D. Gardner

Proverbs 23:7

Over the years I have read several books and articles as well as listened to speakers that make reference to the idea that what we think about ourselves will have an effect on the way we perform.

Today I again found more evidence supporting this theory. In an article in the WSJ Mental Tricks of Athletic Endurance inspired by the Olympics and a book that is coming out Endure by Alex Hutchinson.

Here is an excerpt from the article.

Perhaps the most powerful and widely applicable technique for changing how your brain interprets incoming signals is to train yourself with motivational self-talk. Whether you’re conscious of it or not, you have an internal monologue running through your head during difficult tasks, and it has a measurable impact on how effortful you perceive those tasks to be. It is possible to channel that monologue in productive ways.

Many athletes consider such techniques a little hokey. My college track teammates and I laughed our way through the mandatory self-talk training we received from a well-meaning sports psychologist, figuring that if we honed our muscles and our maximum oxygen uptake sufficiently, we wouldn’t need to worry about such flimflammery.

That’s now one of my greatest competitive regrets, given the mounting evidence of self-talk’s physiological impact. A 2016 study by Stephen Cheung, an environmental physiologist and avid cyclocross competitor at Brock University in Canada, gave cyclists two weeks of self-talk training before an all-out ride in a heat chamber at 95 degrees Fahrenheit. Replacing negative thoughts like “I’m boiling” with motivational statements such as “Keep pushing, you’re doing well” boosted their time to exhaustion from eight minutes to over 11 minutes. Most tellingly, it allowed them to push their core temperatures half a degree higher, on average, before quitting.

I am reminded that I must keep up the positive inner dialog with myself. I have been trying for a few months, but I must keep it going. Mike my brother is trying to keep a positive dialog going too. Dennis my other brother is deep into a philosophy of questioning ourselves when we bring up negative thoughts.

I am also going to add a Being Thankful portion to my website.  I have heard and read a few things lately that being thankful makes us happier.

I try and post some information every Sunday.    We always end up going to bed late and then I wake up later than my usual around 5:00 AM.  Last night it was about 11:00 PM when I went to bed.  Dennis, my brother, was in town and we were staying up with him.   So I didn’t wake up until 6:30 AM.  The difficult thing with this is that Kate will wake up between 7:30 and 8:30  and then I am done with updating.   It’s 8:24 and I can hear her rustling around in the other room.

So I have to hurry.

I am teaching three classes and it takes up four evenings every week.  Hopefully, circumstances will change and I will be able to change that situation next semester.  This week in my Business 1050 class one of the readings is about how learning how to refine iron better started to accelerate technology innovation in the early 1800s.  It’s crazy how quickly things are moving forward now.

Emerson and Roman have been sick this week, probably the flu.  It’s a huge stress on Amanda as she is trying to keep everyone else from getting sick.  It’s weird because I have woken up many mornings over the last month feeling like I might be coming down with something but within a few minutes, I feel fine.

I learned about the Page action in inContact studio.  To me, it only feels about 1/4 of the way done.  Functional but not super useful.

I also remembered this week I have an educational version of a Java IDE. Hopefully, that helps me as I am trying to write stuff in Java.

Well, Kate is here to do crafts so until next week…

I am trying to think of some things I’ve learned this week.  One of them is that Java has a shortcut to the for-next loop.  I try and spend a few minutes everyday learning java.  However, I haven’t even installed an IDE.

I learned that inContact can spawn one action while waiting for another thing to happen to play hold music.   However, I haven’t actually tried it yet to see how it works.   I also discovered the program I have been using to convert CD’s to MP3 over the last 15 years can batch convert audio

The Philadelphia Eagles beat the New England Patriots – You’ll have to google the details.

I have been reminded of several different places recently that keeping a journal is a good thing.  One of the suggestions is to keep track of what I do each day.  I started last Sunday but have only made that one update.

I have made it easier.  Now I need to work on making more of a habit.    Here are some of the things I learned this week.  Last Sunday, Christian Bradley, the other guy I teach with was sick so I had the opportunity to teach.  We discussed the creation because we studying the Old Testament this year.  Iris one of the girls in the class pointed out that Sunday, the first day of the week, was the day the Sun was created and that is why it is called “Sun” day.  I had never thought about that before.  But that is cool.  This inspired me to look to so see how Sunday is named in other languages.  Sunday does seem to be related to the Sun in German, but not French, Spanish or Italian.  Which use a word like Domingo.  Which have its origin in a word meaning “The Lords Day”  I also asked the question if other “Non” Judeo/Christian cultures had a seven-day week?  It seems that many cultures have adopted weeks based on the moon cycle which is based on a 28-day cycle with either 7 or 14-day week break down.  However, there are several cultures that have used over day number versions.  The Romans used a 10 day week and there is a culture in Indonesia, Javanese, that still have a 5-day cycle.   I got most of that information from Wikipedia articles.

Anyway until next week.