2 June 2021
Push-ups Context
The Push-up Challenge for Mental Health started yesterday, and I set about creating my plan to do push-ups to meet the challenge.
When I have a busy day at work, it’s incredible what a difference taking a moment to breathe can make in your productivity. It also helps you refocus your priorities.
My energy was spread across multiple areas on the home front, mainly because I’ve agreed to do the “Push-Up” Challenge for Mental Health. It’s a 25-day challenge to increase awareness for Mental Health by doing push-ups.
Now, I’m going to get real with you; I won’t be able to do the number of push-ups required to reach the 3,318 over 25 days (I’m in a team of two, so I only need to do 1,659 or 75 per day if one day a week is a rest day). However, my goal to do what I can.
My plan of attack follows:
- Push-ups: 1 x day focussing on doing as many push-ups as I can
- Squats: 1 x day focussing on squats as many as I can
- Sit-ups: 1 x day focussing on sit-ups as many as I can
- Repeat back to the start with push-ups
By the way, if you’d like to contribute to the Push-Up Challenge, simply click on the link or go to www.thepushupchallenge.com.au (oh no! The search engine thingy isn’t going to want that link spelt out in total).
Doing the challenge means my writing needs to be kept short, so I can go to bed early enough to wake at 5:00 AM to do the work.
So, let’s get straight to the analysis.
Today's Cards
The Cards - Analysis
Carryover Cards
No cards carried over from yesterday.
Push-ups Cross
Flowering is in the Now influenced by Possibilities. Since today and yesterday have been about mental health, and the push-up challenge is a new possibility for expanding my mental health. It seems like a novel idea on how to get myself into better shape and get back into transforming my lifestyle. There are different ways to tackle mental health.
The Rebel in the Goal position is about not following the Push-up Challenge to the letter by following it in spirit. By the way, the site quite clearly states other forms of exercise are accepted. It’s based on an honesty system anyway. Today was my squats day, and they’re much more manageable than push-ups!
Signing up for the challenge was a bit of an Adventure (Recent Past) out of my comfort zone; since my karate years (teenage years). The punishment for doing something wrong in karate or misbehaving were push-ups, and I’ve disliked them ever since.
In the Future Energy position is Mind. Mind is ironic because it appears as the very opposite of mental health and representing mental disorder. Bear in mind that not all confusion is detrimental; it happens at the beginning of learning.
Push-ups Base
Ice-olation is the card in the Feelings position. In truth, my emotions are all over the place at the moment, up one day, down the next. Ice-olation is holding back tears or masking tears, or diverting your attention away from what you should be letting yourself feel. Hmmm… who has the time! 🥲 In Osho’s book, tears are the only things that can melt away the feeling of Ice-olation.
Others’ Views is that of Playfulness. I haven’t paid much attention to how I’m perceived if I had to reflect on my interactions with the team … yep! There were undoubtedly some playful emails trying to coax a push-up out of the group – knowing full well it’s unlikely. But, hey! You can only offer. 😄
Hopes & Fears is that I hope doing the challenge doesn’t become The Burden (the card in the position) and fearing it will. It’s only for 25 days – I can do it without dying!
Finally, the Outcome position has the Thunderbolt card. Thunderbolt is about physical changes and appropriately describes what needs to happen for the push-ups to occur in my life. ⛹🏼.
References
- Osho, Osho Zen Tarot – The Transcendental Game of Zen, St Martin’s Press, ISBN 0-312-11733-7
- The Push-up Challenge
