On my beach walks last week – glorious beach walks, as the day trippers have all left, leaving the beaches to the gulls, the tiny piping plovers, the rare fisherman and occasional walkers like me – I became more conscious about the range of feedback available to me and how valuable it all is. There was feedback from the elements in the environment, from my own psychology – how I was feeling – and from the electronic devices I was wearing/ carrying.
The environment – nature in this case – provided feedback which supported my experience in the following ways: the embrace of the gentle sea breeze blowing my hair and cooling my skin; the sound of the waves roaring up onto the sand, and being sucked back again, and the noises and sights of the gulls squawking and swooping, and the tiny piping plovers scurrying a constant few feet ahead of me. This tactile, auditory and visual feedback from nature contributed significantly to my feelings of well-being and my most satisfying performance. I felt supported by the environment. Furthermore, I overheard one woman say to another as I passed them, “this is so great.” I smiled. A couple of days later, when walking, a man wearing only bathing trunks walked toward me with arms outstretched with a huge grin on his face. “This is beautiful. This is the first time I have ever walked to the most north part of Sandy Hook. It is just so beautiful.” I congratulated him, laughing with him as he exuberantly needed to share his feelings of elation and achievement.
Psychologically, I felt light and powerful, and in tune with nature all around. I felt positive and supported by the environment. I drew deep breaths to take it all in appreciatively. I felt the blood pumping in my heart as my pulse intensified with my effort. My breath quickened and the heat was rising in my body in proportion to the energy I was expending. I felt fortunate to be in such a place at that moment with an increased sense of well-being just as the other people had expressed.
Then there were the electronic devices that provided me feedback. I was wearing a heart rate monitor strap around my chest and a watch on my wrist. I knew exactly my heart rate as I walked, my “lap” time, and the calories I was consuming. The feedback from these tools helped me track my performance. Not only was the HR monitor providing me valuable feedback, I also had my iPhone with an app called MotionX-GPS, in my short’s pocket. This app tracked my walk. I could see where I was going on the map, the GPS co-0rdinates, my pace, if I chose to look at it in the moment. My pace was 3.9 miles per hour and if I wanted to get to 4.00 mph, I knew what I had to do! At the same time, I was listening to music, that inspired me and helped me find a rhythm that worked with my pace. I also took this photograph with my iPhone.
Would I have enjoyed my walk without my feedback tools – the environment, my psyche and electronic devices. Yes, and I think the feedback these tools provided me in the moment enhanced my enjoyment and my performance. Moreover, I can now make choices about my next walks – the conditions of the environment and how they impact my psyche, and the data that I later downloaded from my heart rate monitor and iPhone app, MotionX-GPS to my computer.
Being conscious of my performance helps because it’s in my nature to want feedback – to know how I am doing , how I am serving myself and others, how I am in nature, and in the world at large. It helps my performance to know how I relate to the context itself and to others. I learn more about what supports me; what I value; how I can evaluate and improve and take corrective action. I can make choices about the feedback. It is all information and I can chose to ignore it or use it as a benchmark for something different.
It seems to me that our participation in, and contribution to this world is hugely dependent on the quality of feedback we get from a variety of sources. We don’t live in isolation; there are feedback loops that that continually inform us. How much attention we pay to all the feedback that is available to us and what we do with it, is our choice.
