then use that knowledge to do it again, for a different emotion.

This is where some might say, “wait a second … if I let ‘the beast out’ that isn’t good either … I thought we are supposed to manage our emotions so that others don’t get burned?”  And you would be right: partially. Life is almost never an all-or-nothing deal … it is learning to balance, and sometimes that means shifting the fulcrum (balancing point). There is a tension between showing no emotion and showing too much emotion … each of us have to find that balance on our own because there is not a one-size-fits-all formula. Find yours by beginning to exercise and experience the full range of emotions … but YES, manage them gently.

Spiritual flexibility is about our capacity to tolerate non-harmful values and beliefs that are different from our own. Being spiritual means having core beliefs and values and principles. As you might guess, there is a strong link between the mental, emotional and spiritual on these things. Mentally we explore the universe for options on values, beliefs and principles … spiritually we decide on which ones we will declare to be our own … and emotionally we passionately build our lives around those, making life choices automatically because those things are core and anchored deep within us. To be spiritually flexible might appear to be unwise, but it is only when you objectively consider other options that you can truly deepen your commitment to your own values or to see when they need to change.

Values and principles get stronger when they are tested … so exercising them will happen naturally as life delivers up opportunities for you to test what they are. I remember listening to a John Maxwell leadership teaching session where he made a statement that stopped me in my tracks. I can’t remember the exact words but they were along the lines: “Principles are core beliefs that you would rather die for than violate … so try not to have too many principles.” 

Principles are core beliefs that you would rather die for than violate.

You don’t need to exercise your spiritual flexibility … you will be given plenty of opportunity to stretch it. But note well … your core values should be inviolably anchored in your soul, until such time as you realize they are wrong … and then change them. In other words … be spiritually rigid in your espoused values, but be ready to change them the moment you know they are wrong. Everything you do and everything you ARE comes from those core values … they decide everything for you, or at least they should.

I hope to see you back next Monday when we look at building character endurance.

Blessings Viphilus,

Your friend, Omega Man

OCA Training

* Viphilus means, "lover of life"

CHARACTER BUILDING: Exercising for Strength (spiritually)

Saturday Nov 21 update …continued from Friday's post

Go back and look at Monday’s post. The table shows that spiritual strength is the capacity to:

1. be committed to our deepest values, regardless of our circumstances;
2. be morally upright and virtuous.

Let’s set aside the second one for this post since not everyone will agree on what those words actually mean. Let’s just stick with number 1 and look at it a bit closer. The table says that strength is a measure of one’s capacity to do work or complete a desired task that requires intense energy. Combine that with #1 above and we see that spiritual strength then is the capacity to be committed to our deepest values, despite any and all circumstances. 

There are times when life’s circumstances seem almost intentionally hostile to our principles and values, and that’s when our spiritual strength comes in to play. If we are spiritually weak then we will compromise our principles and values at the slightest sign of opposition. If we are spiritually strong then we won’t. If we are incredibly strong in our spirit then we might even be prepared to die for our convictions, values, principles and beliefs.

The question is … how do we exercise this to grow in that capacity and get stronger? I don’t know if my thinking on this is the right answer … all I know is how I have grown my own core values and principles … and that is by reflecting on them continually so that the emotional side of me (my real powerhouse) can support the spiritual side through passion.

As I mentioned yesterday, passion can be intentionally sparked in us through purpose and calling. When we declare certain things to be core values and principles and then continually reflect on them, they become such a deep part of our character that it becomes increasingly difficult for us to think/act against them. Therefore, in the case of the spiritual part of us, strength is developed by driving principles and values deep into our core; that’s why they are often called “core values” because they are rooted deeply within us.

Principles and values are our roots. If they are shallow we are weak and topple easily …. If they are deep we are strong and can withstand any adversity against our character.

A strong man or woman is one who is, first and foremost, strong spiritually … meaning they have core values and principles deeply rooted in their character … principles and values that drive virtually everything else.

Are your roots strong? Do you even have any? If not then this explains almost all self-sabotaging behaviours you find in yourself.

Come back next Monday as we shift from strength and look at exercising for flexibility.

Blessings Viphilus,

Your friend, Omega Man

OCA Training

* Viphilus means, "lover of life"

CHARACTER BUILDING: Exercising for Strength (emotionally)

… continued from last post

This is a tricky one because more than all the other dimensions, this one has the potential to hijack us to bad places. It also has the potential to empower us beyond measure because of passion … so let’s start with passion.

What are you passionate about? What do you care about? What gets you excited? Don’t know? Then find it or create it. Just make a choice and then give your heart to it so that it becomes a focal point (focal points fall under Spiritual …. But work with me on this for now).

Our emotions are powerful influencers of our life so let’s do two things:
1. Make them as powerful as possible;
2. Make them work FOR and NOT AGAINST us.

As discussed in a previous post, passion can be fueled by at least 3 things … but this time let me refer to them as 3 exercises for building emotional strength:
1. Be purposeful … do things with intention and for a reason;
2. Follow your strengths … do things which make you feel alive when you do them;
3. Calling … allow yourself to follow the thing that “calls” you (because you can’t help it)

These things alone will actually strengthen your emotions.

PICK ONE and just do it. Consider it like time in the gym in that it will exercise and strengthen your emotional resolve.

You might be tempted to think to yourself that it is way more complicated than this ... and you would be mistaken ... not everything that we need to do for ourselves is complicated; they can be easy. This doesn't need to be hard s don't make it hard. Just make it a process.

Come back Saturday for the final part of this thread ... exercising for our spiritual side.

Blessings Viphilus,

Your friend, Omega Man

OCA Training

* Viphilus means, "lover of life"

CHARACTER BUILDING: Exercising for Strength (mentally)

Welcome back Viphilus*

Thursday Nov 19 ... continuation of Tuesday's post.

Back on August 17 I wrote about the concept of breakdown-breakthrough: breakdowns sometimes furnish the breakthrough in our thinking so that true change becomes possible. The way muscles grow to provide increased strength also comes from a breakdown-breakthrough; the muscle fibres actually breakdown, opening the door for the body’s repair-mode machinery to do its thing, with the result being bigger stronger muscles.

Exercising for Mental Strength

The mind strengthens the same way. Correction: the brain strengthens the same way. The old expression, “use it or lose it,” is quite appropriate for the brain because like a muscle, it will atrophy through lack of use.

If you are a good parent you will know that kids grow through challenge. Mother birds are good parents … they let the hatchlings break out of their own shells and they kick them out of the nests when it is time for them to fly. The fly-or-die model seems harsh but what is actually more cruel is a parent who removes all challenge from their child’s environment, removing every obstacle and making every decision. The result is a child who grows up to be a weak adult, having no capacity for making good rational judgments and who has no problem-solving skills. Good parents know that an environment of mental challenges is essential for their kids to grow mentally strong.

How can you challenge or exercise your own brain (mind)? By tackling problem-solving challenges and then not giving up. The “not giving up” part is a choice, but the funny thing is that making that choice actually strengthens the mind for similar future endeavours because everything we do (for better or worse) creates new neural pathways. With enough time reinforcing those pathways (see my “jungle paths” post) things like persistence and stick-to-it-iveness become mental habits that help us immensely. And as we strive to solve problems … every-day-kinda-problems … our brains get stronger.

What Are Good Exercises?

Internet mind-strengthening games that promise “your path to a stronger mind?” NO! Enough already with the mind games (pun completely intended).  Quit playing games in the hopes that this will make your brain stronger. They just are another way of justifying an excuse to be lazy and avoid real-life. They don’t actually help you. Give yourself something real and useful to do, such as these:

Stronger knowledge – read books that have a technical side to them (or watch videos if you really aren’t a reader … but TRY HARDER to be a reader). And don’t just read for 5 minutes at a time … devote some serious time (as in occasional marathon sessions) because this provides a way for the mind to absorb information that reading-sprints just won’t do.

Stronger memory skills – task yourself with memorizing something. Make lists (again, of something useful) and memorize them. Memorize small portions of classic literature (Bible – favourite fiction – technical material – speeches). For this one you need to be aware of your learning style (for example, I memorize best when I hear vs when I read). Unlike reading, long periods of memorization are NOT the way to do it. Interval training is best for this … spending 5 minutes each day for 7 days will get something into your memory far better than 35 minutes in one sitting.

Stronger problem-solving skills – want to get better at solving problems? Then start solving problems. You get better at anything that you intentionally practice, specifically when you have specific performance goals in mind. Tackle problems individually or as a team … both are excellent. And just don’t give up so quickly. Real life doesn’t provide instant answers or cheat codes (which is why playing problem-solving games often fail to deliver a better brain … because the challenge can be bypassed or you can purchase a “booster pack” to crush the current level).

Stronger concentration skills – same as problem solving. Want to get better at concentrating … then start practicing concentrating. If you want to get better at music, or sports, or public speaking, or …. Well, anything … you practice the thing you want to get better at. And in the case of the brain, intentional practice is the exercising that brings strength.
Stronger visioning and planning skills – if you struggle thinking forward in time because you are a NOW kinda person, then begin in a simple way with the following 4-step process. This may seem juvenile but it really is the process. With time your thinking will slip automatically into this mode as your become a stronger planner and you will naturally apply it to more and more things.

1. Think of a simple goal or objective that you would like to accomplish and then imagine how you will feel when you achieve it. 
2. Make a list of all the things that you need to do to accomplish it.
3. Make a list of all the obstacles to prevent you from accomplishing it.
4. Finally, map out the order of things from 2 and 3 above into one big list (with dates/times) and systematically work your way through the list until you have accomplished the goal.  

About the breakdown part. For each of the things that I mentioned above … if your practicing stops before you start to fail or fatigue, you likely won’t get the full benefit. It appears as though the “stress until breakdown” is a key even to mental strengthening. And of course, as I discussed when we looked at the importance of rest/recovery earlier in November, the break between periods of practice is just as important. Interval training isn’t just for the body … it strengthens the mind as well.

Come back tomorrow as we look at exercising for emotional strength.

Blessings Viphilus,

Your friend, Omega Man

OCA Training

* Viphilus means, "lover of life"

CHARACTER BUILDING: Exercising for Strength

Welcome back Viphilus*

As promised, here is the completed table. How did you do?

Today I want to discuss exercising for strength. I will look at it from a conceptual angle, beginning with what is collectively understood in the gyms of the world: how to build physical muscles.

Physical Exercising for Strength

Body muscles require fuel (protein), stress (exercise), and de-stress (rest) to grow. Contrary to what most people think, exercising is not when the muscles grow; they actually grow during a period of rest …. when we sleep. I think it is very instructive to learn a little bit about how muscles actually grow because we will see how this carries over to other dimensions.

When we do exercises like cardio workouts (aerobic activity), the help build lung and heart capacity, in part, because those workouts capitalize on oxygen. True strength-training, or muscle building, comes from anaerobic exercises … activities where the muscles are deprived of oxygen. The process results in lactic acid buildup which ultimately causes tiny (microscopic almost) tears in the muscles, making them breakdown. When we sleep, if our sleep is truly restful, the body goes into repair-mode … like putting the car up on the hoist to fix stuff while the owner goes shopping. The protein that we have digested forms the building blocks of muscle and during repair-mode our body essentially spot-welds all the little tears with more muscle material. And as anyone who has seen a good welding job … the weld is stronger than the original material. And muscle grows.

Oh, one more thing … when you are doing anaerobic exercise, you haven’t actually achieved the state where the muscles are breaking down the needed amount until you can feel the burning sensation of the acid being produced. Until you push to the point where you feel the pain, you will never reach a point where you will receive any gains (cue the slogan).

Let’s recap by seeing the four key, yet non-intuitive, things:

1. Muscles grow by first weakening or damaging them a little bit.
2. Muscles grow during times of rest when the body is in repair-mode.
3. All the exercise in the world won’t help if you don’t supply the building materials (protein).
4. Gain requires pain.

I’ll skip all the instructions about the best kinds of exercises for targeting muscle growth or muscle-shaping. I just want to stick to these essentials.

[FYI - One more thing I picked up about 10 years ago from Harley Pasternak (5-Factor Fitness). One of the by-products of anaerobic vs. aerobic exercise is the duration of the benefits in the area of fat-burning. Doing 30 minutes of aerobic exercise (running for example) puts the body into a fat-burning zone. When you stop, the body remains in that zone for another 40 minutes or zone. Excellent return on investment … more than 2:1. BUT …. And this is a HUGE BUT …. During anaerobic exercise for 15 minutes (weight lifting to the point of fatigue and failure) the body also goes into a fat-burning zone. When you stop, the body remains in that zone for an additional 48 hours!!!  (even 3 exclamation marks aren’t enough). That is a ridiculous ROI … almost 200:1. The reason is simple …. Damaging the muscles in anaerobic exercise puts the body in repair mode which mandates that the metabolism run at its peak until the repairs are made. Simple muscle repairs from this kind of exercise usually take about 48 hours … so if you do 15-20 minutes of strength training every 2^nd day, you are literally forcing your body to remain in repair mode … and hence, fat-burning mode … 24/7 until you stop that cycle).]

OK, now what about the other dimensions? How do you exercise for strength mentally? Emotionally? Spiritually?

I want to give you a couple days to ponder this before just tossing out an answer. This is not a dodge for a few days … it’s actually an important part of the lesson I’m trying to get across … that being that we need to struggle a bit with a problem (mental stress) in order to grow in mental strength. People don’t learn by giving them answers … they learned by solving problems. 

So, come back Thursday, Friday and Saturday to continue this thread … and see what you come up with on how to strengthen your mind, emotions and spiritual states.

Blessings Viphilus,

Your friend, Omega Man

OCA Training

* Viphilus means, "lover of life"

CHARACTER BUILDING: Exercising for Increased Capacity

Welcome back Viphilus*

My October and November posts are linked to the theme of character building. So far I have looked at breathing, feeding, resting and evaluating. I’m sure that you don’t see any real pattern yet, but you will in December as I tie it all together. First, though, I need to conclude the theme by looking at the last topic under character building … the topic of exercising. I am looking at this one in more detail than the others and will spend the next few weeks looking at 4 different purposes for exercise; to increase our capacity in the areas of: strength; endurance; flexibility; and resilience.

So let’s jump right in by defining each of these, noting that the common element between each of them is that they each are a measure of our capacity:

Strength is a measure of our capacity to do work or complete a desired task that requires intense energy.

Endurance is a measure of our capacity to exert effort for a prolonged period of time.

Flexibility is a measure of our capacity to stretch and adapt to changing forces without damage.

Resilience is a measure of our capacity to absorb energy upon deformation and recover upon unloading.

Whether or not you are a person who exercises your body, you are most likely familiar with at least the first 3 of these … at least as far as your body goes. You likely know that if you want to get stronger, you need to lift weights to build muscles. You likely know that if you want to have greater endurance, you need to train your cardiovascular system (heart and lung muscles) to handle increasing durations of work. You likely also know that if you want to have greater flexibility, you need to stretch your muscles in a systematic way so that they become more flexible. As for becoming more physically resilient, you may or may not know exactly what/how you need to train in order to intentionally toughen your body against serious injury.

But here’s the point of today’s post … it isn’t just our physical muscles and body parts that need to be exercised. We also need to learn how to increase our capacities emotionally, mentally and spiritually … and in each of the four areas of strength, duration, flexibility and resilience. I want us to look at each of these character markers in each of our four basic dimensions.

We will start by looking at what those terms mean in each of our 4 dimensions. Below is a 4x4 table that I want you to take a stab at filling in. This is a great exercise in itself in that you will develop a deeper understanding if you try to fill it in before I just give you my answers (which I will give at the start of next week’s post). To get you going I have filled in the row for Physical and given one sample for each of the other markers. Just fill in the rest on your own, or at least wrestle a bit with the concepts before next week.

Come back next Monday to compare your answers to what I post and also to look at exercising-for-strength.

Blessings Viphilus,

Your friend, Omega Man

OCA Training

* Viphilus means, "lover of life"

CHARACTER BUILDING: Evaluating

Welcome back Viphilus*

Well, after a week off you might expect a particularly long post. Quite the opposite. This one will actually be very short. Not because I don’t have much to say, but because I want this message to be clear.

Without constant vigilance regarding our condition and progress, the natural tendency for people is to regress and lose focus. Why? Because focus fades with time without continuous intentional effort. And let’s face it … it is hard to maintain attention. This is why in PROSCI’s A.D.K.A.R. change model (which I outlined on June 8), the final step is just as important as the others. The R stands for re-inforcement … which is possible only by constantly evaluating how and what you are doing.

Before evaluating ourselves we first need to determine:

1. The standard or “benchmark” we’re using for the evaluation. Without this we’ll never have a focal point (goal) to direct our energy of self-correction nor will we know if progress is being made. The skill of self-correction is called discipline.
2. How we will observe, measure and monitor ourselves. This is the skill of self-awareness. Measurement (of progress) provides considerable motivation for the needed changes.

In Timothy Ferris’ fascinating book, “The 4-Hour Body,” the author cites a case where a man sets out to lose a substantial amount of weight. The guy believed that he knew everything that he needed to know about how to lose weight, so he devised the following simple strategy. He decided how much weight that he wanted to lose, over a reasonable period of time (ie: it was doable – nothing extreme), then he drew a line on a graph from his starting weight to his final weight (plotted against the date). He then had only two rules of engagement; he got weighed each morning and:

1)    if his weight was on or below the line, he did whatever he wanted in terms of eating and exercise;

2)    if his weight was above the line, he acted/behaved accordingly to bring it back on or below the line ASAP.

Apparently it worked. No exotic plans or procedures. He went on the assumption that all of us know how to lose weight … by eating less, eating healthy and by exercising or being active.

What we need to see here was the genius behind his success; it was his vigilance. Without exception he paid attention every day to what his weight was and then took immediate action. His goal wasn’t to always be perfect and remain below the line. His goal was to try to live as normally as possible but to make corrections as quickly as possible, in real time, in order to stay on target.

I love this strategy … and here’s why. After a while, his continual practice of self-correction actually trained his brain about what healthy eating and activity looked like and he ended up self-sabotaging a lot less … to the point where he eventually just stayed on target.

This approach is actually very biblical. To make this point let me present exhibit A. The Bible tells about Israel’s King David who did some pretty nasty things (adultery and murder). The Bible also says that David was “a man after God’s own heart.” Really? A murdering adulterer is someone whom God identifies with? Of course not … so here’s the point. We aren’t perfect … God knows this and He wants us to know this. But He also wants us to strive for perfection without it being a neurotic pursuit … by simply making course-corrections as quickly as possible in order to get back on “the straight and narrow.” In the case of the weight-loss guy from Ferris’ book, his “straight and narrow” was literally a straight and narrow line on a graph … and the goal was to stay on or below it.

What does the straight-and-narrow look like for you. Physically? Emotionally? Mentally? Spiritually? Socially?

Keeping with the Biblical ideas on this there is a wonderful Psalm (#139) that David wrote where he asks God to search his heart, to test the anxiety levels in his thinking, to investigate the incongruent patterns in his life, and then to show him the “straight and narrow” so that he could make self-corrections. OK, I paraphrased that just a wee bit … but the point is there. And it goes without saying that David didn’t ask God to do all this so that God would know where David was screwing up … he asked God in order for God to show HIM where he was screwing up. In essence, David was praying for God to help him get better at self-awareness so that he could accurately evaluate himself in order to be better at improving himself.

The importance of self-awareness is littered throughout the Bible because it is one of the most important (if not THE most important) character qualities necessary for maturity. And while self-awareness in itself doesn’t bring about the necessary changes in us, it provides the data and motivation for us to go to the next step of actually measuring what we see … which then provides the benchmark for knowing where and how much to change (improve).

This could be an incredibly long post because there are dozens (or hundreds) of self-awareness exercises and self-measurement tests that all provide useful data for us. But I promised this would be a short post, so I am going to keep this somewhat generic by simply providing a few overarching principles.

1. Whatever you find when you monitor yourself, don’t judge it … just observe it and acknowledge it. Why? Because if you judge yourself then your emotions will amp up and the experience will be sufficiently negative that you will shy away from your needed vigilance and you'll stop caring.
2. Whatever you are trying to monitor or measure, ritualize it to the point where it becomes habitual (like getting on the scale each morning … like pondering the good/bad points of each day … like asking yourself why you are having negative feelings rather than just accepting the bad feelings … etc.)
3. Give yourself at least one point of vigilance for each of the following:
1. Your body (eg: measuring body fat content with a meter of some sort)
2. Your emotions (eg: did I laugh at least once today?)
3. Your mind (eg. did I take captive all negative thoughts today or did they linger?)
4. Your social connections (eg: was I easily offended by anyone today?)
5. Your spirit (eg: did I stay on mission today?)
4. Because negative emotions ultimately lead to self-limiting, self-sabotaging and self-defeating thinking and behaviour, try to identify the one negative emotion that rules you the most, and become vigilant of when it happens and why you think you feel that way. Such emotions include: fear; frustration; anger; bitterness; depression; worry; shame; jealousy; envy; doubt; sadness; guilt … to name a few. As I mentioned above, just thinking about it won’t solve it, but it’s a darned good place to start by at least identifying it.
5. Above all else, make sure that you have a clear goal, focal-point or mission that guides your life each day, week, month or year. If you have nothing as your target, well, then you’ll hit that every time … but you won’t want to brag about it. If you are stuck on this then routinely ask yourself the question you’ve read in this blog numerous times before:

Do you do what you do because you have a reason to or do you do what you do because you don’t see a better reason not to?

Happy vigilance my friend and I hope to see you back next Monday.

Blessings Viphilus,

Your friend, Omega Man

OCA Training

* Viphilus means, "lover of life"