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Ever the fearless, but never the fearful fares the better in a fight; 'tis better to be glad than in gloomy mood whether all is fair or foul. Fáfnismál, verse 29 To his friend a man should bear him as friend, and gift for gift bestow, laughter for laughter let him exchange, but leasing pay for a lie. Hávamál, verse 42 ================================================================================================= Courage and truth, the first two of the Nine Noble Virtues (not a bad set of things to aspire to, all in all). I stumbled across these a long while back and they rooted themselves in my mind, though until now I’ve never really paid them much attention. Now seems like an appropriate time to start moulding my life into what I want it to be, and it lines up with the Nine Noble Virtues quite well. To start, I’ll need courage. Maybe I won’t quite be ‘ever the fearless’, but if I don’t let go of some of the fear I’ve been hanging on to then I’ll never fare well in my fight. And what better partner for courage than truth? Uncomfortable though it might be, if I don’t start being honest with myself about how much I go off the rails during my downswings then I’ll never be able to move forward. So here we go. Courage Goals Physical: Get weird with training. Actually running an OCR drummed it in better than reading about it did: regular training ain’t gonna cut it. So out I go to run in the rain, to pick up suitable looking rocks and logs, to do burpees in the middle of a burn, to make use of the playpark in the early hours of the morning. No need to be afraid at what passersby might think. Aim: 2x weird training sessions weekly, 10 in total Reward: An increased ability to deal with adverse conditions. Mental: Cold adaption. Yes, it’s a handy thing for someone planning two winter OCRs, but my body could use some toughening up in general when it comes to the cold. So it’s time to enforce cold showers. Aim: Daily cold showers. Reward: If six consecutive days of cold showers are completed, day seven can be a warm shower day. Social: Daily check ins. Not just here. I’ve gotten very good at hiding away again, and that’s never a good thing. Time to break that habit. Aim: Daily check in wherever I have any kind of social presence. ***I didn’t count on the NF forums updating the format and it being so… painful. The lack of contrast between background and type in some parts physically hurts to read and while I have been trying to ignore it, the longer I spend on the site the more pronounced the nausea gets. I’m sure (I hope) they’re either still in the middle of updating or there’s a way for me to alter the colour scheme myself. If not (or if this is just my admittedly less perfect eyesight giving me more grief) this is definitely going to impact how much time I spend here.*** Reward: Feeling a little less lonely and isolated is the a reward in itself. Truth Goals Budget: This kind of got away from me. Now, after a fairly sharp shock from actually checking my bank statement, I’m reigning it back in and calling on my years of surviving on next to nothing to give me a little help these next few months. I learned how to track down the best bargains and how to make things last, and as soon as I found myself in a better financial situation I let that go a little. As soon as the stress hit I let that go completely. Aim: I have a weekly food budget (and multiple supermarkets to pick from helps massively here), a weekly household goods budget, a weekly ‘other’ budget, and my monthly expenses (things like bills, rent, and repayments) to stick to. No exceptions. Reward: This time around there will be no tangible reward, but the knowledge that I’ve begun to build a savings buffer will provide some comfort. Diet: I’ve gone in two different directions at once here. On one hand, when I have late shifts I’ll come home and cook up some chicken and veg. On the other hand, I’ll buy crap with the intention to make it last and devour it in one sitting. Guess what? Not good. Aim: Stick to the food plan I’ve created for myself day in and day out. Again, no exceptions. Reward: ...eventually the cravings will go away? ================================================================================================= There’s no disguising that this is essentially a cold turkey, health by brute force kind of approach. It’ll be hard. But if I don’t go all in then I’ll never make lasting changes. I can do it, and I will do it. Like I said before: shit is going down, but I am not.