Good habits: walking and meditating

Disclaimer: this is not a New Year resolutions post. I just want to take post about a couple of new habits that I have adopted for the last couple of months. Will they last? I hope so.

The first one is walking. Working from home can bring laziness to amazing levels. When I realized that I was spending too much time sitting and decided that I needed to move. We live surrounded by a beautiful countryside, so all I had to do was get to the door and start walking.

I have been using RunKeeper to track my activities (I can tell you that since November 1st have have walked for 168Km). I’m not trying in any way to make my walking sound “sporty” or competitive. It’s just walking for 4-5Km every day. I do admire a lot all my friends who run. But I just walk. I do believe that a gentlemen will walk but never run. ;)

The real challenge is walking every day when I’m not travelling. Even when it rains, like yesterday. So far I have been pretty good.

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The second habit is meditation. I had been interested in the subject for a while, then I followed a link posted by Loïc to an iPhone app named Headspace. I went through their free “10 minutes for 10 days” program, and I was hooked. After that I did “15 minutes for 15 days” and “20 minutes for 20 days”, and now I have just started the more advanced “Discovery” program. I’m pretty much recommending this app to everybody I meet.

Of course two months of walking and meditating can hardly put a dent in a life of laziness, fat, anger and stress, so while I can’t say that I’m seeing significant changes, I am enjoying the process very much. Which I guess it’s the whole point.