Dynamic Movement, Dynamic Growth, Dynamic Life

Dynamic movement creates a dynamic life. The more dynamic the movement the more dynamic the life. You have the power to elevate your energy and generate new energy by simply moving vigorously.

No Excuse Worked

I was really tired. It was around 6 pm and I’d been sitting all day working, plus hadn’t slept well the night before. This combination created a sleepy fatigue that I’d been fighting much of the afternoon. “If I could just get this one more thing done…”

Although I knew how to turn it around in an instant with exercise, which is what I usually do, on this day I let the fatigue be my excuse. So instead I struggled for hours, pushing through my groggy foggy brain to keep on working.

Finally at 6 pm it was time to stop fighting the fog and either exercise or call it quits for the day altogether. It was very tempting to call it a day and laze around watching TV because I was “too tired to do anything else.”

But in playing out that scenario, there was no excuse I could come up with that was good enough or rang true enough… that I could live with. Because while it was true that I was tired and I had an excuse, I knew there was a greater truth. One that has never failed to prove true.

Only a Decision Away

I knew unequivocally, that I would be glad after exercising, even though I didn’t feel like it… even though it would be hard. No excuse I could think of would help me feel better about a decision not to.

“OKAY! Just 6 times up and down our hills”, I thought. I usually do either 6, 8 or 10 rounds for 4-10 miles of 40% hills. So… to do 6 rounds was the easiest of my usual biking workouts. Once on the bike it was hard as I panted up the second hill, and I considered maybe doing just 4 rounds under the circumstances.

But once into the ride… the magic began to happen. It always does. Always.

It’s All in the Story

Once we engage, the magic begins, UNLESS… unless we tell ourselves another story. If while biking I had been saying and thinking thoughts like, “this is too hard”… “I’m too tired”… “I don’t feel like it”, and all the negatives (all of which would be true), that would have anchored that tiredness more fully into my psyche and body.

Instead, as I pushed myself to do what I didn’t want to do, and then reinforced that decision by encouraging myself and my body. “Yes you can!”, “Grateful that I can ride a bike up hills”… “So grateful for this bicycle”… “Grateful for these wonderful tree-lined hills right out our door”. Etc.

It Never Fails

As encouraging gratitude thoughts and favorite energizing exercise music filled my head, I began to pick up speed. As I picked up speed and pushed harder against the gravity of resistance, more energy flooded my body. This hard push was followed by the gloriously refreshing breeze of the downhill ride, where each downhill coast was a victory lap.

After six rounds, I told myself I could do two more after all. Everything after the commitment of six rounds up and back was a bonus. After 8 rounds, I told myself the same thing… “just two more…”. And so I did, for a glorious 10 total rounds when I didn’t want to do even one.

After struggling all afternoon, I had turned around the entire energy system of my body from just one decision and a few minutes of dynamic movement. There I was ready to give in to tired and not exercise at all.

Transformation

Once I committed to doing the minimal, more energy was made available. The moment I released the victim attitude and changed the story, my body cooperated to help manufacture more energy. My body was awaiting my command to be more tired, or to get energized.

In that moment of positive decision I created more energy than was there before. Energy was manufactured from the ethers of effort and attitude.

Our bodies are energy factories with built in generators and transformers. We can take an idea and decision and in minutes create more energy than was there before.

A muscle is created through action… like thoughts… like art, it is a manifestation of energy.
~LeAura Alderson, cofounder-iCreateDaily.com®

Metamorphosis

Once you truly grasp the profound physics at work here, it will change your life. Pushing through when you don’t feel like it signals to your mind and body that it is capable of more, and so it is. Dynamic movement generates dynamism that bolsters all areas of life, beginning with the physical.

That’s why so many fitness folks can seem annoyingly chipper. It’s because their entire energetic system is more dynamic, so they are too.

Like Magic

And here’s part of the magic: it’s all the more positively powerful when you convert a negative into a positive. Negativity energy and thoughts are heavy and sap energy. We’ve probably all experienced being around a negative person whose energy is draining to be around. It’s the same for the negatives within our own system.

Transform your energy and you will transform your day.

That day when I pushed through to 10 rounds when I didn’t want to do any, on my last couple runs I was so elated and positive, it’s like a flood gate of ideas opened up and poured into my mind. Some were fantastical ideas for the iCreateDaily brand direction, which is something I had been stuck on. That gush of positively charge energy wouldn’t have happened at all if I had given into tired and victim.

When we convert negativity to positivity the metamorphosis is powerfully elevating, creating more than was there before.

When we push through negatives and convert them to positives, amazing transformations begin.
~LeAura Alderson, iCreateDaily.com®

Movement is Life

The dictionary defines life as growth. Growth is essential for life. 

A dynamic life demands dynamic growth. Dynamic growth creates a dynamic life. Try walking, dancing, skipping, etc., with dynamism and energy. You will notice the difference it makes in your overall energy and vitality almost immediately.

“Health is not the mere absence of disease, it is a dynamic expression of life.”
Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, spiritual leader, humanitarian, author, b.May 13, 1956

Only a Minute Away

Exercise is the quickest and easiest way to generate greater health, fitness, energy, optimism and creativity. And vice versa. The quickest and easiest way to compromised health and happiness is the way of excuses.

The more excuses we make, the more we have to, in much the way one lie leads to another.

You are just one minute away from more energy, vitality and creativity. Dynamic movement doesn’t just energize your body and circulatory system, exercise also stimulates greater creativity.

“Movement is a creativity catalyst.”
~Chase Jarvis, Creative Calling

Comfort in Balance

Sure, exercise isn’t easy, but it is through challenges that we grow. Growth can be uncomfortable and disconcerting because by nature, it moves us out of our comfort zone. We need periods of comfort. Comfort is the night’s rest that restores for the next day. Comfort is the rest stop on the long journey… the R and R or much needed vacation.

But comfort in balance. To stay in bed too long… or to linger at a rest stop delays progress, which makes us restless and ill at ease with ourselves. Day after day of not energizing the body through dynamic movement will not make it or us more capable tomorrow, next week or next year.

We have the freedom to choose not to exercise, but that freedom will impinge on our freedom of health and vitality. The more we engage in dynamic movement, the greater our energy and health. The greater our energy and health the greater our creative capacity and experience of life.

“True nobility is being superior to your former self.”
~Ernest Hemingway, writer, author, 1899-1961

Discoveries Just Outside of the Comfort Zone

About 13 years ago, around the age of 48, I started working out with a personal trainer. I had been exercising on my own and made a lot of progress, but there were still issues to resolve. Namely, osteopenia—the loss of bone density—and chronic back pain.

Doctors told me that the way to resolve both was to make my body stronger through resistance training with weights. To take it to the next level meant getting help because I didn’t know about gyms, barbells and fitness machines.

I didn’t want to do it. Didn’t care for gyms and weights and all those mirrors. But I definitely didn’t want the alternative of diminished health and physical ability, so it was a no-brainer choice. If I wanted a better life it was up to me to create a better body by taking care of mine.

I found the gym intimidating, so I hired a personal trainer. It’s a good thing too because fitness saved my life twice!

“Move a muscle, change a thought.”
~common phrase in AA

More Capable than You Know

My personal trainer had me do things I wasn’t even sure I could do. Jill handed me huge dumbbells that had me laughing at first because I thought she was joking. She wasn’t. I was like, “Yeah, right! Very funny!” She blinked and continued to hold out the weights for me to pick up. So I did.

Then she expected me to lift them, over and again. Jill had me jump up onto a bench and back down numerous times. She expected me to hop up a flight of 30 stairs, two steps at a time, come back down and do it again on one foot all the way up, then back down for the other side.

I wasn’t sure I could do it without tripping up and falling flat on my face. I could just imagine my toe catching on the steps for a painful face plant on the stairway. But Jill knew that I could do it. She was practiced at pushing limits—her own and that of her clients—and she knew that the greatest growth lay just on the other side of my comfort zone… and then some. I thought perhaps she didn’t know my age, so I reminded her.

“Remember… I’m 48.”

Her blank stare clearly stated, “And your point is…?”

But she was right. I could do it. Not only could I do it, but each day I grew stronger, fitter and more confident.

Never Easy… Always Worth It

I’m not going to say that it’s gets easier because the exercise always needs to be hard enough to do it’s job in keeping us progressing and the body guessing so that it doesn’t slip into stasis. The good news is that the more we engage in dynamic movement, the more addicted we become to it because of how fantastic it makes us feel. That’s a good kind of addictive behavior.

For a time I had bought into the myth of being less capable because… you know… “I’m getting older.” “I’m almost 50.” (Notice I was already thinking of being old at 50 when I was just 48.

That’s a part of our unconscious societal indoctrination, to think of 50 as “over the hill.” But it’s not….it’s the new middle age, which means we still have half our life ahead of us. Better tune up the only vehicle we’re issued.

And I promise you, when we get to be 80 years old we’ll look back up on our 60 year old self as YOUNG!! Same thing at 90 and 100.

Most of us are rarely challenged to capacity. Your latent potential is awaiting your command.
~LeAura Alderson, cofounder-iCreateDaily.com®

Creating Success

Successful people are simply those with successful habits.
~Brian Tracy, self development author & speaker, b.1/5/1944

We are like our computers or our smart phones: a vast store of potential, much of which goes largely untapped, day after day as we settle into our usual routines.

Routine reduces and constricts our parameters of possibility. Challenges expand and flex them.

So all good things in good time. Rest when you need it. Start small when you need to. But remember to challenge what you thought you could do. Challenge, by definition is not supposed to be easy.

Set goals. Create daily. Chances are, you will surprise yourself.

Delight yourself. Do more than you thought you could. Do one more page… one more sentence… brushstroke… one more painting… or video… one more pushup than you thought you could do.

Don’t make excellence a chore… make it a joy… an adventure… a game and a privilege. For ultimately, if you have the freedom to create, that is privilege indeed.

You won’t regret it. Ever.

Work until your idols become your equals.
~Cindy Eckert, American serial entrepreneur,

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“You have to change your physiology to change your psychology.”
~LeAura Alderson, cofounder-iCreateDaily.com®