Miri McDonald

What is it about Richard Simmons?

Richard Simmons was on NPR Morning Edition  yesterday morning and hearing his voice brought a smile to my face and my mood lifted immediately. I find it amazing that hearing a certain person's voice can have such a profound impact on how I started my day. I came into the office in a great mood and was joking and laughing with people. 

Simmons has great energy and such a passion for helping people be their best. He said something that I think epitomizes his philosophy. One that we should all adopt, in my humble opinion. He was talking about the people that came to his workout and said, "...these people did close to 500- 600 leg lifts this morning, but most of all it did something for their self esteem."

I think Richard has it right. What can we do every day that lifts our self esteem? Maybe even more important, what can we do every day to lift up others' self esteem? If we all feel great about ourselves, every one of us, we all benefit.

My friend recently shared a story with me about a mean thing another girl said to her daughter. It makes me sad that kids are learning - from us, the adults - that it's OK to make others feel badly about themselves. To put others down. Why not make someone else feel great?

I'm reminded of a question I heard a yoga teacher say they ask themselves whenever they are not sure how to react to a situation. They ask "What would love do?" Said another way, how would you lovingly respond or act in a specific situation. Unfortunately, I think some approach situations, maybe without even thinking of it - with a negative disposition or worse, "What would hate do?"

What if all of us brought Richard Simmons's positive energy to the workplace? Imagine how great it would feel to come in every day. We'd have fun and we'd get a lot done!

It would be even more fun if we could pop in an old school Richard Simmons aerobics video and sweat to the oldies together but not sure that would fly in all work cultures. A girl can dream, right?

Day 11: #15yogain30 - re-imagining perfect

When I started this journey, I did a challenge in September that required at least one sun salute each day for 30 days (#30daysofsunsalutes). One sun salute takes about a minute. There were many days where I did more than one sun salute but some days, I just squeezed in the one and felt great about it. That was amazing to me - one sun salute can make that much of a difference in how I feel? How is that possible? Then I realized why - or at least part of the why. Here are the three big ones: 

1. Making time for myself and what is important to me makes me feel good
2. Realizing I do have time for something that's important to me
3. Taking a few deep breaths and moving my body mindfully makes a difference

There are probably more but these stood out.Now that I'm doing the October challenge (#15yogain30), at least 15 minutes of yoga every day for 30 days - these three things still hold true. The 2nd one is the one that is standing out the most. That we tell ourselves stories about being so busy and not having time. We also tell ourselves stories about the thing we want to do and how it has to be a certain way.

For me, my story about yoga was that it had to be in a studio (or gym), on a hardwood floor - preferably cork or bamboo or some other fancy wood, had to be taught by an awesome teacher, with a great playlist, had to be at a time that worked with my schedule, had to be done away from home/kids/husband/etc. You get the picture.

Well, this morning I rolled out my mat in our bedroom on carpet (I really prefer it on the hardwood floor) with my husband getting ready right near and around me. I heard kids yelling at one point, too. I could have done it downstairs on the hardwood floor but I wanted it to be a bit quieter and the kids were down there. There was no music. I was my own teacher.

And, guess what - it was a pretty good practice.

Yoga helps us go inside and when we do that, it doesn't matter where we are practicing, what is going on around us, who else is in the room or building, whether music is playing or what we're wearing.

Here's my sequence:

• Down dog for a few breaths
• walk feet to hands - forward fold
• Rise up to extended mountain and fold forward 3x
• 3 sun salutes (A)
• Come back to down dog - lift right leg back, knee into belly 3x
• Place foot in between hands - come up to standing lunge
• Use ujjayi breath - bring hands down into fists and bend back leg - do this 5x
• Come down and flow
• Repeat other side
• Flow
• Down dog
• Come up to Standing lunge - flow between twisting lunge and standing lunge 3x
• Flow
• Repeat other side
• down dog
• Come up to Warrior 1
• Warrior 1 with clasped hands behind back - bow down to humble warrior - flow back upright (do this 3x)
• On last round lift back leg up to warrior 3
• Either keep hands clasped or release to hips and pulse standing leg 5x
• Flow
• Repeat other side
• Down dog
• Warrior 2 - pulse front leg and raise arms 5x
• Reverse warrior, side angle pose, reserve triangle, half moon - lift up bottom hand
• standing split
• flow
• other side
• yogic squat
• Crow
• yogic squat
• twist in yogic squat on both sides
• go to wall and work on handstand
• child's pose

 

Day 8: #15yogain30 - trust your inner yogi

We're on Day 8 and I've already learned some things about ability to go with my instincts for what to include in my home practice.

When I was teaching yoga regularly, I created numerous sequences for my classes. Too many to count. And I never doubted my ability to do that. However, for some odd reason, I always balked when thinking about a home practice. I always relied on DVDs or went to classes at studios and my gyms. I think part of it was not wanting to think too hard about it and just flow. The other part, if I'm honest, was that I didn't think I'd find my "inner yogi" and instead I'd either just sit there not knowing what I wanted to do or just copy something I've done before.

What I'm realizing is that I really do have a preference for certain poses depending on the day, what I did before the yoga practice, what time of day it is, and more. For example, on Saturday, I wasn't able to fit in a practice in the morning. The day was coming to a close and I realized I needed to fit in a practice right before bed. I noticed that body didn't want an active, standing practice. I was also feeling tired and didn't want to wake myself up and have a hard time falling asleep. So I did a practice that started with cat/cow, was mainly seated with a few twists and supine poses like pigeon done on the back with a few minutes of sivasana at the end.

On Sunday, I did a 4.5 mile run as part of my preparation for a race. After the run, I felt a bit sore and also felt compelled to stretch myself out. So, my practice was instinctually based on stretching my hamstrings (down dog, wide leg standing forward fold, pyramid), quadraceps (hero pose, half bow and full bow), hip flexors/psoas (runners lunge with back knee down - arms on either side of knee as well as arms inside knee, shoulder under knee to prep for Eka Pada Koundiyanasana II) , hips (warrior II, triangle, pigeon, number 4 pose) and achilles - (down dog with VERY bent knees and runners lunge moving back and forth).

Today, after a walk with my dog Madeline, I did a more active flowing practice with sun salutes, warrior poses (I, II, III), standing poses (lunge, twisting lunge, side angle, triangle, balancing poses (warrior 3, needle, half moon, and a few gentle back bends (mountain with backbend, warrior 1 with arms clasped behind back).

So my lesson here that I hope to share with all of you is that we have to trust our instincts even when our minds are telling us we can't trust ourselves. And, I think doing yoga every day for even just 15 minutes is helping me to build that trust.

Day 5: #15yogain30

Well, it's the 5th day of the #15yogin30 challenge. I am proud that I've been able to fit 15 minutes (or more) in every day this week so far. I am also surprised to see how much time I've been wasting in the mornings when I could be doing my yoga practice. I find it interesting that when we make something a priority, we see that we aren't as busy as we think we are (or at least this is me). We see that it does fit in - just maybe in a different way than we imagined.

Today I did my own practice. Here's the sequence if anyone is interested:

• Start on hands and knees in cat cow.
• Move through cat/cow/child pose/down dog - repeat 3x
• stay in down dog for a few breaths
• Lift right leg up - open hip
• bring leg through - come to lunge - drop back knee - raise arms overhead - open heart - then drop back to half split - gently work with hamstring
• Repeat other side
• Back to down dog - walk feet to hands - hang in ragdoll
• Come up to standing - mountain
• Inhale up - exhale fold 3x
• 3 sun salutes
• Flow back to down dog - lift right leg - come up to warrior 1 - stay for a few breaths
• Clasp arms behind back - open heart - breathe
• Humble warrior
• Lift back leg up - warrior 3 with humble warrior arms
• Arms come down - flow
• Repeat other side
• Flow back to down dog
• Lift right leg back - come up to warrior 2
• Reverse warrior
• Stay in reverse warror -Straighten front leg
• Lift up and come into Triangle pose
• Inhale back into reverse triangle
• Come forward into half moon
• back down to warrior 2
• flow
• Repeat other side
• Come forward to mountain
• Stand on right leg - Tree pose with left leg
• Transition to number 4 pose (left leg crosses over right thigh - bend knee) - hands in namaste
• Fold forward into preparation for flying crow - just fold for a bit and open the hip
• Come back up - repeat other side
• Chair pose
• Twisting chair - shoot leg back into twisting lunge
• Play with arm balance - fall - get back up ;)
• repeat other side
• Come back to hands and knees - 3 cat cows.
• Finish in Child's pose

Namaste

 

What's your score on the smile index?

I'm one of those annoying people that smiles a lot. Sometimes I don't even know I'm doing it. The vice principal of my middle school even called me Sunshine (yes, you can make fun of me for it - it's dorky, I know). Once, it backfired on me in the office setting. In a meeting someone asked me, "why are smiling so much at me?" You can imagine how hard it became NOT to smile in that meeting!

So why am I blogging about smiling? And is there really a smile index? No. Not that I know of. Although I think there should be. We are so distracted by social media these days and how our klout scores show our influence power but what about the power of a smile?

I know many people more famous than me have been lamenting the loss of human connection. This NY Times article got a lot of retweets and facebook posts. So, this is not a new revelation. However, I think it bears repeating. We don't realize the impact a simple smile can have on another person.

And, I want to be clear that I am not saying we all need to be happy 24/7. That is not realistic or genuine. At times, when I smile at someone, I'm not that happy myself. But, when I see the other person's face transform because of my smile, it makes me feel better!

Here's a little story about the power of smile that inspired me to write this posting in the first place.

Those of you that know me know I have a black labrador named Madeline. I walk and/or run with her every morning. We see a lot of people in our neighborhood. Some with dogs, some just out for a morning run or walk, some gardening or getting the paper. Because I am one of those annoying smilers, I smile at everyone and sometimes say, "hi!" or "how are you?" I've noticed that some people look surprised when I do this, which kind of makes me sad. One time I had a little contest with myself (yes, I'm a dork like that) and I said I was going to say hi to every single person I passed that morning. Again, I got some pretty surprised looks for some, and a return smile or hello from most of them.

Well, the other morning a man we see often was out on his walk and crossed the street towards us. In my head I was thinking, this is weird - he never crosses over. And then, he walked right up and say, "hi - i just have to tell you that your smile always brightens my day. We're moving out of the neighborhood so I wanted to take a moment to say goodbye and tell you I'll miss seeing you in the morning." I was very struck by this. And, no - he wasn't hitting on me. It was a genuine, innocent comment by a person that I connected with and didn't even realize how much I positively influenced with my smile.

So, what I'm saying here is, in addition to all the fancy indicies and scores for social networking, let's not forget about the power of our human interactions.

Increase your score on the smile index - flash someone those pearly whites today. See how it makes you feel. And more importantly, notice their reactions.

Image Credit: © Mariaam | Stock Free Images & Dreamstime Stock Photos

Follow my coverage of the IABC World Conference

I'm excited to attend the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) 2012 World Conference, this coming Sunday June 24 - Tuesday 26 (the conference runs through Wed but I'll be leaving Tues eve).

What's even more awesome is that I'm blogging about it for Smartbrief on their Smartblog on Leadership. I'll also be tweeting live via my twitter feed - @mirimcdonald,

Please follow my tweets to hear the latest thinking on change communications, leader communications, trust, engagement, culture and more.

These are the sessions I plan to attend:

 

Sunday 6/24:

• New terms of engagement: Using social media to enhance engagement
• Rediscovering play: Bringing fun and passion to your work—and life

Monday 6/25:

• (Re)Writing the book on the communicator’s role in managing change
• More heart, more soul: Employee engagement and transformational change
• Communication strategies that build organizational trust
• Still deciding between - Building a high-performance organization or Lying on the job: Do your leaders create a workplace of truth or consequences?
• Building an internal communication capability

Tuesday 6/26

• Our environmental destiny
  The promise and peril of internal social media
• Still deciding between - Engagement is the new black: Culture and communication in the next decade or Running your communications function as a business
  The naked company: Why organizations must have engaged employees in today’s transparent world

Which sessions sound most interesting to you? If something I tweet from a session inspires you to comment, please tweet with me. Also feel free to tweet me questions and I'll try to get them answered for you!