Lights, Colors, and Compartments

The new morning routine was amazing!  I am so full of energy this morning.  My 1x Tabata consisted of:

1 - Side Lunges x8 10lb dumbells

2 - Dumbbell Calf Raises x?

3 - Side Lunges x8 (10lb dumbells)

4 - Jumping Knee Tucks x22

5 - Sit-ups x12

6 - Spider-man Pushups x10

7 - Sit-ups x10

8 - Spider-man Pushups x8

The dumbbell calf raises did not work out very well, I will have to find something else to stand on, like a block of wood.  The side lunges felt a little awkward, I will have to review the proper technique.

Who knew 4 minutes of working out would make such a big difference on my entire morning?!  Talk about getting off on the right foot.

I have mentioned before that I currently workout in the basement at home in my boxers. :)  I actually workout in the theater/family room/office/kid's play area.  This is the half of our basement that is finished, we pack a lot into the giant room.  To add to the ambiance of the room, I installed a crown molding on the soffit that runs the length of the room and placed an LED light strip behind it.  The light strip came with a controller that lets you set the color of the light from afar.  We have used the color lights in the past while watching movies (usually set to a dim pearl color), or playing video games (depends on the game, I prefer green when playing as the rebels in Star Wars games), or playing cards/board games, etc.

I am one that believes colors have an influence on our psyche.  So, as I was setting up for my morning workout, I set the lights to a nice deep red.  Now, this is the only source of light in the entire room, so everything is washed in a nice red glow.  When I was finished with my workout, I flipped the lights to a nice rich blue as I did my emotional and spiritual workout.  Blue came to mind as a calming color.  Blue and Red just happened to be the colors that made sense to me.  Here is what I found out about the two colors and the effects they have on us (source):

Red

Red has been shown to increase blood pressure and stimulate the adrenal glands. The stimulation of the adrenals glands helps us become strong and increases our stamina. Pink, a lighter shade of red, helps muscles relax.

Blue

In contrast to red, blue proves to lower blood pressure. Blue can be linked to the throat and thyroid gland. Blue also has a very cooling and soothing affect, often making us calmer. Deep blue stimulates the pituitary gland, which then regulates our sleep patterns. This deeper blue also has proved to help the skeletal structure in keeping bone marrow healthy.

Looks like my choices where spot on.  However, I may try Green for my emotional/spiritual workout tomorrow morning...or maybe for my stretches.

Green

Green is said to be good for you heart. On a physical and emotional, green helps your heart bring you physical equilibrium and relaxation. Green relaxes our muscles and helps us breathe deeper and slower.

Day Tight Compartments

I am in the midst of a complete lifestyle transition.  Almost all efforts put forward thus far have produced very satisfactory results.  In the mindset of continuing down this track, I have opted to switch the audio book currently in my playlist from a fiction title to a non-fictional self-improvement title.  This morning I began listening to How to Stop Worrying and Start Living by Dale Carnegie.  This will be my third time through the book, I absolutely love it.  It is full of rich information on how to improve one's life.  The first chapter of the book directly relates to my lifestyle change.  Here is the excerpt I am referring to:

In the spring of 1871, a young man picked up a book and read twenty-one words that had a profound effect on his future. A medical student at the Montreal General Hospital, he was worried about passing the final examination, worried about what to do, where to go, how to build up a practice, how to make a living. 

The twenty-one words that this young medical student read in 1871 helped him to become the most famous physician of his generation. He organised the world-famous Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He became Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford-the highest honour that can be bestowed upon any medical man in the British Empire. He was knighted by the King of England. When he died, two huge volumes containing 1,466 pages were required to tell the story of his life. 

His name was Sir William Osier. Here are the twenty-one words that he read in the spring of 1871-twenty-one words from Thomas Carlyle that helped him lead a life free from worry: "Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand." 

Forty-two years later, on a soft spring night when the tulips were blooming on the campus, this man, Sir William Osier, addressed the students of Yale University. He told those Yale students that a man like himself who had been a professor in four universities and had written a popular book was supposed to have "brains of a special quality". He declared that that was untrue. He said that his intimate friends knew that his brains were "of the most mediocre character".  

What, then, was the secret of his success? He stated that it was owing to what he called living in "daytight compartments." What did he mean by that? A few months before he spoke at Yale, Sir William Osier had crossed the Atlantic on a great ocean liner where the captain standing on the bridge, could press a button and-presto!-there was a clanging of machinery and various parts of the ship were immediately shut off from one another-shut off into watertight compartments. "Now each one of you," Dr. Osier said to those Yale students, "is a much more marvelous organisation than the great liner, and bound on a longer voyage. What I urge is that you so learn to control the machinery as to live with 'day-tight compartments' as the most certain way to ensure safety on the voyage. Get on the bridge, and see that at least the great bulkheads are in working order. Touch a button and hear, at every level of your life, the iron doors shutting out the Past-the dead yesterdays. Touch another and shut off, with a metal curtain, the Future -the unborn tomorrows. Then you are safe-safe for today! ... Shut off the past! Let the dead past bury its dead. ... Shut out the yesterdays which have lighted fools the way to dusty death. ... The load of tomorrow, added to that of yesterday, carried today, makes the strongest falter. Shut off the future as tightly as the past. ... The future is today. ... There is no tomorrow. The day of man's salvation is now. Waste of energy, mental distress, nervous worries dog the steps of a man who is anxious about the future. ... Shut close, then the great fore and aft bulkheads, and prepare to cultivate the habit of life of 'day-tight compartments'." 

Did Dr. Osier mean to say that we should not make any effort to prepare for tomorrow? No. Not at all. But he did go on in that address to say that the best possible way to prepare for tomorrow is to concentrate with all your intelligence, all your enthusiasm, on doing today's work superbly today. That is the only possible way you can prepare for the future.

This entire excerpt is a metaphor for the change I am going through now.  My line of thinking has adjusted to a point where it aligns with the daytight compartments.

How do you eat an elephant?  One bite at a time.  

How do you reach your goal weight?  One meal at a time.  

How do you expose your stomach muscle?  One workout at a time.  

To me, living in daytight compartments means one thing, 

FOCUS ON TODAY!