wellfesto

May 23

Car-Less Fitness

My car puttered to a stop this week, turning out to be in dire need of a new alternator. Unfortunately it conked out while we were out for dinner, meaning Sean and I had to schlep our kids and ourselves a few miles home on foot in the near dark. This sounded something like, “Carry me. Put me down. Pick me up. I don’t want to be picked up! Where is our car?” But, the silver lining of being car-less for most of the week has been better integrated fitness (not exactly workouts, but definitely fitness). Here’s what it looked like:

Monday (5 miles of running): Ran 2.5 miles each way to volunteer at the kids’ school and get back to work. I stashed a t-shirt in my son’s cubby in the morning so I’d have something dry to put on when I got to school, and I took an awkward “French shower” in the ladies room at work when I returned. This only took 15 minutes longer (total) than driving, including the “French shower.”

Wednesday (15 miles of biking): Biked the kids (and 2 lunchboxes, 2 sets of sheets, a change of clothes, and a computer) in the trailer from home –> school, school –> work, work –> school, school –> doctors’ appt, doctor’s appt –> home. Listened to giggles in the trailer the whole way (except for when kid #1 was squashing kid #2’s head into the side of the trailer), and someone at work commented that the flag on my bike is “cute.”

Thursday (6 miles of biking and 3 miles of jogging): Biked to/from work (6 miles) and jogged 3 miles to pick up the car at the end of the day. That 3 miles — which I never would have done otherwise, since I ran this morning — actually cleared my head after a long day. I came home happier and more relaxed than if I would have cruised home with the A/C on listening to NPR.

This teeny episode of forced bike/run commuting was a good reminder of how easy it is to make simple changes that lead to a more active day. I’m not sure if I’ll ever adjust to the French shower, but the fresh air in my face and the sun on my back mid-day definitely make it worth it.

What’s the last workout you fit into a crazy day? Would you rather integrate exercise into your daily routine or carve out time for dedicated workouts?

May 22

2 Comments

Graduation Season

photo by trazomfreak, via flickr creative commons

I love graduation season. Graduations are some of the moments most of us remember most clearly, marking both an ending and a new beginning…a time of massive change and promise and yes, fear. I take note of the nostalgia that arrives as the season does, and I love the sense of possibility and optimism and truth that comes with it. For people like me, whose only “graduation” this year is a kid’s migration from diapers to underwear, the posts and re-posts of graduation speeches that share nuggets of wisdom that both take us back to another time and make us think about our lives today. Even if we’re worlds away from being twenty-two.

Transcripts and videos of speeches are all around us this time of year. Time has a list of the top 10 graduation speeches of all time (yes, the famous Steve Jobs commencement address at Stanford is on the list), as well as a great editorial by Ken Robinson about “What Graduation Speeches Should Say, but Don’t.” (in short, our education system needs to be focused on helping people “find their element” and translate it into their lives and their work). I’ll come back to that topic in another post. But for now, I’ll get back to graduation speeches and which one prompted me to write this post…

Yesterday The Atlantic published an excerpt from the commencement address Jon Lovett gave to the graduates of Pitzer College last weekend. The speech was called “Life Lessons in Fighting the Culture of Bullshit.” He talks about the fact that graduates are entering a world where we’re drowning in bullshit — partisan rhetoric, inauthentic human connection, casual acquaintances saying “I love you, people describing everything as the “best thing ever.” I usually call this bullshit “noise,” which is all of the talk that sits in the background of our minds drawing our attention away from the here + now…away from the things that really matter. As any good graduation speech giver does, Jon gives graduates three pieces of advice as they go out into the world:

Don’t cover for your inexperience.
Sometimes you’re going to be inexperienced, naïve, untested and totally right. Then, you need to decide: is this a time to speak up, or hang back?
Know that being honest — both about what you do know, and what you don’t — can and will pay off.

What I like so much about this speech is the idea that being honest about who you are, what matters to you, what you know and what you’re working on is important. It’s clarifying. It helps us find signal in the increasing amount of noise that fills our lives. If we all could do this…focus on the meaning and the purpose and the real connections and our authentic “elements,” as Sir Ken Robinson puts it, we may experience more quiet…more peace…more direction…and greater well-being. I struggle with this daily, as the curious part of me loves noise. But I find more peace when I’m able to then look inward and filter the noise. This inward view can show up in lots of forms — writing, talking with a close friend, meeting with a coach or mentor, figuring out what you love and what you loathe…all in service of being honest with yourself first, so that you can be just as honest with the people around you.

What do you think? Do you feel bombarded by bullshit, and what do you do to filter out what matters most?

May 21

4 Comments

SoulPancake

photo by dawn ashley via flickr creative commons

I watched a video last night about Zach Sobiech, a teenager who lived with a full heart and a busy life and unbelievable wisdom as he dealt with a terminal cancer diagnosis. The video went viral yesterday after he passed away at age 18…or as he said it, “just closed [his] eyes and [fell] asleep. At the end of the video, when asked what we wanted to be remembered for, Zach said he “wanted to be remembered as the kid who went down fighting, and didn’t really lose.” His closing words were an incredible combination of solid self-assuredness, profound sadness, deep perspective, and brightness. Just plain brightness. Amazing, even shocking…brightness.

That’s all I’m going to say about the video…it speaks for itself. Check it out if you have tissues handy, would like a dose of perspective, and would like to honor Zach’s legacy (that life really just boils down to making other people happy).

This was the first SOULPANCAKE production I’d ever seen, and I checked out the site afterwards to see what it was all about. It’s a beautifully designed site designed to serve up “brain batter of art, culture, science, philosophy, spirituality and humor to open your mind, challenge your friends, and feel damn good.” I just liked it on Facebook so I can keep tabs on their work, and I checked out some of their content. There is a tab called “Activities,” which is really fun, and something I’ll refer back to. Here are a few of the exercises I liked as I scanned through:

In 100 words or simply one, tell us where you are most in your element.
Quick write your latest mantra. Breathe. Repeat.
Memory wipe time. List four things you’re dying to forget about.
In 100 words or less tell us what “the bigger picture” means to you.
Upload a creative travel guide to your home town.
Sum up what you are striving for in a single word.
What things are you working on now that will pay off in the future?
List the 10 most important things to you, in order.
Describe what you’d do with an extra day inserted into every week.
Fill in the following sentence five times: I belong
Upload a picture of hidden beauty.
How will you become a happier human?

And the list goes on. SOULPANCAKE is trying to modernize spirituality, and I love what they’re doing. Their provocative questions and content let you think about abstract things like God and afterlife and soul within the context of practical, real and beautiful things all around us. It’s fuzzy meets real. Serious meets fun. Spirituality meets self-knowledge. It’s a great attempt to deal with the hard stuff in an easier and lighter and more palatable way. I look forward to following along.

In Zach’s honor, may today be filled with brightness and love and compassion and joy.

What, if anything, guides you through the muddiness of modern spirituality? If you had a question to add to SOULPANCAKE, what would it be?

May 20

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Goodbye “Workplace Wellness,” Hello WORK

A few years ago (2010), I read a book put out by Gallup called Wellbeing: The Five Essential Elements. It outlines Gallup’s Wellbeing Finder tool, which is designed to help people assess how “well” they are in five categories: Career, Social, Financial, Physical, and Community. The book and the model underscore that these five elements aren’t independent entities, but rather intensely interwoven categories. In order to assess one’s wellbeing, each of the elements — as well as the interaction between all five of them — must be evaluated. Hmmm…strinkingly similar to the concept of a wellfesto!

The book is straightforward…not rocket science…but it illuminated one thing for me that has really stuck with me since then and continues to influence my work. Career — in the home, out of the home, however you define it — drives well-being. In fact, Gallup’s data shows that people with high Career Wellbeing are more than twice as likely to be thriving in their lives overall than those who have low Career Wellbeing. This isn’t new news — a 1958 Gallup study found that while the standard retirement age for men in the 1950s was closer to 65, men who lived to be 95 or older did not retire until they were an average of 80 years old.

So what does this mean? To me, it means that the idea of “workplace wellness” is dead. Yes, I love working on the treadmill and eating salad in the cafeteria as much as the next person does, but what matters more is how I FEEL when I’m at work. The well-being conversation should start with WORK — why you work, how you work, when you work, what you do, who you work with (once that’s all set, then the treadmills and salads are icing on the cake). I’d argue that getting to a place of loving the weekdays as much as the weekends is much better for our overall health than a 3-miler on the treadmill at lunch (which of course, until we reach this utopia, doesn’t hurt). And to be clear, I’m not talking about working all the time…I’m talking about creating an ecosystem of work that feels additive, not sucking. One that feels whole, not fragmented.

Our society trains us to think of work as, well, work — something undesirable, something we’re forced to do, something we would avoid if we could. In this paradigm, workplace wellness makes sense (add on the “wellness” to make up for the work). I can’t wait until this model goes away, and we enter a world where the focus is on finding joy in the everyday, being the same person at work and outside of work, meeting on bikes and treadmills, and measuring impact instead of hours. A world where workplace wellness doesn’t need to exist…because work itself keeps us well.

What do you think? This is a personal quest for me, and I’d love to write a longer post/article about this topic, so if you have ideas/thoughts/examples/skepticism, please comment or send me a note!

May 17

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Ten Things That Made Me Feel Happy This Week

1) Our 2-yr-old daughter told me multiple times how beautiful the flowers smelled as I was running her to school in the jogging stroller. And she asked me whether it was winter again because it was raining. It was a deeper than usual…and particularly awesome conversation.

2) I saw an elderly couple riding a tandem home from the grocery store. He wore khakis and she wore a dress. May we all be so lucky.

3) Philz Coffee.

4) My parents arrived for a weekend visit, and I was overwhelmed that they are my parents + friends + teachers all at the same time.

5) I learned something new (check out Michael Pollan’s fascinating new article on microbiomes) and felt better about the dirt on my floor.

6) I wished an old friend happy birthday and for a few minutes, was transported back to being a kid.

7) I ate a strawberry from our garden. It was a little bit green, but it doesn’t matter. We grew it!

8) We had dinner outside and the sky was pinkish.

9) A standing weekly meeting at work is now a standing weekly WALKING meeting.

10) I watched a few Granny Rock videos. I CAN’T STOP!

The learning? Only one of these things was purchased (Philz), everything was close to home, and most importantly…THE LITTLE THINGS CAN HAVE A HUGE IMPACT. Happy Friday!

What brightened your spirits this week?

May 16

4 Comments

Time

A few years ago, I did a graduate school project focused on work/life balance, a concept I now think is much better re-framed as work/life integration. My primary research was at a design firm, where I gave people I interviewed a stack of index cards to sort as they saw fit and then craft into a cohesive story. The cards included words that related to the idea of work/life balance…things like: SLEEP, TIME, GROWTH, FAMILY, MONEY, CHALLENGE, CHILDCARE, SKILLS, ETC. Everyone told a very different and equally fascinating story, but one thing really stood out in every single one: a focus on TIME. It sounds obvious, but it’s something we don’t talk about much. As our lives and careers evolve, the limited resource often isn’t opportunity or skill or experience or connections…it’s TIME.

The notion of time as a scarce resource comes up a lot among parents. Actually, it comes up a lot among people. At work, a friend recently lamented the fact that she needs to sleep for eight hours a night. “I could get so much more done in a day if I didn’t need to sleep so much.” (WHAT?!?!) A new dad told me a few months ago, “I’m trying to figure out how I’m going to stay ahead now that I have a huge responsibility outside of work. I used to be able to outwork people (work more/longer), and I can’t do that anymore…nor do I want to.” Executives complain about not having enough white space to think. And when I talk to friends about health + wellness, the response is often “I wish I had more time to cook…exercise…go on dates…etc,” but I just don’t have any TIME.

There is a lot of truth in this. Time is a limiter (I’ve been having one of those “I HAVE NO TIME” weeks), but there are things we can do to make it feel a bit less scarce. We can organize around impact, we can schedule in some “unmoments,” we can be proactive about spending time on the things and people that matter most to us, and we can look to others for ideas. I recently saw two examples of how people are scheduling their days to optimize their time, and I thought I’d share them for inspiration:

via The Daily Muse

by amber rae, via fast company

Oh yeah, and not to be underestimated…we can be easy on ourselves and simply pat ourselves on the back for what we DO get done, and not what we DON’T.

Do you feel stressed about time, or are you at peace with how much time you have to do the things you want/need to get done? What do you do to make sure you’re spending your precious hours on things that matter to you?

May 15

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Refrigerator Cleanout

photo by bobbi bowers, via flickr creative commons

Growing up, I remember eating some weird meals in the name of “refrigerator/freezer cleanout.” Bless my practical and wonderful Midwestern mother who taught by example that we shouldn’t waste a bite, eating a smorgasbord of leftovers or an unexpected combination of sausage, broccoli and peaches (or something like that) was never out of the question. (Note: the saving grace of these meals was that they were likely to be eaten by candlelight).

In my adult life, I have trouble putting together these random meals (in part because I married and share meals with a man who rarely ate leftovers when we met). But nonetheless, I inherited my mother’s practicality and like the idea of putting what I have in the fridge to good use. I made my favorite fridge cleanout meal last night: stir-fry. I’m sure real chefs would cringe to hear me talk about the prized stir-fry as my “cleanout meal,” but I’m not a real chef. I’m just a human trying to put colorful, real, nutrient-dense food into my body via meals that look pretty and taste good enough to make mealtime pleasurable. So if you’re in the same boat as me, here’s the version of the stir-fry I made:

Saute garlic, ginger, and red onion in sesame oil
Add 2 diced carrots, a handful of sliced mushrooms, a head of broccoli chopped into small pieces, spinach leaves, leftover chicken broken into small pieces
Drizzle soy sauce as cooking veggies and warming chicken in wok
Add leftover cooked brown rice
Mix in one scrambled egg per person
Add spice with a drizzle of sriracha sauce as desired

This took 10-15 minutes to make and tasted hearty and whole and real and (dare I say) interesting. I even had seconds….in honor of my mom.

What’s your go-to refrigerator cleanout meal? And if you’re not into using whatever scraps you have, what’s a delicious and super fast meal you’ve cooked lately?

May 14

3 Comments

Making Memories

photo by counselman collection, via flickr creative commons

“When people say that time goes by too quickly, I generally respond that time goes by at just the right pace. But today, when I think back on the day you were born, that five-year chunk of time seems to have passed very quickly….you’re growing up in an interesting time, as there are lots of social changes afoot (legalization of gay marriage was a huge social issue in the past year) and technology continues to evolve at rocket speed….I was just looking for the email address I reserved for you when you were born and wondered to myself whether email will even exist when you’re old enough to use it….This year has been filled with tragedies in Newtown and Boston and around the world, and every time one occurs, I have to shift my mind away from the fear that it will happen closer to home and find strength in my confidence that you are going to contribute to making this a more peaceful and happy world….I love you with every bit of my soul.”

These are a few excerpts from the birthday letter I wrote to my son last night. Every year on my children’s birthdays, I pour myself a glass of wine and take some time to pen a letter re-capping the past year in their lives, my life, our family, our corner of the world, and the broader world and society we’re part of. My plan is to hold all of these letters and turn them over to the kids when they’re ready to fly the coop…giving them a glimpse into what happened in our lives and in the world as they grew up.

I generally don’t make cakes (I’m a crummy baker) or cool Pinterest-ready gifts on kids’ birthdays, but I do try to “make memories.” Knowing I lacked the discipline to keep up with a traditional baby book, when I had children, I decided these letters would be the way I’d try to connect the dots for myself and our kids. I do this because as time goes on, the events of our days and lives start to bleed together. And an annual milestone like a birthday offers time and space and reason to extract the events and ideas and emotions that stand out over days and months and years and lifetimes and keep them in the forefront of our minds. In the case of the letter I wrote last night, it’s also a great way to help my children (someday) understand who I am…not just as their mom, but as a person. I freely write about my own hopes and fears, my own passions and projects, and my own frustrations and celebrations — to remind myself and teach them about the constant juggling and tradeoffs involved in life….and to remind them that each of us is our own unique person on this planet.

Not everyone likes typing letters like I do, and that’s fine. There are tons of amazing forms of self-expression — songs, videos, drawings, handmade cards, etc. For example, every year on our anniversary, Sean and I pull out a nondescript book that sits on our bookshelf and together jot down a few notes of trips we took, job highlights and challenges, friends we made, things that happened in the world, etc. This weekend’s New York Times featured drawings authors made of their children at specific ages, accompanied by a brief 1-sentence summary of the parent’s greatest fear.

The practice of making memories will look and feel different for anyone who does it, but the point is that taking time to make memories — both for yourself and for your loved ones — can be a powerful way to anchor our past, direct our futures, and knit our common experiences together in really special ways.

What do you think? Do you do anything special to mark the time between birthdays, anniversaries, or even just calendar years? What do you do, why do you do it, and who do you share it with?

May 13

4 Comments

Saturdate

photo by gluioo, via flickr creative commons

Sean and I went for a bike ride Saturday. A 2.5 hour bike ride. Together. We left home together…rode up a mountain together…and rode home together. I know this might not sound that exciting to you, but it was a big deal for us. Most Saturdays we don’t even see each other before noon at the earliest. He’s gone before I wake up and when he gets back, I’m out the door before he can even mix a glass of Gatorade. This is the behind-the-scenes reality of two parents wanting to get substantive weekend workouts in, yet feeling like we should be with our kids during every moment of non-work daylight. It’s very efficient and very…unromantic.

Ever since having kids, I’ve felt like one or both parents need to be with the kids if they’re awake and we’re not working. We even negotiated AWAKE and ASLEEP rates with our babysitter so that we didn’t feel frustrated about paying exorbitant babysitting rates for someone who never even see the whites of our children’s eyes (99% of the time). Rather than go out and bask in the early evening sunshine or catch a happy hour, we usually head out after dinnertime/bathtime/bedtime only to fight off falling asleep in our soup (movies are out of the question after 7pm). So this is why a daytime date (yes, we call a bike ride a date) was so extraordinary.

Don’t get me wrong…this wasn’t our first daytime date. But daytime dates haven’t historically happened very often, and this was the first time I actually asked myself about the why. Here’s the list of trade-offs I could come up with:

PROS: both of us waking up when it’s light outside, going out to breakfast as a family, doing an art project, working out together, feeling happy for the rest of the day, wanting to spend the rest of the day with the kids, kids get to play at park with fun babysitter
CONS: we get a bit less time with the kids, kids “had” to play at the park with fun babysitter

Enough said — this was a true case of quality over quantity — on both the date and the kids front. We had better quality family time (all of us together versus ships passing in the night), and Sean and I stayed awake throughout our whole date. It was a win-win, and while it might not become our weekly reality, it will definitely happen more often from here on out.

If you have kids, how do you feel about daylight babysitting? How do you manage to get your weekend workouts in?

May 10

2 Comments

Work Friends Matter

I had lunch with a friend at work today. Not just a co-worker…a friend. We sat at a sushi bar and talked about our lives and batted around work ideas in a way that we could have done whether we worked together or not. When we got up to leave, I felt better about life, I felt better about work, and I even felt better about the world. I felt more connected, and I felt more like myself.

This brief lunch reinforced Gallup’s research — “having a best friend at work” matters (note: “best” is used here a way to differentiate, not necessarily connoting what we think of as a “best friend”). Gallup talks about why it matters in the context of engagement + productivity at work, but from a personal perspective, I think it’s important to think about how much it matters in terms of our emotional well-being. Spending as much time at work as we do in today’s world, having a friend — or lots of friends — at work makes it easier to be our true, authentic selves. It makes it easier for us to show the highs and the lows…to share what’s working and what’s not…to give open and honest feedback…and to stay emotionally connected to a company and a culture.

So I end this week grateful…to live in a world where as life and work are blending, friendship connects the two.

Do you have a great friend at work, and how has it changed your work…and your life?

Car-Less Fitness

Graduation Season

SoulPancake

Goodbye “Workplace Wellness,” Hello WORK

Ten Things That Made Me Feel Happy This Week

Time

Refrigerator Cleanout

Making Memories

Saturdate

Work Friends Matter

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