One of the habits I picked up during this pandemic is the addiction to my fitness journey. When I started having a more active lifestyle through working out regularly, there are changes that I noticed. I gradually lost weight (and that’s a topic for another post entirely) and my proportions are leaner. But apart from that, I became stronger, I had less brain fog, and I was able to sustain my gains in muscle building and fat loss.
The Pitfalls of Multitasking
I used to feel guilty for the moments that I need to go on downtime. My decade ago self would typically cram my schedule to death and even “optimize” the pockets of time in between things by multitasking. At the time, it was alright because I was young and not prone to lower backache and other pains of aging. But then it took its own toll in my brain. The cognitive switch between tasks has made me obtain the attention span of a gnat. Fortunately my reading habit has offset this by allowing me to focus on longer blocks of time.
So now I guess I am at a stage of downtime in my life but it’s not an empty process entirely. It allows me to germinate my ideas, synthesize what I have done in life so far, and clearly think of my next direction.
A Bottom Rock Crisis: You Can Dwell or Go Up from Here
It’s a pandemic and now, everything I used to do normally at home which was weird for people became the new normal. Working from home, dealing with mental health issues, and becoming unhealthy physically are the top three things that I grappled with and adjusted to long before the pandemic forced people to face those three things during the onset of the global lockdowns.
The only thing I learned is that it only becomes a situation of permanent despair if you stop improving, stagnate, or dwell. The bottom is not meant to be a dwelling place. It’s meant as a takeoff point as you crawl your way back up. Life goes in cycles of ups and downs. You can look at that rock bottom as a sucky place but then also look at it as an opportunity to be resourceful. When I am in a difficult situation, I just tell myself that I was raised in the school of hard knocks before gaining the formal education I now also fortunately have. If I lose my current comforts, I will still know how to find my way.
Optimum Performance Begins with Proper Conditioning
I have noticed when I am starting to do my dumbbell deadlifts, I am unable to do it properly without the pre-workout stretching and the warmup on the spinning bike. It just also opens up the risks for injury.
And professionally, it seems like the same concept applies. You need to warm up before you go for the big stuff. Then pace yourself as you try to get there. Just now, I am attending this Zoom webinar and the concept of Jim Collins' 20-mile march was introduced and it was very powerful and resonant to what I am currently doing in my life.
I started my workouts with 10 minutes only at three times a week. Now I am hitting 1.5 to 2 hours everyday except Sundays. Building that stamina took time. I did not really notice that as the time passed. I just kept SHOWING UP to the workouts and executing the movements to the best of my ability.
So in a business when you have these big goals, you also need micro-goals for the short and medium term to help you have milestones or small wins that lead up the momentum to the ultimate big win. You can only have that kind of success if you find people who are committed to executing that 20-mile march for your business in the long haul. And that can only happen if they love what they do and care about the business.
The Value of Guarding the Energies You Imprint and Connect with
This was my biggest lesson in the last 3 months that I have suffered from a massive personal crisis that I cannot post about publicly.
Once I regained a semblance of my peaceful self back, there was a constant fight to maintain that peace. And social media is full of the noise that does not always bring about the good stuff that can help propel you to success.
Just imagine this. I was already happy with my fitness goal achievements and celebrated them on my Facebook account. A friend of mine just took offense at my weight loss and started posting articles about why it’s a bad thing. On a pandemic.
I felt bad. What had I done to this person that she would crap on my wins? But then I realized that her power to upset me for a long time is something I choose to give. Or I can choose to forgive, and GUARD MY PEACEFUL ENERGIES.
The funny thing was that there were hundreds of people who responded and messaged me that they were inspired by my decision to get active. But this single negatron of a person just basically caught my attention. Psychologically, we as humans are hardwired to focus on negative feedback in the midst of a sea of positive feedback.
From the last Millionaire Mindset Online, it was communicated to us that money is energy. And abundance can never thrive if you are steeped in negativity or limiting beliefs. So I lose more if I let myself be upset permanently by what this person said and did to me.
I mean, I am still beautiful, worthy, and rocking it regardless of my size or regardless of how people perceive that journey. She may harp about my wins all she wants but I feel good about myself right now with regards to fitness, I have done tremendous science-backed research before I did what I had, and I don’t need to apologize to anyone about it.
We all have wins! We are allowed to celebrate them especially during this pandemic.
Clearing Emotions
The other more powerful exercise I learned lately is the clearing of emotions. It’s like a reset button for the emotional landscape and the mind.
Life brings about the likelihood of having debris or extra baggage from the past. There is a process to let go and to take lessons from what happened especially if they are traumatic or particularly distressing.
No one else is responsible for this task of clearing my emotional slate so I can be open to beautiful things and happy experiences in the future. It’s me who can consistently do that, in the same way I show up for my workouts at 6am every morning.