Anna S. E. Lundberg

Coach, Speaker, Writer

5 Life Lessons From 3 Days of Boot Camp

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Hiking in the Welsh mountainsI’ve just returned from my first-ever boot camp, feeling a little sore but full of good intentions and with plenty of things to think about. Thanks to a couple of very stubborn colds and an also-very-stubborn runner’s knee, I haven’t been exercising much since December. Recently I’ve been putting much more focus on my health and wellness, so what better way to kickstart it all with a week of exercise out in the fresh air, nutritious food, and lots of sleep?!

We arrived in Gobowen, Wales, on Monday and so had three full days of circuits and hiking, with healthy meals throughout. A typical day would look like this:

7am circuit training (tabata / high-intensity interval training)
8am breakfast
9.30am circuit training, boxing, running with a snack break
1pm lunch
2.30-4.30pm hilly hike with a snack break
6pm dinner
Optional yoga (using my iPhone app), sports massage and/or hot tub session
9pm bed!

Here’s a little video from our final day, a full-day hike through the beautiful Welsh countryside: snow, waterfalls, and, of course, lots of sheep:

We burned an average of 4,000 calories a day and each of us has lost both pounds and inches. More importantly, however, I think we’ve been given a lot of food for thought (*hoho*) that we can take home and continue to reflect on. Our instructors, both with over 20 years of experience in the military and really lovely guys, were full of wisdom and positivity. I think their little maxims are applicable not just to fitness but also to life.

Here are 5 life lessons from our 3 days of boot camp:

1. “Visualise your goals”

Welsh countryside
Some of the views during our full-day hike on the final day

If you’ve been following my blog, you’ll know that I’m a big fan of goals. Goals can give you a sense of purpose in life, focus your limited time and energy on what’s really important, and motivate you to achieve something that is meaningful to you. This week at boot camp, we were asked to define our goals on Monday, and encouraged to remember them and to really focus on them throughout the week. If you don’t know what you’re aiming for, then how can you ever get there? Visualising what you’re trying to achieve, and keeping it top of mind, will make you work that little bit harder and help you not to get distracted.

2. “You won’t be an achiever if you’re not a believer”

I’ve written about this before, too: although you may have set fantastic goals with the best of intentions, you might be held back by your limiting beliefs. You have to believe that you’re going to achieve your goals, or you’ll never get there. Maybe you tell yourself you don’t have time, or your job is too stressful, or you can’t afford it, or some other justification for why your goal is just too hard to achieve. Whatever the reasons – excuses – you give yourself, you need to break these down before you’ll make a breakthrough. Reframe your beliefs in positive terms: I can make time, this is a priority, I choose this over that, I’m strong, I can do this!

3. “The only thing that stands in your way is you”

HIIT exercises
A few of the circuits we were put through

It’s definitely easy to blame other factors for your own weaknesses: you can’t say no when your colleagues pass around a pack of biscuits, your friends encourage you to have another drink or to eat that dessert at the weekend, your husband says you’re being silly. Ultimately, however, these are your goals, you are the one who will achieve them, and you are the only one who will stand in your way. Nobody is forcing you to act in a particular way and you can choose to be strong, choose to resist, choose to make your own choices. It can be incredibly empowering when you recognise that you are in control of your own actions and you really take ownership of your goals and your behaviour. At the end of every day, ask yourself: did my actions today move me closer to my goals? If not, what I can I do differently tomorrow?

4. “Every movement you do chisels your body”

I think this was my favourite call to action of the week. Each and every thing you do, each time you work that little bit harder, each time you keep pushing yourself when you feel like giving up, you are having an impact on your body shape. Whatever the goal, we tend to think in terms of drastic changes, big leaps forward, good or bad. In fact, each and every small step we take will move us forwards; every single thing we do will have an effect (depending on the action, that effect will be positive or negative). We don’t need to think in such black-and-white terms, all or nothing. Knowing that every little thing we do will have an impact will help to motivate you to go that bit further when you don’t think you can.

5. “Don’t let your imagination be your limitation”

The food at boot camp
Here’s a little selection of the food we were served during the week. Not bad, eh?

We did a huge range of different exercises throughout the week, with a minimal amount of equipment. The only things we had were mats, resistance bands, and boxing gloves. The world is your gym, whether you use lampposts or trees or fences, and you can even use your own body weight. I’m definitely guilty of blaming my irregular schedule and constant travel for making it very difficult to exercise – but that’s really a poor excuse! Aside from hotel gyms you can do all sorts of circuits in your room or out in the park. Same for food: the chef this week cooked up some very tasty and creative concoctions. Why not get resourceful and invent your own solutions with the materials and environment you have at your disposal?

The overall message is very much consistent with my own position on this blog: take control of your own life and career, set meaningful goals, and take one step at a time to get there.

 

Prestige Boot Camp runs boot camp retreats in Wales as well as Devon, Suffolk, Spain and Portugal. They also run sessions in Hyde Park – I went last year and it was great. They really care about the participants, it’s not some horrible shouty military mania, and the results are there as well.

GUEST POST – The Power of a Three-Letter-Word: say YES more

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Today I have the pleasure of sharing a guest post from Terri Witherden. She said “yes” to a little adventure back in June and this has led to a whole summer of “yes”, culminating in being part of the team supporting Dave Cornthwaite in his first-ever Yestival, a weekend of campfires and inspirational speakers. And this is only the beginning…

[Terri:] For three letters, “yes” has a lot of clout.

It can open doors, start new journeys and lead you down paths you could never have planned. It can be frightening, it can be daunting, but it can be the most wonderful world in the world if you let it.

The greatest danger in life is not to take the adventure
[Photo credit: Jonathan Chater]
A few months ago, I became aware of just how little I said “yes”. “No” was my default response to life, falling out of my mouth like a lead balloon and sinking any chance of new adventures before they ever really had chance to float. Inspired to Say Yes More in June, my summer evolved into a season of adventures, firsts and friendships – all through three little letters.

From learning to kayak and paddleboard to a month road tripping in America, “Yes” helped me discover the world and also myself. My summer of adventures culminated in a field in Surrey last week as I witnessed its magic again at Yestival: the Say Yes More Festival.

Say Yes More
[Photo credit: Jonathan Chater]
Yestival is the brain child of adventurer and motivational speaker Dave Cornthwaite. Fuelled by his own passion for living life, Dave formed the Yes Tribe (we’re not a cult, honest), a community of people who are dedicated to DOING – turning plans into actions and lofty aspirations into guidelines. Yestival saw 150 attendees merge with the good and the great of the modern adventuring fraternity. The result was enchanting.

I was privileged to watch the magic happen from behind the scenes. Each day we rose from our tents to the rallying cry of Project Awesome: a free fitness venture run by Ultimate Hell Week’s Danny Bent together with fellow adventurer Anna McNuff. The morning Yoga class was also full, perfect for those looking for something a little less burpee orientated.

Yestival speakersFuelled by freshly catered food, energised by physical activities and inspired by the great outdoors, the Yestival Day began. Speakers pitched their talk topics to an eager crowd who then scurried to their chosen venue, sunk into soft hay bales and armed themselves with pencils and notepads. From the adventuring elite such as Vince Austin, Sean Conway and Niall McCann, to emerging stars like Ben Arthur, Laura Kennington and The Meek Family, there was an adventure waiting for everyone at Yestival.

The fog rises
[Photo credit: James Hinchcliffe]
From behind the scenes I witnessed the beauty of “yes” again and again. I saw ideas kindle, friendships bloom and jaws drop. Eyes sparkled around the central campfire as the British weather treated us to four seasons in a single day. Adventures both big and small were discussed and lofty “Howabouts” were nourished with oodles of genuine, integral passion. People who came alone were soon dancing with new friends as the Yes, and the hot buttered rum from the Landrover bar named Hector, continued to flow.

We awoke to the first frost of the year on the final morning of the festival. It was as if nature was mirroring the crystal-clear resolutions many of us had formed over the weekend. As the autumn sun rose, we brought the stage outside, bathing in the last warmth of summer and dreaming of the future to come.

Yestival team
Terri is on the far right, Dave in the centre. [Photo credit: Jonathan Chater]
Working on Yestival was a huge experience for me. I learned about time management, juggling jobs, social promotion and working without any budget. I also learned that when you pull the right people together, under the right banners with the right purpose, the right things happen. From hoisting six-foot letters into a giant, Hollywood-esque “Say Yes More” to chasing chickens off the festival site, I adored being apart of something so special.

Taking notes
[Photo credit: Dave Cornthwaite]
What meant most, however, was watching people enjoy the fruits of our efforts. Everyone came away from Yestival with a new hope to do more, be more and dream more. A support network that had been sprouting all summer through smaller campouts bloomed into an entire tree of possibilities. Rather than feeling sad as the tents came down and the stage disappeared, I couldn’t help but feel hopeful. Yestival was the start of new journeys for many involved and I can’t wait to follow the adventures that were conceived in a field in Surrey on a perfect Autumn weekend.

And just think, all of this magic, all of this opportunity, all of these new friends, dreams and adventures, all started with one little word. I’ll leave you to figure out what the word was…

Home, adventure, and something in between…

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Death Valley
High on the “adventure” axis: experiencing extreme heat and out-of-this-world landscapes in Death Valley, California.

Someone I met on a recent adventure told me that we have two desires: home and adventure.

When I first heard this, I thought it was a great insight and immediately interpreted the two as being contradictory: adventure is having no ties and travelling the world alone while home is settling down, buying a house, and starting a family. This puts me far down the end of the adventure spectrum at the moment, while some of my friends are at the other end, focusing on the home side of things.

But I don’t think they’re contradictory at all.

Home, now that I think about it, is about creating a family with people you love, having somewhere you belong and feel safe, experiencing an element of stability and balance. Adventure, on the other hand, is about taking risks, challenging yourself, being free to explore the world. And I think you can have the two together.

Home is where the heart is, bla bla bla – but it’s true, isn’t it? You can feel lonely and unhappy in a big house full of stuff just as you can feel at home living out of a suitcase. A family can be a partner and five children or a partner and a dog; it can be your dad and your brother or a group of your best friends. In the same way, you can have an adventure by grabbing a backpack and heading out into the world by yourself or you can have it with a group of strangers on a hilltop an hour from London; you can have it with your partner and you can have it with your children.

We have a tendency to see things in black and white: having a steady income in a full-time job or being poor as an entrepreneur, feeling tied down or remaining independent, creating a home or having an adventure. This kind of thinking makes every decision seem incredibly important as you decide where to live, how to work, who to spend your time with. Seeing different shades of grey (no not 50 thank you – well, that’s an adventure too I suppose), or a happy mishmash of different things, makes it all more relaxed, more of an experiment as you step by step create the balance you want in your life. It’s an individual choice, as ever, and only you can decide how much of each ingredient you want in your particular mixture.

So, yes, at the moment I’m having a whole lot of “adventure” and, yes, I feel like I want a bit more “home” going forward – but it’s not yet clear what shape that home will take, or what adventures I’ll continue to have while I’m creating this home. And I’m not going to get it right tomorrow: I’ll try a little more of this, a little less of that, and I’ll probably keep trying as long as I live. There are those who’ll give up their home to become professional adventurers, and others who’ll focus all their attention on building a home for their loved ones; but as far as I’m concerned, I’m completely confident that I can have the two together.

Let’s meet for a coffee? No, let’s meet for SUP!

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On Saturday night, my sister and I ran Midnattsloppet, a 10k race that starts late in the evening and goes around Södermalm in Stockholm. Yay us! This was an amazing achievement particularly for my sister who has somehow managed to go from nothing to speedy gonzalez in less than a year. And she’s running another 10k next week! It was such a fun evening – a few nerves, of course, but once we were there we soaked up the atmosphere, threw ourselves into the warm-up ahead of the race, and even enjoyed the run itself. “I want to do it again!” said my sister after crossing the finishing line – this from a girl who, like many, has always said that she’s “not a runner”.

Midnattsloppet
Approaching the start at Midnattsloppet, ready to go!

Of course the run itself was just one evening, the culmination of months of training. For me, it started when my sister suggested we go for a run together back at Christmastime. Since then, we’ve both been training off and on between other commitments and various injuries and illnesses, including running a 5k Race for Life with some of her friends back in May. When I’ve gone to visit her during the year, we’ve gone out for a run together; usually we would have gone to the theatre or the cinema and had an ice cream! We’ve still been able to chat – we generally ran at “conversation pace”, an excellent pace I think – but we’ve done it while getting fresh air and exercise. How very virtuous of us.

Stockholm from Smedsuddsvägen
I couldn’t bring my phone with me on the water to take pictures so you’ll just have to imagine how stunning the skyline looked from out on the water as the sun set over the city.

But this is what I think is so great about training for an event like this together, or simply deciding to do something a bit more active instead of the usual food-related and sedentary meet-ups that are more common. Last night, I went for an evening SUP (stand-up paddle boarding) with some friends around Riddarfjärden and Långholmen in Stockholm. Usually we would have just met for a fika or for a drink after work; instead, there we were out on the water, watching the sun setting over Stockholm Old Town. Magic.

And it’s not just me. On Facebook now, my newsfeed is full of friends going off on microadventures and secret adventures, saying yes more and being awesome together in the mornings before work. Smiling faces all around. Some of it is about escaping the city, escaping work. Some of it is about getting fit and losing the couple of kilos that we’ve put on thanks to all those cinnamon buns and salted caramel ice creams we’ve been having over the summer (no? just me?). But most of all it’s about meeting friends and having a laugh.

So next time you’re agreeing to meet with a friend after work, how about choosing something a bit different? Maybe rent some canoes and paddle down the canal? Or stay on dry land, grab your running shoes and go for a jog together? Book a tennis court and play a few sets? Grab a picnic and go to your local park? Or try some SUP!

If you want to find other like-minded adventurers, here are some of the lovely people you can join – mostly in the UK I’m afraid but I’m sure you can find similar groups of intrepid adventurers around the world! Let me know what you get up to…

Project Awesome – Danny Bent and Anna McNuff are running free fitness sessions in London on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 6.30am. Here’s the Facebook page with details of locations and awesome photos to get you in the mood.

Say Yes More – Dave Cornthwaite has been running a summer series of weekend escapes in the UK. There’s still an opportunity to Join Dave or you can join the tribe on Facebook to find out about future yes-saying activities.

Secret Adventures – My first adventure was with Madoc on a secret island north of the M25 – read about upcoming trips, including the highly recommended night Kayak on the Thames and, further afield, dog sledding in the Arctic, on the spanking new website.

Escapes Retreats – A new one for me, this one is especially good if you’re interested in the wellbeing aspect: Escapes Retreats is run by a nutritionist and personal trainer.

If you happen to be in Stockholm then here are a couple of options to try kayaking or stand-up paddle boarding:

Stockholm SUP – We went out with these guys on Kungsholmen yesterday They offer courses as well if you want a bit of instruction before heading out on your own. English website here. And we didn’t have to wear life jackets, so we looked cool, which is important.

Surfbussen – This one comes highly recommended from a friend who has competed in SUP SM, so it must be good. They have kitesurfing too, for the hardcore enthusiasts among you. No English site as far as I can tell, so practice your Swedish here.

Tanto SUP & Kayak – On Södermalm, you can rent SUP and kayak here, as the name suggests. English site here.

Travelling Back In Time: Digging for family roots

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For the last few years, my parents have been driving around various areas of Sweden, exploring our family roots; this year, I joined my mum on one of these trips. She’s always been interested in learning more about our family history. She herself grew up without many relatives close by and with three of four grandparents dead long before she was born. She’s also interested more generally in how people lived in previous generations. Exploring our family history is a way to connect more personally with how people used to live – it’s easier to relate to an individual’s fate than a general description in a history book (just like Kate and Leo on Titanic!). 

Anders Jansson
Anders Jansson (perhaps this is where I get my big head from?!)

On this particular trip, we were following my maternal grandmother’s branch, to her father Arnold and his father, the vicar Anders Anngren, whose roots are in the county of Dalsland. We went even further this time, going back also to Anders’ father, Anders Jansson. He was born in 1826 on a torp in Landhult, a set-up in Scandinavia that allowed a poorer man to lease a little piece of land and a simple cottage while he worked on the land of a larger farm. We visited the place of this larger farm, the main gård, although there’s no longer a farm there and the residential building is of course much more recent.

Torp remains
The remains of the stone foundations of the torp could just about be identified through the undergrowth, where we took the opportunity to pick some wild strawberries, smultron, that have grown here more recently.
Skiffer
We also found some pieces of the roof, in the popular (and widely available) material of the time, skiffer (slate).

When Anders Jansson came of age, he moved to another torp, Tomtekullen, in order to work on another gård. In fact we’ve discovered that Anders was quite the entrepreneur. He chose to cultivate oats and thanks to a high level of demand for horse fodder at the time (in the mid-1850s), he made enough money to buy a small gård of his own, Skällsäter. There he had a family of six children, though two of his sons Enock and August sadly died in the aftermath of the measles aged five and eight. Anders’ youngest son Karl eventually took over the gård, after a brief stint in the US. Karl’s two sons later also emigrated to the US but they on the other hand would not come back to take over the gård when Karl asked them to, and he was forced to give it up when he became too old to run it.

Ragnar and my mother
We met with Ragnar, grandson to Karl, and he was the one who helped us find the location of Anders Jansson’s childhood home in Landhult. He’s one of those people who you just instantly like. We also met with another one of Anders’ great-grandsons on another branch, Thore (whose wife said “There won’t be any dessert, just a bit of cake” and then proceeded to serve us four of the best home-baked goods I’ve ever had in my life). This is a new part of our family tree that we’ve recently discovered, albeit quite far removed; they’re my second cousins, twice removed, to be exact – if my googling of the terminology is correct.

But coming back to my own direct line of descent and my grandmother’s grandfather, Anders Anngren: he chose the path of priesthood and became curate in various small parishes including Skållerud and Ör, eventually working his way up to become vicar in Filipstad in the neighbouring county of Värmland. Here he lived with his wife Elisabeth, with whom he had five children, until his death in 1927. He is buried in the Filipstad churchyard with these five children, joined by my grandparents in the last few years.

Filipstad Church
The church in Filipstad: not a bad place to lay your weary bones to rest, I think.
Nils Ferlin statue
My other link to Filipstad is Nils Ferlin, the beloved Swedish poet who is in fact my first cousin thrice removed! His aunt Elisabeth Ferlin married the vicar Ander Anngren. Do you follow? 🙂

My grandmother lived in the vicarage in Filipstad from 1921 to 1927. She had been born in Norrland to Arnold, oldest son of Anders Anngren. Although poor, Arnold somehow managed to finance his law studies (presumably with the help of a scholarship) at Uppsala University – but then he met my mother’s grandmother Magda, Maggie. He couldn’t afford to marry her and continue his studies, so he chose instead to join the army as an officer with a small salary. Married in 1918, they moved to Sollefteå in the north of Sweden and had two children, Britta followed by my grandmother Inger in 1920.

Arnold died in the Spanish flu in 1921; he was 29, younger than I am today. At least 50 million people died of this flu pandemic in Europe, which infected 500 million people across the world at the end of the Second World War, although it was quietened down at the time so as not to demoralise people further. Maggie couldn’t take care of two children alone and so sent Inger to Filipstad, where she lived with her grandparents in the vicarage along with one of her unmarried aunts, Hildur. When the vicar Anders died in 1927, the vicarage passed on to the new vicar and everyone had to move. Inger was sent off again, this time to her other aunt Märta in Nyköping.

Vicarage in Filipstad
The vicarage in Filipstad

Of course this is only dipping our toes in the fates of these individuals, who each of them lived rich lives with joys and tragedies in different measures. I think it’s always humbling to learn about their circumstances, both to be grateful that I was born when and where I was (my mum likes to remind me that I would have been working as a maid if I had lived in previous centuries) and also to understand that our time on earth is really just a fleeting moment, and we’ll soon be turned to dust like all these before us.

“As you are now, so once was I
As I am now, so you shall be”

A cheery thought, don’t you think?!

Have you explored your own family history? What have you found?