And I don’t need any of this. I don’t need this stuff, and I don’t need you. I don’t need anything except this. And that’s it and that’s the only thing I need, is this. I don’t need this or this. Just this ashtray. And this paddle game, the ashtray and the paddle game and that’s all I need. And this remote control. The ashtray, the paddle game, and the remote control, and that’s all I need. And these matches. The ashtray, and these matches, and the remote control and the paddle ball. And this lamp. The ashtray, this paddle game and the remote control and the lamp and that’s all I need. And that’s all I need too. I don’t need one other thing, not one – I need this. The paddle game, and the chair, and the remote control, and the matches, for sure. And this. And that’s all I need. The ashtray, the remote control, the paddle game, this magazine and the chair.
-Navin (played by Steve Martin),  The Jerk.

So much has changed for all of us in an astonishingly short amount of time. In the U.S., we’ve watched a wave flow across the globe. A trickle of newspaper stories turned into a deluge. A suburb north of my city, Seattle, Washington, a nursing home, was hit first. My brother teaches at a high school, down the street from the nursing home. Late last month, we decided that he should not visit our mother, who is 85-years-old. Another brother, who is married to a flight attendant, decided the same. I stopped visiting in person, as well. Mom is in good health and we want to keep it that way.

You have no doubt seen the buying frenzy of paper goods and disinfecting products. My husband, who typically does minimal grocery shopping, brought home survival food, on two separate occasions, less than one week apart. I learned that Spam, something I have maybe eaten once or twice in my life, is an essential tool for survival. I asked John to stop going to the grocery store. We argued about it for a bit and then it dawned on both of us that it might be more effective to actually look at what we had. By the time we’d reviewed our pantry, refrigerator, freezer, my homemade dehydrated backpacking/hiking meals, the food that he’d bought, and our stash of non-perishable food for emergencies (we live in earthquake territory), he estimated that we had enough food for approximately 72 days, not counting the approximately 30 pints of homemade preserves I have on my canning shelves. An overly sweet existence, but we would eat for another couple of weeks, without buying another single bit of food.

To be fair, I’d also been stocking up on items, just different ones. I had an irrational fear of running out of fresh vegetables and fruit. I still keep a good eye on my canned tomato, chicken broth, and dried bean supply. I have been making and dehydrating chili and soups. I hope that I will be using it for backpacking and camping, which is why I started using a dehydrator in the first place.  I had a rational fear of not having enough cleaning supplies for my psychology office, where up until a few days ago, I saw patients. Every morning, I had been disinfecting all “high touch” surfaces, light switches, thermostat knobs, door knobs, table tops, desk tops, pencils, pens, the control buttons on my office equipment, my cell phone, my cell phone charging stand, and all surfaces of my laptop computer.

I worry about my business. 80% of it is doing psychological testing, which has to be done in person. Last Monday at 11:00 am, right after testing a young teen, the Governor of my state made an emergency order and recommended a minimum of 6 feet distance (a bit less than 2 meter) between people who do not live in the same household. There’s no way for me to do that. On top of that, with having had SCAD, I have a rare heart disease of unknown origin. Who knows how my body would react to COVID-19? By noon, I had cancelled the rest of my scheduled testing patients and transitioned the rest of my business to telehealth, from my home. I knew that in two weeks, once I finished up all of my remaining report writing, my income would drop about 80% for who knows how long.

Two days later, I took my first virtual yoga class, from my favorite yoga teacher, Aubrey. She is calling the class, “Zoom Sangha yoga”. “Sangha” is a Sanskrit word for “community”. It was so nice to see everyone’s familiar faces to to practice yoga together. Yoga ends with a meditation. As I listened to the sound of my breath, I thought, “I have all that I need, in this moment.”

In this moment, as I write this, I have all that I need. I have my breath. I have my mind. I have my family. I have friends. I have shelter. I have clean water and good food. I have the nearby woods in which to walk. Not all moments are like this but right now it is.

I wish you many moments of having all that you need.

Yesterday, John and I returned from a winter adventure in Arizona. For most of the trip, we hiked in beautiful Sedona. On the last full day of our trip, we drove to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World, and the only one in the U.S. Between the other-worldly wonder and the briefness of our visit, five hours, it was like a dream by the next morning.

The dream is settling into the reality that I was there and the memories and musings have built up to this bit of writing. When I was a girl, I learned that the Grand Canyon was formed by erosion from the Colorado River, which still flows thousands of feet below the rim of the canyon. When John and I looked at the canyon, we mused aloud, “There’s no way that little river could have made this.” I questioned my memory of my elementary school teachings and possibly, the quality of my public education. I hypothesized that the river must have been much wider and then dwindled in flow bit by bit until it’s current width. Then we got re-educated at the Geology Museum at the park. “The Colorado River has been the same width for the last 5 million years.” The river’s path caused fissures, which led to further erosion by the river’s tributaries. (Or something to that event. The Grand Canyon was right next to me. Turning away from it to read the additional explanation of how it got so wide was lower priority.) The canyon was described as perhaps the best example of the power of erosion in the world.

The primary reason for the Grand Canyon is stream of water that ground away at the strata of rock for 5 million years and counting. That erosion, the gradual diminishing of land, is considered, rightly so, one of the most beautiful places on Earth.

Loss is such tricky business, whether it occurs slowly, like the Grand Canyon, or more suddenly through the plate movements that created volcanoes and earthquakes in my native Washington State. There is loss of life, habitat, and the literal earth under our feet. And yet there is great beauty. I stand in awe at the power of Earth, at what she can do, all by herself, and instead of feeling frightened, I feel more connected. Yes, I will die. Yes, things will change. But there is a larger context that holds my little life, which is part of the great wonder. Then I am distracted by the beauty and I stop thinking about myself and my mortality.

Loss, as we all know, can cause trauma and grief. It can develop slowly or all at once. There have been much written about it and loss is generally perceived as negative, and often it is. But loss is much more than that, even the really sad losses. John and I have been listening to the podcast, Dolly Parton’s America. (Click on the link after you’ve read this post and you will not be disappointed.) One of the episodes is about how she ended her business partnership with Porter Waggoner. He had helped make her a star but over the years, he was working against her, possessive of her talent, and envious of her building success. When she left she felt “a sad freedom.” That’s acceptance in three words.

Loss can be an education, an acceptance of a reality and the loss of a reality that is no longer or never was true. Loss can whittle away what we want but don’t really need. Like Southwestern ceramic artists have done for centuries, loss can be intentional through the use of a stone to burnish a pot to gleaming black.

Loss can hurt and devastate. It can illuminate, teach, and result in greater wisdom. Holding these truths at once can elicit a sad freedom, joy, awe, anger, and every possible experience in the mindful moments of life.

A half century ago, Walter Mischel, a Stanford psychologist, led the classic “marshmallow study”, which was actually a series of studies. In one of them, young children were presented with a marshmallow and told by an adult that they could eat that marshmallow immediately but if they waited, they could have not one, but two marshmallows. Then the adult left the room for a short period of time while the young child was tested with one of the great tests of humanity, delay of gratification.

Delay of gratification is an aspect of motivation and I mean motivation from a neurological standpoint, not the popular understanding of just “wanting hard enough.” I could write an entire post on the pitfalls of thinking of motivation as “wanting” or “not wanting”; “caring or “not caring”; or the very damaging “being a good person” or “being a bad person”.

Motivation to obtain an immediate reward is easy. Motivation to avoid or escape immediate discomfort, danger, or something else we don’t like is also relatively easy. Both are forms of immediate reinforcement, the former is positive reinforcement and the latter is negative reinforcement.

I think about motivation a lot. Some of this is for professional reasons. I work with a lot of kids who have difficulties working for delayed rewards or to avoid delayed negative outcomes. They are most excellent at working for immediate reinforcement. If an activity is fun, they can do it for a long time. If an activity is mundane, boring, or frustrating, they do all they can do to avoid it or escape it.

Parents often don’t understand why it’s so hard for a kid to delay gratification. Why does he play video games all night? Why does she texts friends all of the time instead of doing homework? Don’t they know how important school is?

I empathize with the frustration. I also often give the parents an example. I say, “I have a Ph.D. and I am a generally very disciplined person. I want to be physically healthy. And yet for many years, I did not exercise regularly. I also have trouble maintaining a healthy weight. Food tastes really good.”

Most parents identify with this example. Working for the second marshmallow is really hard. The first marshmallow is right there, after all. Working to help avoid long-term negative outcomes is also hard. Those outcomes are a long way off and further, in the case of physical health, there are no guarantees of success in terms of extended life span.

This brings me to today’s topic, which is motivation to exercise. We’re all told to do it. I have struggled on and off with physical exercise. For the past several years, I’ve had a regular habit of exercise. I have recently “upped my game”. I want to hike more and the hiking in my area of the country is challenging because it is so darned hilly around here. I am also working to lose weight and be more fit in general. This has gotten me thinking about motivation.

First, here are some motivation myth-busters:
1) Motivation is not a moral characteristic. It is a neurological process.
2) Motivation does not have a switch that is turned on by wanting something hard enough.
3) Motivation is not fixed. Motivation is not the same for every life activity.  Even motivation to do the same activity can wax and wane. Making behaviors into habits can help but is not an absolute.
4) Doing things that are good for you in the long run but not satisfying right now is really hard.

Let me repeat that,  doing things that are good for you in the long run but not satisfying right now is really hard, especially if there is no immediate bad thing that happens if I skip it. However, it is possible to get better at this.

The hardest thing about exercising for a lot of us is getting started. Here are a few tips for reducing barriers. This is not an exhaustive list. Feel free to add your own tips in the comment section.

What exercise?
If you hate exercise, bundle it with something you like. Some people read or watch t.v. while using exercise equipment. I walk outside because I love being outdoors and it is also a good opportunity to take photos. If you are a social person, an exercise class may be a good idea. Once people are used to seeing you, they will ask you why you didn’t make it to a class! You can also do something pleasant or rewarding after exercise to increase motivation. (See below.)

When?
Schedule your exercise. If you take a class that only meets particular times, this can be a major advantage. Time flexibility is not necessarily an advantage when you are trying to establish a new habit.

Seriously, when am I going to do this? I am really busy. I can’t possibly add another thing to my schedule.
Say to yourself, “Maybe I could do one more thing.” Or, “Maybe I don’t need to do all of the things I am doing now.” Then take a deep breath. Maybe it’s the thought of having another commitment, another thing “I should do” that is the burden and not so much the time. You do not have to marry exercise. You can have a fling and see how it goes.

How do I get started?
This is getting out of bed early to exercise before work. This is looking at the bad weather outside and going out to exercise, anyway. This is scheduling a time, the time comes, and thinking, “I can do this later.” Here are some tips that might help:

1. Reduce the number of steps needed to get started. Lay out your exercise clothes the night before. Sleep in your exercise clothes and put your shoes next to the bed. Get fully dressed for intended morning exercise as soon as you get up, including shoes. You may be surprised at how much trouble it seems to get your shoes on after you’ve finished your breakfast and drank some coffee. If you exercise after work, change into work out gear at your work place or as soon as you get home.
2. Build in reward for getting started. Give yourself a small square of chocolate on your drive to the gym. Treat yourself to a coffee at a drive through. When my husband and I walk together on the weekend, we stop at the local coffee shop about 15 minutes into the walk. He is highly motivated for coffee and does not like our home coffee.

How long?
You all know the answer to this. Start with what is do-able. Start small. It is easier to build up than to make your goals so high that you feel that you have failed every time you have actually done exercise.

Maybe, just maybe, you will learn to enjoy exercise. Maybe the second marshmallow will be the exercise itself. Or maybe not.

How will you know until you try?