Hartstown is on the outside of Blanchardstown and has a small parkrun in the community park that is also alive with football on Saturday mornings. The parkrun is easy enough: two laps and very flat but it is just running around a field. Luckily, I was there on their 9th birthday and scored two pieces of delicious homemade lemon drizzle cake.
The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph is a nonfiction book by Ryan Holiday. I really enjoyed his book Ego si the Enemy so I had been meaning to reard this one for quite a while.
In the book, he puts forward the case for stoicism. In particular, living our lives in the philosophy of perseverance and acceptance. Expect the worst while trying to achieve the best and almost never give up. When things do go wrong, accept that it happened and be determined to rebuild.
In some ways, this is one of those books when, once you have the title, you really have the book. The text itself is just an elaboration, and part sales pitch, on why you should do what the cover says: see obstacles as your path to success rather than something to be avoided.
The book is broken down into many mini lessons. Many of them useful, although some difficult to see how I would integrate them into my personal development work. For example, Holiday urges us to buil resilience by training our physical bodies. I’m currently trying to figure out whether running is a useful tool for maintaining my mental health, or I’m literally running away from my problems. Most likely it is both.
He also puts forward the idea of the pre-mortem. Before you even launch your project, imagine how it has gone wrong and why, so you can troubleshoot problems before they even begin. This sounds like a really useful tool in business. But also dangerous when used in our personal lives for those of us who are high in trait neuroticism.
Some bits are both depressing and inspiring. The more successful you are, the more obstacles you encounter. Behind mountains are more mountains. This reminded me of that meme that suggests being an adult is just a series of “I’ll get just through this and then I’ll have a break and recover” endlessly for the rest of our lives.
I did really enjoy the idea that beyond acceptance, there is feeling great about something because it was meant to happen. The idea that when a relationship breaks down, we don’t get the job we want, or something else unfortunate happens, we reframe it as something that will ultimately turn out to be a positive force in our lives.
Wim Hof wants us to tracend our limits and push ourselves outside of our comfort zone. He is known as the ice man and held several records for running on and swimming under ice.
I tried to push beyond my limits and finish the book. But I failed. I did however test The Wim Hof Method which says that if you take a cold shower of 1-2 minutes per day for 10 days, your heart rate will drop 15-30 bpm. It did not work.
I’m now hack having warm showers because they are much nicer. But I don’t dispute that they can be a useful tool in acclimitiing to cold water.
When I was young, printing was high quality. Printers used sharp fonts and everything was easy to read.
Now, for no reason, the entire industry has started using low quality blurry fonts that are hard to read.
Elina and Venla were in Finland last week to see the family. As well as catching up they went to a bouncy castle thing, built a snowman and met Santa. Everyone is a lot more grown up than last time we were there!
This month, I’m hosting a daily series of classes on the theme of resilience. We’ll be doing movement, breathing, mindfulness and meditation classes with a new one every day and all free on YouTube. You can subscribe to the Holbeck College YouTube channel to get all of the classes.
We were hosting my parents this week. It was lovely to see them and have them here. We did a birthday meal at the Step Inn. I was too ill to enjoy it unfortunately but the food was delicious. We also managed to fit in a trip to Johnnie Fox’s and plenty of walks, too.
Last weekend the Worfolk family took on Marlay parkrun. It is the biggest one in the city and very well organised with plenty of marshalls, a PA system and an organised warm-up. It is also a single loop with only one realy hill in it making it very attractive.
Everyone laughed when England made it through to the knockout stage. But we were minutes from beating South Africa and ultimately came home with the bronze. Well done, lads.
Just wanted to say a big congratulations to my mum who ran her first ever 10k at the Abbey Dash yesterday. She also raised over £500 for Age UK! You can continue to contribute to the fundraiser here.