Snappy sayings in the gym

My gym has a few new posters up in the ladies' changing rooms.

The two that I can remember are these:

-Winners train, losers complain

and
- One day or day one - you choose. (Personally, I think it would sound better the other way round.)

I read a lot of positive-thinking books and motivational sayings to give me a bit of a kick up the backside. My family is generally very cautious. If I had followed their lead, I'd not have done anything but find a safe little job and watch TV in the evenings.

Now, I know these motivational sayings get up some people's noses, but they are nothing new. A couple of days ago, I came across a quotation and couldn't believe the source. Sceptical as I am, I had to check and, yes, it was really a quotation from Goethe and this is how it went: "Erfolg hat drei Buchstaben: tun."

Translated, this says: "Success has three letters: doing." (Obviously, if you wanted to be correct, you'd have to change the 'three' to 'five'.)

What does this remind me of? The Nike slogan: just do it!

When I tell people of all the studying I've done, they think I'm clever to have done all that. However, I put it all down to 'chipping away' at things. I do it and I cope with the study material by breaking it down into chunks and only doing so much a day from Monday to Friday, with a bit of extra time at the weekend - if need be. 

The hardest thing about going to the gym is actually getting past my front door. When I just let my feet lead me to the gym and I don't think about things, I get there and enjoy myself - and the sense of achievement.

And when I'm there, I get to read motivational sayings. I particularly like the "One day or day one" slogan, because, for me, every day is day one. Every day is a new day and a new beginning, a new start. And it's a new chance to try to achieve the mantra from decades ago: "Every day, and in every day, I'm getting better and better." (As the Germans say: "Die Hoffnung stirbt zuletzt" - "Hope is the last thing to die.")

Vary your routes!

During the last long lockdown, when nothing but nothing was open, I did a lot of early-morning walks to stretch my legs. At the weekends, I would walk to the Rhine and back and I would try to vary my route each time. Doing this allowed me to make all sorts of little discoveries: residential buildings I'd never seen before, little alleyways, specialist shops and small, tucked-away parks and green areas for example.

You don't have to go out of your way to be a bit of an explorer. In our normal daily life, we tend to take the more well-trodden path. Seeing the same things every day gets boring and we become bored. However, just by going down a parallel road, for example, means you might discover a lovely display of flowers on a balcony, a cute mural on a building, discover a shop you never knew existed, or see some attractive person pass by.

It's even better if you take a camera with you; that way, you will be on the lookout for striking images. 

One saying I learnt while still at school - thanks to a Collins Gem Dictionary of Quotations, was from Confucius. He said: "Everything has its beauty, but not everyone sees it."

I go around trying to see what is beautiful about things. You can train your eye to see something beautiful even in a ruined building. Life is more uplifting if you focus on what is nice.

This article in The Guardian newspaper talk about similar walks in the countryside:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/oct/04/the-wonder-stuff-what-i-learned-about-happiness-from-a-month-of-awe-walks