how do i get there?

If I want to go somewhere I've never been, I have two choices.

I can put the address into google, get in/on my vehicle of choice and listen to a super-annoying voice tell me what to do. This makes me feel less alive. 

Or, I can figure it out. I find the address on the map, find nearby cross-streets that I recognize, and then formulate a route based on my internal spatial map. Since I'm often on a bike, that involves also considering clothing choice/weather, lock-ability, size of pack, and hilliness in addition to the car-related issues like traffic, road-conditions, and time of departure/arrival. Each of these variables involve their own mental maps of sorts that layer and combine, restricting options, leaving me with a only a couple dials to actually do anything with. 

In short, I am forced to plan. I do a little mental weight-lifting. It makes me feel alive and involved with my life, not just "along for the ride". And apparently, it makes my hippocampus sexier.  

How do you navigate?

strength must have a context

I am all about "being strong." And I usually say that means being able to receive large amounts of resistance without faltering. 

But if you frame strength in a temporal context, pretty interesting things happen. I mean, it makes sense that while someone might squat 300 lbs 1 time, that same person would only be able to hold a 1-min squat with much less weight. What weight could they hold for 7 days? A month? 3 years?

Of course, the resistance involved on that sort of time-scale would be too much to handle if we were actually squatting. But imagine a similar "exercise" going on internally, that is really just each of us "receiving resistance" from the world around us. What if we could get stronger at that exercise? What might we fix? And how would we not get injured?

eat like a toolshed

Alright, so I posted a rap yesterday. You should probably check it out if you haven't. 

It came partly out my recent listening of Hamilton (finally). Jesus it's good. I wrote about it on Thursday. 

But it also came out of what I think about most of the day--how people might direct their lives in a way that they feel good about. Food is just one attention-costing decision of many, but it's a concrete and crucial one, and I'm glad to think about so extensively. 

Truly, what I coach most of the time is simply this: slightly deeper-than-average, daily decision-making. I find that while most intervention/coaching programs are directed at either quantifying and assessing the minutiae OR looking and planning big picture; the very best programs do both. 

But I have yet to see a behavioral approach that focuses on the mental discipline involved in making consistent decisions. The more enlightened thinking usually stops at convincing all of us why certain decisions (like, EAT KALE) are good ones to make. But how about the endurance involved  in making that decision week-in, week-out? 

Dan John alludes to something along these lines in his 40 day workouts when he talks about the hardest part being, uh, following the directions. But I am looking at the next step: when people have the "fire" for themselves, and are self-sustaining in their exercise/wellness habits. 

Sounds great, right? The hard part, though, is that being consistent is boring. Like, it works and is sturdy and you start to like it in a an endearing sort of way. And sometimes, it's super important that you cut loose and take a break from all the normalcy. But it's always going to be a little humdrum. Like a toolshed.