Sounds like a no-brainer, doesn't it? What's interesting about the title to this post is how our notion of what we can do becomes more elusive as soon as we take out the physical manifestation of what we can do from the equation. To almost any human activity there is the physical and mental element to the activity - the physical being what we do that is visible (and quantifiable) to others and the mental element, which is obvious to ourselves, yet invisible to others.
The trouble with this division of what we can do is that our notion of who we are becomes inextricably linked to the physical side and we let what is visible to others govern what we think is valuable to ourselves - although much of that, is not as meaningful to us as is the invisible stuff, such as happiness, focus, Flow (balance of challenge and skills) and so on. In fact, we are easily sucked into defining who we are solely by our material wealth, physical output or indeed physical limits (what we can't do) and gradually thinking what we are is solely a sum of the parts we have.
Why I'm writing about this is that this realisation has dawned on me this year, based on an intuition I started pursuing a year or so back - the idea that my transition from one field of work and expertise into another would be significantly aided by a drastic increase of physical exercise. This sounds perhaps a little odd, but research has shown that our ability to learn is dramatically improved if we couple learning with vigorous physical exercise, which means more oxygen is transported to the brain and stress hormones are diminished.
These findings come from the fact that human beings, when subjected to stress, are considerably less able to learn and remember things, than when in normal conditions. Conversely, it has also been proven that learning and memory improves with exercise. I realised that the act of changing jobs would put me under considerable stress, which, if not counter-balanced with exercise, would impede my ability to make the transition swiftly and quickly learn and internalise the new things that were part of my new job.
Now in retrospect I can say that it has certainly worked and much better than I dared to imagine and it has further led me to a hypothesis about how we can actively build our confidence in enduring difficulty and hardships mentally, by stretching our concept of what we can do physically. It seems that by meeting the goals we have set for ourselves physically and exceeding them, gives us a profound sense of confidence in our own perseverance and by having those memories to hand, we can draw upon them to positively frame a situation where we would previously have given up - even if that challenge is in another area or even purely a mental one.
Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz postulate in their book 'The Power of Full Engagement' that we build emotional, mental and spiritual capacity in precisely the same way that we build physical capacity and that to build capacity, we must push beyond our normal limits, training in the same systematic way that elite athletes do. This is an interesting counter-point to all the talk about time-management and effectiveness - from this it appears that our human abilities are not about how we manage our time, but instead how we systematically build our capacity to meet challenges, managing our energy expenditure by systematically stretching ourselves and building in time to recover. Planning becomes less of an activity to try to meet all the demands placed on us, but more about staking out the peaks and troughs of our performance over time - building in time for feeding and recovering our minds, bodies, emotions and spirits as well as setting goals of when we expect to be performing at the peak of our abilities.
Thus the notion of 'who we are' is a dynamic, continuously evolving concept that we can deliberately change based on developing what we can do - a notion of continuous growth, development, learning, acquiring wisdom and sharpening of the saw. It's funny - once upon a time I was reading the 7 Habits and thought what a drag it was to have to plan one's time simply in terms of what was important and what was urgent (balancing short term and long term benefits, which is certainly a useful skill to have). It sounded very adult and grown-up (read: sensible) thing to do, yet what I was missing, was the play.
Children cram in a ton of learning under the innocent banner of play, and despite the fact we have to grow up - the role of play as a way to rejuvenate our minds, bodies, emotions and spirits is one that is timeless. Something I got intuitively when planning my cycling calendar for the year, the time to have fun and enjoy yourself, nourishing the mind, the body, the spirit and the emotions as a counterbalance to having the training regime and the goals - this balance between have to do and want to do is key. Here routines are essential, create some positive routines and free your mind from beating yourself up about the things you didn't do.
Now those proponents of the 7 habits will rush in and correct me to say that of course the bits that fall under 'what is important' are precisely what is meant by the things that rejuvenate our mind, but I cannot help (and perhaps this is where one can blame my Christian work-ethic) but think that it is so easy to conceive of the 'what is important' purely from an external, materialistic or even work-centered perspective - and indirectly seeing the play element as something frivolous one can only engage in if one didn't have to work/wasn't married with children/was a millionaire etc.
Instead 'who we are arises from what we can do' - becomes an active choice of spending and renewing our energy reserves in all areas of life, balacing present and future benefit and ultimately, creating a sustainable source of happiness, which is intrinsic rather than extrinsic.
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