Tag Archives: musings

The 1-minute rule

I have always known that I was secretely lazy. Don’t get me wrong–I’m a very hard and responsible worker when outside factors are pushing me, like school, or a job. I’m a performance and approval driven person (and trying to get over it . . .), so if there’s a boss or teacher who needs to be pleased, I will do whatever it takes to get the job done. However, when it comes to motivating myself to do things that only I may care about . . . that’s another story. Earlier this year I journaled about it–I had just joined the gym near our apartment and was contemplating my new life of regular exercise:

“I want the infusion of energy that regular exercise brings, but this is also a chance to exercise discipline over myself–because with no external motivation, I appear to be naturally lazy. This was reinforced 2 weekends ago when my frustration about the state of our apartment was driving me mad–the mysterious brown piece at the back of the microwave, the 3 spots on the kitchen flor, the loose thread hanging from our library chair . . . so I had a small breakdown and threw myself into an emotionally charged, frenzied cleaning. At the root of it was the frustration I felt with myself for letting all these little things nag away at my soul and yet failing to take action! I was amazed at my laziness and appalled that I hadn’t just taken care of those things when they first bothered me. Most of them took a minute tops to put aright.”

My resolution after writing all this down was to do what I want. It sounds selfish initially, but with a deeper reading you’ll see that it’s really about self-control and discipline. If I truly want a lovely, clean home, I should be faithful to that desire and follow through to make it happen. It’s a way of being true to myself. I still struggle with it, don’t get me wrong, but I’ve found it helpful to identify what my true and deep desires are, and then to commit myself to working towards them to the best of my ability. For example, I want to be cute and sexy at home. I have a secret fear of becoming an unkempt wifely mess at some point in my life (greasy hair, soiled bathrobe, possibly fleas and/or lice) and I truly want to look as best as I can for my husband. However, my tendency is to throw on that pair of baggy, disgusting sweat pants that are now about 10 years old. I don’t know why I gravitate towards them–I just do (does anyone else have this problem?). So what is more important? My desire to please my husband (which also helps my own self esteem) and be the cute and attractive wife? Or my desire to feel the comforting existence of those pants surrounding me in all their baggy glory on a daily basis? I need to weigh my desires and choose the ‘true’ or greater one, and pursue that.

On a tangent, I’m not saying baggy sweatpants have no place in a marriage, or that wives shouldn’t dress to please themselves as well, or that being sexy and comfy aren’t compatible–hopefully you see the point beyond the example. Your case could, in fact, be the opposite–you feel oppressed by what you think you should look like and trapped by a sense of obligation to your spouse, and wearing those sweatpants could be a move towards freedom for you! Let each woman (or man! No discrimination against male readers!) know herself.

This also means that you have to have a good understanding not only of what your deep desires are, but how they relate to each other. Many times I have to prioritize one over another. I’ll give a kind of obvious example: I desire to be a good homemaker and have a clean, beautiful, peaceful house. However, I also value hospitality. I grew up in a very open and welcoming home, and I greatly admire my Mom’s ability to randomly take in large groups of people on very short notice, or take in a stranded person for Christmas who doesn’t have any family close by–and to do it all with a smile and a genuine enthusiasm and love for her guests. Large batches of homemade pizza, big pots of Pozole, or a paella were whipped up in the kitchen, beds were made, fresh towels laid out. Let’s be honest–hosting a large group can mean your house will soon become a messy, chaotic place (though I have high hopes of discovering the top-secret workaround to this otherwise universal truth via the Martha Stewart magazine). I desire to be hospitable, and I desire a clean and orderly home–the two desires in this example are in conflict. At that point I have to examine them and say ‘which is more important to me?’ And for me, hospitality trumps order. It’s more important for me to take in the 6 woebegone friends who are stranded in Chicago because their flights were canceled than to turn them down but keep my house clean and perfect. I would prefer to have luggage strewn all over, blankets layering the entire span of the livingroom, and a precarious pile of blow-up mattresses, than to have peace and quiet and not extend the hand of love to these friends.

This is hypothetical, since (unfortunately) no friends of ours have been stranded in Chicago. But I secretely hope that someday we’ll get a ‘freebie’ visit via living so close to an international airport.

I read a rule in a book called “The Happiness Project.” The rule essentially states that if it takes less than 1 minute to complete a certain task, you shouldn’t put it off. I think this little rule is extremely helpful, because it eliminates all the clutter of tiny things that you tend to leave undone until they’ve accumulated into One Massive Task. For example, last night my husband and I snuggled under a blanket on the couch. We watched a movie, drank tea, and then headed to bed. I knew that leaving the blanket on that couch in a messy pile was just going to depress me the next day when I encountered the ‘chaos’ in the morning light. I could have chosen to leave it because I was tired and just wanted to crawl into bed–but instead, I reminded myself “this will take 20 seconds tops”, folded the blanket, and felt much better about the general state of things both that night and the next morning. The mysterious piece of brown something in the back of the microwave that I journaled about took all of 10 seconds to wipe out and throw away–but I let it bug me every time I opened that microwave for over 3 weeks. I hereby proclaim that next time, I will simply grab a paper towel and deal with it on the spot.

It’s surprising how quickly those little details (especially the ones that relate to the house) can get under my skin and make me irritable. The 1-minute rule has been really helpful to me, and I hope it will be for you, too. But this little trick is part of a greater lesson that involves knowing your heart and pursuing what you truly desire with all your strength.

New muscle in the house

So a week and a half ago I wrote this post expressing my fears surrounding the 2 hour exercise block I have involved myself in on Mondays at our local City of Chicago gym. The second hour is my beloved yoga class from last year, but the preceding hour was the dreaded cross training/conditioning class (aerobic exercise, conditioning, and weights).

I promised an update . . . so here it is: I love it. And it hurts. And I love it. And it hurts. It’s Wednesday, and I can still barely walk up and down the steps to the train platform.

The class setting helps so much. When I’ve tried to make myself do aerobic exercise on my own (jogging, the elliptical, etc.), I spend half the time fighting against my own desire to stop. It’s the most gigantic mental battle for me. “You can stop in just 5 minutes! C’mon, just 5 minutes and you can totally be done with this ridiculous business!” I promise myself slyly, knowing in my secret inner being that I will have to keep going for at least another 20 minutes. Self-deception is the only way I can trick myself into going longer and harder. And it’s a hard game to play, turning yourself against yourself. However, when there’s a teacher involved, I don’t even toy with the idea of stopping. I’m a teacher-pleaser and I always have been, so instead of fighting a battle of the wills with myself, I can just focus on doing what she tells us and taking myself to the limit. During the yoga class afterwards, my legs were shaking so badly I could barely hold a warrior pose.

And now for the big announcement: after week #2 of this dynamic combo, I have just discovered a new muscle.

For real. After my class this past Monday I was at home, looking in our hallway mirror and wondering whether I was going to get some hot musculature at some point. And lo and behold, I suddenly saw a new muscle about a finger’s length above my left knee! I flexed my leg a few times just to make sure it wasn’t a trick of the light, and there it remained. The rounded shadow of a small bulge.

At first I wrote it off as some kind of swelling produced by the intensity of the exercise. But as I did my devotional last night with my legs stretched out in front of me, there it was again! I bookmarked my place in Colossians and set my Bible down in order to inspect this new anatomical wonder with the care and attention it deserved. Right there in front of me was a little curve that has never been there before. And yes, it’s only on one leg. “Baby!” I called to my husband. “C’mere and look at this muscle on my left leg!” He came, he observed. “I think it’s new!” I exclaimed. I think he thought I was joking. “No seriously, this is my new muscle from my cross training class!” I explained enthusiastically, flexing my leg back and forth for maximum effect and pointing vigorously. “Dontcha see it? Dontcha see it?”

I put the question forth–what is this mysterious new muscle? And why has it shown up so quickly? Does it have a name, and is this name ‘Fred’?

I have done this small drawing because I know for a fact there are some doctor type people in my lovely assembly of readers. Could you please identify this body part and get back to me as quickly as possible? Should I be worried? Elated? Or is it all just a figment of my overheated brain? Will new muscles continue to crop forth week after week? And more importantly, when will my right leg also have a Fred on it?

OK, that sounded kind of weird. But you get my meaning–symmetry is important in this whole legs business.