The Art of doing nothing!

One of the lines in my book ‘How to Thrive through Transition’ is ‘Inaction is a decision and choice.’  This comes from my belief that letting circumstances happen around you, not making decisions because they seem too hard and therefore someone else makes them for you and then you complain that you have no control – is actually the choice you make when you decide not to make a choice – we can’t always change what is happening around us, but we can make a choice about what we do and feel in any given moment.

That’s one type of ‘doing nothing’ the other is the enforced ‘doing nothing’ – due to the fact that a broken arm means I’m not allowed to exercise, currently not even go out for walks!  So how does a physical ‘doing nothing’ effect my mind.

To start with I was making plans for setting up my turbo bike to do gentle peddling indoors just to keep my legs moving, and also going out for walks.  This has been set back at least a week by the Doctor, my arm is doing well but my expectations of how quickly a break heals was based on hope rather than fact (Unfortunately there are no Madam Pomfrey’s local to me!) 

As always I am asking myself questions, checking in with how well I’m thinking.  I’m still coaching on line and coached at the running club on Tuesday.  What I have noticed is that because my body is working hard to heal the break, that my thinking tires more quickly and so having more rest breaks from work during the day, keeps my mind working at a high level.  Also just before lunch seems the optimal time to take on any difficult or tricky tasks, which mean they are done well and more efficiently than doing them first thing or the end of the day (and perhaps having to repeat them later – not a good use of time!)

So although I’m ‘doing nothing’ in a physical sense, I have been given an opportunity to find another level of my understanding of me, that when I am back out training I can use to my advantage.  Understanding when to push, when to pull back, when to let go and when to blast it to the end!  It’s what we call an AFLO moment… (Another F***ing Learning Opportunity)

If you’d like to know more about how you can use your downtime to give you more quality in your training and competing then give me a call.