Coaching Post # 002 - June 4, 2021
I am learning a lot and for the rest of this year I want to rediscover my love for the written word. I will aim to write regularly, and share with friends who may wish to give feedback or discuss the ideas I bring to the table. Here is the first post that I have written since my post about life coaching itself. That post is housed on my blog and can be found by clicking here
I am away from home this week, trying to climb Mt. Rainier. For the second time. But that is a story for another day. While I am here, I am able to create some mental space for continuing my explorations around life coaching and personal development, and in doing so aim to offer some value to those who choose to read these emails.
When I decided to pursue formal training in life coaching, one of my old ideas came back to the forefront, to create a quantifiable model for what is otherwise a qualitative realm of personal development. There is a large body of work in this area, from which a few writings substantially resonated with me. One such concept is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and another is Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development. As with anything in psychology these are not laws but constructs, frameworks for viewing an aspect of life. This notion of frameworks will recur in future explorations. And within frameworks lives a subset concept, which is metrics.
There is a fundamental maxim in the business world — if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. Like any maxim this one requires context. In this case, we can say that measurements have to be meaningful, and relatively simple, in order to be useful to whatever is being managed.
Maslow’s pyramid, as known to us, is a qualitative framework of personal growth resulting from one’s needs being met. If we can create a quantifiable model of the same then maybe we could use it to check in with ourselves at any point during this journey of life. It would be a reasonable guess that most of us dream of achieving a point in our life where we have no unmet needs and our life is “near perfect”.
When we are fulfilled we may be better able to assess what “self actualization” actually means to us. But let’s start this journey from the first step. The first thing we can measure is our physical body. This is close to the first level of the pyramid, the physiological needs. There are so many ways that we can measure the working and well-being of our body. And every minute of the day someone is willing to see you a widget to measure heart rate, steps taken, EPOC etc.
So here is the first tip in measuring, courtesy of one of my teachers — my running coach. If you are (or are planning to be) physical active and considering using the many parameters of performance, here’s one way to simplify that goal.
Check your heart rate first thing in the morning, even before you roll out of bed or sit up. Do this for a week and you will have your average resting heart rate. (By the way you can simply check your heart rate with fingers on neck pulse, or use one of your widgets!)
When you exercise on any given day, if the next morning’s resting heart rate measurement is greater than your average resting heart then your body has not fully recovered and you shouldn’t engage in more strenuous activities (until it returns to baseline).
There are many athletes who don’t necessarily follow this rule and their bodies are both working and recovering. But especially for those who workout infrequently, or newly active, following this tip will help reduce injury and also help build cardiovascular ability. As you remain active, your resting heart continues to improve so you have to keep that track as well.
This is not a concept that is commonly followed but I found at least one informally written post about the concept.
https://theathleteblog.com/athlete-resting-heart-rate/
Next time I will highlight another aspect of our basic needs as we are working from food, clothing, shelter and up. Today’s post is loosely under the physiological aspect, adjacent to food.
Thanks for reading.
P.S. I would appreciate your feedback on the content and readability, etc. Also, if at any point you don’t wish to receive this regular communication just let me know and ‘poof’ all future emails will disappear from your unread box. :-)