Hello (again) Boot Camp

     I’m back at boot camp.

     And no, I am not going to regale you with tales of hiking, biking, weight training, core work, intervals, kickboxing and other adventures in swearing and sweating (in that order).  Instead, I’m going to tell you why I am back here.

     Those of you who’ve read my new book (and if you haven’t:  Get a move on!), Counterclockwise: My Year of Hypnosis, Hormones, Dark Chocolate and Other Adventures in the World of Anti-Aging, know that I jump-started my foray into fitness – a key to reversing the biological clock – by putting myself through a serious, give-it-all-you-got boot camp experience.  It worked.  In the months that followed I developed an excellent work-out routine, teamed up with a terrific group of women (we called ourselves the Sweat Chicas), found an amazing trainer and had a lot of fun on my way to cardio-vascular and lean-body goodness.  The year I spent living the book was a year spent mindfully, a year of making many good decisions and reveling in the changes, the counter-clockwise changes, this made in me.

     Then I spent most of the following year writing the book, a year of sitting in front of a computer, of meeting deadlines, of stressing over revisions, of slowly, sometimes even without me knowing it, becoming less and less mindful about those anti-aging choices I had so carefully researched and so assiduously practiced.  And the Sweat Chicas lost our great trainer.  And one of the Sweat Chicas suffered some significant exercise-restricting injuries.  And Lizzie suddenly got very very good at making butterscotch brownies. And I ended up doing a lot of traveling.  And.  And.  And.

     I could (well, I did) beat myself up about this for a while.  Then, recently, I had occasion to sit down and read the “Thinking Young” chapter in my book (I was finding an excerpt for a magazine) and was reminded of the health, wellness and counterclockwise-promoting power of optimism.  No not rose-colored glasses, “It’s all good man” fake optimism, but optimism borne of what’s called self-efficacy.  Self-efficacy is our belief in our ability to succeed, to change for the better, to make something better happen.  Not always, not all the time, but sometimes.  People with a strong sense of self-efficacy do not think of themselves as victims and do not collapse under the weight of circumstance. They take action.  It is the optimism that suffuses the “take action” mentality — not the actual result of the action — that is healthy, that works to reverse the biological clock.

     Those of you who’ve read the book know I am not a poster child for self-compassion.  But I do rock at self-efficacy.  Which means I view challenges as something to be mastered not avoided.  Which is what brought me back here to boot camp, where I intend to kickstart myself back into those habits that need to be a part of this counterclockwise journey.

     I’ll report next Wednesday on how I do.