Another month, Another Lockdown.
This one was way less of a shock to the system however, you could sense it collectively. We have been here and done this before. Precautions ingrained - masks normalised. All well and good except this means I no longer have the city to myself, a braver tranche of souls is out and about making use of its wonderful facilities. Fair enough, yet another enforced restriction helping me focus on areas requiring attention. A calf injury and limited access to social environments enabled/forced a time allocation revaluation:
- The Value of Origami grew as a tutee requested we delve into the practice, shapes learned include the Elephant (very hard, not yet good), Crane, Butterfly, and Flower.
- The Value of Tennis i’ve convinced myself is high, having recently read the Agassi Autobiography (e.g. on dealing with pressure & maintaining concentration) so we snuck onto a few courts to play.
- The Value of Band Practice is always high - especially for breeding teamwork, creativity, cohesion, as well as cultivating leadership and service to/of others. Rocked some good ones with a relatively new team.
- Living my Values in the product/service choices I make is increasingly a high priority too. This month I switched to Honest Mobile Network (zero carbon) from EE after 15 years and also switched the majority of my index investments to ESG (environmental, social and governance) passive funds.
- The Value of Yoga is extremely high as it helps me complete my daily list and compound gains in flexibility, mobility, strength and breathing with a concurrent sense of spiritualism/connection. I meet with a Yoga teacher friend monthly now to train.
- The Value of Music is of course on the upper most echelon possible. As a form of self expression, collaboration, introspection, and self actualisation - for me - it is unparalleled. Working on the second album so far has been a joy!!
- Value of learning/teaching: I took a coding class from an american tech guy who works at windows. Clever dude but awful teacher. Explaining as you go is crucial!
Persistence has been a consistent theme this month. Plenty of periods have arisen where there was absolutely ZERO energy to purse goals, I did them anyway.
“It is not that I’m so smart. But I stay with the questions much longer.” Albert Einstein
So that’s something. Ha. TBG my mother says I should think/share more about the stuff not going well. Take the rose tinted glasses off for a second and reveal the struggle! Well for a start my teaching this month has been under par, for some reason the insights which usually click (relatively) seamlessly and the fun factor in lessons has been diluted. Really need to think about switching it up with regards to strategies/manouvres which continually motivate high productivity. Also I was struck by the death of the head of Zappos, as well as my cousin getting Cancer treatment. Tony Hsieh ran an online shoe company which excelled in delivering amazing customer service and was bought by Amazon for around $900m. Externally his life seemed rosy, but he ended up overdoing it on narcotics as well as surrounding himself purely with people on his payroll. His mental health played a massive part in his demise, a huge reminder to prioritise that at all costs despite success or failure.
“A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it.” Albert Einstein
