The Blog of Glenn Edley

Walking along the road pushing Alba yesterday I realised there is no reset button for life. There really isn’t.

All you can do is take all the experiences you’ve had, examine them, learn from them, and choose a new track.

Not doing the above is like changing lanes on a busy motorway without looking first. You might get away with it once or twice but more than likely a car will be in your blind spot and chaos will ensue.

And why would you want a reset button? You have a learned so much just to get to here it would be a waste to lose that experience and knowledge.

If you are not on the track you thought you would be I know a person who can help you right now. They are very close by. You might even be able to see them in the reflection of the screen you are reading this on.

That’s right, that person is you. If you can’t see yourself too well go and take a look in a mirror. The person looking back at you has all the knowledge and experience to change lanes at any time. No need for a reset button. Just think about where you want to go, look for the big signs, and make sure you’re in the right lane.

This week’s image.

I recently decided to do 10,000 push ups this year. That sounds a lot, it is, but it’s not as hard as you might think.

Why 10,000 push ups? I consider myself an experiment of one. I am my own laboratory because unless I try something myself I would feel unqualified to tell others about it. So I thought what’s an exercise that will change my body shape and I can do it anywhere. Push ups. Perfect.

How did I choose 10,000? Well it’s a big number, until you divide it into the days of the year left. There were 295. So 10,000 divided by 295 = 33.898. Therefore to do 10,000 push ups this year all I have to do is 34 push ups every day. I choose to do 35. It’s a cleaner number for me.

Tools for the goal are myself and a calendar to mark off the days I complete the push ups. Pretty simple.

How easy is it to do though? I’ve been doing them for nine days now and it’s not as easy as you might think. You have to get into the habit of doing 35 push ups every day. Every day. Things get in the way. I’m tired, busy, and whatever else my mind throws up as an excuse. I have been doing them all at the same time and I do variations. Some ways are really hard. Try doing them on dumbbells.

What do I get out of this goal? I will have changed my body shape. Cool. I will have done some strength training every day for 295 days. Excellent. I will have done what I set out to do and show if I can do it anyone can. AWESOME!

Have a great week and choose a simple goal. Want to lose weight? How about a goal of one less piece of bread a day or one less food item with wheat in it. Or one minute of skipping. What you will get out of achieving your goal will be the knowledge you have the strength and will to do anything. That is life changing. You will never be the same again.

My best.

Glenn

This week’s image is animated. If you can’t see the guy from Wikipedia doing push ups click the Read Online link above.

Yesterday I plugged our camera into my laptop and boom, I was back to the dark ages. My laptop’s hard drive was fried.

I was alone. The usual panic, followed by swearing, and then a sense of relief.
I have been using Dropbox and moved almost everything there. Yay! All my photos and lots of my documents were safe.

My planning worked.

The interesting thing is that planning for this was something I started and it kept going quietly in the background. I just got on with my life, while in the background things were happening that would save my stuff.

Here’s the part that was tough: making the decision to do it and then DOING it. It was a pain for a few days. But now, so worth it.

This week, think about about planning from a different angle. Think about it as cruise control in your car. It maintains a constant speed that means you don’t get a ticket and leaves you to focus on the road ahead.

Because focusing on the road ahead means you might get an extra second or two and be prepared when something goes wrong.

My best.

Glenn

This week’s image
 

Yesterday saw the wedding of Lauren’s cousin go off without a hitch as Auckland put on one of its finest days.

Weddings are generally a great time. Families get bonded together, fathers make heartfelt speeches, and mothers get to bask in the glory of a job very, very well done.

Today however is a little bit more special than even that. It’s our second wedding anniversary and what an awesome day it is. Exactly like the day we got married.

The UK traditional symbol for your second anniversary is paper. Not much to go on with that I thought but I learned a new skill to through it – Origami.

Bit of a mish mash of things this morning and I’m in a huge hurry to get out the door. So excuse any spelling or grammatical mistakes and have a great week.

Remember though it’s not only at weddings or on anniversaries you should say nice things or go to some effort for your loved ones. It doesn’t take much. A smile might do. But do something, it will pay off in spades.

My best.

Glenn