MBS #4: Soul Food
Hey hey hey!
Yet again, I’ll give a basic rundown of this week. Then, we’ll dive into the Soul part of the challenge! Not a ton of housekeeping, so lets jump right in!
This week:
Pretty consistent week. I hurt my ankle/calf (probably running) so I took a few extra days off the ‘Body’ part. I’m not too worried about it - I’d guess that going from not really any hard activity to 6 days a week (3 runs, 3 lifts) is a bit much, so I’m just counting these extra days off as part of the taper up. Mind-wise, I felt good. I wrote this essay on how I’m feeling right now (spoiler: pretty great) which you should check out. I’m trying to make it a video essay, and when that happens I’ll share that as well. There was a moment where I felt quite “blah,” this past week - hard to capture if I’m being honest. I continued the reading streak this week - it’s been fun, even though I know my book-a-day rate is gonna drop off as I both work through all the short books I want to read and start traveling.
Thoughts on the Soul.
I’m ginger - I sold my soul a long time ago (do you think someone can naturally be this charismatic, good-looking, funny, hot, and humble??).
Okay, the main two parts of taking care of my soul were journaling and meditating. I think Soul might be a bit of a misnomer - I wonder how many of you thought I’d be diving deep into religion - but it felt like a good way to capture the sentiment of mental health/mindfulness/self-care. More importantly, Mind Body Soul sounds a lot better than Mind Body mental health/mindfulness/self-care. What would that acronym be, anyway? MBMHMSC? Nah. It came to my attention that I could do “Personal Objectivly Measured Development Project” (POMDP) since life is a POMDP but I haven’t decided yet. I guess for now I’m associated with the Saudi crown prince :/.
With that out of the way, let’s get to it.
Journaling thoughts:
I’ve kept journals before, but this is by far the most active I’ve been (my first “real” journal entry was June 14, 2017, which was like 2284 days ago, but I haven’t journaled daily since then). You could argue I’m keeping 5 right now (a personal journal, a gratitude/development journal, a journal for notes on books, my lifting journal, and burner notepads for miscellaneous thoughts). Having somewhere to put my random daily todo’s is nice, taking notes while reading is good, and tracking my lifting on paper has been helpful, but I’m gonna focus this email on the two most quintessential: my personal journal and my gratitude journal.
First, my personal one. I wake up, open my journal, draw a line, write today’s date, and then start writing. I don’t have any explicit goals/things I want to write about. It’s unstructured. In the mornings I tend to write about how I slept, what I have coming up that day, and any thoughts from sleeping. In the evening, I’ll write a little delineation separating my morning from evening, then debrief the day. I’ll explore what I ended up doing if I liked it, and sometimes (not daily but way more frequently than in the morning) I’ll dive deep into something that’s been sitting in my head (think jealousy, what job I want, my crush on your mom, bigger plans like a trip, something important in the future like a big event, thoughts on a friendship, anything). The evening sessions tend to be longer because of this.
The other journal I’m keeping is called “A Season of Life” and it’s a book written by Dr. Ana Yudin. I’ve been enjoying it. The premise is that in the morning you write
10 things you’re grateful for
5 goals
3 things you’re doing for self care
Values you’re focusing on
Then, in the evening or the next morning you debrief the previous day by writing
Your mood
A kind thing you did for someone
A kind thing someone did for you
A moment of connection
Something you’re proud of
Something that sparked joy (I love this phrase - “Sparks joy” is superb)
A beautiful experience
3 lessons
Your day in one word
It sounds like a lot more than it is. If I’m not daydreaming/zoning out, neither takes more than 5 minutes. I’m liking it, though. The structure is good and it feels more forcing (in a good way) than my simple personal journal. I think that knowing it’s meant to be finished in 3 months makes me more reluctant to stop early/skip a day.
If I could only choose one, I’d choose my personal journal. But I do think guided journaling is really helpful. I just think it’s less fun to reflect on (I have more fun now looking at my old unguided journals than old guided journals). If I didn’t have it, I wouldn’t do gratitude journaling or anything related. And it does feel nice to think about the things that have gone well through my day.
Meditation Thoughts:
I’ve been using the waking up app to guide my meditations - I’ve only ventured out alone a couple times, to disastrous effect (I forget I’m meditating and daydream for 12 minutes). When I started, meditation felt soooo easy. But honestly it’s been the one thing that has felt like has gotten harder over the past month. I feel like I’m trying to grab an oiled up bowling ball rolling down a hill or something. I just can’t quite get it.
I think part of this is that I’m now more aware of random thoughts that bubble up in my head. So maybe what felt like meditation was really just thinking before. Focusing on just my breath is hard. Literally multiple times a second some random thought is in my brain. It makes me wonder if I’ve ever even been able to listen to people talk. Even when I focus on something now (ironically writing things like this email is mostly an exception - maybe thats why I enjoy it so much) I notice that instead of thinking about it continuously it’s more like I think about it and all the things around it and just keep coming back.
For example, if I think purely about surfing (like doing a specific maneuver) then I think about what board I’d wanna ride then I think about shapers then I think about living in hawaii then I think about driving to the beach then about surfing (the maneuver) again then about surfing in SF (and giving Ryan the heimlich) then about getting my leg cut up on the reef in tahiti then about Kelly Slater then about some movie I watched where these kids tried to make it pro and the best one broke his foot walking on rocks and none of them made it and then about snapping my favorite surfboard then about surfing again. That was stream of conscious, btw.
And that occurs for everything, I’m noticing. Especially when I try to avoid it. Like when I’m meditating.
I don’t feel bad about it, though. Everything else in this challenge I’ve done before. And meditation is the one thats not like the others. So it makes sense that it’s the hardest for me to pick up.
Next week I’m gonna give an overview of the month+ that I’ve been doing this (I started on the 14th of August) and then talk about what comes next. I hope you’re not tired of these emails already because they certainly aren’t stopping. I’m expecting that the main changes I make will be
1) hours-based reading goal instead of books-based reading goal (that feels much healthier). I
2) maybe 5 total exercises a week (2-3 lifts, 2-3 runs, lifts can be calisthenics) just so it’s easier while I’m abroad. I think the main thing is keeping momentum - if I lose steam because I can’t accomplish some unreasonable goal then that defeats the whole point.
3) I’ll be back on social media soon prolly. I kept the spirit of the “no insta, snap, yt, etc” this past month, but won’t continue it. I’m not sure what I want my social media to look like? I can’t imagine wanting to spend more time on anything specifically - I didn’t feel like I was missing anything this past month - but my thirst traps won’t post themselves. Genuinely I do like the creative outlet socials give me.
With much love and more affection
Tristan
Things happen: You should NOT use balsamic vinegar instead of olive oil when you make eggs (or probably anything else) even though the containers look almost identical. I started to clean up the tracking sheet - it’s now partially color-coded. I’m making a YouTube channel (and these emails will soon be joined by weekly vlogs). It’s a canon event - you can’t stop it - plus, for those who weren’t privy to high school me, I’ve always been partial to photography, and this just feels like an extension of that love (I get to write, make dumb jokes, and use my camera)!
Watch my runs & stuff on Strava
See what I’m reading on Goodreads
Check my Activities tracker