Five for Friday: Change is Good

"Every day the bucket goes to the well, One day the bottom will drop out"...... Bob Marely

The theme for today is doing the same thing over and over and expecting things to be different. The Bob Marely quote in I Shot the Sherriff speaks loudly to me right now. Doing the same thing day in and day out and one day it will just break. We need to change it up. So here's my top 5 ways to change it up.

1. Meditation - It's new to me so I don't begin to fully understand the impact but I'll try here. In easy to do Breath Awareness meditation you sit for your desired length of time and focus on your breath. Every time you mind wanders and it will, you bring focus back to your breath. I've found myself often recently bringing focus to a situation quickly. Where in the past I would get emotional and animated I don't do it. I quickly asses what is important and focus on that. The only reason I can find to that new found calm is the 5-10 minutes each day sitting in meditation. What's the most interesting to me is I can sit on the floor and get mauled by our chocolate lab Niki. Sit on the floor in meditation and she senses what I'm doing and leaves me alone. Think about that for a second. An Animal who doesn't have our brain senses the calm and remains calm.
2. Shock the System - Arnold talks about his early body building days where he learned to constantly shock his body to get results. He didn't do arm curls over and over and over again to get those arms. He shocked his arms with different movement with different weight with different cadence. This applies to your fitness goals. Do the same thing over and over again and you won't see change. My wife Mary does the same thing most of the time. Recently she started a belly dancing class. Instant change!
3. Quite Your Job - I know it's not for everyone and it's really scary. Believe me I'm sweating bullets each day wondering if I made the right decision. But at the same time it's really liberating. I'm relaxed and energized right now and ready for the new challenge that I know I'll find.
4. Walk Away - I'm so lucky to live in Cardiff by the Sea with the Pacifi Ocean just minutes away but my ocean is your nature trail, country road or mountain meadow. When the stress of the day builds up, walk away. I was always one to stay and fight the stress. Use food or coffee to fight it.  I've come to taking walks on the beach in the middle of the day and it's so refreshing. If I'm dead tired and cranky I walk away and come back calm and energized. It's different then meditation in that there is blood flow and fresh clean air. Sometimes I even combine and sit on the beach and do the meditation in the middle of the walk.
5. Stop Consuming - Oh my this has been liberating. I sat down a few weeks back and penciled out how much money I needed to make for us to maintain our life. The basics, food, water, shelter. It came out to less than half of my previous annual salary. So then I looked at where the rest of the annual salary was going. We were consuming (It didn't all go to consumption at huge portion went to long term saving). After that exercise I stopped consuming. Where swiping my debit card was just easy to do, I've gone days without a single swipe. I don't need to do this, we have money and I have time to get back on the work bus. The point is I forced myself the change a habit and it has been liberating.

It's a good life.....