Willpower

As I mentioned in a previous post, I have been reading about habits. [The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg] I am enjoying this book! That's a surprise because I usually get impatient with books like this--start skimming and skipping sections, and then give up before finishing it. Not so this time. I'm finding both the information and the case studies fascinating.

While each habit is composed of common elements (a cue that sets it in motion, the behavioral routine at the heart of the habit, and the reward/payoff), each one is unique to an individual person. Once formed and ingrained, habits stay in us permanently--even if they go unused for a very long time. This helps explain how I could set foot in the gym after a decade off and pick up right where I left off. It took a lot of research and work all those years ago for me to establish a workout routine. This time around, it was automatic. This also explains how we can easily fall back into long-unused habits that we hoped we'd left far behind.

Much as I have found the information about habit formation and transformation fascinating, I have been even more gripped by the information about willpower. Call it grit, self-discipline, self-regulation, self-control--or willpower. Did you know that we have a limited supply of it? According to this book, "willpower isn't just a skill. It's a muscle...and it gets tired as it works harder, so there's less power left over for other things...If you want to do something that requires willpower...you have to conserve your willpower muscle during the day...If you use it up too early on tedious tasks...all the strength will be gone..." [Duhigg, p. 137] I had been thinking that the reason I lost my life these last few years was due to using all my energy and time at work. Now I realize that it was more than that. I was using enormous amounts of willpower at work every day as well. No wonder I had none left for me.

Contentment

Today is a day that I feel as well as know that I am enough. I have enough. I do not have to fix anything. I do not have to make anything better. I keep smiling.
::: contented sigh :::

More Inspirational Bits

I am in the middle of reading Long Distance: Testing the Limits of Body and Spirit in a Year of Living Strenuously by Bill McKibben. Originally published in 2000, I received a reprinted edition as a Christmas gift last month. The book documents the year that McKibben devoted to training as a competitive cross-country skier. When I read in the first chapter McKibben saying that "by year's end I hoped I'd have more sense of what life lived through the body felt like," I thought "Me too!" I may not be training as strenuously for a year, and I don't intend to race competitively, but I do want to shift the one-sided way I've been living (all mental work) significantly in the other direction. I am mostly reading the book for inspiration and entertainment, but I am paying attention to what he shares about appropriate heart rates and exertion levels for maximum endurance benefit. [Weird side note: Did you know that "in the brain of a committed cross-country skier, wax occupies the amount of space allotted to sex in a normal mind. Perhaps sex and money both." Admittedly, McKibben is funny, and when he says "normal mind" he should probably say "normal man's mind." Even so, I have found my mind coming back to and pondering this notion a number of times.]

I re-read an article in Outside magazine today about the historic 1963 American expedition to summit Everest. The article describes how Willi Unsoeld, famous mountaineer and professor of philosophy at Evergreen State College in Washington (until he was killed in an avalanche on Mount Rainier in 1979) "embraced risk as essential for growth." He said: "It has to be real enough that it can kill you." I agree with the part about risk being essential for growth. I disagree, though, with the notion that the risk needs to have the potential to kill you in order for it to produce growth. While for a very small number of people this may be true, I think there is so much variability in our minds, personalities, and psyches that most of us simply need to find a level of risk that means we have stepped out of our comfort zones, out of our ingrained habits. I don't think we have to literally risk our very lives in order to make significant change, discover new aspects of ourselves, or embrace life with more gusto.

I am also reading The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg. I think if I understand how habits work and how they may be changed, I will be more successful at transforming my exercise and eating habits and, ultimately, my life.

Maybe this is a good time to explain why I chose BikeHome as the title of my blog. Although my son did argue passionately that I should bicycle from Niagara Falls to my home in Maine when the UGRR tour ends, I do not intend to bike to my home (over the Green Mountains and White Mountains) after the trip. After all, I have to get home and build a house. (See my blog about the house building.) Even so, I do consider this bike tour to be a vital part of my journey home to myself.

Sleep--It's a Beautiful Thing

Although not all the mechanisms by which sleep works its restorative magic on us are fully understood, there seems to be ample evidence that getting adequate restful sleep is important for repairing and rejuvenating our bodies. Lack of sleep negatively impacts our mood and our brain's plasticity; we lose ability to make sound decisions and to consolidate memory.

I'm a textbook example of the effects of sleep deprivation. Over the last few years, the last six months especially, my sleep patterns have been radically compromised. Invariably after only two to four hours of sleep, I would wake up--and then spend hours wide awake, unable to fall back asleep. Sometimes my body was riddled with generalized anxiety; other times my mind was obsessively creating or reviewing to-do lists related to my job. During the day, I could tell my mind no longer worked "right." I did not resort to medications to fix this problem; I just coped as best I could. (My thought was that if I needed to take medication in order to get a break from my job through sleep, shouldn't I ditch the job first?)

I hoped that by quitting my job I would find a way back to getting restful, restorative sleep. I wasn't sure how to help this happen, so I thought I would start by observing any changes in my sleep patterns. I did give myself a few parameters to start with: 1) No computer or smart phone allowed in the bedroom, and 2) To the extent possible, go to bed and get up at roughly the same times each day (and no naps midday)--to make sleep a regular habit. (I figured that, once I was sleeping reliably, I could then indulge in naps.)

Day 5 post-job: I have now had four nights in a row of sound, uninterrupted sleep. I feel great! Will it really be this simple? Is this really all I had to do to find my way back to sleeping well? (Not to suggest that leaving my job was a small thing.) Since just about nothing in my life works quite this simply, I anticipate there may be some twists and turns to come. For now, though, here's to sleep! It's a beautiful thing.