Cliff diving is like one of those things that, much as I would like the experience , I’m not prepared to jump of a perfectly good cliff, to see if I can cheat death on the way down and maybe land up injured or dead at the bottom, but then again I know the feeling that they get. I use to jump off cliffs with my hang glider and soar through the sky with the wind in my face.

Why did I do this? Well firstly, I was much younger and acted on impulse, before I thought about what might happen to me and I nearly crashed on one or two occasions, but there was a rush to it also where I felt alive and put my fears on the back burner, that is why I can understand these young guys in Mexico who like to do cliff diving and even make it their career choice for a while. The part that I really liked about watching these cliff divers was the apparent ease with which they are able to cheat death each time by inches.

The part that I didn’t seen was that they had probably practiced this hundreds of times starting out from small cliffs and working their way up to the point that they could jump off a big cliff, while doing a somersault and landing in a small pool of water. This was both awe-inspiring and amazing to me that they could do this over and over again with the same accuracy and commitment.

This is like most things in life, you have a great idea and then the next thought is, why take the leap of faith? It’s the commitment that is required to do it, because it’s quite comfortable where I am (even if it’s not). The problem with this philosophy is that after a while, the quite comfortable, becomes quite boring and then becomes quite a rut and once a person is in a rut it takes a lot of effort to climb out of the rut.

Now for most of us, jumping off a cliff might not be the place we want to start out, but taking an idea and then applying little steps to reach our goals will firstly get us out of the rut, one bit at a time and will expand your comfort zone and give you a similar rush as a person jumping off a cliff. Taking bigger steps, the rush will become more intense and will require a higher degree of faith and commitment. If you jump and you are focused on the rocks and not the pool your chances of hitting what you are focused on are much greater, i.e., the rocks. So staying focused on the destination is always a good idea and greatly removes the fear of the rocks.

You might at this point be saying that it’s not the same, taking that next step in your idea or diving from a cliff, but it is. They both require a desire to do something, they both start out with small steps, they both have a learning curve to get there and when you are accomplished them they both seem easy and they both have the same chance of becoming comfortable and needing a new desire or goal, so that you don’t land up back in the comfort rut.

It’s been a couple of weeks since I last wrote a post; I was having one of those midlife experiences on a beach in Mexico. You know the type, sunshine, warmth, margaritas and the like.

My family and I went on a whale watching expedition to see the Humpbacked whales, traveled into the jungle and learnt about flowers, trees and saw some of the local animal life such as Iguanas, birds and insects.

A couple of the most interesting things that I got to do was to swim with the dolphins and watch a man jump off a cliff, blind folded over a bunch of rock while doing a somersault on the way, and landing in a little pool, from about 30’ up.  I’m going to learn how to setup a You Tube account, so that you can watch this diver do his stunt, which was very impressive, also some video of swimming with the dolphins and the unique experience we had with them.

On my return home I’ve realized that it’s time to take a look at some of those things that I do out of habit or social expectation, to see if I need to continue to do them and whether my time would be better served to drop these habits or grow them into something that is more effective and that I would enjoy more. This is one of those short post to touch base. I have some interesting articles to come in the next while so stay tuned.

My prayers have been answered; easy fitness that’s what I like. For Christmas we got the kids a Wii Fit/Sport. I really don’t like exercise without a purpose and have been trying to figure out how to get some  exercise, without having to run around in the rain or do to much work. I needed a solution. So I recovered our old elliptical trainer from a friend where I hoped it had been used for more than we had used it for; hanging clothes.

I set it up on the covered back deck, so that after having my morning cup of java which I am slowly managing to wean myself off, I could jump right on the trainer and do a 5-10 minutes workout a day. This worked great for the first 2 or 3 days and then I fell into my old routine. Within a few days I finally quit altogether.

Enter the Wii fit/sport, the Wii fit is a great device, it combines the fun of playing a game and doing some exercise, just the way I like it. I started off doing a little ski jumping which requires a degree of balance to pull it off and then had ago at snowball fighting and finally some boxing to get the old heart going again. It’s a surprisingly good workout and I can be sweating and breathing hard by the end of it.

The Wii fit it begins by working out your Wii fit age, this is done by putting in your date of birth, height, and a couple of other things in that help it out. Then it tells you what your Body Mass Index is and your weight. Which incidentally you can password protect to stop prying eyes from knowing what you weigh.  I was asked to do a bunch of activities like balance, agility and strength. In its nice way, it let me know my Wii Fit age which was right on the money this time (29 + 21 years).

This age moves up and down depending on your fitness and abilities, feel free if you have a Wii Fit, to post your age and progress in the comments of this post. After doing all this you are ready to setup an exercise routine, which can be done every day and combines Yoga and strength training and at the end you can have one of the fun trainings, like boxing or holla hoops added in.

So if you don’t want to exercise in the rain, but think that as part of your New Year’s resolution you should get a little fitter this might be the answer for you. I was going to do my own training video for everyone so that you could see how easy it is, but I thought that I would not subject you to this at this time. One other bonus is that you get to make your own character to represent you in the game which is kind of cool.