Day 63: No Moody Blues

Many times this summer, I’ve had the thought that 2017 has been the best year of my life.

It’s not that there’s been any significant life event (other than moving to a more peaceful neighborhood last winter). I’ll make about as much money this year as I did last; I weigh roughly what I did when the year started; I’m with the same guy; the challenges in my business have been the same, or perhaps greater, than in the prior year; there haven’t been any extraordinary events or leaps forward. If I think about it, I can even come up with the usual set of disheartening, frustrating, unfortunate occurrences and moments.

And yet I still have the strong sense that the year, and most particularly the summer, has been more full of contentment and happiness than any I can remember since I was a child. I’ve bounced back faster from setbacks and disappointments. I’ve been more consistently positive and optimistic. I’ve been really good about not letting douchebags bother me. I’ve been more pleased with my relationship, more satisfied with my life, and had more moments of flat out joy than in…well, ever. It’s been a lot like being on Paxil for months, only I haven’t been.

And in an example of how disconnected from cause and effect I sometimes am where it comes to my own experience, it just occurred to me last week WHY this probably is: 5-6 days a week of hardcore exercise, which I began in May.  The fact that at least 1 day of this exercise, most weeks, has taken place not just outdoors but in full-on nature. Eating, for a lot of this time, lots of fruits and vegetables and not many carbohydrates. Avoiding sugar and alcohol more than usual.

But mostly the exercise.

I still don’t like it. I get through it. And in the last month, more often than not, I have to fight not to talk myself out of it. But it was the most consistent change I made this year, and I have to credit it with the fact that my mood and outlook has improved 100% even though my life hasn’t changed a lot.

In the past few weeks, as I’ve been traveling a lot for work again, and stressed out by a huge project that takes place every year at this time, I’ve fallen off the exercise wagon in a big way. There have been entire weeks that have gone by when I’ve only worked out once. Whether I’m more impatient and likely to see everything that’s going wrong, more likely to take offence and less likely to let thing roll off my back is because of the stress of this time or from lack of exercising my body is something that I’m putting to the test this week by going back to my every day workouts.

I wish there were a more obvious cause and effect relationship between exercise and outlook; if working out made me happy until it wore off and then working out again brought the feeling back, I’d probably be addicted to it instead of just determined to grind my way through it. But I’m convinced enough that I’ve felt so good this summer because of what I’ve put my body through that I’m sitting in front of the gym as I write this, waiting for the 3^rd time this week for my 9 am bootcamp to start so that I can be so so ready for it to be over for a whole hour. But hopefully also have my spirits lifted in a way that I can’t instantly perceive, but also can’t help but notice.