"You must be shapeless, formless, like water. When you pour water in a cup, it becomes the cup. When you pour water in a bottle, it becomes the bottle. When you pour water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can drip and it can crash. Become like water my friend.”
What this statement implies, is to make your own way, but to never get stuck in your own way. Continuing to evolve, grow and adapt and never becoming stagnant. This simple quote should be applied to life in everything we do. And if we could accomplish even a fraction of what Bruce Lee did in his short 32 years, it would truly be something - as we can see from this man's philosophy and ethics in this great documentary. He would have been 75 years old today.
As we get older, it's a sad fact that we are more likely to become less flexible in body and mind. According to a study made by Virgin Active, people by the age of 25 are already stuck in their ways. Choosing the same routines and even ditching the hobbies they used to enjoy, many people give up on trying new things.
Change is difficult for everyone. Because we become creatures of habit, preferring our established truths about the things we know and lazily sticking to the same old things rather than looking for something equally as good or better.
We should all try something new on a regular basis. There's so many new things to experience. If we can keep up these challenges for 30 days in a row, we end up forming new habits and suddenly, we have a new habit or routine. If we can choose positive changes and remove negative ones in the same manner, we will become a much more flexible and constantly evolving individual.
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.
So yesterday was a mostly productive day - quite intense but with a bit of R&R. So I've set aside today as my first chance to do nothing. Doing 'nothing', as I've now realised, just isn't entirely possible. There's always a bit of 'I'll just do that first' and then after that I'll relax.... That's why planning on doing not very much today didn't work out too well...because the 'just do that' got in the way again and again. However, I'm ok with it today as I was being so efficiently productive, that I managed to get a lot done in a relatively short space of time.
That being said, It's a beautiful sunny, warm day here in London and yet I've spent the most part of it in front of a computer in a darkened room. Thing is, there'll be another sunny day but it's not often that I'll get such clarity on my thinking like today and you have to take those opportunities when they come along. I managed to get so much done this morning that I'm now in the sun with the knowledge that tomorrow will be another day of doing something with more breaks factored in rather than spending the whole day in front of a computer screen.
It's all down to balance - which can be said about everything in life. Finding a place of balance in our lives is always subjective and ever changing. Accepting that balance is merely a concept that should be monitored from a place of harmony within our mind body and environment, will help us to stay in tune more. That's the place I want (and need to get to) - where I'm less frantic trying to fit so much in to a day and not feeling so run ragged. If I'm in a more relaxed state, the working moments will be the most productive and rewarding too.
Flexible hours = flexible workers = creative workers = productive workers = happy workers. And that all equates to a successful thriving business. Or maybe not?
A lot of the technology we use today, can be taken out of the office and used on the go or at home. Yet, we are stuck in a kind of paradox. Companies are trying to utilise the modern technology and combine it with what they believe to be a work environment conducive for great creative thinking and high productivity. They add in adult slides, astroturf and play areas, beanbags and fuss-ball tables - and expect the magic to happen. It doesn't. You can't just add all those distractions and pointless toys 'n' gimmicks and think there'll be award-winning creative ideas flying out of the door.
Thing is, creative people need quiet space and time and then even more time, to conceive of great ideas. These thoughts come to us through quality moments when we've shut ourselves off to outside influences allowing the thought synapses to fire off freely and do their thing. They come from a stilled mind - one free from other cluttering thoughts and any prompts for action on lower-ranking actions. They usually come to the front of our conscious minds in the quiet of the morning or during a walk around the park when the distractions are turned down.
That Eureka! moment we experience, is the result of our brain working across both hemispheres to find a solution. The left side of the brain, which deals with logic - will strive for a solution. If there are no immediate logical answers, it's simultaneously passed through the right hemisphere. The right hemisphere (operating the left side of the body), is our creative brain.
The region where our inspiration or insights come from is known as the anterior superior temporal gyrus. Studies carried out into how insight works in the creative regions of the brain, have shown that our 'ah ha' moments stem from the right part of the brain, which helps us to access farther-reaching connections (sometimes also the bigger picture) that we couldn't formulate with logical, formulaic/systematic types of thinking. Between the two spheres, we have greater scope for allowing us to solve more complex problems and formulating ideas, as this informative documentary shows.
The studies have also shown where brain activity clearing Alpha rays are emitted in the short time before synapses fire gamma-rays. This process happens in the brain to create neural pathways - linking up knowledge/inspiration and allowing new ideas to form from this complex brain function. We essentially need silence, or freedom from distractions to first switch on these neurons in order to work their magic. Apparently, they only do this after around 15 minutes of quality thought immersion. And when do we get 15 minutes of undistracted time in an office, especially the modern version of an office - the ones that are open-plan, noisy and full of a whole multitude of distractions? Rarely. We know this, yet, we're thrashing around in this work quagmire - slowly drowning.
Time And Space (and playfulness)
I love these great videos (click for link to vimeo) from John Cleese, of Monty Python and Fawlty Towers fame (amongst other great shows, sketches, films etc.) - who is arguably, one of the best comedy writers of the 20th century, talking about what it is to be creative.
He firstly tells us something that a lot should already realise, that creativity isn't a talent - it's a way of doing things. He cites confirmation of his understanding with the work of Donald W. MacKinnon. He also understands the importance of being in a creative space - he calls it, 'in the open mode' - with space in your mind, time for being receptive to ideas forming, more time to explore these formations and the importance of being in a place where you can be shut off from outside distractions to allow all this to happen.
Home Working - Not Working
So, we've identified the right way of going about the creative process. The work environment has been been greatly modified for the 21st century. Flexible hours, working from home options and connection with the world in the 24/7 'always-on' technological revolution should all be giving us the freedom to move in greater and more productive spheres.
Unfortunately, we're not getting it right and it's strangling the creative process. Dave Coplin has written a couple of books - one entitled: Business Reimagined: Why work isn't working and what you can do about it- and in it, he talks about the modern day issues that are holding back the creative process. By increasing process and further complicating process with ineffective uses of technology plus seeding a fear that if you're not seen to be busy, you're not busy and so you had better be visible. This is why WFH - 'working from home' policy has been back-tracked in a lot of modern office environments. A very large percentage of the office workforce are disengaged, ineffective and fruitlessly expending their efforts. Employees are being left run ragged, trying to appear productive, working at breakneck speed to clear menial tasks (but important to some people) like emails etc. and consequently NOT allowing time/space/isolation for (as John Cleese puts it) 'the right way of doing things'. The very kind of environment we get at home.
The audiobook can be purchased through Audible on Amazon (US only) or via iTunes.
He didn't have tech. He didn't even have a special diet. But he had a phenomenal physique - honed through hard work & self discipline, following a regular training routine. It sounds like he lived a fairly regular lifestyle (he made a lot of money by the sounds of it so had free time) but ultimately he died young - likely from over-exerting himself. So, I'm not going to be two hard on myself about eating the 'wrong' kind of food occasionally for - let's face it - the sake of vanity. Yeah, I do want to fix my ailments and I'm loving the yoga, but I miss the pub and friends - so I know this routine will have to be a bit more flexible eventually. It's also proving to be quite tough getting up at 5am every morning. To get 8 hours a night, I'd have to be asleep at 9pm. That means no real social life and my partner and I are like passing ships! The key is balance. After 2 weeks of no drinking and 14 days up at 5, it's starting to feel a bit like drill camp. I'm also writing quite long blogs every day - which, I'm very pleased with - but are taking a bit more time than I'd like to spend on them and not leaving room for much else.
Next Two Weeks
I'm going to try and keep the blogs a lot shorter - maybe focus on just one topic. Then I'll write-up some pages with more researched content in and publish those every week or so. the plan is to keep writing something ever day - for the whole year. But I'll be a lonely single man if I carry on the way I've been going. Here's what I'm going to do:
5am Starts
I'll stick to these every day - even weekends, but if there's a social and late night, I'll get up when I need to get up - be it 5, 6 or 7am - I'll still find quiet time that day but won't knacker myself out.
Diet
The Paleo diet is very restrictive. I haven't craved bread, pasta or potatoes - but if I find myself in a position or at a social event where there are little other options, I won't beat myself up about it if there's a bit of the 'wrong' food on my plate.
Exercise
Listen to your body. I feel a bit jangly after doing a heavy training session yesterday - so I'm going to take it easy. Currently, the only day off is Monday - but if I need to rest, I'll rest. I'm going to stop climbing in the evenings as this is effecting my eating pattern and not helping with my bicep and shoulder injury.
Zen Yoga On A Rope
I love climbing, it's like doing yoga on a wall.There's a few great climbing centres in London. Westway has great lead climbs (for more advanced), The Castle has lead and bouldering - plus it's a pretty cool venue, The Reach looks good for leads (yet to try it) and The Arch @ Biscuit Factory is good for short bouldering routes. My true home is Mile End Climbing Wall and my local pub is The Palm Tree - the last bastion of East End London.
Take Stock
The changes are happening - and it's been a good, hard start to the year - it's time to take stock, measure and find a balance. So, while there's not much fresh material on this page - it's another milestone and on reflection, I've been performing BETTER than I could have hoped for. The discipline has been amazing considering how I can be (especially mixed with alcohol) but for creating more free time, there'll be a slight change to the formula starting from tomorrow.
