Mixing things up to provide a new focus
While I love being on holiday because of the total escapism, its so true that there is no place like home. Not just the physical house, but the familiar surroundings, people, food, and of course, your own bed! Just a short break away is enough for me to fall back in love with things that maybe I took for granted.
What that means in reality is going for that long run over the racecourse near where I live, and stopping mid-run on a bench just to remind myself how wonderful life just outside my door can be.
Then I went rowing with my mates again in preparation for “The Great River Race” along the Thames in four weeks. My hands certainly knew they’d had two weeks off with a few new blisters formed, however, the banter, the shared goal, and the chat about how our fundraising for Prostate Cancer UK is going had us all laughing while having our post-training drink.
Life, of course, is not all about rowing and running (much as I wish it was a bit more!) but having been away, even the more mundane things felt fresh and new. This allowed me to see things from a new perspective, having got out of the rut my head was in on certain projects.
Eating out on holiday is fun for a bit but there is only so much fried food I can take, so to come home to fresh fruit and vegetables in my old favourite meals reawakened my taste buds. I even enjoyed shopping in Aldi!
So this all got me thinking about how I can keep things fresh without going on holiday. I came to the conclusion that it just takes a little thought and a list here and there. For my running, I thought of 10 or so routes I can run from home, and I will make sure that I only do each route a maximum of once a week. For the food, rather than “its Wednesday so it must be spaghetti bolognese”, my wife and I have written down 30 things we like to eat at home, and won’t have the same food more than once every two weeks (apart from salad at the moment as it’s been so hot!).
Maybe like me you could do with mixing things up a bit, or you’ve become lazy like I had, doing the same old things rather than others that are still within us but we had forgotten about. So why not write your own list? I believe you will start to love life more for doing that!
No column from me next week, so it’s until two weeks’ time rather than next week...