The 2 key principles for me in life are Balance and Simplicity. In response to my blog about the 21 Day Challenge a friend of mine rightly suggested that peoples responses may have been skewed by the fact that it was an excercise based challenge.

This got me thinking about the balance between excercise and the food we consume and the quantity of each we do.  The recommendation from most health professionals is excercise 3 to 4 times per week. On the other hand we eat 3 to 4 times per day and often more if you add in the stops at the friendly vending machine, company snack shop or corner cafe!

My thinking goes that is the days before we wore clothes and tweeted on twitter, we spent a larger % of our time hunting/gathering as compared to eating.  So my question is, have we got it wrong, should we be exercising a LOT more than we do in order for us to be in balance with the way nature intended?  We are all aware of the worldwide pandemic of obesity and the associated conditions such as diabetes and heart conditions.  Maybe, just maybe, we have it wrong and we need to excercise for the same amount of time as we sit around consuming doughnuts and fizzy drinks ?

For me Mind Maps are awesome tools.  Not only do they help you logically and graphically see the ideas around a central theme, they also serve as a to-do or reminder to help my failing memory.  I have been using the free mind mapping software for Mac called FreeMind, which you can Download Here.  It is simple and easy to use and does the job without overly complicating the issue.  it does allow exporting the maps to other formats as well as importing maps from programs like Mind Manager.

There is a nice starter video tutorial series available at Gurushare.  Just watch the first few and you will be up and running quickly.

A while ago I created a Facebook page and subsequently a page on my web site called "The 21 Day Challenge".  The main purpose of the challenge was to excercise for 21 days consecutively for a minimum of 1 hour per day.  I am now on my 3rd 21 Day Challenge and have seen some interesting things which I would like to share with you.

To answer the question posed in the title as to the rationale behind the challenge, it was NOT about the excercise!  The whole idea behind it was an experiment in human behavior.  I wanted to see how people would react to a challenge in general.  There were two distinct reactions:

The first group, which was by far in the majority, immediately threw an excuse at me, often without asking me about any details.  After giving me their excuse, they would begin to gather more information and only after some serious discussion would they even consider it.  I loosely termed this behaviour "safety netting".  The worrying aspect of this behaviour is that it becomes so automated that I can see how a great many people would miss out on opportunities in life simply because their automated way of being closes them off to opportunities and possibilities without the full understanding of those opportunities.

The second and very small group of people just automatically asked me how they can do it and how to take it on, based on the information I provided, they chose to do it or not!  Could there be a link between this kind of behaviour and how successful people are in life generally ?  I think there is......