Next Small Step

Drive Straight There: The Ultimate Plan to Stop Comparing Yourself to Others

2013-02-19T06:11:00.000+02:00

“The world makes way for the man who knows where he is going” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Why we compare ourselves to others

When we are clear about where we are going, we just go there. When we are not, we start comparing ourselves to others.

Have you ever driven to a large sports event or concert? As you get closer you start noticing other people that are clearly going to the same place. You may notice their running outfits or team jerseys or that they are as excited as you about finally seeing Rodriguez perform. When you know exactly where the event is taking place, you go straight there, right? But when you are not sure where the place is, you may start following other people that you think are going there.

The story of comparing ourselves to others is exactly the same.

Why we shouldn't compare ourselves to others

First, we have no idea of what it is that we are comparing ourselves to. Years ago I knew this guy who was totally intimidating: he had a high profile job, a gorgeous wife, a beautiful house, clearly lots of money and he was in great physical condition. One fine summer's afternoon he locked himself in a garden shed, and killed himself. Later the truth of his desperate life emerged. Wow. Clearly looks deceive. Suddenly I didn't want to compare myself to him any longer. The grass is never quite as green on the other side.When we compare ourselves to others we assume that they have somehow cracked the code and know how to live. Maybe they don't know either.

More important than reason number one, is reason number two: it doesn't feel good. Comparing ourselves normally leads to feelings of inadequacy, stress and other negative emotion. While comparison to others may mask itself as motivation and inspiration, its often just self-criticism in drag.

Reason number three is no less important: you must live your own life, not someone else's! Even if you could copy someone else (which you can't really), you would still be inauthentic. You are totally unique. What a waste it would be if you did not at least try to reach your own full potential, rather than someone else?

How to stop comparing yourself to others: Focus on your own game

Be as clear as possible about your own goals, priorities and game plan. There is no formula for living, so don't aim for complete certainty. Take your best shot and make sure it feels right.
Work towards those goals every day. Small steps are better.
Pat yourself on the back for each of these steps. We often just forget the amazing things that we have done in a day. Remind yourself. Write a done list.
When you catch yourself comparing yourself to others, remind yourself of own your goals and game plan and of what you have done towards those goals today. And make sure that you have done it (see step 2).

How will I know? Connect the dots.

You may not be sure about whether your goals and plans will lead to success. Its exactly when we start doubting our own plans that we start comparing ourselves to others. At these points we need to remind ourselves that they don't know either. If no-one really really knows, then we need to have a little faith. Let me give the mic to Steve Jobs for a second:

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart even when it leads you off the well worn path; and that will make all the difference.”

Even if you don't quite succeed in the wild spectacular ways that you may want to, you would have lived your own life. And what can be more important than that?

"There is no one flower that cancels the need for another. Each bloom has a unique and irreplaceable beauty." - Julia Cameron (author of The Artist's Way)

Some more reading

Many other people have written on how to stop the comparison virus. Here are a few that I enjoyed reading:

Life’s Enough: Stop Comparing Yourself to Others - Leo at Zenhabits

Stop Comparing Yourself to Others: An Alternative to Competing with People - Sonya at Tiny buddha

How to Stop Comparing Yourself to Others - Judith Orloff at the Huffington Post

You vs. Her: How to Stop the Mind Games You Just Can’t Win - Martha Beck at Oprah.com

Are you over-committed on self improvement?

2013-02-14T05:10:00.000+02:00

Do you feel like you are not making much progress with your personal development projects? Are you still not exercising or meditating? Or is that extra weight not really coming off? Chances are you are trying to do too much, rather than too little. When we take on too many self improvement projects, we get the opposite result - we end up achieving nothing. The ideal is to commit to a small number of projects and to resist the temptation to take on anything else. Once you have achieved your limited goals, you can turn your attention to new horizons.

You know how it goes: You have decided to lose weight and you are on a good diet. Then you read an interesting blog post on how to start running and you start following that program too. Exersize will help you lose weight, right? One thing leads to another and pretty soon you are writing a blog, training for a marathon, learning meditation etc etc etc. After a while it all falls apart and you don't make much progress with anything. This is frustrating and erodes your self-confidence.

The reason I am writing about this, is because I do it all the time. I wrote down all the things that I am trying to change in the way that I run my life and I came up with an embarrassingly long list with nineteen items on it. You can laugh, but make your own list first! I have decided to pare this list right down to three things:

Do nothing but write and think in the mornings from 8.30am - 12.30pm,
Write a to-do list for each day and stop work when I complete the list, and
Meditate for 2 minutes at the end of the work day (I have to start somewhere, ok!)

I will work at these three things for the next four weeks. During this time I will not take on anything else. When I read an inspiring blog, I will put its ideas on a list to consider after these 4 weeks. Why four weeks? There is some debate about about the 21 day habit forming rule, so I've added a week, just to be sure.

If you have over-committed on personal development projects, here is what you do to fix it:

Write down all your current self improvement dreams,
Choose two or three of these to focus on,
Make concrete plans for each of them and write them down, and
Resolve to take on nothing else for the next 4 weeks
After four weeks, come tell me how it went.

You have my short list above. What's on yours? I'll report back on progress in 4 weeks and then commit to the text 3 goals.

Photo courtesy of waterdotorg

How to teach your children to march to their own drummer

2013-02-04T14:00:00.000+02:00

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away - Henry David Thoreau

When our household goes to a restaurant, we re-enact some pretty common scenes. The kids want to order things that we can't afford. Or they want to order dishes and deserts that are unhealthy. And my responses have been pretty standard as well: that is to get a little irritated and to tell them that they can't have this or that. Normal, but unpleasant and, I suspect, ultimately unproductive. They will grow up and my wife and I will not be at their sides to tell them what to do. Sooner or later they have to learn to judge for themselves. How can I ensure that we are at least starting the slow transition from dependence to independence? From looking to their parents for decisions to looking into themselves?

A few days ago, we went out to lunch again and a different approach 'came to me'. Before we went to the restaurant, I told the kids what our overall budget for the meal was. They could order whatever they wanted, but they needed to consider the overall cost and we all had to stay within the stated limit. When we were looking over the menus, I also asked them to keep the idea of 'balance' in mind when they ordered. I didn't give any other instruction. Just that they consider balance.

These two experiments were a huge success. For starters I didn't have to say 'no' a thousand times. But beyond this, it feels like this approach is a step closer to helping my kids become the kind of adults that I would want them to be. I want to help them become adults that are inner directed, not outer directed. What I want to teach them is to make their own decisions, not blind obedience to some authority figure such as a parent, a teacher, or a boss. To march to their own drummer.

I did a parenting course a few years ago that suggested that by 16 your children are largely adults and that they are best treated that way. My children are now 11 and 13 years old respectively. That means that I have only 5 and 3 years to help them learn how to be inner directed adults. Time is short.

Also read:
About being inner-directed: Becoming who you are
About parenting during the holidays: What to do when the holidays stop being fun

Think you're stuck? Any movement will help.

2013-01-30T14:00:00.000+02:00

Ever been well and truly stuck? Do you know those moments when you find yourself in a tight spot and you have no idea of what to do next? What do you do at those times? Give in to despair? You won't be surprised to hear me say that the only option, really, is to take the next small step! There is always a next step and one after that and then another. Even when the next step doesn't look particularly promising. The essence is to get moving and to take that step. Eventually we get through it. As Winston Churchill once said: "If you're going through hell, keep going."

This story from our recent family holiday illustrates the point nicely.

A few weeks ago we were returning home from the holidays. We had packed our car to the rafters and we were ready to pull out of the driveway. Then we noticed that the front tire was flat. Completely. OK, no problem, 'we'll just unpack the car and get the spare tire', I thought. An inconvenience, but no problem, right? Wrong. When we got to the spare tire we discovered that our wheel spanner was gone, so we couldn't take the flat tire off. We were far away from any large town. And it was a Saturday afternoon over the festive season, so it would take any emergency service hours to get to us, if at all. Me, my wife, three irritable kids and 30 degree (86 degree Fahrenheit) heat. Ugh. What now?

For a few moments I felt completely stuck. I eventually walked over to some neighbors to see if they had a wheel spanner that would fit my car, but no luck. Eventually I despairingly phoned the three numbers that we had for emergency services. Again, no luck. Even more stuck.

Then the neighbor came back to us; he had found a wheel spanner that magically fitted. OK, one piece of progress. We repacked the car and we were finally on the road, albeit on a small emergency spare tire with only an estimated 50 kilometer (30 mile) range. And we had no back up if this little 'biscuit' punctured. And we still had no wheel spanner. We kept phoning and eventually reached an emergency service who directed us to someone who could fix the punctured tire in the next town. We covered the risky hour long voyage to the next town at a snail's pace. Once there we managed to get the offending tire fixed; we even found a place to buy a replacement wheel spanner.

A nerve-wracking but a great learning experience. Here are a few revealing points about this story:

If I hadn't gone to ask the neighbor, he would not have discovered the much needed wheel spanner.
If we hadn't kept on phoning emergency services, we wouldn't have made contact with the saint that fixed our tire after hours.
If we hadn't 'finished' the job and bought a wheel spanner even after the tire had been fixed, we would have run the risk of further disaster.
Regardless of anything we did, there was still a large measure of good fortune involved. But if we had given up and succumbed to despair, none of this good fortune would have been available to us.

We are often overly attached to being in control and being able to fix things. When we can't have these things, we feel intense stress. But this story shows that if we keep moving and hope for the best, things sometimes do work out.

Yes, I know that Lance Armstrong has been completely discredited and humiliated, but this quote of his still says almost exactly what I tried to get at in this blog. So just park your opinions about Armstrong for a moment and read it.

"I believed in belief, for its own shining sake. To believe in the face of utter hopelessness, every article of evidence to the contrary, to ignore apparent catastrophe - what other choice was there? We are so much stronger than we imagine, and belief is one of the most valiant and long-lived human characteristics. To believe, when all along we humans know that nothing can cure the briefness of this life, that there is no remedy for our basic mortality, that is a form of bravery. To continue believing in yourself...believing in whatever I chose to believe in, that was the most important thing.” - Lance Armstrong

Relax if you want to speed up.

2013-01-28T10:56:00.002+02:00

Last week my son's karate coach reminded him that you can increase the speed of your punches by relaxing. The more relaxed your muscles, the faster your punches.

Early this morning, Julia Cameron reminded me that "Stress is a block, not a building block."

A few weeks ago I posted about Bill Murray's insight that "The more relaxed you are, the better you are at everything."

All of this just reminded me of an Abraham Lincoln quote: "I walk slowly, but I never walk backward."

We find it hard to live like this because it is counter-intuitive. Surely if you want to go faster, you should try harder? But no, when we want to go faster, we should slow down and relax. Especially when it comes to hard stuff like writing and other creative pursuits.

Surprised by adult peer pressure

2013-01-24T06:33:00.000+02:00

The world makes way for the man who knows where he is going – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nine weeks on the Artist’s Way course has led me through some very deep thinking about my priorities. I have totally transformed my diet and the way that I exercise and the result has been a huge amount of time and mental space for increased creative work and writing. I have also had more time to spend with my wife and kids than ever before. I have loved this process. It feels like my life is more aligned with my inner priorities than ever before. Sounds like a fairy tale, right? Well, the ride has not been as smooth as it may sound. I have been surprised, shocked and fascinated by the amount of peer pressure that I have been exposed to. Isn't that a thing that we preach to teenagers about? Well I can report that adults are equally pestered by peer pressure!

Just try not drinking alcohol at parties and see what responses you get. Just see what even your friends say. Or try limiting what you eat at Christmas and see what responses you get from your family. Then try and cut back on the amount of exercise that you do and see what reaction you get from the people that you train with. Actually try not doing something that everybody else does. Try anything.

I have found the strength to stand strong against these pressures from writing morning pages. But be that as it may. The thing that I want to say in this post is that the rewards of resisting this adult version of peer pressure are enormous. You get to be your own person! I finally get to train, eat, drink and exercise the way that I have always wanted to. No more day dreams about what I will do ‘one day’. ‘One day’ has arrived and it is today! How cool is that?

So hang tough against peer pressure! Be clear about what you want to do and why, and then stick to your plans. Truman Capote recounts a little fable about how when you walk through a village, the dogs may bark at you. As you exit the village they may follow you and keep barking for a while. But if you keep walking, they will eventually turn back and leave you alone. Keep walking. Your friends and family will get used to your new ways sooner than you think.

How to keep going when the going gets tough: What you can learn from a bicycle race

2013-01-17T06:36:00.002+02:00

As regular readers will know, I do a crazy solo 24 hour bicycle race every January. This weekend will be my 8th foray into this madness. The reason why I love this race so much is that it strips you down until you are confronted with your self in its naked essence. 'Are you a fighter or a quitter', it asks you? 'Are you going to succumb to self pity or keep moving forward?'

There is really no way to prepare for this race. At some point event the most thorough training and the most well-researched nutrition strategies break down. You are in pain, sleepy, cold and sometimes even a little nauseous Then it is just you and your innermost resources against the slowly ticking clock. At this point it helps to be very clear about WHAT you are doing and WHY.

Lets start with the why...

In the middle of the night when most competitors have gone to sleep, this race asks you, 'Are you going to follow the crowds or follow the lonely path of doing what you know is right?' Like Chris McDonald in the 2005 Race Across America, it asks you 'Are you going to get better today, or worse?'And there is no hiding from these questions and the answers that you end up giving. By the end of the race each competitor knows deep down what their answer was. And those answers stay deep within yourself and do their magic or mischief. As Steven Covey said, these answers stay in your emotional bank account. This is enough to motivate me. What could be more important? Building the integrity of my relationship with myself is enough of a 'why' to keep me going through even the darkest hours. As Lance Armstrong said, 'this is for all the marbles'.

And then the how...

I find it helpful to boil my overall approach down to a story or a sentence. This year I have somehow settled on the story of the swan and the crow. In short the crow challenges the swan to a flying contest. The crow shows off its '1000 ways of flying'. The swan only know one way and slowly settles into his rhythm and picks up speed. Eventually the crow tires of its antics and starts to fall, only to be saved by the swan. From noon on Saturday until noon on Sunday (South African time), I will be emulating that swan. No tricks or waste of energy, just slow, sure, steady flight.

UPDATE: Go to my friend Len's Kalk Bay Peak blog to find out how the race worked out.

Also read:
The 24 Hours of Oak Valley
The full story of the swan and the crow
Are you going to get better today, or worse?
Steven Covey's Emotional Bank Account
Kalk Bay Peak

My second 24 hour ride in 2007

How to enjoy the unnerving calm of true effectiveness

2013-01-14T15:00:00.000+02:00

We often blame the stress and time starvation of our working day on external circumstances: bosses, customers and phone lines that prod us with brutal regularity. But what if we, ourselves were as responsible or even more responsible for this stress and bustle?

Do you have the courage to go slowly at work? When we focus on core tasks and only on core tasks, the working day can feel quite slow and restful. Effectiveness can feel disarmingly leisurely. Gone is email. Gone is flitting around with to do lists. Gone the worry about not doing what you know you ought to do.

So can you handle this calm and restful productivity? Or are you tempted to fill up the stillness with email, Twitter, Facebook and other such chatter? Do you find it almost impossible to not turn a restful day into an exhausting and stressful day with clutter and clamor?

How to relax into this calm? I have found three things that work

Momentum matters. How I start the working day really makes a huge difference. If I start with focus, I find it much easier to stay focused. If I yield to the temptation to check my blog statistics first, then it is almost impossible to return to focus. Or it requires the kind of huge effort that I don’t always have the energy to make.
Be kind and gentle to yourself. Deep focus and concentration can be intense. It is quite normal to flinch and to want some breaks from such efforts. Let yourself take these breaks. But don’t fill up breaks with distracting chatter. Rather lie down with your eyes closed for 5 minutes. Or go for a slow, contemplative walk.
Short bursts of rest and work. I have found a rhythm that works for me. 15 minutes of intense concentration. Followed by 5 minutes of relaxation. Rinse and repeat. And the surprising thing is that the breaks are the important part of this mechanism. Make sure the break is filled with something calming and restful. Something away from your desk and away from the internet. As described above, I find that lying down with my eyes closed works best. You will be amazed at the ideas that come to you in this position! Your brain keeps working. Sometimes it even does its best work in these breaks. You may also think that 15 minutes of concentrated work is not very much. But you will be surprised by what you can achieve in 15 minutes of uninterrupted work. I have often typed an entire first draft of a blog post in 15 minutes. Sometimes you will be tempted to keep working once the alarm sounds to stop the work session. Its OK to run over a little. But after that the break is essential.

I hope you try this some time. You don’t need to keep depriving yourself of time. There is a world of calm right before our eyes. We deserve it. Even though we may not think we do.

Also read:

How to schedule for the right side of the brain
The courage to be idle

Which dreams to hang on to

2013-01-10T14:00:00.000+02:00

As 2013 starts to settle down, you may already be finding it hard to stick to your New Year's Resolutions. But how does one know what you are supposed to do? Which dreams to pursue? And which to dismiss as fanciful ideas?

In one of the first personal development books that I ever read, Ed C. Bliss (yes that really is his name), encourages one to distinguish between dreams that you are prepared to work for and dreams that you would like someone to drop in your lap. Everyone wants to be able to speak Italian, but few want it badly enough to put in the hours of work required to get it. He encourages us to work for the dreams that we are prepare to work for and to forget the dreams that we are not prepared to work for.

Julia Cameron takes a slightly different approach. She talks about "dreams that persist". The dreams that hang around for years. You fail and you get discouraged or mocked. But a little while later you discover that the dream is still there. That is how you know. Those dreams that hang around - follow them!

Her powerful example speaks about when children are subtly discouraged to pursue their dreams by their parents. The parents ask the knock down question of 'how do you know that you are supposed to be an artist' or that you are 'good enough'. Through over-cautious concern they encourage more ‘sensible’ courses of action. 'At least get a degree'. 'Make sure you have something to fall back on'.

Of course the young artist doesn't 'know'. Or she thinks she doesn't know. But the dream lives on. Whatever she decides to do, the dream persists. It is always there, in the corner of her eye. It may become obscured by what Kazantzakis calls ‘the whole catastrophe’. But in holidays, Sundays or moments of grief, there it is. If nothing else, when her children grow up and she hits the stasis of mid-career, this is where her thoughts will naturally turn.

I have tried to eat vegetarian and vegan a few times and have lapsed. Same with doing a PhD. But yet these dreams will not go away. Deep down I know that this is what I should be doing.

So this is how we will know. Our hearts will tell us. And it will keep on telling us. In a book on meditation by William Johnston, he says that Jesus knocks on the doors of our hearts. And he lovingly reassures us that even if we don’t answer, Jesus will keep on knocking until we are ready to open. The same with our deepest dreams and desires. They are persistently yet lovingly knocking on the door.

Also read:

In defence of New Year's Resolutions

Ed C. Bliss's Getting Things Done (Yes, he used the title first)

Julia Cameron's Artist's Way, Week 1.

I think the William Johnston book is Letters to Contemplatives

How to start working on yourself

2013-01-07T02:00:00.000+02:00

Dig within. There lies the well-spring of good: ever dig, and it will ever flow - Marcus Aurelius

What does spiritual and internal work consist of? And where to start with this kind of work? It starts in the capacity to be aware of and reflect on what we are thinking and feeling. We act, think and feel. This much we have in common with many animals. But when we become aware of what we are thinking and feeling, we become truly human. This is also when we acquire the ability to choose what we think and feel. When we can choose what we feel and think, we can also choose what we do. It is only when we can make these choices that we can start doing real internal and spiritual work. As our capacity for such awareness and choice grows, so we become more human, spiritual and reflective. Sadly the opposite is also true.

Does this mean that we can increase our own levels of awareness and choice, that we can grow spiritually? I know firsthand that we can choose activities that help us to be more aware or prevent us from being so. Generally too much food and drink, too little sleep, too much work and emotionally persuasive crowds will not help. Walks, frequent rests, morning pages, listening meditation will help. Of course people differ and the effects of some of these activities will be individual. You will need to discover your own awareness enhancers and inhibitors.

Activities such as those listed above have a short term effect on my awareness and choices. But what about the long term effects? Can we increase or decrease our overall capacity for awareness over time? Do these short term ‘awareness enhancers’ also have a long term cumulative effect? I would like to think so. Many of the spiritual and philosophical traditions also say so. At a minimum I know that there are some long term effects that come from making these awareness enhancers an habitual part of your daily routine. I know for example that my overall levels of awareness have increased since I have established the habit of writing morning pages.

But don’t worry too much about the long term. The short term rewards are good enough. There are many worlds locked up within us that we are not yet aware of. Dreams, preferences and worries. And as we unlock these inner worlds, we unlock our choices and therefore also unlock our outer worlds.

“But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew

Also read:
How to hack your emotions
About morning pages: Write yourself from moaning to bliss.

In Defence of New Year's Resolutions

2012-12-24T15:00:00.000+02:00

As we approach the end of the old year we also approach a new year. When the celebrations draw to a close, our thoughts turn quite naturally to the New Year, what it will bring and how we will engage with what it brings. I hope you are not blasé about New Year’s resolutions! I love the sense of energy and possibility that come from them.

But it’s true that the spiritual Eeyores have something of a point. “What about last year’s resolutions?” they ask. “How far did you get with them?” But in the end their message is a glum and negative one. Ultimately they argue that New Years resolutions, and in fact all plans for change, are doomed because people and things don’t change. “You are stuck, so don’t be a fool by thinking that you and your world can change,” they say. You don't want to be like that, do you?

Keep shooting for the moon

My New Year’s wish for you is “Don’t buy it!” Keep dreaming big. Make bold plans and act as if anything is possible. The English language is full of this enthusiasm and hope. “If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again.” “It is better to have won and lost than to never have played the game.” Or if English is not an inspiring source to you, turn to the hippy mantra: "Be reasonable, demand the impossible!"

What if you fail?

But OK, let’s humor the glum and talk about last year’s resolutions. It may well be true that you didn't realize last year’s resolutions. Now is a good time to review them and to return to any unfinished business. As Seneca says, "making noble resolutions is not as important as keeping the resolutions you have made already." So by all means return to the resolutions that were unattended to this year. But don’t let your inability to deal with these last year dampen your enthusiasm to do so in 2013. Rather channel that skepticism into plans to do a better job of it this year.

Your situation may even worse and you may not remember what you resolved to do in 2012. This year do yourself the favour of writing down your resolutions and making a note in your diary to review progress in December 2013. Better still, plan to review your progress more regularly during the year.

Above all, guard and cultivate your enthusiasm. Tilt at windmills!

What will happen at Next Small Step?

Your dear author will take a few weeks leave to think over 2013 and other things. One of these 'other things' a rapidly advancing book version of Next Small Step. Yes, that's right, by the end of March or so, you will be able to get your very own pocket Next Small Step! Watch this space.

Thanks for your continued support and messages over the last year. All the very best wishes to you for the New Year. Next Small Step will be back in the week of 7 January.

What to do when the holidays stop being fun

2012-12-20T06:21:00.001+02:00

On holidays and long weekends, especially the long summer holidays that we have this time of year in ex-English colonies like South Africa, we let ourselves relax into the well-deserved rest that we have dreamed about for the rest of the year. Afternoon sleeps. Long walks. Reading endlessly. We let all the structure, 'must do' and bustle of the year go and we breathe out.

But at some point the space and calm tends to turn on us. The dreaded 'I'm bored' moment that parents will be very familiar with. Even non-parents will know that moment in holidays where you wake up after your umpteenth nap or finished another large breakfast and wonder ‘what now?’

The bitter irony is that a few weeks later, once we are back in the hustle and bustle, we will desperately miss these times. We will find it hard to believe that we were a little sick of holidays at some point. One of my meditation teachers used to say that we should not take more than two or three days of holiday at a time. And we used to think he was crazy. Or at least a helpless and hopeless workaholic. But when we hit the rock bottom of holidays I start wondering if maybe he had a point? What on earth is going on here?

I have learnt that us humans crave effort and rest. Too much of either of these and we get stuck. One of the early Christian documents describe God as a ‘movement and a rest’. The same is true of us. We are a movement and a rest. So what does this mean practically?

It means that after the initial big breath out, we need to put some structure and effort into holidays in order to keep having fun. Of course it doesn't mean that you should go back to work or only take two to three days holiday :-) It does mean however that we need to combine some movement with rest. Now is the time to work on some of those projects that you never seem to have time for. Here are some of the things that are on my list for these holidays:

Scrap booking
Sculpture
Involving my kids in some home maintenance projects
Working on a book about Next Small Step. Yes, dear reader, expect the best of Next Small Step in a book sometime in the first half of 2013!
Involving my kids in keeping the house clean
A daily session of drawing
Cooking with my family
Some very long hikes in the mountains.
After dinner family walks
Card and board games with the family
A daily reading session with the kids
Learning how to iron clothes. And actually ironing the family’s clothes during the holidays
Teaching our dogs to ‘Stay’. At the moment they can only ‘Sit'
Learning how to juggle

The magic of all this is that once you make an effort to do something, you can enjoy the sweetness of doing nothing all over again. But in order to re-enjoy this sweetness, you need to overcome the deadly inertia of holidays, make an effort, and do something!

Become a diet and exersize Ninja!

2012-12-19T02:30:00.000+02:00

My dream is to be an exercise and diet Ninja!

An exercise Ninja does only the essential exercise. He subtracts from exercise until it breaks. He knows that his missions are the most important part of his life. So he only exercises as much as necessary to accomplish those missions. But he is still a Ninja! Which means that this exercise gives him an extremely high level of overall physical fitness. He can run fast. Lift things. Climb up things. And he has a core of steel!

For me this means sticking to my program of running 20 minutes 3 times per week and sticking to the 100 push up, 200 sit up, 200 squat programs. I have been following this regime for about 8 weeks and it has been fantastic. I had to build up to the 20 minutes of running (being a cyclist by habit) – I started at 4 minutes :-) But now I am slowly introducing speed intervals into the 20 minutes.

I still do other forms of exercise: walking, hiking, bicycle commuting, playing cricket and soccer with my son and so on. But all of that is unplanned and for fun, not training.

Being a diet Ninja means eating oats and fruit for breakfast. And salad or rice and lentils or beans at lunch. And one plate of whatever my wife has prepared for dinner. It also means no meat and avoiding dairy and refined carbohydrates like bread and pasta. It further means sticking to one cup of coffee per day and limiting alcohol consumption to two glasses of red wine on social occasions.

Becoming an exercise and diet Ninja also means integrating these habits into my life to such an extent that they become second nature. Eventually I won’t really notice it much anymore and I won’t talk about it. It will simply be a support system that helps me do what I value in life.

I am an exercise and diet Ninja! This affirmation reminds me of all of the above. I don’t yet do all of these things all the time. Which is why I need the reminder. But slowly this will stop being an affirmation and simply be what I do each day - like brushing my teeth.

Also read:
Subtract until it breaks
About keeping exercise in its proper place: Tough training advice from Seneca
Hundred push-ups program
Two hundred squats program
Two hundred sit-ups program
About finding out what you most value in your life: Figuring out what’s most important
About Affirmations: Becoming who you are

Morning routine: A good start is half the victory

2012-12-17T03:00:00.000+02:00

In Afrikaans we have a saying: "Goed begonne is half gewonne." This loosely translates into: "A good start is half the victory." How we start the day is important. It sets the tone for the rest of the day. If a day starts in the right way, it is easier to continue in the same way than to try and turn it around later. Sadly the opposite is also true. For many people this is also a time of day that is easily protected from outside interference, which makes it a good time to work on things that are important to us. Here is how I organize the start of my days.

5.30am

I am a 'morning person', so waking early has never been a problem for me. Even so, when I wake up, I need coffee. So that is where I head when I wake up.

5.40am

After the coffee is made and down the hatch, I write morning pages. This takes 30-40 minutes. Recently I have followed morning pages with 15 minutes of mantra meditation. I find that the morning pages clear the decks for deep meditation.

6.15am

Next I write for Next Small Step. I try and fit in 15 minutes. That is not enough to write a post. What I aim for is progress – the next small step, if you will :-) So I try and get a draft of a post down. On other mornings I manage a rewrite or final edit and publication of a draft post written previously.

6.30am

After that I do another 15 minute stint on my novel. I wrote a short novel for Nanowrimo last year that I am editing now. That should be done in the next few weeks. After that I hope to start on a another idea for a novel.

7am and onwards

Once I have done all these things, the time is close to 7am which means breakfast and the school run. I start my day job at around 8am. These days I tend to slip exercise in over lunch time – a short run and 5 sets of push-ups, sit-ups and squats.

That’s the routine that I have been following for the last 2 years or so. I have been tempted a few times to wake up earlier to leave time for reading or getting exercize done earlier, but I really do need the sleep. So getting up much earlier tends to backfire.

All of this goes out the window when I travel for work, which is about 3 months per year. Then flights, jet lag and day job pressures make things a lot more interesting. Or during school holidays, which feels like another 3 months of the year!

I am a firm believer in doing the most important things as early as possible in the day. But there are a lot of important things that I only get to later in the day. My morning routine tends to focus on the delicate and important tasks that easily get crowded out of the rest of the work day.

Nanowrimo is National Novel Writing Month: www.nanowrimo.org/

Becoming who you are

2012-12-12T14:46:00.000+02:00

I have been doing Morning Pages for years, but I am finally working through Julia Cameron’s The Artists Way. The book is structured into 12 weeks of which week 1 is about recovering a sense of safety around artistic endeavors No surprise that she has one work with negative self-talk – what she calls “blurts” or the opposite of affirmations.

I was surprised by how much negative self talk I have going on inside me. For most of the week I was soldiering on, noticing these negative voices and trying to flip them into workable affirmations. But I found that the frequency of these blurts easily outstripped my ability to deal with them. It was a case of the Hydra growing two heads for every one that I could cut off.

I started wondering about whether I couldn't deal with these blurts at another, more fundamental level. I read through Julia’s suggested creative affirmations and found this one: “As I listen to the creator within, I am led.” Working with this affirmation, I realized that a lot of my blurts are based in self-doubt and thinking that I am doing the wrong thing or not being sure whether I am doing the right thing. And this affirmation addresses the issue at the core.

The irony is that when I stop to think about things, such as when I write my morning pages, I am aware of a very clear ‘internal voice’. I think what this affirmation does, is to strengthen my faith in that voice. It helps me to become less other-directed and more inner-directed.

Later I realized that this internal creator is female, in an archetypal, Jungian sense. It is gentle, yet creative and intuitive and less about planning and more going with what makes sense in the moment. One night, after a long day’s work, with just 45 minutes to spare before having to attend a work dinner, I realized that I had to go for a run - a run that was completely unscheduled. I loved it, even though I didn't feel physically strong. Just being out there and knowing that I needed to be out there, was enough.

It feels like the Artists Way course is pulling me more deeply into becoming what I really am. Affirmations like these have help me to do more of what I desire most deeply. As the Greek Poet Pindar put it: “Becoming who you are.”

But don't be scared if becoming who you surprises you a little. Its early days on this course, but over the last two weeks I have returned to meditation, cut down on exercise further, worked more than ever before. So as my friend Len at Kalk Bay Peal playfully warns this week: Be careful what you wish for!

Also read:

About morning pages: Write yourself from moaning to bliss

About Julia Cameron and the Artist's Way

Miriam Webster online dictionary’s definitions of inner-directed and other-directed. Also have a look at the Wikipedia entry on David Riesman’s The Lonely Crowd, which is where these terms were first developed.

Wikipedia entry on Affirmations.

The Creative Affirmations listed by Julia Cameron in the Artist’s Way

Wikipedia entry on Jungian thinking about the male and female principles

Len's Blog Kalk Bay Peak

How to schedule for the right side of the brain

2012-12-10T15:00:00.000+02:00

"Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion"

reads the first sentence of Parkinson's famous essay. While a little time pressure can help us to focus and complete routine tasks, the creative work of the right side of the brain will not bow to such a regimen. Scheduling for the right side of the brain is a gentler art.

Unleashing Parkinson on your Diary

Photo courtesy of fdecomite

People like Tim Ferris have turned Parkinson's law into a method of setting clear objectives and time limits for the tasks that we perform. This allows us to perform them faster.

This technique works really well with left brain or no-brain activities like clearing email or submitting expense reports. Tasks that we usually dawdle over for hours can be cut down to a fraction of the time.

Enter the Right Side of the Brain

This military discipline does not work for right brain work. Creative ideas will not be commandeered and prefer to sneak up on us when we least expect it. Ironically, setting deadlines for creative work often has the opposite effect of drying up the creative stream.

There are things that we can do to stimulate right brain activity like walking, taking breaks, and journaling. But putting our muses under time pressure is not one of them.

Empty space: How to get your Right Brain into your appointment book

Martin Versfeld, an old South African philosopher once said:

"Time is like seed: you have to throw some of it away to get something back."

Creativity works in the same way: you need to forget about the clock and do what you can to induce a visit from your muse.

One way of scheduling this time-resistant work is to leave empty space for the creative juices to flow into.
Allocate time for thinking about what needs to be done, but don't set a specific output goal. For example, I started work on this blog post by allocating 30 minutes to just thinking about a new post. No deadline for completing it; the goal was simply to spend an amount of time thinking about it.

Take off the pressure and creative ideas come into such empty space. Try it, you will see.

By removing the deadline you also give yourself permission to pursue interesting, but apparently non-related ideas. This post, for example, started off as an idea to write about what eagles can teach us about time management. As you can see, having permission to explore led me to writing about something completely different.

Feed the muse and it all works out

Of course we still need to deliver to deadlines, even for creative work. I have found however, that when I block out enough such output-free time, the ideas come.

Such creative work is obviously most important at the beginning of projects. Once you have developed the concept, the left brain can start helping to put things into practice. Then you can roll Parkinson's law back out.

How do you get the ideas to flow? What do you do to get your muse to show herself?

Subtract until it breaks: unclutter your life

2012-12-05T02:00:00.000+02:00

This is the motto Chrome plug-in that I just installed. But never mind the tech. Its a helpful summary of the minimalist approach to life. Remove what appears to be inessential. Keep removing until the thing breaks down. Then you know what is truly essential. And of course you need to add back the piece that caused it to break. So you,

Reduce and reduce exercise until you start losing fitness.
Reduce and reduce food until you get hungry between meals
Reduce and reduce email time until colleagues start prompting you to respond.
Reduce and reduce time spent working until you start falling behind with core tasks

Why?

Because what you can cut out is not needed. And what is not needed takes away time, attention and other resources from what is needed.

The divine wisdom of Bill Murray

2012-12-03T13:23:00.000+02:00

You MUST read the interview with actor Bill Murray in yesterday's New York Times! He combines his legendary deadpan humour with a disarming level of wisdom and humility. Here are some extracts:

The more relaxed you are, the better you are at everything

"The more relaxed you are, the better you are at everything: the better you are with your loved ones, the better you are with your enemies, the better you are at your job, the better you are with yourself."

It pays to look after each other

"It pays off in your life when you’re in an elevator and people are uncomfortable. You can just say, 'That’s a beautiful scarf.' It’s just thinking about making someone else feel comfortable. You don’t worry about yourself, because we’re vibrating together. If I can make yours just a little bit groovier, it’ll affect me. It comes back, somehow."

When you feel like you are stuck, look after someone else

"Well, who hasn’t woken up thinking, 'God, nothing good has come to me in a while', right? When I feel like I’m stuck, I do something — not like I’m Mother Teresa or anything, but there’s someone that’s forgotten about in your life, all the time. Someone that could use an 'Attaboy' or a 'How you doin’ out there.' It’s that sort of scene, that remembering that we die alone. We’re born alone. We do need each other. It’s lonely to really effectively live your life, and anyone you can get help from or give help to, that’s part of your obligation."

We hope that we will witness the things that happen to us

"That’s the only thing we really, surely have, is hope. You hope that you can be alive, that things will happen to you that you’ll actually witness, that you’ll participate in. Rather than life just rolling over you, and you wake up and it’s Thursday, and what happened to Monday? Whatever the best part of my life has been, has been as a result of that remembering."

Click here for the whole interview, you won't be sorry for taking the time to read it, I promise.

How artists organize their days

2012-12-03T03:30:00.000+02:00

I love reading about how famous writers and artists organize their days. They all seem to understand the value of rest, exercise and giving ideas time to develop. Seeing that it works for great artists gives me the courage to work in the same way - in a world that is obsessed with long hours, endless meetings and email.

A few days ago my friend Mark sent me a very nice post on the daily routines of famous writers .

In return I sent him a guest post that I did few days ago on the ways in which famous artists organize their days. Enjoy!

Overcoming the fear of death

2012-12-01T14:36:00.001+02:00

Learn how to live, and you'll know how to die; learn how to die, and you'll know how to live - Morris Schwartz

I know this is the ultimate of grim topics, but I have always been very uncomfortable with the idea of death. Not dying, that could be quite interesting, but rather being dead. Judging from Morris Schwartz's quote and many others like it, resolving this issue is quite important. Luckily there is no shortage of advice for how to solve this problem.

Irvin Yalom argues that the fear of death comes from the fear of an unfulfilled life. (As usual the links are at the end of the post). But no, what bothers me is not what I would have left undone when I die. It is rather the thought that it will all be over.

Seneca says that we should not worry about being dead because it will be the same as before we were born. He says that he can’t remember experiencing any suffering or discomfort in the time before he was born, and that death will be the same. And, ipso facto, if there will be no suffering or discomfort in death, why worry about it? This makes sense, but it still bothers me somehow. For once not even Seneca provides me with comfort.

Saying that the ‘experience’ of being dead is the same as the experience of not being born yet, does not comfort me because I can’t remember it. Why? Because I was not aware of it. What worries me about being dead is not being aware of it, not being dead itself. You still with me?

Then I reflected on the fact that unawareness stalks me every moment of my every day. I get absorbed in work and I become unaware of my body and its surroundings. Or I become worried about my parents or financial security and the same thing happens.

If my fear of death is the fear of being unaware, then the struggle against death starts now, not when I puff out my last breath. I need to wage that battle NOW and keep it up at every moment. Consolation comes from feeling my fingers hit the keyboard as I type this. Feeling the air-conditioning of the plane hit the back of my hands. Death is not the issue. Being as aware as possible at every moment is what I want.

This is about what many call mindfulness: According to the Wikipedia definition, mindfulness: “signifies presence of mind, attentiveness to the present… Its function is absence of confusion or non-forgetfulness.” As Dylan Thomas said, we must “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” The dying of the light does not happen in death, it happens in life!

Irvin Yalom – Staring at the sun

Seneca - Letters from a Stoic

Wikipedia entry on Mindfulness

Wikipedia entry on Morris Schwartz

The complete text of Dylan Thomas's poem Do not go gentle into that good night

Are you going to get better today or worse?

2012-11-28T15:00:00.001+02:00

I recently watched Stephen Auerbach's excellent documentary about the Race Across America, called Bicycle Dreams. The RAAM is a crazy continuous 4800 kilometer coast to coast bicycle race from Oceanside, California to Annapolis, Maryland.

The man who eventually finished second in 2005, Chris McDonald, says that he starts his days by asking himself if he is going to get worse today or better. We all know what we should be doing today. (If you don't, I recommend start writing morning pages - NOW!) The question is whether we are going to do it or find excuses not to. Chris's question pushes me to do those things. Am I going to do what I know I should, or not? The memory of his question prompts me to stick to what's important to me and to ignore the rest as best I can.

Chris took ten days to complete the RAAM. In the last day or so, he made up massive amounts of time to overtake Fabio Biasiolo for second place. I like to think that he got to that point, remembered his own advice and kept on racing hard despite the fatigue, lack of sleep and million other ailments that participants suffer.

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit." - Aristotle

Running free!

2012-11-26T06:52:00.000+02:00

I went for a trail run on Table Mountain with my wife Annette yesterday morning. It was one of those magical runs where all plans were thrown out the window (where they belong) and a planned run turned into an adventure. Sheer alchemy. Funny that I have just blogged about losing oneself in the present (link at the end of the post).

I know this is a slightly unusual post for Next Small Step. But then again, what's the harm in stepping off the beaten track once in a while? To be fair I was also a little inspired by the kind of reports posted by Jill Homer at Jill Outside and my friend Len at Kalk Bay Peak (these links below too).

I have been doing 20 minute runs three times per week for the last six weeks or so and I thought that I was ready for a slightly longer run. I was also very keen to try running a long run really slowly. I got this idea from Tim Ferris's blog about "Victor". He describes how he trains so slowly on his long runs that he can do a strength workout the next day. The idea is around specificity. When you are training for endurance, only train for the endurance. Same for speed. But don't mix the two. This means that long runs or rides become slower and speed work sessions faster. I had done the same thing on a long cycle on Saturday and I loved it. After a hilly four hour cycle in the mountains on my single speed, I was still fresh enough to tackle this trail run with Annette. Already I loved this approach.

Annette is always keen on a run and plans were made to go for an hour’s run, starting at the Newlands Forest fire station and to head up towards Constantia Nek. The plan was also to run half of it and walk the rest – for an hour or so. Anyway, we got the route wrong and my plans were abandoned within the first ten minutes. I also realized that a regulated 5 mins run followed by 5 mins walk was just not practical on the mountain. Steep hills demand walking up and running down, not regulations by a deaf and dumb wrist watch. But this stage I still thought that we shouldn't go for longer than 75 mins or so, this being my first long run and all. Anyway, after 40 mins of heading up the mountain, we had walked a lot of the uphill and we were just getting into the run. So we cast off and just went. We got back to the car after just short of 2 hours of bliss. The highlight for me was the long decent down Plum Pudding hill. I felt like I was ten years old again. Just letting rip and running flat out down the hill!

Here are a few photos of our adventure:

Ripping up the single track!

Annette smiling through the run

Magical Forest

Lulu and Oscar taking in the scenery

Glorious Table Mountain

My post on how to Lose yourself and be happy.
Tim Ferris's post: The Painless Path to Endurance

Jill Homer's Blog Jill Outside

Len's Blog Kalk Bay Peak

Simplifying life from the inside out

2012-11-21T14:50:00.000+02:00

“It is a mark of a good way of life that it satisfies and abides.” – Seneca

“Any of us do what is fundamentally most important to us.” - Linda Rose quoted in Ralf Potts’s book Vagabonding

I’ve been following Leo of Zenhabits’ advice about simplifying life. I have compiled a short list of what’s most important to me (click here to read my list). I have been working with this list for a while now, and these really are the things that are important to me. And when I stop to think about it, I am really quite happy to let go of other activities. But something in me remains restless. Maybe I have simplified my environment, but not yet myself?

Simplifying the outside

I realized that my Kindle was a temptation to spend more money on books than I needed to. It was also a temptation to pile up reams of reading that I never really got to, but that I felt guilty about. So I sold the Kindle. And I haven’t missed it for one minute. The local library, friends and my own bookshelf now keep me reading.

More challenging has been a clean out of my exercise regime. I used to cycle about 8 hours per week, do karate for another 4 or 5 hours and then daydream about running, strength exercises and yoga. I have now trimmed down exercise to about 4 hours of cycling on the weekend and about 40mins of running and body weight exercises three times per week. (Click here to see Seneca’s advice for keeping exercise in its proper place.)

I also cleaned out my desk and all the other areas of the house that I use exclusively (I haven’t tried to convert my family), like my bedside table and drawers, my box with cycling stuff in the garage and even the laptop that I am typing this post on. A few places remain, like our huge collection of CDs, the rest of the garage and eventually the kitchen. But so far, so good.

The space that this clean out has created has been a real pleasure. And I have not yet missed any of the stuff that I sold, gave or threw away.

Simplify the inside

Despite the pleasure that I have taken in cleaning out and simplifying, I do still have a tendency to accumulate new clutter. Here are some examples:

Letting myself get excited or upset about things that are not one of the five things that are important to me
Plans to train for endurance events like marathons, Ironman triathlon and various cycling events.
Looking for new music while my iPod has piles of music that I haven’t listened to yet.
Downloading novelty value software from the Chrome store, Lifehacker etc.
Taking out new books from the library while I have unread books on my bedside table

I think that these tendencies to accumulate hang around because I haven’t simplified myself as much as my environment. If I don’t simplify myself, I may collect the same external clutter again. I don’t have any magical solutions to this problem, but here are some things that I am working on:

Leo’s approach of starting with the identification of your priority areas does actually start on the inside. When we stray, we can return to what is important.
Continuing to remind myself of what my five priority areas are, seems to help. Every time that I do that, it becomes a little easier to drop the clutter and focus on these things that I derive deep pleasure and satisfaction from.

What do you think? Have you tried any of this stuff? How do you stick to what’s most important to you?

Tough training advice from Seneca

2012-11-19T15:00:00.000+02:00

Lucius Annaeus Seneca (often known simply as Seneca) was a Roman Stoic philosopher. His 'Letters from a Stoic' contains some timeless advice. Its also one of my favorite books. Here is what he has to say about exercise and how we should fit it into the rest of our lives.

1: We should prioritize our inner lives more than our bodies

“Without wisdom the mind is sick, and the body itself, however physically powerful, can only have the kind of strength that is found in persons in a demented or delirious state. So this is the sort of healthiness you must make your principal concern. You must attend to the other sort as well, but see that it takes second place. It won’t cost you any great trouble if good health is all you want. For it is silly… and no way for an educated man to behave, to spend one’s time exercising the biceps, broadening the neck and shoulders and developing the lungs.”

2: Beyond reasonable limits, exercise detracts from the cultivation of the inner life
“Devotees of physical culture have to put up with a lot of nuisances. There are the exercises, in the first place, the toil involved in which drains the vitality and renders it unfit for concentration on the more demanding sort of studies. Next there is the heavy feeding, which dulls mental acuteness.”

3: There are many short, simple and cheap exercises that can keep our bodies healthy and strong

“There are short and simple exercises which will tire the body without undue delay and save what needs especially close accounting for, time… Pick out these for ease and straightforwardness. But whatever you do, return from body to mind very soon.”

What qualifies ME to give YOU advice?

2012-11-16T15:00:00.000+02:00

I often wonder what gives me the right to give advice to you. Should I not spend my time fixing my own life rather broadcasting advice to all of you? I was relieved to find my hero Senecas answer to this question:

The question: "Who the hell am I to give advice to YOU?"

'So you're giving me advice, are you?' you say. 'Have you already given yourself advice, then? Have you already put yourself straight? Is that how you come to have time for reforming other people?'

Seneca's answer

No, I'm not so shameless as to set about treating people when I'm sick myself. I'm talking to you as if I were lying in the same hospital ward, about the illness we're both suffering from, and passing on some remedies. So listen to me as if I were speaking to myself. I'm allowing you access to my inmost self, calling you in to advise me as I have things out with myself.