I lived in Berkeley for twenty years, so I have a high tolerance for woowoo ideas and maybe even have a few of my own. The ones I keep are the ones that can live happily next to my belief in science, which is tempered by my understanding that not everything that can be known can be quantified. Meditation practice hardly even qualifies as woowoo anymore, given all the research into the good things it does for us.
My inner contrarian would like to point out that one thing about meditation, taken too far, can be detrimental to our fitness. Please note the disclaimers in that sentence; I am NOT saying that meditation is bad for us. So here’s the thing I want to highlight: being in the present moment.
Staying in the present moment is a great practice and it reminds us about what we can control and what we can’t. It helps quiet our monkey minds and encourages us to let go of difficult emotions. However, if we focus too much on the present moment, we lose sight of our marshmallow goals.
(What are marshmallow goals? I am glad you asked! Some researchers ran an experiment with kids. The kids could have one marshmallow right away, or they could wait for a period of time and get two. The kids who could delay gratification by keeping their eyes on that second marshmallow had a bunch of better outcomes later in life. An update to this study done more recently suggests that in some cases this is not true. Kids who live in environments where the adults are not to be trusted, for example, have learned to take their marshmallow right away or else they might get no marshmallows at all. Anyway: now that we are technically adults, marshmallow goals are things we do to get a benefit later.)
Being present in this moment might allow us to skip our workout because, right now, we don’t feel like doing it. We need a little bit of future thinking to do what is good for us. We can go back to the present moment when we’re done.
Go play.
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