The Healthy Management of Reality - Stanford University

Exercise. Exercise is helpful in weight control, but it also has many otherbenefits: It increases cardiovascular fitness, muscle strength, agility, flexibility,and even has positive effects on mood. It is one of the best habits to get into.Three half hours is the usually recommended lower level of scheduled exercise perweek. Walking is a good alternative. Keeping your body strong enough to do thethings you want to do is one of the best ways to manage your reality.TimeIn teaching how to manage external reality, it is helpful on focusing on eachday, each 24-hour period. In a sense, our life is made up of some unknown numberof days, and thus, molding the shape of each of these days will result in moldingthe shape of our lives.If you are feeling overwhelmed with commitments, the task is to build insome “white space” into your days. “White space” is an image that our familydeveloped during a period in which all of our days seemed to be scheduled, and wehad little time to just be together. The image is that of writing on a piece of paper,and using up all the space available, including the margins. We felt we needed toleave some white space somewhere on the page, in order to feel a sense of controlover our own lives. The phrase stuck, and we have used it successfully torecognize it when we achieve it, and to ask each other for some when our schooland work lives seem to get out of hand.HMOR.July2005.Muñoz.doc 87