Self-Care Toolkit: #8 Keep Moving with Deliberate intention
“Grab your gear, strap in and go, just move and then keep moving”
Possibly the most important thing for any of us to do is keep moving. Literally move your body and engage your mind regularly in a fashion that’s easy to do. Look to promote solid routines towards good moving habits that are hard to break. The habits keeping you working towards new areas of interest and learning in life----------a deeper investment in your calling or profession but importantly too maintaining your engine that facilitates the work so you arrive healthy at new destinations.
The opening quote sums up the importance of the keep moving concept as it’s intuitive and easy to do, driven by gut feeling and desire that requires little tools or support, just move, just start and you’re on the way to a new destination. When we move, like with exercise, chemicals are released such as endorphins, dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin etc. These chemicals help us feel good and regulate our mood helping to increase optimism, which in turn helps our phycology (our attitudes, beliefs, confidence etc.) to be positive about what otherwise would be a negative situation for us------------we now can spot a fracture in our reality, revealing a new way or approach we can move towards or use.
You might be flying high at work and super busy, rolling into one meeting after the next and delivering result after result. It's all good and you attain all the rewards that the hard work and performance deserve. But your see overtime if you don’t make room for mind and body “Keep moving” practices, your performance and mental health will plateau and then suffer. Remember, that what got you this far, won’t always be enough to keep you moving towards the next destination. Constant re-investment in your holistic interlinked mind and body growth in needed.
If you are stressed and anxious, then exercise and meditation should be at the top of your daily routine as both activities release serotonin which is the same chemical antidepressants help increase in the body. If you have never exercised then this can be hard. Similar with meditation, it can be difficult to master so you feel the effects and usually a lifelong journey activity. Living however with the opening quote in mind, avoiding overthinking while you strap in and move the best way you can is important to do right now. Perhaps start by taking a moving break even if it's only for five minutes. If you can move and build up to at least thirty minutes of intense exercise every day, the type where your lungs are burning, this can help your mental mood up to four hours after exercise. Then boom, it promotes good concentration levels resulting in clear thinking and greater performance. No wonder most top performers have exercise as a part of their daily life, it’s a necessity, it’s a priorty zero task to ensure a consistent quality output.
As we age and without good “keep moving” habits then we are impacting the quality of our autumn years, at a time when we want to start new adventures that perhaps we’ve put off for many years. Growing older results in depletion in muscle mass making it harder to do physical tasks we’ve done in the past, or even move from our seats without a twinge we learn to accept as old age onset. We need muscle for weight control and middle age spread too so it's all pointing to us not putting off what we can do right now until twenty years later, where catching up is then a young person's game in an older person’s body.
There are so many ways you can start new routines to form good “keep moving” habits. The first step is to start asking yourself “How can I?” questions.
For example:
“How can I start to move more and enjoy it?
“How can I find time to read for twenty minutes each day and look forward to it?
“What in my role/job could I spend time researching that would benefit me and the team?”
Or “What form of exercise would I really enjoy doing that I could start right now?”.
Think about your specific questions for your situation and let them sit in your unconscious mind. Your unconscious mind does not deal well with unanswered questions and will strive to find the answer. When the answer appears, don’t over think it, strap in, get moving to keep moving.
