Basic Training Update
My four weeks of Basic Training are just about to wind up. In case you are very good at math or paying close attention, YES, it has been more than four weeks since I started. The beautiful thing about Basic Training, and this particular spreadsheet, is that it is fully adaptable. If you have sick children for a week, if you are sick, if you just forget, if it becomes overwhelming, if you decide to rebel for a day, YOU CAN JUST START AGAIN WHEREVER YOU ARE (as you can see in the photo of my spreadsheet, I stopped and started more than once).
If you get started and decide, hey, I don’t think dancing every day is a key to my wellbeing – or it is not the most important key to be focusing on at this point – YOU CAN CROSS IT OFF! Just cross it off. Leave the list on the fridge, with a big line through dance every day and that’s that. Dance if you feel like it.
If you get started and after one week you have a much better understanding of what activities might really work best, and they are different from the ones on your chart, YOU CAN START AGAIN!
(Caps are meant to indicate enthusiasm, no one is shouting here.)
For me, the most important lessons from my “four weeks” of Basic Training are that:
1) I can meditate!! That “monkey mind” that won’t be quiet when I try to meditate?? Noticing the incessant chatter of my brain is the whole reason TO meditate! If you try and your mind just won’t stop THINKING, congratulations! You are alive! Just keep practicing ; )
2) Setting aside 10 minutes each day to play an instrument is, essentially, another form of meditation and incredibly soothing to my body, mind, and soul. It feels like getting a brain massage every night after the kids go to sleep. And it usually turns into more than 10 minutes.
3) Turning my attention away from electronic devices by 9 pm each night has been difficult to stick to, but I notice that my life feels much, much better if I adhere to this practice. Not sure what to do after 9? [Insert joke about sex here]. I use my time after nine to read, play music, fill notebooks, have conversation with my husband (remember conversation?), organize stuff, or, if all of those just feel like too much effort, I just go to sleep. I use my phone for guided meditations, so I have started a meditation on my phone after 9 pm and still given myself credit (because I make my own rules!).
4) I am still struggling with wake times but am hoping to make a big push in this area when the clocks change. I am also hoping that the next phase of the program will help with waking. And I notice that screens off after 9 makes a big difference with the ease of waking also.
After completing Basic Training, our next stage is going to be focused on energy. Just so you have some concept of what I have in mind for The Jenny Goodguts Super-ish Hero Training Program the components will be some versions of:
Module 1: Bad Guys 101 – Loop-o
Module 2: Allies/Good Guys
Module 3: Lair/Hideout
Module 4: Secret Weapons
Module 5: Super Powers
In Module 1 we will slightly modify the spreadsheet, but we will keep paying daily attention to most of the Basic Training activities and add some new tasks to specifically look at energy drains and try to plug some energy leaks.
If you haven’t yet started Basic Training, the spreadsheet and explanation are available here.
Module 1 should be ready to launch next week (I hope!). If you have finished Basic Training, print your spreadsheet again and keep going on your Basic Training activities until Module 1 is ready.
My Song
I wanted to give you an update on what’s up with the song I wrote last week.
I know what I am about to report is small beans in the world of the Internet and Facebook. But it is big beans for me. So, as of this morning, my song has at least been ‘seen’ by 489 unique visitors – that’s definitely the most of any song I’ve ever written. I’ve had 2,796 page views this month, which is not my ‘biggest’ month, but it is a pretty big turn out for me. It is a bit dangerous to look at statistics like these because they have the tendency to make you want to make the numbers bigger. I don’t know if wanting bigger numbers is nature or nurture, but it definitely feels exciting to see numbers getting bigger (unless you are looking at a scale or the price of home renovations, for example).
So it seems like I’ve written a song that not only I like but some other people do too. I’m thinking about a way to record it so that I (and anyone else who wants to) can have the song as a music file instead of having to listen from the website each time. Will let you know when I figure it out. I have some other songs I’ve been working on. They are not all in the same vein as this song. I will share some of them. They are almost ready.
