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Head & Heart – 2 September 2016

September 2, 2016 By Clare 2 Comments

Over the last week or so, I’ve tried to practice more conscious consumption of information. I have a love of learning and it’s easy for me to spend hours listening to podcasts, reading blog posts, and following endless internet rabbit holes. However, I’ve noticed how little of this information I actually retain, and even less is translated into some action in my life. As Derek Sivers said, ‘if information was the answer then we’d all be billionaires with perfect abs’.

So, what I’m trying to do is commit to not consuming anything without also producing. This doesn’t have to be something significant or public. It can just be a couple of notes in my DayOne journal. Already I’m noticing how it’s made me more selective in what I consume, and I consume less. I guess it’s like making a deal where every time you eat a biscuit or cake you have to do 10 pushups – it makes you ask yourself, is this cake worth the work I’ll have to do. And doing the work seems to make the consumption feel more worthwhile.

One of the best things I’ve read on the internet lately was Asher Wolf’s ‘Fuck You, I’d Spit in Your Cupcakes‘ and it definitely got me fired up on Monday morning. Becoming a mother has affected my sense of self and my thoughts on feminism and so I very much enjoy reading about other women’s experiences.

Several late nights unable to sleep with a nice viral cough provided the opportunity for binge watching the fabulous You Can’t Ask That on iView.

The other thing I’ve been watching quite a bit this week is clips from Cats the Musical. E loves drama and dancing so I thought she’d enjoy these and I was right. I have very fond memories of seeing it as an 8 year old when the production toured Australia for the first time, so it was fun to share it with her.

I learned that the French have a term for the predicament of thinking the perfect reply too late – ‘l’esprit de l’escalier’ (staircase wit).

This post about attempting to go for 21 days without complaining got me noticing just how much complaining I do! I have too many ‘challenges’ on the go (habits, #100happydays etc) that I’m failing to keep up so am not going to start this challenge right away, but it is something I’m interested in trying.

When I’m sick I’m particularly conscious of practising more self-compassion, and I think that’s the reason that this week I sought out Tara Brach (I started reading Radical Acceptance*) and Brene Brown (I re-listened to her interview on the Tim Ferriss show).

I went and saw Annabel Crabb & Leigh Sales at the Canberra Writer’s Festival last week which was delightful. And this was followed up by a new Chat 10 Looks 3 episode, which always puts a smile on my face.

We’ve had some pretty challenging episodes with E recently. I suspect that it’s just ‘being three years old’, but I could do with whatever help I can get, so I’ve also started reading Janet Lansbury’s No Bad Kids – Toddler Discipline without Shame*.

Last week was Book Week and I’m super grateful for my mum making a gorgeous Gumnut baby costume for E. She also made a Princess Leia costume (which was E’s original request). Yay for amazingly talented family!

Head & Heart are approximately fortnightly posts about what I’ve been reading, watching and thinking about – things I thought were interesting, and that you might find interesting too.

* These are Amazon Affiliate links.

Head & Heart – 10 July 2016

July 11, 2016 By Clare 2 Comments

Once again I’ve found myself several months behind on my regular Head & Heart posts so I’ve decided to try something different. While I enjoy the practice of doing some reflection and documenting what I’ve been doing and thinking, I’m not sure the monthly timeframe is working for me. I feel like there is so much swirling around in my head that it’s hard to remember a month’s worth of content for each post and I feel some pressure (self-imposed) to make the post interesting, comprehensive and mostly coherent. It feels a bit counter intuitive that if I’m struggling to fulfil a commitment to post monthly then weekly might be easier, but I’m going to give it a go. I’ll also give myself permission to make these posts scrappier and less ‘complete’. The goal is here is building a regular practice rather than perfecting a writing craft.

Habit tracking 4/7 – 10/7 (Not a great week – only 7/21 habits completed)

So, in no particular order, here are some of the things I’ve been doing, reading, listening to and thinking about this week…

My daughter Ella turned 3 on Monday. Birthdays are a significant reflection point, and I’ve found her birthdays to be quite emotional as I reflect on how becoming a mum has changed my life and how I see myself and the world.
Not enough exercise, meditation or sleep had me in a funk on Wednesday morning. One of those (thankfully rare) mornings where I’m feeling sad and unable to get out of bed. Staying in bed never helps though. Once I did eventually get up I spent some time clearing my head by mind-mapping (using MindNode – a recent purchase that I’m enjoying using) how I was feeling and why, the things that I know impact my mental health, the barriers to me doing the things that I know make me healthier, and ways to overcome those barriers. Getting it out of your head makes it seem less significant and more able to be actioned. I felt much better afterwards.
Jason and I went on a rare date to see the documentary Minimalism. It was good, but as I’ve been thinking and reading about minimalism for the past year or so, there wasn’t anything particularly new. But one of the most powerful things in it was a statement from author Patrick Rhode which was something like ‘the easiest way to deal with the overwhelm is just simply to turn it off’. This really struck me, particularly because I have been feeling quite stressed and overwhelmed lately. It made me think of a sink that’s full of water and about to overflow. Instead of trying to find ways to manage the water in the sink and keep it from overflowing, perhaps it’s easier (essential?) to first turn off the tap.
I finished reading The Coaching Habit. If you’re new to coaching or you’re a manager wanting to have better quality interactions it’s a good read.
Emi Kolawole’s post on learning how not to be angry was good and her thoughts and advice about how to look after one’s mental health resonated with me.
I did session 1 of the C25K program (using the Run5K app). Feeling excited to get back into running which I know is good for my mental and physical health.
I listened to Mia Freedman’s conversation with Natasha Stott Despoja on the No Filter podcast. Natasha made an interesting comment about multi-faceted women (specifically how difficult she thought the media/public/established political players found it to respond to a multi-faceted woman – someone who could be on the cover of a magazine AND have a serious policy debate on Lateline).
I’ll also include in these posts a screenshot from Way of Life of how I’ve gone with my 3 priority habits (bed before 10.30pm, meditate, 30 active minutes). This week wasn’t great. Only 1/3 completed. I reckon that it’s about 2/3+ that I need to be hitting to be functioning well and maintaining good energy and mental resilience.