Out of the Box
/In our routine lives, I find it challenging to figure out moments where I can step out of the box and be creative. When I was a kid, there was no shortage of creativity due to my wild imagination. I was able to turn a simple 4-wall room into the craziest playground and have fun! To be honest, I can’t remember complaining about being “bored”…
At the beginning of September, I decided to push myself to step out of the routines and find that joyful “ME” again. It was not an easy task…. Everything in my life was (and still is) timed to a minute. For example, if we don’t leave the house by 8:45, we cannot make it to Kaya’s school bus, which will mean I will drive an extra 7 minutes to his campus, spend an additional 8 minutes there, drive another 7 minutes back to Ela’s campus, look for parking and potentially have her be late to her campus. Not to mention, all that going back and forth between their campuses would make me miss any 9:30am calls…. Not to mention the pre-departure routines of getting both the kids, the dog and the lunch boxes ready, especially if I have an 8am meeting at work…. There is NO room to be creative - at least, so I thought. My first attempt in being creative was calming myself down in the mornings and I started to think about what I can do if I miss that minute mark. All of a sudden, my horizon expanded. I ended up with an office overlooking the entire Bay at the top of Presidio while taking a call with Compliance. I got some serious steps in walking in the Presidio with a 4-month old puppy while chatting about one of my critical projects with my team. I then let this calm, creative juice take over one of the rare weekends that I stayed home. Since it had been 2.5 months since my last weekend at home, my head immediately went to all the errands that I had to do at home. I calmed that mind down and realized that for the kids this was also a rare time to be at home. So I came up with a game plan, totally out of my control. Kids and I wrote down 3 things that we wanted to do on Saturday. I even wrote three things for Alpine (our puppy). We then put all these things into a box and we pulled one item per person. I had no clue what the kids wrote/drew, We ended up having a jammed packed day but we did EVERYTHING together: We drew, we played fetch in the garden, we painted Ela’s nails, we cleaned the garage. I was proud of my kids because neither of them wrote down anything about screen time! Best of all, it was really nice not to plan a weekend on my own.
I will admit that it is exhausting to get out of the routine and not watching the minute hand of the watch to click through. However, it is also freeing…
Train and Smile is my main venue of getting creative on a weekly basis. And that’s why I love it so much. Just like I was able to turn any room into a playground when I was a kid, now I can turn anything we have in the house into a workout equipment. There is no limit to how we can get ourselves stronger. It is important to let the creative juices flow in.
Here is fun routine when we turn a blanket into a balance beam:
Fold the blanket on the long end multiple times until it resembles a long line.
Place your “long line” on the floor
Step on it as if you are on a balance beam. From this moment on, imagine that the floor is 4 feet down. No falling off of the beam.
Single Line Lunge Pulses: Have your feet parallel with the balance beam - left foot in the back, right foot in the front with about 3-4 feet in between the two. Your legs will form a triangle with the beam. Come down to a lunge making sure that the front knee stays on top of your front ankle and the back knee comes all the way down to the beam. Bring it back up to the triangle. Repeat it on the same side for 10 times and then switch sides without falling off of the beam.
Heel Pulse into a Squat: Place your feet perpendicular to the “beam”, heel hanging off of the edge. Keep your legs as straight as they can be and hip width apart. Pulse your heels up. When you bring your heels back down come down to a quick squat pulse and up. Make sure to keep your knees behind your toes as you are doing your squats. Repeat the move for 12 times.
Single leg jump: Let the right foot dangle off of the balance beam as you stand on your left foot parallel with the beam. Move your right foot, in the air, back and forth to gain momentum and hop with the left foot. Make sure to land right back to where you took off. Repeat on the same side for 10 times and then change sides.
Repeat 4 through 6, 3 times
Here to a creative day at home… 3 different perspectives of “Cat Kid”
High five to all of us for gettingout of that box to make things more fun!
