I'm now starting my forth week of the 8 week MBSR (Mindfulness Based Stress Relief) online course that my wife got me for my birthday. I don't want to come across all gushing or - worse - tell you that you HAVE to do this because it will change your life. After all, the proof will be in how I am, not in how I say I am and, everyone is different. But as this is a blog that started life as a document of my journey from a midlife crisis to becoming an Ironman, there are a few things that I want to share as well as writing them down so that I can refer to them later.
Remembering back to when I started this stage of my life, I had realized that I had invested all my self-esteem into my work so that, when something happened that was out of my control, it threw me completely off-balance. Most jobs have a large component that is out of one's control and so it might seem surprising that I should not have been used to this, but I was writing mathematical models and, as far as I was concerned, my yardstick was an unbending but utterly rational and objective one. I scrabbled around desperately for something to plug the self-esteem gap and, after a few un-recommendable attempts I found that running was an excellent complement. It took me several years to get it under control, going through the typical boom-bust injury cycles that I've written about at length, until I was recently forced to stop for an extended period of time. Unlike the previous time - when I got a stress fracture in my foot in 2009 - this has been more insidious. When I started building up to running again after my stress fracture I used the opportunity to retrain my running gait; this time I am retraining my mind - or, if you like, my mind-body relationship. (It's hard to say this without sounding all mystical but, if you think about it, the mind and body are all part of the same organism.) Most significantly, I am deriving a source of self-esteem just from being able to react differently to situations that normally drive me crazy - from things as stupid as headphone wires getting tangled up, to having to wait in a queue. And, consequently, the need I have to run or compete has diminished (but not the desire).
The other thing that I have noticed and already commented here is a tremendous increase in energy and decrease in need to sleep. I'm beginning to wonder if it is possible that the energy I am saving from not going over and over things, not getting frustrated or, indeed, not trying to sleep mean that I need less of it. Or it could just be the steroids - I will have my last dose this Sunday, so I'll soon know (although my mum says they stay in your bloodstream for a couple of weeks). Having said that, I am not aware of one of the secondary effects of steroids being a dramatic reduction in stress - so dramatic that I have only just begun to appreciate how stressed out I was. My family almost don't recognize me (my son said this morning "Rob Smith 2016"). Hell, I almost don't recognize myself. I am just a little scared that this is only temporary. We'll see in a few month's time whether the effects are lasting or not!
One thing to be "mindful" of is not to get too obsessed with the whole thing. I have a tendency to do this. If I find something works then I tend to take it to such an extreme that it stops working. In some sense, it is almost impossible to be obsessively mindful by definition, as the whole practice is one of being in the moment. I think the only danger is becoming obsessed about analyzing and talking about the effects of practicing it... So if I get boring please tell me.
For now, my objective is not to enjoy life, but to experience it as fully as I can.
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