Coffee Talk Tuesday #96
Grab your cup! It’s Tuesday and time for a Coffee Talk.
If we were having coffee together this week, I’d tell you that I’ve had coffee in some pretty awesome places – from the edge of the Grand Canyon, to the beach during sunrise, in various coffee shops across the country, and–my favorite–right here in my kitchen. And I love sharing all of them with you! I can’t believe we’ve almost shared 100 chats.
If we were having coffee together this week, I’d share just a few updates before going into a longer discussion of something on my mind/what I’ve been reading. Ready?
I’ve been filming videos for IGTV! I have two instagram accounts, for no reason other than one is FIT and LIFE and the other is YOGA. On my yoga account, I’ve been sharing tutorials for some of my favorite asanas, and on the fitness account, I’m planning to share more fit and food tips. If you’re on instagram, here are my accounts: @fitwithaundra and @ctownyogi. I love sharing my nearly 10 years of fitness industry knowledge with you. Have any topics you want me to cover? Let me know!
If we were having coffee together this week, I’d tell you that I’ve (unofficially until I get the year 2 letter) opted to stay part-time again for my Next Gen Scholars/MBRT position. I really love the flexibility of part-time, being able to continue teaching and growing my fitness and marketing skills. I loved being part of the launch of this program, and am excited to dive deeper with my 200+ Kent County students.
If we were having coffee together this week, I’d tell you that I also got a new gig teaching on Kent Island! I’ll be taking over the Wednesday night BUTI YOGA class starting the first week of September. I’m so stoked. I love being able to teach in various places, and I love the Foundations Island Yoga team and studio. When I started practicing Buti about 18 months ago, I never dreamt that I’d one day be teaching it in the same studio that I started my practice. Funny enough, I started going to this studio because it provided an escape – a separation from my fitness/teaching world in Chestertown. Lots of people have been taking classes there from Chestertown, and I look forward to so many more! (If you want to come try Buti with me, I’m subbing TWO classes this month – August 15 5:15-6:15 p.m. and August 16 9:30-10:45 a.m. Register in advance to make me feel better!!)
If we were having coffee together this week, I’d share that I’m also looking at adding a class/changing things up in Middletown – still chatting about the possibilities, so nothing concrete to share just yet. I’m also stoked about joining a new-to-me studio as a STUDENT – Orange Theory. I’m taking a few classes during their VIP week and can’t wait to see how this transforms my training.
There’s never a dull moment around here – I’m always thinking, training, teaching, learning, researching…it just doesn’t end, and I’m so grateful for the wealth of opportunities.
Okay, let’s dive into something on my mind. I love to follow writers, thinkers – people outside my normal daily work realms (even non-fitness), because they get me to change gears and share new perspectives about daily life and work.
Seth Godin is one of my favorite writers. Much of what he contributes resonates with me – either personally, with my business, or with work in general. One of his pieces recently spoke OUT LOUD to me.
On our project, it’s tempting to spend all of our time in fast twitch mode. To scan the incoming, grab the urgent, set it up and slam it back.
But if we spend all of our time twitching, we’ll never do the difficult work of the non-urgent. Important work requires a daily commitment, one that isn’t sidelined by every emergency, because there’s always an emergency, isn’t there?
I mean, okay, so it definitely spoke to the fitness professional in me – we’re always thinking about fast vs. slow-twitch muscle movements (you may not realize it, but I design classes with these sorts of things in mind). In short, slow-twitch muscles come into play with long-distance things like running, and fast-twitch muscles are used in powerful bursts like sprinting, and tire faster.
He took this idea and compared it to how we spend time. As he says, if we spend all of our time twitching, we never get to the difficult work – the REAL stuff. Responding to urgent things – distracting phone calls, emails, etc. – takes up so much of our working time that we don’t have time to think, create, and ACT. Truthfully, this was one of the worst aspects of my job in higher education. I liked to believe that we were making a difference every day, and guiding students to their purpose, but most of my working day was responding to ridiculous requests of superiors, board members, etc. The real stuff happened, and I believe we did impact student futures, but not as often as I’d like. We did “the minimum required to succeed.” Which, still makes a successful job, but maybe not as fulfilling.
In the work I do with Next Gen, I feel like every conversation we have is an opportunity to impact the future, the community, the school. That’s pretty awesome. Of course, there are still mundane tasks (I’m writing this in between entering 90 surveys from a presentation we hosted in 9th grade classrooms), but I’m learning from those mundane things, because they are real comments made by the real students we’re impacting. There will always be emergencies.
The other piece I love about his post is the idea of a daily commitment. I feel like I harp on this SO MUCH with my fitness community – “You won’t change your life until you change something that you do daily.” Real work requires DAILY dedication, even if just a little bit.
So, a little homework – how will you calm the daily twitching in your life to provide more focus and dedication to the work you love/what really matters? This is something I think about daily, and try to make little changes to make it happen. One thing I’m doing is writing in a FOCUS journal every day — a place that contains my calendar, my top 3 to-dos of the day, and it even has spaces for fitness and wellness related items.
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