Habits Change and Inertia

Hey There Friend!

A week before my scheduled summer vacation my mother suffered from a mild stroke.  Luckily, she's okay.  

It really could have been so much worse. 

Basically it was a scary wake up call.  

Wake up calls can be jarring and unexpected. 

A reasonable response would be, can I just hit the snooze button?

Well, in this instance it made me jump into action without a second thought. 

For a moment there, I thought I would have to cancel my vacation plans and fly straight to Colorado to spend time with my mom and help support my aging parents.  

As a family we worked it out so that I could still go backpacking in the Goat Rocks Wilderness, enjoying some lovely time gazing out across a truly breathtaking valley, pondering powerful ancient volcanoes and snow capped mountains while smiling in awe at hillsides covered in wildflowers.   

Then I had a quick turn around after coming out of the mountains and was off to the airport by 2:45am the next morning. That was an epic day…

My mom ended up in the hospital for the second time in ten days that evening and I didn't get to sleep until after midnight that same day.  

PSA: If you have asthma please carry that inhaler around with you wherever you go! 

So here I am, writing to you from the dining room of my parents home in Evergreen Colorado.  Contemplating what it means to grow older, regardless if that's entering your 40's or entering your 80's.  

One thing that's sticking with me is just how powerful inertia can be.  

It's so hard to change habits, especially as we get older. It's so very helpful to choose your habits wisely, and with great intention, so much easier than changing them later (especially decades later) 

Thoughts about getting out of Inertia…

Take advantage of natural transitions when habits get shaken up anyway, and use that as a time to cultivate other meaningful changes in your life.  When necessary, actively create a bigger environmental change to help assist with bigger habit changes.  

For example, I've been saying to myself for a while that I would like to run a 5K.  Now, I've done almost every sport or fitness method under the sun but I have never considered myself a runner.  As a Yogi I thought it was downright bad for you, but now I think it is, in fact, a really vital and efficient way to get exercise.  

So, I am taking advantage of a big shift in my living situation (I just moved into a new apartment) and I have a whole new running routine and route planned out. 

Watching my parents face the potential of life altering medical events, and continued changes to their mobility and cognition is really driving this idea home to me.  Use it or lose it with your body and your brain, and cultivate a lifestyle that gives you no other option but to stay agile, fresh, and curious is an honorable life skill that really is a lifelong process of growth and evolution. 

Prompt…

Where are you stuck in inertia?  Do you keep telling yourself you'd like to change, but then don't?  It could be super small and simple… like adding a protein bar instead of a sweat treat as a mid-day snack...

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In Movement and Stillness

-Linnea