For these and other reasons, gifted, talented and creative people often find it hard to raise enthusiasm for exercise. Yet we are precisely the group that benefits the most from it.   Here’s why:

Creative benefits of exercise

"If it weren't for my workouts I could never have composed nor conducted my third symphony: 'The Aerobica'."

Gifted individuals live intensely and can benefit from the short term exercise benefits of  increased energy, attention and focus.  After aerobic exercise, we feel more present in our bodies and are able to add greater value and vitality to each moment.

Those gifted individuals who find themselves spinning between different demands will find a regular exercise period provides both stability – a centering event – and a stimulus.

While physically anchored in aerobic activity your mind is opened to new possibilities. You can surrender to what feels like the indulgence of free-floating thoughts, unrestrained by messages that you should be doing something more ‘useful’.

Aerobic exercise also delivers long-term benefits in the form of improved brain function. The increase in blood flow “appears to carry various growth factors from the periphery of the body into the brain to start a molecular cascade there, creating new neurons and brain connections”, says Henriette van Praag, an investigator in the Laboratory of Neurosciences at the National Institute on Aging.

Less stress = more creativity

Exercise reduces the negative effects of stress.

"Exercise? Creativity? For some of us, life can be stress-free without either."

Stress stops creativity dead in its tracks. Without access to that creativity, gifted individuals can feel bereft, abandoned and lost.

Many – particularly those who demonstrate their creativity through entrepreneurial activity – are highly adept at concealing this sense of loss. They turn their minds to other things. Perhaps too many other things. And their loss of a deeper commitment may go unnoticed because they are so competent that even the ‘busy work” they undertake can look pretty serious.

It’s only at the end of the day, with energies naturally lowered, that they reach for an extra glass of wine or similar comfort in an attempt to fill the incipient emptiness they experience within their lives.

So a reduction in negative stress is essential to experiencing a fully creative life.

Boost that norepinephrine

There is a popular theory that exercise creates a “runner’s high” by releasing a rush of endorphins but the American Psychological Association disputes this.

"Freedom's just another word for exercise-increased norepinephrine."

The APA suggests that exercise increases brain concentrations of the neuromodulator norepinephrine, which may help the brain deal with stress more efficiently.

Psychologists don’t think it’s a simple matter of more norepinephrine equals less stress and anxiety. Instead, they think exercise works by enhancing the body’s ability to respond to stress.

Biologically, exercise seems to give the body a chance to practice dealing with stress. It forces the body’s physiological systems – all of which are involved in the stress response – to communicate much more closely than usual.

So the cardiovascular system communicates with the renal system, which communicates with the muscular system. And all of these are controlled by the central and sympathetic nervous systems, which also must communicate with each other.

This workout of the body’s communication system is part of the deeper value of exercise. Remember: the more sedentary we are, the less efficient our bodies become in responding to stress.

So now you know why, what are you going to do?

You’re half-convinced, but the treadmill is still boring and the dogs chase you when you jog down the road. How do you take the next step?

Philip Rabinowitz of S. Africa, age 102, the fastest 100-year-old to ever run the 100 meters (30.86 seconds).

Here’s how to start:

• Embrace the idea. Fully understand that regular exercise (six workouts a week, a mixture of aerobic, strength-building and flexibility)  is much better for you and your performance than the alternative.  Remember, if you and another person are identical in potential, the one who exercises will be the one who achieves more.
• Acknowledge your resistance. It’s very hard to start an exercise program from scratch. It needs lots of personal drive and external support. Admit that it’s hard but that you want to do it anyway. And start small. When I started jogging it took me longer to “run” a mile than to walk it. But it gave me plenty of time to enjoy being outside, increasing my awareness and – bliss! – allowing my thoughts to travel where they will.
• Pick a larger goal than exercising just to be fit. Few of us can crank out the miles on an exercise bike just so’s we can be back doing the same thing tomorrow. So we need to look beyond the task to a larger reward. Pick a sport and decide to compete at your age level. Or surrender to the joy of dance and seek to excel. By participating you expand your social group – and thus develop your intellectual and emotional domains – as well as developing your body.
• Pick something impossibly hard. You’re gifted so you simply must challenge yourself. Don’t allow your rational self to convince you it (whatever it is) can’t be done. If it’s truly beyond you, find out by failing at it rather than by predicting failure from the comfort of your favorite web-surfing armchair. Select your exercise activity for its complexity and limitless scope for improvement.
• Blow  notions of age and physical limitation out of the window. We’re not all going to emulate Philip Rabinowitz (see picture above) but we can certainly set our own anti-aging records.

Don’t confuse exercise with pastime

Many of us claim not to have time for exercise but spend hours each day on what I would term pastimes. There’s nothing wrong with pastimes, from reading to croquet, but they’re not going to deliver the same benefits as a planned exercise program.

Some activities occupy a grey area in the exercise/pastime continuum.

• Sailing can be hectic or distinctly sedate depending on the boat and the wind.  Either way, it gets pastime status because it’s too dependent on external factors to deliver reliable benefits.
• Dancing can be similarly split. An hour of samba would exhaust most of us while 60 minutes of a slow waltz taxes only one’s tolerance for intimacy.
• Golf qualifies as a pastime because it does nothing to sustain a raised heart rate.
• Downhill skiing takes place in too-short bursts to be exercise, but its enjoyment depends on fitness so it could be used as the larger goal in an exercise program.
• Some of the minor sports such as rowing, rock-climbing and martial arts are multi-faceted in their challenges and ideal for the independently-minded, autonomous, gifted individual.
• Team sports can challenge the gifted maverick in a different way, especially if they call for coordinated efforts. However, they will provide motivational support and teach healthy dependency.

Que, moi?

What do I do? I scull.

"Puff! This is hard. Whew! This is hard. Aargh! This is hard.

It looks so easy but it’s so very difficult. It requires physical strength, balance, rhythm and technique. And I don’t have enough of any of these things.

It takes place in a constantly changing environment of air and water. It can be spiritually rewarding and competitively driving. The objects it involves – boat, oars, oarlocks, etc – are beautiful examples of form following function, intelligent and technologically advanced. A 28 foot single scull weighs only 30 pounds.

And I can do it indoors, on my Concept II rowing machine, or outdoors, on the mighty Arkansas River, depending on the weather.

And so to a well-earned rest

Sculling gives me moments of true ecstasy and gratitude for my existence. But that doesn’t mean it will do the same for you.

You must find your own way of manifesting your uniqueness in the physical world, your own way of glorying in the perfect encounter of mind, body and physical environment.

I wish you joy in your exploration and moments of bliss in your application.

The first question from the floor was very positive: “How do we proceed from here?”.

How scornful the very gifted can be

Her spontaneous response was unguarded and arrogant. Her look said: “What planet do you live on?” and her voice dripped with scorn: “Isn’t it obvious?”

Her mentor and major supporter, sitting at the back of the room, could not quite stifle his groan. How could she have done that?

How indeed. Sadly, not every gifted characteristic is dipped in brilliance. In fact, there is one frequently seen quality – asynchronous development – that challenges even those who love the gifted dearly.

Just as we gifted adults are likely to declare: “How can they be so stupid!?” so the rest of the world, witnessing our seemingly inexplicable gaffes, are going to say the same. And they’ll often often preface it with: “You think you’re so effing smart?”.

Asynchronous development in the gifted

Asynchronous development can take many forms but in the opening example we have a fairly common type: situational judgment lagging behind intellect.

Such judgment calls for an understanding and constant awareness of complex unwritten rules about social behaviors. These are precisely the sorts of nuances which the gifted, in their race to explore, discover and reveal ‘the truth’, will often overlook.

It starts in childhood, when the young gifted person’s facility with logic and reason amazes everyone who comes into contact with her or him. Parents and family, however, quickly discover that logic and reason are not useful tools to develop judgment, social adroitness and tact.

When we learn such things we do so through exposure to a variety of experiences and interpersonal situations. And that’s another challenge for gifted adults. We learn early on that we are our own best company so we can easily ignore social challenges if they get in the way of our fascinating internal adventures.

As a result, we may not learn social interaction at the same rate that other children and adolescents do. Even so, by our mid-twenties, the gap between judgment and intellect will typically have closed considerably.

"How could you ask such a thing!?"

But we will continue to have lapses, especially when under stress. And our brilliantly-wrought presentations will continue to miss their marks.

I have an unfortunate tendency to greet newcomers to our local rowing club with a jocular cry of: “How much do you weigh?”

This is a vital piece of information in a sport dominated by power ratios and boats tailored to strict weight ranges. However, most would regard the individual’s name as being of higher priority, at least on first meeting.

I am trying to cure myself of it. And, being gifted, I call my perceived strengths together to give me the leverage I need to change.

Shedding the scorn: focus on your desired outcome

Those strengths are my (and your) above-advertised powers of reason and intellect. If I remember to use them beforehand to work out what I’m really trying to achieve, I can then focus more successfully on what’s important.

For example, the young woman presenter would have realized that her goal was not to make a brilliant presentation but to win her managers to her way of thinking. From that point she could have analyzed their strengths (good hearts) and made accommodation for their weaknesses (their executive vision). And she would have managed the interactions much more skilfully.

As for me, I will remind myself that a rowing club’s first priority is enthusiastic members. Weight and age data can be gathered once they’ve joined up and understand its relevance. And then they won’t be driven away by important but momentarily inappropriate questions, however friendly their intent.

And I shall still feel as if I’ve contributed to the success of the whole.

We all know these people and sympathize with them because they are ourselves. We wouldn’t spurn Mary, Yvonne, Robert or Colin for their physical characteristics and – unless we’re having a bad hair day or using our looks as a focus for deeper issues – we wouldn’t seriously condemn ourselves, either.

Sadly, we are not so sanguine when it comes to other kinds of characteristics: “I’m no good with money.”; “I’m frightened to speak in public.”; “I’m hopeless at spelling.”; “I can’t count for toffee.”; “I get tongue-tied in groups.”; “I’m much too emotional.” These are the kinds of psychologically-related self-criticisms we use to embed the ‘should be able to’ knife deeply into ourselves.

Even more sadly, society generally isn’t very compassionate around these traits. Especially with the celebrity focus so prevalent today, it’s easy to believe we have to be world-class comedians, orators, models, and academics just to get a job as a teller at the local bank. Organizations themselves perpetuate this nonsense by requiring job applicants to make presentations and/or write thousands of self-justifying words even when the job in question has no need for speaking or writing skills.

In this environment, it’s too easy to be genuinely disheartened and disempowered by our perceived inadequacies. This feeling is worsened if we try to improve ourselves and still fall short of what we perceive we ‘should be’.

There is a way, however, to bring the same level of acceptance (hopefully high) to our psychological characteristics as to our physical ones. This, quite simply, is by knowing what we are and recognizing the impossibility of being what we are not. Just like coming to terms with our physical being, we can hold up a mirror to our psychological selves, assess our relative strengths, and learn to love the overall blend of features.

To help us in this task, the world is full of readily-accessible tests for self-revelation. They range from early forms of personality assessment such as astrology to more recent ones such as Jung’s personality typing and the variant tests based on it. I have a free one you can try on my website: www.santafecoach.com/Ptest/the%20DLC%20ptest.htm.

These tests are accurate within a reasonable tolerance. The more of them you take, the more you will balance out individual test idiosyncrasies and recognize your true self appearing repeatedly before you. When the tests reveal aspects of yourself you don’t like or recognize, take another look at yourself: it’s unlikely that tests that are generally accurate will contain huge deviations, especially if the unliked feature recurs across different tests.

Stay true to type

Peter Drucker, a genius on matters of management and life itself, wrote: “Give your resources to your opportunities.” This simple piece of advice is one we seem to find extraordinarily hard to follow. It means we benefit most when we put our effort into things we do well. Too often, we make huge investments in trying to fix things we don’t do well rather than profiting easily from what we do successfully.

Imagine the state of the forest if every oak tree were struggling to be a mushroom. The notion is absurd. Yet this is just what happens when philosopher-types try to be salespeople, artist-types try to be administrators, and regimental-types try to be social workers. They tend to be unhappy or they do a poor job. If they’re naturally competent, they will do a good job but be unable to sustain it.

I believe the most successful strategy for a full life is what I call “Dynamic Living”. Dynamic living is about increasing our conscious awareness and developing congruence, integrity and flexibility. This enables us to pursue the path which seems most honorable and beneficial both for ourselves and for the wider society. A vital part of this is taking our psychological type seriously, discovering it and acting on our discoveries.

Then we can love ourselves for our littered desk (INTP-type) or our tidy workshop (ESTJ-type). And then we can enjoy others’ revealing features too, and stop scorning them for having the psychological equivalent of a large nose.

Our perfection as gifted, creative and talented adults is often a poor mix with the perfection of the other individuals in our world. We are seen as weird or worse by our families, our workmates and our acquaintances.  All of us have experienced the rejection – sometimes gentle, sometimes harsh – of our insights and suggestions. All of us have had to bite back the words: “I told you so!” when we turned out to be correct-but-ignored yet again.

It’s not surprising that so many of us retreat into a way of being in which only we are aware of our unique inner light. We might quench it with drab clothing,  or a humdrum job. Or maybe we medicate it away with alcohol or other drugs. All these behaviors are in the interest of protecting ourselves from the pain of rejection, the isolation that results from our uniqueness, or the exposure arising from success.

Our hiding, while understandable, is a loss for both us and the universe. It costs us our potential for making the world a more beautiful place. To achieve this, I need you to fulfill your true essence and you need me to do the same. That way, everyone benefits.  When we find the courage to express our light from within, we give others permission to do the same, freeing them to benefit us with their own talents.

There is no immodesty in stepping forward to claim what is yours. By manifesting your true self you reveal the light of the world shining through you, not centered upon you. Even a performer, center stage and with every light in the house turned upon her, is really saying: “This is all about us as humans,” and not just: “Look at me!”.

It’s only when we dare to let universal energy manifest through the unique stencil which is ourselves that we discover our potential. Through our self-revelation we assert: “I am worth this risk. You are worth this risk.”

We are not guaranteed a consistently warm reception. Even the sun, shining equally on all,  drives  some people inside to hide.  But there will always be others who will unfold themselves and embrace our energy.

You can start the process of revealing your uniqueness in a simple way.  Start by making a list of everything you do well and/or which rewards you with pleasure, however impractical, silly, or seemingly irrelevant. Remind yourself that “do” can be passive, as in “reflect upon” as well as active, as in “dance the tango”. It can be humble, as in “knit” as well as grand, as in “win Olympic gold”.

When you have your list, keep it in mind so that it informs your every action. Know the reality of yourself, of your uniqueness, without judging it. Slowly, you will find yourself manifesting more consistently and more successfully in the domain into which you will move.

There are no short cuts. The human entity makes progress at a pace that involves building cell on cell, assumption on assumption, experience on experience. But the process is unstoppable, the outcome – your ever-increasing manifestation of perfect uniqueness – inevitable.

You may never discover what impact your pure energy has had on others but you can be sure of this:  when you embrace your uniqueness and risk revealing it to others, you benefit yourself and every other one of us throughout the world.