Hawai’i: Healthset, Soulset, Mindset, Heartset

A New Life Chapter Begins.

Hello dear faith advocates for social justice!

I’ve been on hiatus because my wife and I just moved to Hawai’i. Why, you may ask. The answers are found in the title. These “sets” of things come from a book I just read, The 5 AM Club: Own Your Moving, Elevate Your Life, by Robin Sharma. He advocates for building up four areas of our lives involving our health, mind, soul, and heart (aka, the “sets”). If you are a Stephen Covey fan, it involves sharpening the saw, plus many meaningful additions.

Hog Heaven. I’ll talk about Sharma’s book soon, but I thought you’d like to hear about some of the bigger changes and adaptations necessary for life here in Paradise. We have a fence around the yard for the first time in my life. It’s not to be snooty. It’s called a hog fence because we have feral pigs here. They root up your plants and are especially fond of pineapples. Just ask our dear friends, David and Doug.

We saw a boar on the side of the main road to our house and stopped and told him not to go down our street. He listened or didn’t, wagging his tale with his snout firmly ensconced under a clump of dirt and grass. He probably weighed 250 pounds.

My father, from Arkansas and land of the razorback hog, tells me that’s a small pig, a shoat, he called it. Dad went on pig hunts as a boy and saw a 600-pound boar. He’s also a fisherman, so perhaps that is a porcine fish tale. I leave that to you to sort out.

Roosters crow at all hours, seemingly devoid of any understanding of dawn, except they spout off then, too. We also have wild goats and donkeys in various places. Interesting things and critters to look at pop up regularly around here.

The 5 AM Club and the 20-20-20 Rule. One of the ways to address the four of the “sets” involves the 20-20-20 rule. For those who know me, the idea of my getting up at the ungodly hour of 5 am would make them guffaw. It’s mostly because I have severe sleep apnea and use a BiPAP machine. The full-face mask looks like it would suck my face off. Instead, it blasts pressurized air into my windpipe to “prop” it open because it is too small.

Consequently, I have a nightly struggle to get the mask fitting right, find a good position, and hopefully drift off to a pleasant sleep. When I don’t sleep well, I need a nap fit for an Olympian. I am the queen of the nap. I would win the gold medal in the 1-, 2-, 3-, and 4-hour nap categories if it were an Olympic sport. I’m also a champion snorer without my machine, but I digress.

I was attracted to this book because I’m in a new place, starting a new chapter. Despite my sleep battles, I want to be more productive earlier in the day. That’s partly because we are 6 hours behind Eastern Time. So from a ministry perspective, the earlier, the better. If I manage to get up at 5 am, it’s already 11 am in Michigan and the eastern states.

20 minutes of vigorous exercise. Robin Sharma offers a formula for the first hour you are awake, called the 20-20-20 rule. The first 20 minutes involve vigorous exercise. Again, here’s a source of laughter for those who know me. The most vigorous thing I do is periodically carry heavy stuff (handy during a move).

However, I’m willing to give this a try because when we sweat, we release cortisol, the stress/fear hormone. Sweat generates a “brain-derived neurotrophic factor” (BDNF), which creates healing for brain cells plus new neural connections. This intrigues me because I’m an excellent “sweat–er.” And I could use a regular off-load of stress and fear–heck, right now, we all could.

20 minutes of reflection. The second 20-minute segment involves reflecting, meditating, and/or journaling. There are lots of great resources for this. I use centering prayer; you can read all about that in a previous blog. Meditation clears the mind of what bothers us, and we can let go of the ceaseless “noise” in our busy, over-scheduled, hard-charging life. Meditation also releases cortisol, and the brain slows down through “transient hypofrontality.”

You can try lectio divina (praying and meditating on a sacred text), walking meditation, mindfulness meditation, prayer beads, and a host of others that will fit your needs.

20 minutes to promote growth. The last 20 minutes of your first hour of wakefulness include reading material that will build you up, journaling, and writing down ideas that occur to you. I read this book to promote growth by learning more about how important exercise is, what cortisol does to us, and how meditation has many physical and spiritual benefits.

The next blog will round out The 5 AM Club with info on becoming more productive by incorporating a cycle of rest paired with periods of focused performance. I recommend it to you!