Live and Exercise—Deliberately

by Jason Campagna, M.D., Ph.D.
Medical Director, Clinical Quality and Analytics, Cottage Health System

I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately, to suck the marrow from the bones of life; to put to rout all that was not life, and not to come to the end of life, and discover that I had not lived.
— Henry David Thoreau

What did Henry David Thoreau mean when he wrote this oft quoted line? More important, what does it have to do with fitness?

In the early part of the 19^th century, Thoreau walked out into the woods near Concord, Massachusetts, and began an experiment that millions of people are keeping alive, in their own ways, nearly 200 years later: endeavoring to become more self-aware and live more consciously. “Be it life or death, we crave only reality,” wrote Thoreau in Walden. But Thoreau questioned if most people were really living in reality or whether they were merely observers of life. One symptom of this “observer” status, according to Thoreau, involves the amount and kind urgency with which we pass our days.

As a “wired,” multitasking, overachieving, transplanted East coaster, I thought I understood what Thoreau was saying: To suck out that marrow, to avoid being a mere observer of life, one must approach each day with a strong and unswerving sense of urgency. And this urgency, of course, would include fitness. Right?

Well, here’s what I missed: Even in Thoreau’s time, urgency was actually symptomatic of the sickness of observation.

Since moving to California, and actually taking some time to think each day, I have actually come to learn than living deliberately is not at all about urgency. Rather, it is about just what I had been doing—thinking. Knowing the world around me, well, and being content with that world, for even just one brief second. And I have come to realize is that urgency is overrated. In fact, I’ve come to believe urgency is poisonous, acidic. Urgency may get things done a few days sooner, but what does it cost in morale? Few things burn morale like urgency.

When applied to your fitness goals, urgency creates a kind of reverse alchemy, turning the elusive dream of “gold” into nothing more than fool’s gold. As a doctor, I can state with some authority that emergency is the only urgency. Almost anything else can wait a few days.

Yes, you heard me right. It is actually okay to wait. Even with that workout. I am not saying waiting should turn into forever. When a few days break turns into a few weeks later, problems can arise. But, really, what has to get done today that can’t wait for tomorrow or, my heavens, the next day? If your workout is that critical to the hour or day, maybe you’re setting up false priorities and dangerous expectations.

So, how does one live and exercise deliberately? Living deliberately is to live with intention. The question is, therefore, “Have I been living intentionally?”  If urgency runs your life, then I think—and this might sound counterintuitive—that your answer should be “no.” When your daily life is guided by urgency, then you are living, not intentionally, but reactively, merely responding to stimuli. Most of us go through our lives simply reacting to the nonstop stimuli around us. When we get caught up in this day-to-day “stimuli storm” around us, we are forgetting to live intentionally. That is, with focused, delimited goals that, if achieved, we know will bring us to some positive state of equanimity and well-being as individuals. The same can be said of our fitness goals.

How, then, can we stay physically fit with less urgency? First, we must remind ourselves that human beings are designed to be physically active. But the project of staying fit is not about going “all out” all the time at the gym, on the court, in the pool, on the trail, etc. And it is most certainly not about “ripping it up” NOW!—not about pushing your absolute limit today, tomorrow, and everyday, lest you gain a pound or feel one day older.

What we should be doing instead is trying to live more deliberately. We can challenge ourselves, for instance, to simply do a little bit more than we did the day before. And we shouldn’t confine ourselves to exercising in only those designated “exercise areas,” like the gym or track. As adults, we no longer have that benefit of regular after-school sports practices or recess. So we need to act with more intention by integrating our exercising into our daily lives and routines. Try it when you walk from your car to work—walk fast enough that you are a little out of breath. Walk stairs the same way. Take advantage of every opportunity to challenge yourself. Be active.

I cannot say it any simpler, or with any more heartfelt and professionally supported advice: Live, work, and exercise with intention.

SOMA Get Fit can help you “to live deliberately,” as Thoreau set out to do. And, thankfully, we don’t even have to lead a solitary existence in the woods to do so!

This entry was written by scrawford, posted on October 11, 2009 at 10:26 pm, filed under Fitness, Life is Fitness, Santa Barbara and tagged Exercise, jason campagna, Santa Barbara, SOMA GET FIT. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.