Exercising my Chimp

The book is going well. I get quite a lot of it although I did get a bit lost at the chapters explaining how you 'choose' your troops, I have always sort of waited to be chosen and over the years that so rarely happens that I have kind of given up on the troop business and I've got quite used to being a troop of one or being just a part of my family troop. I do on occasions see troops marching about or I hear people talking about their troops and I think that would probably be quite nice - having a little troop to kind of .... troop about with, but after a while, if you don't get chosen to join a troop you get quite good at building a wall that says 'I'm really not fussed about troops anyway' and in the end you don't even get considered as a troop member, the wall seems to have an ability to make you invisible and people start talking around you like you just aren't there anymore.

So, I sort of skipped through the 'troop' chapters, there didn't seem to be any advice to pathetic people like me who have forgotten how to join a troop!. I'm not too sure how long the average chimp lasts in the jungle 'troopless' but I'll just have to take my chances.

I have learned that those slightly hysterical moments I have when I seem to be going ever so slightly mad are entirely down to my chimp and that I must work at getting in before the chimp kicks off. I'm not really sure quite how this helped with winning Olympic medals but I am only half way through the book so I'm hoping it will all become clear towards the end. After all, I'm not looking to win any medals, I just want to lope all the way around a 26 and a bit mile course!.

I did have another little light bulb moment last night, the book was talking about stressful situations and problems that might cause stress and it said that if you are contemplating the answer to a problem then you should start with what you have and where you are at and work at improving on that day by day, rather than, as I do, starting with where you want to be and trying to work out how your going to get there. If that's what you do then the task is so overwhelming that you become despondent and end up giving up. On this note, I have done quite well this week with the running - I do still have the small matter of 6 little miles to do tomorrow, but I'm fairly confident. I do feel as though I am at last getting somewhere and I can go just a short distance reasonably comfortably, let's just hope it continues.