There they are, smiling, happy while being pampered, taken care of and for once not the having to do the pampering. It’s their time, the one time a month where they are the centre of attention and they enjoy it. And why shouldn’t they?

What am I talking about? Well, women and their beauty salons of course. Each day when I go for lunch I walk past one of these places and today was the first time I actually thought about why women do what they do. These are my conclusions.

Women are…

… generally more compassionate, caring and thoughtful than men. I can only draw experience from my own situation. Johanna, my precioussssss, seem to always be one step a head of me. Whenever she goes to a store it’s more often an exception that she will not bring something back for me. She does this almost all the time. Yet when I go to the store a do it because it’s function derived from the lack of something in the house. We’re out of this and that, so I stop by the store and get it. Rarely does it cross my mind I should think outside the immediate need and sperhaps combine it with a little gift for Johanna.

Obviously this is only one thing of many that she does. At home she’s always the one to think of making little treats, or perhaps boil us some cups of tea and sit outside on the veranda enjoying a quiet moment of peace, tranquillity and us-time . The difference between her and I is that she does it to spend time with me, or more accurately, for US to spend time together. I seem to have some sort of attitude that my mere being and presence is enough. I realize now that I too must make an effort to show my appreciation for her. Not by carrying out some regular housework and expect her to love me for that. No, I also have to show my appreciation through means that are outside of the regular “pattern”, tokens… small gifts of appreciation.

What Men are forgetting…

… is that while we are taking their compassion and thoughtfulness for granted we must understand that they too, women that is, need the same affection returned from us. We shouldn’t be thinking that hoovering the floors is a token of appreciation for our beloved. It’s a frigging household chore… we should be doing that regardless, not as a way to state, or make explicit, our love.

Women want…

… to be appreciated and sometimes be the centre of attention. And why shouldn’t they? They take care of us everyday and I know myself take this for granted, although I am making an effort to show my appreciation, but I still have a long way to go before I’m on pair with Johanna. The hairdresser/beauty salon, it’s a way for a woman to get some well-deserved pampering and attention for their ever increasingly demanding men… it’s not all about “this is what women do”, it’s simply a distraction, a way to be … cared for.

It’s funny what thoughts can be conjured up when walking past a hairdresser…

… what Men Don’t Do!

I believe the reason for all the make up, cloths, beauty places and so forth is a result of the lack of attention they get in their own homes and we, the men, are partly to blame for this. Clearly it stretches somewhat beyond the home into media, social construction etc. but still, we need to take responsibility for our women. It takes so little, but can yield so much… a well-meaning long hug, a flower picked from a morning walk or why not plan a simple, but cozy evening at home. Buy a bottle of wine, attach a little card with a message of an evening of relaxation and no work. Cook, make the dinner and just pamper your woman until she’s happily purring away in your lap…

Wow, it’s been quite a while since I last wrote, roughly two weeks. But, here I am, with some new experiences to share. My idea of blogging isn’t so much about regularity, or even consistency, as it is about exploration and self-discovery. If I have nothing to say, I won’t force anything out, just because I “should”. When I first started this blog there was so much I wanted to share, so many thoughts and ideas. While in the beginning I claimed to write only for me, it was a half-truth. In reality I had an agenda and the plan was for this blog to generate a little side-income … haven’t we all been there?

Anyway. I’ve kind of dismissed that idea and will now use it for sharing perhaps more worthwhile experiences rather than continually ranting about this and that. Perhaps it will actually be more useful. So, without further ado, todays blog post: The Handbreak Effect.

The Project – Story Backdrop

I’m currently working in a big project as a project manager for a sub-project of the big one. I manage about 15 people and have done for about 7 months now. It’s unfortunately an incredibly messy project, and when I joined they had already been at it for about two years. Yeah, the project have now been running for almost 3 years, and still not managed to deliver anything. From an early start it seemed to me as if they had done absolutely everything wrong and I think, after seven months I was right. Requirements have never been properly set and baselined, stakeholders seem to not actually really care about participating in their own project and on it goes.

I had to start from scratch, and try to figure out what we were actually meant to be doing. Looking back, what I should have done when I first realized that the project was in such a bad shape was to pull the break and say, STOP!

Pulling the Handbreak

Unfortunately we don’t do this often enough, ever. It’s so easy to get fixated on a goal, deadline or target and almost completely loose sight of what’s going on around us. We allow ourselves to be consumed by the chaos around us, stubbornly continuing as if stopping is not an option. In reality it might actually be the most effective, and even necessary, solution to bring order to the chaos. What might seem like chaos may in reality actually only be what I refer to as localized chaos. If we step back, or simply stop, approach the situation from a birds eye perspective we might realize that the chaos is not really chaos, it’s really only about lack of clear communication or sense of direction.

Chaos is in my opinion generally only something we experience if we’re in the middle of it. If take a few steps back, or actually, move closer to what we believe is the center we might actually get clarity. I believe chaos is only a consequence of unresolved issues, or problems. It seems to me we have a tendency to circle around a problem never quite reaching to the core. It’s like a round-about where each time you try and turn off another car pulls in front, forcing you to continue driving and on it goes. But if we simply stop, which may seem like a crazy thing to do, it might allow us enough time to figure out how to get out of this circle and then approach the problem from a different angle.

Overcoming the Problem

More often than not, problems can be overcome as long as we don’t approach it like we normally do. To do that we need to pull the handbreak and reassess the situation. If we were to continue moving forward, we’re diverting attention and it will become incredibly difficult to see the situation for what it is because our attention is not at the actual problem but rather the chaos. We might be concerned with the demands of those around us, and loose sight of what’s important.

Obviously a better solution is to never get into this situation to begin with, but that’s a fools statement. All it takes to find oneself in a “bad” situation is to make enough small changes, for a long enough period of time and what at first seemed unlikely may now in fact be likely or even reality. More often than not we’re successful when we do an “iterative” development process which should mean small changes, often. One big, revolutionary, change rarely succeeds. It’s the combination of many small changes that allow us to build something. Ops, got carried away here, better return to the topic at hand.

When we’re faced with chaos we need to realize that the chaos is not the problem. The real problem is that we allow ourselves to stay in the chaos not taking that very important step back… if on the other hand we do allow ourselves to step out of the chaos we can better observe what we perceived to be the problem and actually more easily identify what needs to be done to solve the “chaos”.

Chaos is a consequence of our inability, or failure, to change our perspective. Handbreak, step back and reassess.

This morning I managed to reach a personal goal in my physical strength domain. One month and 12 days ago I set out to improve my physical strength. I did this for a couple of reasons: a little bit of vanity and more importantly because I’m deskbound behind a computer screen pretty much all day long. As you might understand it’s not exactly physically draining to type on a keyboard. Over the years my back have been come increasingly bad and if I don’t do anything about it now I’ll be screwed when I get a bit older. I’d prefer to avoid that thank you very much.

Then and Now

42 days ago I could barely manage a meager 20 push-ups, today I managed to push through on to 50! Yes, I’m proud of myself, and I’m not shy of admitting that. For the first time, in … probably ever, have I stuck with something, continued through the shitty days and the good days, not once giving up. Why did I manage to follow-through this time? Honestly, I don’t really know. I think it might be related to all the introspection work I’ve been doing over the last year or so. I’ve thoroughly analysed myself to try and understand who I am and what I want from life. Achieving goals have never really been part of that and when I’ve tried I’ve given up at the slightest bit of resistance.

The lesson

Over the last couple of months I’ve learnt two very important things that have allowed me to build momentum and motivation. Patience and perseverance. These have been key to unlocking my potential and it sounds cliché, but, patience is a virtue. I’ve said to myself that it’s okay if I don’t notice results immediately. I’ve told myself that no matter how hard I try, results will eventually show up… it’s almost impossible for your body to actually become weaker.

While patience may be one aspect of reaching a goal, perseverance is another. There have been days when I’ve felt like total shit, barely wanting to get out of bed. I guess self-dicipline is also involved, but anyway. This morning I felt rather ill after coming back from my morning walk. Screw it I thought, let’s do it tonight instead. But, as quickly as I tried to dismiss my morning workout I said, screw that… do it now, not matter how bad you’ll be. Well, the rest is history.

Perseverance (I like the word, even the look of it) has really, and perhaps obviously, helped me to reach some of my goals. I’m quite excited to see what things will look like in a year from now.

The title of this post is provocative and that’s intentional. This is not about physical wife/husband abuse, but something most of us do on a daily basis. The idea for this blog-post came to me when I read a blog post from miss-best. It’s about the food we eat, and the way we generally treat our bodies.

Our bodies, as I’m sure you’ll agree, are quite amazing. The things they can do amazes me every day, yet we take them for granted. Never do we appreciate the amount of work they have to go through each day to keep us alive. Clearly we couldn’t go walking around thinking about that all the time, but it’s a good exercise to take a few minutes and just ponder about it.

The sad thing is that we seem to believe that our body can cope with anything we put it through and the most common form of abuse comes from the food we eat. From an early age we are indoctrinated into thinking about food in a certain way. I’m talking about cooked food. A huge portion of the foods we eat today are cooked. We’re in some sort of cooking frenzy. The mantra seems to be that if you’re going to eat it you cook it. I’m waiting for the day we start cooking our salads… hopefully that day will never come.

Heat kills

Take anything, anything at all. Heat it up and you will most certainly change it in any number of ways. The molecular structure of pretty much all that we know of is affected by heat. Some things, like ourselves, are very sensitive to temperature change and even just a few degrees will make us very ill. The same thing goes for food.

Take any type of food and I’ll bet you that it will be very much affected by changes in temperature. Plant a seed and you’ll have to care for it like it was your own child. Nurture it, feed it, water it, all to ensure healthy growth. Neglect it and it will die, take note on the last word, DIE. This goes for pretty much anything that we would consider food.

So, assuming food dies when heated (as made obvious by the above mentioned observation) why would we cook the food we eat? Clearly, not everything goes away when cooking, but wouldn’t it be rather foolish to assume that it’s not affected by the heat? It’s empirically proven that food is affected by heat, yet for some misguided and unknown reason, we don’t make that connection when preparing food in our kitchen.

Somehow we’ve manged to survive for quite a long time eating cooked foods, how could that be possible? I believe the answer is due to the massive amounts of food we eat daily. Even if much of the food is changed or destroyed, there’s still some left and that’s how we survive. But the dead food has to be processed within our bodies somehow, and perhaps it will be treated as a foreign and dangerous entity which our bodies will attempt to eliminate. It’s not that hard to believe, is it?

Most people also don’t exercise at all and I wouldn’t exactly want to say that we’re healthy. There are so many diseases that affect, and kill, us daily. What we’ve done I wouldn’t want to call survive, but something else I can’t even name. We’ve spread. That’s what we’ve done. Through “modern” medicine we can trick our bodies, at least for a while, to think that it’s healthy and functioning, but in the long run, I believe we’re only playing with the inevitable death.

Introducing raw food

So,what’s my point in all this ranting? Well, I quite recently began eating more raw, uncooked, foods. It’s amazing how quickly your body will adjust to a “healthier” diet. As you introduce more natural, unprepared, foods into your eating habits the less “crap” you can get away with. I’ve experienced this first hand. Previously I could put pretty much anything down my throat and be okay with it. Sure, I’d be constipated for days, but hey, isn’t that normal anyway?

Today, since introducing more raw food, I get away with very little, especially if I eat something “naughty” in the evening. Potato wedges will make me hungover. The day after I’ll have a headache, feel sluggish and generally quite lethargic. Never did I feel that way before. Perhaps I’ve gotten weaker? I don’t think so. Thing is, I’ve began to listen to my body. What most people don’t realize is that it will tell you pretty much anything you need to know about your state of well-being. All we have to do is start listening and observing.

I never cared much for my body before. Sure I wanted to look good so I worked out, ate protein powder (because clearly that’s what makes you big, sigh). Listening to my body? No, never did that. Today I allow myself to listen to my body when something is wrong. It’s funny how we’re always told that listening and communication is so important when it comes to normal relationships, but we’re never really told to listen to our bodies.

We’re strange

So, my conclusion is simply that we humans are a most peculiar race and I’d even dare to say, rather stupid. Sure we’ve made some technologically amazing advances, but when it comes to our bodies, we’ve not exactly done the equivalent of the moon-landing. We are the only species on the planet that cook food, and drink the milk of other entirely different species. When it comes to food we simply don’t seem to get it right. Hopefully one day we’ll be intelligent enough to realize that cooking food, wasting energy on eating meat and drinking the fluids of other species is plain stupid in every conceivable aspect.

Until then…

In Sweden we’re moving towards much darker times (literally) and it is getting increasingly difficult to get up in the morning. During the summer months you don’t feel violated when the alarm clock rings, but now, fumbling in the dark after the beeping spawn of the devil is a somewhat different experience. My previous trial, getting up early, have certainly had a few bumps in the road since the sun decided we had had enough light for a few months.

Not wanting to keep hitting the snooze-button I decided to try and ‘fix’ this by getting myself a sunrise simulator and yesterday was my first time using it and it was rather pleasant.

Lumie sunrise simulator

The version I decided to get is called Bodyclock Advanced 200. It’s a product by Lumie and to be honest, I have had no previous experience with them or even these types of products before. What I like about this clock is that it feels solid. The cover is actually made of glass (in this model, cheaper ones use plastic). The digital display is clear, with green solid text. The display will dim at night (which is good) because it’s actually kind of bright.

Unboxing the product, while not terribly exciting, is usually a good indicator of the overall quality.  There is nothing to complain about here. A neat little manual with clear instructions of how to configure the device. Well, I did not intend for this to be a review so I’ll stop here. If anyone is interested in more details feel free to ask and I will happily try and provide the answers.

The first night (and eventually morning)

My expectations were quite high and would hope for some amazing results. I was hoping that I would wake-up, with no tiredness whatsoever, jumping out of bed with a smile on my face. The experience, obviously, wasn’t exactly like that, but certainly not as bad as it normally would be. I set the clock to be fully “risen” by 5:10 am, and I also decided to use the built-in alarm (sound) just in case. I woke up when the alarm (sound) went off and to my big surprise I actually felt it was time to get up. The normal hesitation and magical pull of the warm bed wasn’t there. Over a period of 30 minutes it had slowly increased the brightness from nothing to full and let me tell you it is kind of bright, but a with a very … soft light, not intrusive at all.

My energy levels seem pretty normal and I did my usual little snooze on the train to work, but it was actually, now that I think of it, a more relaxed and light snooze. Not like yesterday when I twitched like the girl from the ‘Exorcist’ falling in and out of sleep. Felt sorry for the person next to me that had to endure me bopping from side-to-side and suddenly giving off a growl and a few crazy hand-movements. You know, the usual kind of falling-asleep-on-the-train-type-of-twitching.

The future

While it’s obviously a bit early to say whether or not it has improved my sleep and wake-up routine I intend on making some sort of concluding thoughts in a month or two. For now I’m just happy that when I wake up it feels like a good time to get up.

But why is it so difficult? To appreciate the things we have. Why do we seem to always look to those that seem to have it better, rather than those that have it worse? I live an incredibly fortunate life with a roof above my head, a wonderful caring girlfriend, a job with great colleagues… yet I seem to long for a different life. Why is that? Why couldn’t I just take it easy, sit back, relax and enjoy the ride. No, not me. I constantly try to find things that I can change, improve or remove.

I don’t think I’m unhappy, and I know this for sure when sitting on the veranda of our house on a Sunday morning having a cup of hot tea and Johanna next to me. It’s an utterly and total bliss. The peace, the solitude and the wonderful surroundings. When spending time like this I feel extremely content and happy. Unfortunately too little time is spent like this and I really wish I could find a way to do this more often.

Much of my time is spent travelling to and from work and I’m currently stuck in the 9-5 rut. I’m a consultant and the firm I work for is great, I get to enjoy plenty of freedom which means I’m much more happy working. But the current assignment is getting rather tiresome and being desk-bound is beginning to … well, not exactly excite me anymore.

Anyway, again, here I am, complaining instead of appreciating. The actual work I do is pretty interesting, and I’m learning so much and for that I should be grateful. This is precisely what I mean when I say it’s so easy to start complaining instead of appreciating. Need to try and condition myself to try and find the positive aspects of something I experience as negative. Should be a useful exercise.

Concluding with an exercise

As a concluding little exercise I wanted to quickly list a few things that I’m particularly grateful about. I’m grateful about …

• … having a loving, caring, affectionate girlfriend to share my life with
• … having a generally illness free life
• … weekends and snuggles
• … early morning walks
• … languages and the written word
• … living in a house that is ours (at least on paper)
• … all the people that never seem to stop trying to change the world to be a better place
• … technology (especially ‘the Internet’)
• … mother earth and her natural, stunning beauty that never seem to cease amaze me
• … music and dance
• … and finally, SMILES!

What are you grateful about?