Another month, another challenge. February is over and so is the second challenge of the year: building a consistent sport routine. Additionally, I want to say a few more things on decluttering and how I continued to use it as a tool for a more intentional life. And lastly I will introduce the new challenge of March.
Intentional Living
After throwing away what felt like 90% of my belongings including a lot of my souvenirs and what I perceived as sentimental items, I must say that I donāt really miss any of those things. And I didnāt just stop with decluttering after January, I continued to sift through my belongings and I found more stuff that was unnecessarily taking up space. I also sorted through and reorganized some of the cupboards in my kitchen. Now I can actually find the stuff Iām searching for and donāt get lost in my own kitchen. I also found a lot of items that I thought about buying because I thought we didnāt have them. Well, now that I found them I saved myself some money. Yayy!
Also, I further cut down on channels and people in general that I follow on all social medias. I tried to evaluate if these people add any value to my life and if not I unfollowed them. A neat side effect of this digital decluttering is that my social media feeds are very short now and in return my time spend on these sites is massively reduced. More me time I guess. One of the places left to digitally declutter are my photos. I realized that a lot of these photos are unnecessary and just make it hard for me to search for specific photos that I actually care about. So, in an effort to only keep what is necessary and important to me, I will slim out my photos as far as I see fit.
One of the things that struck me as odd during my decluttering time in January was one sentence I always heard from people when I told them I was throwing away stuff I didnāt need: āWhy are you throwing it away?ā People were always confused as to why I was throwing away something that was neither broken nor taking away much place in my home. Afterall, it was neatly stowed away in one of the cupboards or my wardrobe and far out of sight. I realized that these people asked the wrong question. Why did I have to come up with a reason as to why I should throw it away, when in reality the question should be why I should keep it? When you turn the question around, you start to evaluate whether you actually need these things in your life. And if they donāt add any value to your life you can get rid of them. You donāt need a reason to throw something away, you need a reason to keep something in your life. And that does not only apply to the things in your life.
Sport Routine
Letās come to the juice of this post: the sports challenge of February. Let me start by saying that I chose the worst month of the year for starting any kind of challenge. Especially one that consumes at least an hour every day. Why February is such a bad time to start a challenge, you ask? Well, February is full of something little called exams. Somehow the most soulcrushing and depressing weeks of the first half of the year. Maybe this time would be less soulcrushing and depressing if I actually studied during the semester. Hmā¦
Anyway, the challenge was set and I was ready to do this one. I decided on alternating between endurance and strength exercise for each day. I actually enjoy endurance sport like cycling and swimming. Running on the other hand was like the weird little sibling of the three triathlon sports. Always just lurking there and looking at me with their little smirk and the moment we made eye contact theyād turn around and waddle away like a penguin. Well, I decided to tackle the last of the three triathlon sports and integrate regular running into my life. And sure enough, after a few runs and multiple days of my legs feeling like jelly, I managed to regularly go for a run. At some point I even looked forward to going for a run. I knew from the beginning Iād enjoy it, I just couldnāt get over the initial hurdle of starting the thing and this challenge gave me the little extra motivation to actually do it.
Initially, when I started running sometime in the past, I always went for a run in the night at around 10pm or so. I enjoyed the cold air and the empty streets. It was quite and idyllic at night, even in the most busy parts of town. However, because of a little thing called the fucking corona pandemic, we had a lockdown going on for a few months. Specifically, this meant that I could not go out after 9pm. So much for my nightly running seasons. Running in the morning after waking up was quickly taken off the table aswell. I feel groggy as fuck in the morning after getting out of bed and I am a barely working human being. Probably not the best state to be in to go for a run. So that left me with running in the afternoon. I gotta say, it felt quite surreal for the first few times when running while the sun was still out. Sounds odd, but I was just so used to it being dark when went out for a run. Though after trying it, I really enjoyed the sunlight while running. Just soaking up some sunlight for an hour really did wonders for the otherwise dreary and grey winter days.
Also, I tried different routes for running until I found one that I enjoyed. The problem with most routes was that there were too many traffic lights that I had to stop at. Another problem was that I could not easily vary the length of the route. Sometimes I could easily run for 7 or 8 km, other times I was dying after 4. So until I had an idea about the perfect distance that I could consistently run everytime I had to somehow be able to stop running mid-route and go home without walking the entire way back or still having half the route to go without a shortcut at a freezing 0Ā°C. After testing a few I found a nice route around near where I live without any traffic lights. The route goes around a park and from anywhere within the route I had a maximum 10 minute walk home, when I did not feel like running anymore. Moreover, I could easily increase the distance by running another round around the park or adding an extra lap around another street for little distance increases. This way I could also steadily increase my running distance without completely overdoing it.
All in all, I gotta say I really enjoyed running consistently and I definitely want to integrate running in my life in some way. The only thing I have to figure out is how I want to split up my exercise time in the summer between cycling, swimming and running. I will probably opt for a more cycling heavy split in the summer and more running heavy one in the winter and some consistent swimming throughout the year. I really look forward to training all three sports and finally being able to participate in a triathlon after this entire pandemic thing is over.
Well, letās get to the strength part of the sport challenge. I have to say, I somewhat hate doing strength exercises. Nothing about it seems appealing to me. Unlike endurance sport, I cannot easily do this outside. With running, swimming or cycling I donāt have to focus on the sport. I can just zone out listening to music or think about something or listen to a podcast or something else. With strength exercises I have to focus on the exercise to do it right and to count the repetitions I do. Also my entire body just hurts afterwards and not in a good way. Iām just not a fan of any of these exercises. Though I think, I just havenāt found the right exercise for myself. At least thatās what I tell myself. I donāt think doing strength exercises is something that I can just not do. I think it is essential to a healthy lifestyle in combination with doing endurance sport of some kind and so I have to try out for things and just find the right exercises for myself.
For February I tried to find exercises for my entire body that I could do at home without equipment. I realized that I could definitely train my entire body without any equipment, but I think having just a few weights will definitely make this entire procedure easier for me. I tried to alternate between different muscle groups for the training for each day where I did strength exercises. But doing this consistently was really hard for me. While I kind of knew Iād like running if I actually tried it, I was very certain that wasnāt the case for strength exercises. I guess that mindset really didnāt help the cause. Anyway, I tried it out and I hated it and going forward I want to try and focus on exercises for strenghtening my core, i.e. my abs and back muscles. First focusing on just one muscle group should make working out easier and when that routine sticks, I can try to add other exercises. I just donāt wanna be an old man with 30 and complain about back pain. Better to just do some exercises before everything hurts and my body is a wreckage.
Another thing that I realized during this sport challenge was my lack of discipline. I really struggled to stay consistent with the challenge, which is something I struggle with in general in my life. I tend to be very motivated in the beginning, do a lot for a few days or weeks and then when the initial motivation fades and I do it less and less consistent before giving it up completely. After a few months Iām motivated again and the cycle continues anew. I also tend to give up often at the first hurdle that comes my way. When the learning curve gets a little too steep or I have to think about a problem for a little too long, my mind just defaults to running away from the thing and distracting itself from the work it would have to do. I feel like this lack of discipline is one of the things that Iām very unhappy with in my life. I feel like itās holding me back in so many things that I want to do and that I actually enjoy. Iām unsure on how to actually fix this problem, but I guess I have to try again and again and somehow just develop this discpline bit by bit. Otherwise I donāt really see a way to get happy with my life in general. Whoops, got a little too deep too quickly. Oh wellā¦
Anyway, thatās it for the sports challenge. I still have a long way to go to make this a routine in my life, but I feel like I made some progress in the right direction. I will try to incorporate this more in my life, especially now that I have less and less time in the day with work and studying and my social life, I feel like itās very important to find a balance between all these things and doing something for myself, like exercising.
Next Up: Becoming a Buddhist Monk
The challenge for march will be meditating. I am going to meditate each day at least once for 10 minutes. I really enjoyed meditating in the past and I felt like it helps a lot with overthinking, anxiety and other problems in my head. But as with a lot of things that might be good for myself, I tend to have a hard time to start it and stick to it. So I want to integrate this habit into my daily life and maybe see when a good time for meditating in my day would be.
See you at the end of march :)
Ash