Wonderstate Number 6: Get Moving!

I have been doing lots and being lots for a while now. And I got a little tired! It took a friend who already does this wonderstate of getting moving really well to give me a kick and get back into the habit of using Get Moving as a way to wonder. She reminded me that in order to sustain my stamina and energy, I'd better ramp up the amount of exercise I am doing.

Now I am sure, absolutely sure, that words along the lines of "I'm too busy/tired/clumsy (etc) to exercise" have crossed your lips or your neural network at some point in time. We get too distracted by being busy, being lazy (tv anyone?), being stubborn, being rebellious or being whatever else it is that is your avoidance of choice. And in the meanwhile, our bodies lie fallow, overgrown and underused. The storehouse of energy that lives inside us and is always available remains untapped and we THEN tell ourselves we do not have the capacity to do any more, we are too tired, we deserve a rest... And the storehouse shuts its doors, clicking the lock into place for the night and waits patiently.

We need energy to do stuff. We lament that we do not have it. We tell ourselves that the thing we want to do will take more of this energy stuff than we can possibly have inside us. So we stay small. We stay stuck. We tell ourselves "one day"... The thing is, we do have energy in abundance, we just forget that we hold the key to the storehouse.

That key is just to get moving. Literally. Move. Do something. Stand up. Start. Swing your arms. Sit back down. Stand up again. Circle your hips, wiggle them. Go on, stop reading just for a moment and stand up. Now sit back down. Made you breathe right? Or smile at the very least? If it felt good, do it again! As soon as you take action, especially action that has a little bit of physical exertion, something happens.

The wonderstate of getting moving works to beautifully fuel your day and many of the moments in your day. It is instant, accessible, and free. Have you ever stopped to notice what happens as soon as you've done a little bit of 'hard work'? Maybe you dug out the Hoover and whizzed around the house. Maybe you walked down to the local shops to pick up a loaf of bread, maybe it was just moving laundry from one floor to another. Maybe you pulled out the weeds from between the paving stone cracks in the garden path. Each of these things requires us to expend energy, and here comes the true wonder: every time we do something, everytime we move, we somehow release more energy, and the loop deliciously plays around and around. As Horace puts it: "dimidium facti, qui coepit, habet" or “Once you've started, you're halfway there”.

All of this is just so present because, having had my kick (thank you Rachel), I made arrangements to spend an hour a week at the gym with a wondrous woman (Trinny) who is making me push my physicality to the limit - I come out pink-faced, wobbly and not quite able to walk out as fast as I want to. I also come out smiling, proud and energised. I am noticing, even after two weeks of this just how much more energy I have. I am noticing my tendency to NOT hop on the bus to the station. I am noticing my desire (!) to walk up escalators and bound up stairs. I know how good I will feel at the top of them; a little out of breath to be sure, but also happy that I have loved my body well for a moment or two. I am cultivating an addiction to moving. It's in me and I want to give it space to wake up even more.

Simple things are helping me to get moving in the small moments. I have relocated the 'home' for the tv remote to live ON the mini trampoline (which is now out in the living room again). This is a powerful tool in shifting my mindset!. It makes me question if what I really want is a rest or a move. Do I want to slip into inertia or do I want to maintain momentum? Natural law dictates that "An object at rest is more likely to stay at rest"...and is that what I really want? How will I feel after an hour or more of sluggishly losing myself in the land of TV, when I could just pop out for a walk down the road? "An object in motion is more likely to stay in motion". This simple relocation of the remote means that I am so much more likely to get on my mini trampoline and bounce for ten minutes rather than click the TV on and settle in.

So how can you get moving, to get yourself more energy? What can you do today to energise yourself and set that motion going? Have you got a skipping rope? Can you have a go? Maybe you can just move up and down the stairs / steps in your house for a minute or two to get your heart going? Or reach for the volume control on the stereo and just move those hips and shake that booty whilst no-one's watching. Or get mopping the floor vigorously with a timer, set yourself a little competition as to just how quickly you can get it done! I promise you, there will be a smile on your face as you feel your body respond with more energy than ever to fuel whatever you do next.

And what can you set up around the house that reminds to you to move? What little reminders or tools might you set out for yourself to encourage this wonderstate of getting moving? I've now got my favourite housecleaning CD permanently loaded into the player for just such moments (The Barenaked Ladies - Gordon, just in case you wondered...) Turn it on, turn it up, grab a broom and sweep yourself into energy!

Whatever you choose to do, I'd love to hear what your body energiser was today.

Yours with wonder,

Helena
PS - the mini trampoline I mentioned is my wonder kit of choice in the area of getting moving. Get yourself a PT Bouncer for the best results ever.

The wonder of clearing out the old

This week, in anticipation of moving to an new office, we have all been in various stages of wondering - what will it be like? what can we let go of? what will we need to do when we move? who will we meet? what will be different? what will be the same? what worries can be set aside?

I have become fascinated by the reactions of myself and those around me, and I am in awe of just how beautifully different we all are, and how varied our responses to this forced change have been. I personally am loving the challenge of throwing out 'stuff', letting go of that which no longer is needed or serves me. I am delighting in the idea of the new people, new environment and new experiences that sitting in a different building will bring. It's an adventure. It's a way to wonder.

The wonder of clearing out is that feeling of lightness that begins to come as you fill up bag after bag of recycling, shredding into the past the pages and pages that once were decidedly useful and now have been yellowing in the corners of cabinets. Long lost and lurking files make their trip from drawer to dustbin liner, leaving us wondering what else we can search out to let go of. We had a bit of a festival with the dry wipe markers in the cupboard - who knew they had an expiry date?!

The true wonder of the week however has been just how much the clearing out has brought out the spirit of the explorer in each and every one of us and to what degree. New definitions of 'brave and courageous' are abounding, with 20 or so years of filing being left behind by some. The mood is bouyant. Clean slate is the new buzz. With the lightness has come possibility. The move has gone smoothly, and we are now all settling in, all worries left behind with the files and pages, and newness is filling the spaces we we've created. New friendships, new projects, new connections to play with, in mind and reality.

So that brings me to asking you - what can you clear out of your cupboards, metaphorical or actual? How can you bring yourself to lightness through letting go? And what wonders might come in to fill the vacuum that you create...?

Wonderstate Number 3: Get Curious

Wonderstate Number 3 or "A recipe for getting out of the 'lazies' and back in flow".

You know those mornings where everything is just moving along the way you want it to...the people you are call are there, the appointments are easy to set, the pace is moving along and you feeling effective and efficient and wonderful as a result?
 
Then you go and make a cup of tea. Just to be ready for the next 'chapter' of your day. You are on fire!

And then you get back to the laptop or desk or laundry or hoover or book or whatever it is you have planned as your next thing to 'tackle' - and you just cannot find that spark of efficiency you seemed to have only moments ago. You sit, you stretch, you stand, you lift the metaphorical cushions of your couch to find all that energy, but it's just gone. Vanished! The tea gets colder as you resort to surfing or shuffling things around instead, and before you know it, you are another hour into the day and feeling grumpy because you are now being 'lazy', 'lacksadaisical', 'a wastrel', 'rubbish' (or whatever it is that your inner head voice is choosing to label you right now).

So how do we get back to that delicious feeling of flow? For me, it's wonder state number 3: Curiosity.

When I catch myself in that state, I have learned to get curious. I stop. I look around inside my head or on my desk for something, ONE thing, to get really really curious about. Now when I say curious, I am talking about the kind you see in children who have just found some new thing that they are just fascinated by. They become explorers of the microlevel. Wow, isn't this straw just the best thing ever? It's smooth, it's light, I can look through it, I can bang it on a table without getting shouted at, I can look through it, look! I can see you! I can push it into the floor and it squishes. It makes a sound when I rub it. It feels funny. It gets put in drinks...hmmm. Ooo, I can blow it and it makes your hair move! It's got stripes, I wonder what they do, it's red and white, and it bends, and it's hard to tear; I can blow through it; I can put it in my ear, hmmm that makes the bigger people laugh, I can see a small you - I can SEE you!!! wow....

Curiosity. Go find something to get curious about and get on in there, with full on absorbtion and fascination... before you know it, those questions and observations will be causing all sorts of things to happen inside your brain and your body. Almost instantly, you find you are back in flow, your creativity and drive are back and it's all because the chemicals in charge of that flow have been given a kick-start by your curiosity.

You see, curiosity is an emotion and all our emotions are connected to the body and the brain and the cool thing about that is that we can learn to  control those chemicals and choose, yes!, choose to get in flow whenever we want to. Just by kick-starting that curiosity cycle again.

Curiosity: Go ahead, roll the word over your tongue, say it out loud and move it around in your mouth. The word comes comes from the Latin; curiosus 'careful, diligent, curious' (akin to cura "care") and is an emotion linked to natural inquisitive behaviour such as exploration, investigation, and learning. Scientists observe that humans and animals alike have the quality; it's that old and that ground into us! It's just there, ready for us to use and we can choose it whenever we want to.

We use the term 'curious' to denote the behaviour itself, being caused by the emotion of curiosity. As this emotion represents a drive to know new things, curiosity is the fuel of study and one way to get in flow. So, start to wonder 'how long will it take me to Dyson up that staircase?'; say 'I wonder how long it might take for Bill to call me back?' or even 'what can I say in my message to make him call back sooner...?'; 'I wonder what Mary will say when she gets home and sees I've cleaned up the kitchen for her...?'; 'I wonder what I can write to make the board understand how important this is for our company...?'.

Here's my recipe for getting curious and back in flow:

Ingredients required for this recipe are:
An egg timer + focussed attention + a bit of playfulness + the words "I wonder..."

(If you don't have an egg timer that pings, maybe use your mobile phone's alarm or something like that - I just like egg timers because they are fun and make a noise!)

The best way I have found to get curious, to experience curiosity is simply to say 'I wonder...?' and then add whatever the best question is for me at the time. Right now, the 'I wonder...' questions that I am asking myself are:

• 'I wonder where do I make this blog entry end?!'
• 'I wonder how I can make the best of the next 5 minutes?' 
• 'I wonder how much more I can write in the next 5 minutes?',
• 'I wonder how I can make the instructions live inside you so you remember to take 3 or 5 or 7 minutes out to wonder?'.

You can make it fun too. When I am out of flow, I now use one of the cute little tea timers that I bought in a shop in Copenhagen: I have a 3 minute wonder (green tea), a 5 minute wonder (black tea) and when I am really going for it, a 7 minute wonder (herbal tea). You could just set your egg timer. For those of you that do, I can almost guarantee, it will make you jump when it pings! Flow does funny things to our perception of time.

Get absorbed, get curious and it won’t be long before you are making another well deserved cup of tea, feeling excited, happy, pleased with yourself, and probably full of curiosity about the next thing...

Yours with wonder,

Helena

Full to bursting...

Tonight, having spent a day in the sunshine with Tabita and Karen, I wonder at the nature of family and friendships...how my sister can be such a good friend and how my good friend can be a such a sister to me. The lines blur, we are caught in the web that is community. I am left in awe, filled with the kind of wonder that fills my heart to beyond brimming. This kind of wonder is energising, refreshing and altogether supportive. We all need this kind of heart wonder - the kind that allows us to connect to our hearts, to sparkle inside the skin, to feel truly bigger than the bodies that contain us. We need to expand inside of ourselves and feel that bigness so that it makes us come alive, all smiling beyond any need to do so, in a just because kind of way.

When did you last have that full to bursting feeling? What was it that got you in touch with that joy, that delighted you so much that you just had to smile?

Some thoughts on good intentions and how habits are easy to let go of...

I used to write a newsletter. About 7 -8 years ago, I got into a fabulous habit of pulling together everything that was catching my interest, and putting that into words and pictures. I then sent it out to everyone I knew. Eventually I thought I might as well throw it all into a blog of some sort and let lots of others share that joy...only I think I let technology get the better of me, and I surfed my way out of a good habit, all the while holding great intentions to re-start my efforts 'at some stage'.

Well, tonight I unearthed my blogspot - one I set up when I decided that surely this web of the world would allow me to do more than I'd been doing for those two years. So for those of you that know me and miss my updates, hello again. For those of you stumbling onto this page with little or no knowledge of what you are doing here: Welcome! and finally to those who know me now but have never had the joy of the phoenix missive that used to arrive monthly, well, you'll have an inkling of what to expect!

What is grabbing my attention at the moment is wonder, it's what is currently taking up thinking and feeling space, I'm wondering about how we get in touch with that state of wonder inside us. I am sure you know the kind of wonder I am talking about...That feeling that raises hair on the body, that springs the heart wide open to the point of it exploding from being so full, that state that is just so full of curiousity that we forget to be shy or modest or ...whatever it is for you.

I know I experience these states of wonder at least once a day if not more, and I am beginning to learn that I am lucky in this as I have recently been canvassing people on how they get to this wonderstate in their lives. Not that often or that easily seems to be the common opinion. Now, I am a believer in wonder. I know we can all have moments every day that allow us to go all goosebumpy at the very thought of something magical. What is more, I believe it is something you can design in and that it's available to each and every one of us.

I have decided to explore this more fully over the next little while, and I'd love you to join me on the journey....more on wonder tomorrow.