I Don’t Know How She Does It!

I need to write this every year. I need to remind myself of this every day. My wife is amazing and I don’t know where she gets her energy from.

Sporting Cultures Clash

It is interesting when you have a family from a mixture of cultures. You ask yourself so many questions when your kids are young. How will they cope speaking two languages? Will they enjoy being bilingual? Could they possibly feel too different to those around them?

Changes

I haven’t posted anything in quite some time and now I have decided to get back to it. There are various reasons why but the main one was certainly time. It was just taking too much of my time to post and promote my blog and I found that there was less time for the actual writing. So I decided to take a break and with a step back came a new perspective. I haven’t stopped writing, it’s just all in my notebooks and for my eyes only, up until now anyway.

I also decided that major changes needed to happen in my life, for my own wellbeing as well as for those closest to me. It became apparent to me that I needed to repurpose and reprioritise my days and my life as a whole. I have done this through various means, some have been successful and are still a part of my life and some have fallen by the wayside. But all have been valuable experiences which I may return to one day, who knows?

It all started with running, that was over a year ago now and I am still going. Slowly getting faster, going further, feeling better and stronger. That was to be the start of my physical improvement and help mentally too, it feels good to be out there in nature getting plenty of fresh air and even better to be able to chase my kids around. But I was still stressed and anxious, some days were worse than others but something just wasn’t right. So I decided to make changes, do some of the things that I had read about and listened to people discussing. Once you hear several people recommending the same ideas it is perhaps time to listen.

Before I go into it all I would like to thank two people who I would credit with inspiring me on this journey. First of all Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, who is a British doctor and television personality, and I can’t recommend his books and podcast enough. You should read The 4 Pillar Plan and The Stress Solution, they both contain so much wisdom and I still find them enjoyable just to look at, leave alone read. I have taken several ideas from both books and included them in my daily routine. If you have a bad back do the exercises in the first book, if I wasn’t an atheist I would believe in miracles. Seriously I have had a bad back for 20 years and it disappeared after 2 weeks! The second person is Mr. Rich Roll, an American athlete and wellness influencer, whose personal story in the book Finding Ultra and even more importantly his podcasts have proved incredibly inspiring and influential to me. It is so easy to find inspiration in the modern world we live in, you just have to open your eyes and look.

The biggest change I made was firstly to give myself the time to do some of the things I wanted. I was always guilty of thinking there just weren’t enough hours in the day. How could I possibly find more time? I did it in a very simple way, I started getting up earlier. This concept was always slightly scary to me, I already got up at 6am every day. But I started getting up at 5 am to allow myself more me time before the rest of my household awoke. Once I realised that this was achievable by simply going to bed earlier and not wasting time in the evening watching television or YouTube then it wasn’t that difficult. I would say though that you need the agreement of your partner, he or she needs to be going to bed early too or you won’t sleep properly.

So what is my morning routine? It consists of stretching and light exercise, glute exercises for my back, journalling, meditation, pranameyic breathing, an affirmation and away I go. Sounds like a lot, doesn’t it? But all in all it takes around 75 minutes, then I am in the shower, have breakfast and after 2 hours I am awake, alert and ready to start the working day.

There are many parts to this routine and they all work together but the most important, and the one I never miss, is my journalling or Morning Pages. That last phrase comes from the author Julia Cameron and her book The Artist’s Way. This is not a diary, it is free form writing where you just let your thoughts flow onto the page. You can also have particular ideas which you would like to explore but you think about them on the page. I find it a wonderful way to start my day, it slows the mind and allows you to really think things through, you can only write so quickly after all. As I said, this is the one morning practice which I never miss. Normally I would write 3 A4 pages but if there is some reason where time is a problem, when I am on holiday for instance, I will shorten my writing. But I will always do at least a page. I have been doing this every day for more than 150 days now and I have only had to change my routine on a handful of occasions.

All of these things add up to making a calm and purposeful start to the day and they have improved my levels of stress and anxiety immensely. Some people might still claim that I am a grumpy bugger, and they would be right, but I certainly feel better and that has to transfer to others too. I am a work in progress, it hasn’t even been a year and there were 47 years before that of totally different behaviour and routines to make up for!

Then that brings me to the latest change, I have stopped drinking alcohol. It started with a 28 day challenge and when that finished I felt good and not especially like starting to drink again, so I haven’t. I am not saying I have given up forever but I have done these types of challenges before and I was dying for a drink by the end of them. But this time it felt different, I finished the challenge with a shrug of the shoulders and haven’t really been tempted. Again there was a book involved, The 28 Day Alcohol-Free Challenge by Andy Ramage and Ruari Fairbairns. Reading this book whilst doing the challenge seemed to help convert a short term change into a long term lifestyle decision. I never drank that much, just Fridays and Saturdays, a few beers and maybe a whiskey, but I feel so much better with none in my life. No more fuzzy head on the weekend mornings, less grumpiness, more energy and I am ready to get up and get out there with my family.

Perhaps there will be more changes to come, I am sure I will read more books, listen to more podcasts and try new things. Some of them may work and replace things that do not but I will certainly be keeping the things that still work for me. As I said, I am still a work in progress, as are we all.

© Neil Hayes and neilsworldofenglish

Appreciation

© Neil Hayes and neilhayeswriter

Discovering Krkonoše National Park, The Czech Republic

I have visited this National Park several times and, having lived in the Czech Republic for more than a decade, thought I knew what to expect of it. But a recent family trip proved to me how wrong I was.

Located along the northern Czech border with Poland, the Krkonoše National Park is one of the most famous and popular in this country. Containing the countries highest peak, Sněžka, it has a stunning collection of ski resorts, hiking and walking trails, as well as beautiful nature everywhere you look.

Now, I am not much of a hiker, my dodgy knees make me wary of getting too high as coming down is a jarring experience. Due to this I have never been to the peak of the highest mountain, so I had never experienced the difference in nature which the higher reaches of this mountain range contain. But a recent family trip, and a small improvement in my fitness, recently changed that.

We still did not visit the peak itself but stayed in a small skiing village, called Rokytnice nad Jizerou, for one week and enjoyed day trips in the surrounding mountains. Now they may not have been the highest, but they were high enough. And since our holiday took place during the recent European heat wave, it was fairly hard work every day. Hard work, but so satisfying. Physical exercise, beautiful nature and plenty of fresh air.

As I said, it was a family trip and we were all kitted out with our Camelbaks. Carrying 9 litres of water, between us, just about covered our needs for the day. But the best item we carried had to be our micro towels, nice and cooling when wet, they proved to have great recuperative powers, for both the children as well as my wife and I.

So what is so different about the nature? At the higher altitudes, the dense pine forests disappear and are replaced by sparse Scandinavian style nature. Low-growing trees, which look more like bushes, and space. There is much more space, if you can get away from the crowds. But that is relatively easy. There are some very popular trails, like going to the source of the Elbe, or Labe in the Czech language. But if you take a different route back you will be on your own in no time.

There are also many mountain chalets located throughout this area. Places to stop, take a break and buy some food and drink. If you are Czech this will probably mean a beer, but until I finish the day I stick to the water myself. Some of these chalets can be surprisingly large and offer a bit of fun for the kids too, they never lack in energy of course.

At the end of the week, I was happy to get home and rest my legs. But this was definitely one of the most enjoyable holidays I have had. A special mention should go to Hotel Helena, where we stayed. Returning there every day, where the kids could keep jumping and playing and my wife and I could collapse for a while, was a pleasure. This small hotel has good facilities and the food was excellent. Breakfast, a snack for the day and dinner were all included in the price. There was plenty of it and every meal was delicious. Oh and, of course, the beer was cold and refreshing too. Even more so than dipping your toes in one of the local streams.

© Neil Hayes and neilsworldofenglish