Beyond Funk: Stretching Our Limits

Personal trainer and massage therapist, Penny Capps*, recently challenged me and other members of a fitness class to see how many workouts we could do. I took her challenge and squeezed 5 or 6 workouts a week into my month.

Penny’s invitation inspired me to try Yoga and Body Flow. I survived being an awkward newbie. And while I’m not sure if either class will become routine, I’m more curious about physical challenges. Body Pump anyone?

Penny is masterful at encouraging clients to try new fitness and nutritional practices. It’s one of the reasons I take her class and like her as a person.

But sometimes it is pain that urges us to move forward. Over a lifetime I’ve had “sobering” readouts on my scale and blood pressure cuff; lost a job; experienced a break up; been lonely; felt bored or just found myself very disorganized. I noticed that pain lessened and funk (pain’s partner) departed, when I stretched my limits. Instead of burrowing deeper in a dark hole, life got better (and more interesting) when I flexed and tried something new.

Here are some questions I like about stretching and flexing. If you are interested in stretching your limits, I invite you to sit with them. They might help you figure out what your own next challenge might be.

Who are the people in your life inviting you to do healthy things you've never done?

How often do you say yes when invited to step out of your comfort zone?

Who or what inspires you now?

What might you add to your life to make yourself better company--to yourself and others?

Is there irritation, pain or an "ouch" in your life you can use to nudge yourself along toward trying something new?

What might "something new" be? Might there be more than one thing? Assume for a moment there are many things...

·

"To get something you've never had, you have to do something you've never done." Anonymous

*Penny Capps, Certified Massage Therapist and Personal Trainer, Alexandria, VA, can be reached at 703-237-3327.

A Case for Hibernation

I planted an amaryllis yesterday looking for some spring in my January. I plopped the chunky bulb into a white pot of wet peat and slid it across the counter near a window. The bulb looked inert, though I can predict that given light and time those little green cells underneath that dry brown skin will produce marvelous things. That familiar spiky amaryllis surge will not happen immediately though, and I’d be a fool to expect it. So why, I wonder, looking outside to a soggy cold day, do I expect myself to surge after January 1? Dormant, after all, isn’t so much unattractive as it is promising.

But when I turn on the TV, or stand in a grocery line reading magazine covers, calls to make dramatic life changes are everywhere. What is wrong for me about this press for activity in January is that I’m not ready for it. Resolutions seem premature and forced, a form of madness more appropriate to spring. It’s winter, after all, a time when many living beings hibernate.

Losing weight, for example, has been at the top of my to-do list for decades and trust me, is not going away soon. But instead of South Beach, or a round with a personal trainer, I know I might live off my fat for awhile, just like the squirrels and bears in northern climates. I wouldn’t have to eat much in hibernation, since the store around my mid-section would most certainly support writing, napping and sitting in front of the fireplace on a bleak afternoon. What little I require I can get from my pantry and freezer—both well-stocked, or in serious need of cleaning out, depending on my point of view. That bag of frozen parsley will sink nicely into a stew concocted from that package of stir-fry beef sporting only the thinnest layer of freezer burn.

Moving my hibernation thoughts along to less ordinary concerns I find myself taking a hard look at my current responsibilities in the economic crisis. Quickly I realize that not much is up to me right now on the national and global economic front. Yes, I can worry, but the world and its economic mess is not likely to miss me for a month or so.

I don’t know how to measure psychic energy, but I know I am saving some with my new thinking. Life and winter both seem easier. I notice I am sitting straighter in my writing chair and greeting my clients on the phone with a sense of curiosity and optimism for their futures. I am getting curious about what lively directions I might choose for 2011, but I know it’s too early to name these, let alone to act on them. “Go inward,” is what keeps echoing through my head.

I am not so sure of myself that I don’t second-guess my inclination to hibernate. Retract or exert, what’s really the best thing? Should I pressure myself to take action on new projects, instincts be-damned? I do want to lose those extra pounds that popped up on my doctor’s scale. I like to work hard and make a difference in the world. I know it is my time to live and I am aware that it passes quickly, without our permission. Still, as I stretch out my legs in front of the family room fireplace, I remind myself both that life does not always surge upward and that the ground in my January probably only appears fallow.

Just Talk

            A few weeks ago I gave a presentation to a group of over-50 year olds interested in wellness.  My hope, in addressing this group of strangers in hard seats, was to explore the relationship between living an intentional life and being healthy.

            I asked the crowd to think of something that made them smile; then I asked them to talk about that “smiling something” with someone in the room they had not yet met. 

            I thought I could predict what would happen. I expected the tone in the room to warm.  But it was bigger than warm.  The room exploded into laughter and conversation.  It was musical!

            What was that like?  I asked.  They said, “Light.”  “Happy.”  “Peaceful.”  It was hard to stop them talking, connecting, relating.  I kept thinking, this is what “breathing easier,” looks like.

            I next asked them to imagine having a conversation about their own ailments or worries.  Might they predict for a moment how the tone and mood would differ?

            Together we had demonstrated our power in choosing our conversations.    

            Of course sometimes we need to find comfort for our pains and heartaches; of course sometimes we need to listen kindly to the worries of others.   But still I find myself thinking about those remarkable five minutes and how, with a happy focus, a group in hard chairs came to life.  

What's Essential

 I was asking myself, “What’s essential?” as I navigated the aisles of Whole Foods in search of pomegranate seeds.  Because the economic downturn has had its impact on my family’s investments, “what’s essential?” plays like Muzak in my mind lately.  But hard questions were a distraction in the aisles at Whole Foods where I kept bumping into other shoppers looking for items equally as exotic as pomegranate seeds.

 “Preserved lemons?”  

“Quinoa?” 

Each of us took a turn pestering the stockman for our special food, interrupting his work shelving veggie chips.

I quickly learned that pomegranates were one of those things that I had better not think essential, because Whole Foods was sold out.  Configuring my salad anew, I decided that what was really important was red.  Radishes, tomatoes or peppers might fill the bill and the entire produce section was a field of red choices. Beets, cranberries, apples with red peels—raspberries?  Any of these might work.

But I still wanted pomegranate seeds.  Glancing at my watch I calculated whether I could get to another store and make it home in time to cook.

Then I recognized I had arrived at a ridiculous place.  I was ready to go to whacky extremes to get what I wanted but didn’t need. 

I grabbed a red pepper and drove home.  Knowing when to quit—that’s essential.

Losing My Job

 I lost my DC job in 1982.  I was visiting the Pacific Northwest for Christmas, making pasta sauce with my good friend, Gary, in his Seattle kitchen when I got a phone message to call my office. I reached the receptionist first, a friendly, deeply kind woman from Louisiana who said, with uncharacteristic speed: “A’ll put you right through, Hon.”  

I enjoyed my boss, tightly strung and charismatically creative.  He’d built the company from a few to many in just a handful of years.  When he told me that the company had lost government funding and he had to let me go due to a “reduction in force--a RIF,” I was stunned.  I’d been promoted just a few months before.  In an instant I went from up-and-coming and well-paid, to up-and-gone.  As for money, I had a mortgage, bills and not much savings.

 Gary gave me a hug while I stirred a few tears into the tomato sauce with a wooden spoon.  But even before the wine was poured that night he had me laughing as he hunted for the music to the song that goes “I want my old job back, Mr. Sellack.” This campy tune became a refrain for the evening every time I veered toward sadness.  Ever confident, Gary said, “You will find another job.”

            But as cheery as I tried to act while I looked for new work, I remember the fear. Our recent economic down turn reminds of that time in the early 1980’s when many people lost their jobs to “Reductions in Force,” or “downsizing.”  Just a month ago a good friend lost her job in journalism.  Another friend still works for Goldman Sachs, having survived several cuts so far. But he's keenly aware that he might well have a place in the next line that goes out the door.

What I recall most about my time unemployed was that it was hard to believe there were other worlds, other than the world I had been ousted from.  Long after I was happily committed elsewhere I dreamed about my old company.  I would awaken in a sweat, having wandered familiar halls searching anxiously for a desk.  No matter how understandable and in some ways impersonal the reason for my being let go was, it upset me to my core to be pulled away abruptly from the place where I once felt successful and been so fully engaged. 

            Once back from Seattle I did what anyone must when you need to pay the mortgage and eat.  I asked myself, what did it really take, on a bare-bones level, to live?  I learned it would take much less than I was accustomed to spending. Once I eliminated all meals out and all discretionary spending I knew I could squeak by for several months.  And when my parents called, upset and worried, I asked them for a small loan to cushion myself  for even a little longer. 

            At first I applied for any job that seemed even remotely related to me, slipping resumes and cover letters into the mail almost every day in that pre-internet era.  I also scoured the ads in the Washington Post and spread the word to friends and acquaintances that I was job hunting.   But in my most private moments I agonized over a question that seemed beside the point in a tight economy.  What did I really want to do?  

            I listed every activity and skill from past work and education that I enjoyed doing.  I came up with a list of activities that I might use in a perfect job.  I constructed this “fantasy resume,” emphasizing my preferred skills and interests and minimizing the ones I wasn’t keen on doing again.   For example, I had begun to loath big research projects, but had loved managing data collection projects.  I rewrote the entry for my time in research to highlight the managerial parts of that work. Unfortunately no job title that I knew fit my fantasy resume.  Meanwhile, unemployment numbers in the city continued to rise. 

I was not the only person from my former company who had lost her job.  A group of former employees from my old workplace met regularly; we called ourselves the "Outsiders." In the beginning there was solace there among the miserable.  But over time angry tirades--If the company had been managed better!; They let the wrong people go!; Why not more notice, better severance?--morphed into wistful stories of happier days when our sense of purpose for the company had flowed as freely as the beer on Friday nights in the company kitchen.  

And then, one by one,  we each found new work.  My turn came in early spring. In tough economic times it was a good landing: a professional job in a well-funded and stable organization with a staff of amazing talents.  Most surprising to me was how closely it lined up with my list of "fantasy" favorite skills and interests.   I stayed there seven years, before leaving of my own accord to start a business.

Many fortunate things came out of being “RIFed,” in 1982.  I improved as a money manager and discovered the value in dreaming of work closely aligned to my strongest personal interests.  I’ve never forgotten that possibilities often lie just beyond the fence we have built around life as usual.  

Maintenance

I grew up in a car family.  When I was away at graduate school my dad would phone and say, “Hi honey, how’s the car running?”  Only after inquiring as to the timing of my last oil change, would he ask, “How are you doing otherwise?” 

I didn’t take it personally.  The retired owner of a cab and ambulance company took his transportation seriously.  “Fleet maintenance,” was central to his view of caring for others.

With age Dad approached his health care much as he did the maintenance of an old vehicle.  For general well being, he swam every day at his Elks Lodge.  Shoulder bad?  Fix it!  Back sore?  Chiropractic!  And when all noninvasive methods failed, he said, “Yes, do it,” to the surgeon. 

Over 20 years of living Dad had almost as many medical procedures.  Doctors cleaned out his corroded artery and stuck in a stint; scoped his knee; and near the end of his life took part of his leg. Outfitted with prosthesis, he figured he was good to go. He learned to walk all over again with the new equipment--at 80. 

When he decided on the prosthesis I asked him, “What do you think you are, a Ford?” 

“No Honey, I consider myself more like a Mercedes.”

Now I too am “of the age” when medical interventions becomes more probable.  So far my issues have been small and resolvable.  I’ve ducked surgeries, but am certainly paying more attention to maintenance.  I hope I am as fortunate as he was: to simply wear out after providing years of exceptional service.  

Write Your Own Script

I think we write our own scripts.  Life intervenes in ways we don't expect, and then we create from that.  It's like having red, yellow and blue paints and then discovering that when they blend together there is brown.  And we think, why not brown?  It matches my eyes, and the earth!  It could be good.