Making Good Returns

DIMINISHING RETURNS

There's so many great places to explore, new people to meet and exciting experiences of adventure - all out there waiting for that brave step into the unknown. So, why is there ever a need to go back to somewhere we've been before? If the first time was great - will the second time be as good... In my experience - no. It's very hard to live up to the first time so it's better to strive for somewhere new and take the risk. The more we try, the better we see and hence I try and stick to my motto - 'never go back.'

Barceló Illetas Abatros

Sometimes, when something is so good, when a 'go for what you know' is a sure bet - it makes perfect sense to go back. This hotel in Mallorca was just as great this weekend as it was for me two years ago. So the never go back motto now has been modified....The secret to going back now is to have new places to explore as well. That way, if the new doesn't inspire, there's always the known places to enjoy!

Trying something new

Yoga, around for millennia, is truly amazing and should definitely be practiced by everyone. It's benefits are felt so much more than purely on the physical level. Yoga is helping me to be a more thoughtful, tolerant and positive person. I initially took yoga up as a way to improve flexibility and movement in injured muscles and joints and since I've starting to practice regularly, have noticed a huge improvement in general health & wellbeing. I will surely continue to practice yoga daily to carry through these benefits throughout the rest of my life.

I have to confess, when starting out, I felt very self conscious about my image, uncomfortable with the chanting and being in a room where I was the only guy. When I'd tell my mates about yoga - they'd recoil. Somehow, it's not seen as something 'men' do. It's crazy but apparently, we're meant to be lifting heavy weights as a show of strength/masculinity or maybe playing football. We definitely don't talk of spirituality or being connected to the earth. Thing is, doing the yoga will help with the weight training and very likely lesson the risk of injury in football too. What guys are really missing out on, are the meditative and focussing benefits that you get. Plus, doing yoga has really helped me deal with how I see myself/my ego and how I present myself or engage with others. Ultimately, practicing yoga, has given me the confidence to try new things that I'd have been afraid of doing because of (in the case of yoga) a stupid idea that it's not something guys do!

I'm fortunate right now to have a bit of a small window in the rat race of life - some time to stop & reflect with an opportunity to recharge/strengthen a battered body and soul. I'm trying out new things as a way to continue developing as a human being. It's all too easy to stay in the comfort zone and never grow as a person. Looking inward and around at life can make us feel uncomfortable & vulnerable - especially when the veil of reality is challenged, but it's better to come to terms rather than hold on to a false reality. I've seen it with older people who do not appear to have learned much for their years and I'm conscious of making sure that will never happen to me.

This week, I will be making the most of this small window to try different yoga, Qigong and meditation techniques at The Life Centre in Islington. They are currently offering a deal of £25 for 14 days unlimited classes. So, I will try Jivamukti - a style of yoga started by David Life and Sharon Gannon. Reading up on the pair, I found a couple of amazing videos of Sharon from the 80's practicing yoga to music. She has incredible flexibility and graceful movement. I also discovered a couple more talking abut veganism. She seems like a decent person who cares about the animals. In all the yoga videos I watched, the women again outnumber the men 20-1 which I still find incredible giving the benefits available for all. Will this balance ever change I wonder...

Whatever we make of the people, the beliefs and their low-grade videos - we shouldn't be judgemental of the things we know little about and practice being more open minded. So although I still feel very self-conscious and a little bit uncomfortable about putting myself in a room full of strangers and especially chanting with them - I will go along all the same. The important thing for me is to go and 'try'. Because, I've learned that it is good to deal with those egotistical and cynical aspects of the personality that potentially hold us all back from experiencing things - mainly because of what we've been previously taught to be the right/wrong way of doing things or placing too much importance on what others may think of us.

On The Rocks

RISK MANAGEMENT

I've always been an adventurous sort. As a kid, I'd scare the life out of my mum doing crazy (to her) things - ie. climbing up high and balancing on ledges. My childhood was filled with things that, had my poor mum seen me doing them, she'd have had a fit, I'm sure. Things like climbing 13 floors on the outside of a building at 12, jumping across the gap at the top and riding on top of the lifts - just to name a few.

Rocky relationship
So, we're in St Ives, Cornwall where I've been coming every Easter since I was a little kid. The town is on a sort of island - surrounded by rocks, which you can navigate to get to the other beaches. In the glorious lo-tech 70's and 80's, we had arcade games for a bit of a treat at the seaside, otherwise, we had to make our own fun with whatever we could find - and a lot of it was on and around these rocks. My brother and I were just reminiscing about our time here as children this morning, telling my niece and nephew about how we'd never been bored as kids.

We headed back from Carbis Bay Hotel after a lovely (boozy) family lunch and I suggested to my girlfriend that we take the rocks round, like my younger brother and I did at 12 & 8 years old - and join another walkway that takes us up the cliffs, back to the other adjoining beach just half a mile away. 

It was on the first tricky bit, that I realised my other half's abilities to climb slippery rocks was not as highly adapted as my own, but mercifully, with a bit of assistance, helped her to get around a potentially dangerous portion of the rocks. We'd managed to get around another couple of edgy bits - my girlfriend's three pint confidence helping her to beat the fear of serious injury or death, when we came to a really precarious and slippery part. Then it came back to me how I'd got my 8 yr old brother to do this section. It was pretty hairy looking at this now, even as a grown man - and I still enjoy dangerous pursuits like rock climbing for fun. What were we thinking!?

In the end, I had to get us up a different, equally steep and precarious cliff back to the path and safety - where we embraced and laughed about our recent brush & victory with death! The relationship was saved after all...

The tech-kid generation 

The kids never did get to play on the rocks. They weren't even allowed to stray out of mum & dad's sight for the whole trip. They were bored unless on an iPhone or in the arcade - they couldn't make their own fun. It's a very sad modern-day situation. 

I'm so glad I grew up in a different, more free-to-roam age. Kids should be allowed to explore more and we need to encourage it more. It's important for their characters to form properly. Otherwise, how will they ever find the metaphorical rocks needed to help them grow.