https://www.veed.io/view/dfdb0f4e-2da0-4bd2-ad55-4c1cfd7ad868?panel=showcase
I have created a meditation guide that might be useful to those in need of a little inspiration. If you have ten minutes then give it a go using the link above!
Let me start with a quote from the movie The Pursuit Of Happiness. Smith’s character says to his child…
“Don’t ever let someone tell you that you can’t do something. Not even me. You got a dream, you’ve gotta protect it. When people can’t do something themselves, they’re gonna tell you that you can’t do it. You want something, go get it. Period.”
And whether they mean it or not, it is quite often those closest to you who are the ones who might be holding you back. They’re giving you your limitations. Smith’s character even warned his child, “Not even me.” Parents, partners, friends. They’re all capable of telling you that you’re not able enough.
But don’t blame them. Certainly not if they are misguided. We are all guilty of blocking a loved one’s ambitions. Just realize that every time they tell you that you can’t, they’re just showing their limitations, not yours.
However, you should try to surround yourself with as many people who tell you that YOU CAN as much as possible. My wife and I seem to work well at this. She knew that I was desperately unhappy in my previous career and, even though it meant less income and with a new born baby, she allowed me to follow my dreams of becoming a Personal Trainer.
Likewise, after being a stay at home mum for our two children for a few years, I encouraged her to go to college to qualify as a Massage Therapist. Financially it became a challenge, but we could develop a lifestyle that worked for our family and it made us happier.
Now, we are telling each other every day that we can take our business ventures to Portugal, despite some days the whole universe telling us that we can’t.
Along with the misguided people who don’t mean any harm, I can guarantee that you will have those people in your life who do. They will thrive off of your misery and failures. Yes, these are the toxic ones. Most of them won’t care about your problems and some will be even glad that you have them. Stay clear. These aren’t just the doubters, but these are the ones who will go out of their way to trip you up. They’ll look friendly, but I think that you know who they are. Insincere people are easy to detect.
So much of our success in life is determined by those we have around us. You need positive people to support you. As for the rest, just say to them, “You told me I couldn’t, so I made sure that I did.”
This week’s quote of the week comes from the Dutch motivational speaker and author Alexander Den Heijer.
I have read lots of his work based around our environment and how to prime it to suit our needs in which to meet our personal goals.
He encapsulated this message perfectly when he said…
“When a flower doesn’t bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower.”
If you now focus on a specific goal that you have struggled with lately, you might find this quote useful to you.
We often put ourselves in the firing line when we don’t meet our own expectations. Perhaps your gym goals have stalled and you feel demoralised by the process. Firstly, the process is something that you must believe in for you to get successful results. So a full overhaul of all of your foundations isn’t what ‘fixing your environment’ means. After all, a flower doesn’t need a tropical rainforest to grow, it might just need a little bit more sunlight at the other side of your desk.
To ensure that you create the proper environment for your gym goals I’ve added a few tips below that should become your positive habit forming actions moving forward. AKA…priming your environment.
* Pack your gym kit the night before. If you’re in two minds on whether you attend the gym today, when your kit is ready to go in the boot of your car then you are far more likely to stick to it than rummaging the drawers for your favourite vest or sports bra during the morning rush.
* Prep your favourite nutritious meals. Batch cook sauces that can be frozen. Defrosting it and making a bowl of pasta or rice is a better alternative than starting from scratch…and if we really can’t be bothered to cook after a long day at work, we resort to takeaways. But you are more likely to stay within your calorie goals by prepping your own meals.
* Be around positive people. Whether it is in the gym or people you hang out with, if you are getting negative vibes from them then ditch them. This might seem like a big decision, after all, this could be a friend you’ve known since childhood or it could be your wife or husband. Talk to them, tell them how you feel, but if you still feel like crap because of what they say and do to you, then move on.
* And on the same theme as above, if it is a job, a gym, a pub or a social group that is holding you back then find an alternative. Find the places that allow you to be you and not what your environment demands of you.
And on that note I’ll finish with a final quote from Alexander.
“You often feel tired not because you’ve done too much, but because you’ve done too little of what sparks a light in you.”
As my son and I walked away from his opportunity to do football training with the older kids the other day I noticed that the anxiety had overcome him. The coach was fantastic, he tried to encourage him to join in. The kids are a good bunch, they would have welcomed my son. But the occasion got too much for him. He just couldn’t do it.
It isn’t the first time. At an open trial event at Leeds United, a similar thing happened. And there’s been lots of scenarios where he has not joined in with something because of this. He gets anxious and I get that. My first ever fitness class in front of 30 experienced class attendees was a disaster because I could hardly get my words out or move my feet. Not a good start for a coach trying to lead the class!
Being good at something and even excelling to become successful at it requires much more than skill and intelligence. My son has this at football in abundance. His ‘football brain’ is excellent for a 9 year old. He has an instinctive mind of knowing what to do in certain situations of a game that is unusual to have at his age. But it’s no use if he can’t walk onto the pitch to showcase this ability. This is a different skill entirely.
Turning anxiety into excitement is an art.
American author Simon Sinek has spoken about the Nerves Vs Excitement situation. During the Olympics he observed that the interviewers would ask the athlete if they were nervous about their upcoming event. Almost in every reply, the athlete said that they felt excited. An elite athlete who has reached the peak of competing at the Olympics won’t get nervous. Despite their talents, had the nerves gotten the better of them then they surely wouldn’t have made the cut to represent their country at the Olympics in the first place.
We could define being nervous as having sweaty palms, a faster heart beat and a future cognitive thought process whereby our minds come up with negative outcomes such as tripping up, losing or getting injured.
And yet excitement could be defined in a very similar way. Sweaty palms, a faster heart beat and, as for the future cognition, this would be our minds coming up with positive outcomes such as winning a gold medal, breaking a personal best and celebrating.
But the interviewers are actually commenting on their emotions. It is them who would feel anxious. They’re not the elite athlete.
And this can be seen in many other, non-sporting contexts. The Great British Bake off contestants will talk of being nervous about baking a cake. Mary Berry would feel excited. She is an expert and the contestants are amateur bakers.
So these elite athletes and Mary Berry have one thing in common and that is the fact that they have practiced their craft a million times before. And during this time there will have been some disastrous events and many soggy bottoms, but they kept on going. Practicing and perfecting their skill until it wasn’t daunting to them in any way, just exciting.
I could only get over my fears as a class fitness instructor by going back to the class each week and training my emotions to get better at it. I knew that I could lead a class, but I had to keep repeating it several times to lose the nerves.
And I know that, had my son trained with the older kids the other day, then he would have been a little bit more prepared for the next week. And the week after. And the week after that. Until a time would come where he felt nothing but excitement to train with them.
One way in which I worked with my initial anxiety about my first few classes was to announce to the participants that I was nervous. I even tried to laugh and make a joke of it. This broke down any barriers that were there between me and the class participants. I became one of them. After all, there are plenty of gym goers who are extremely anxious about stepping into a gym. Them knowing that I was nervous too, seemed to put us all at ease. We could work through it together. I am now about to stand in front of a class full of people whether it be two people or two hundred! The adrenaline would be there, but it would be excitement and not nerves.
We don’t need to be elite athletes to transfer anxiety into excitement, but we do need to keep turning up. Start by thinking about what could go right instead of what could go wrong. Sure, such as life, things won’t always go as you would like, but if you can be at peace with that in mind then the rewards are massive.
Just remember, we can all be guilty of a soggy bottom before we create a masterpiece.
Let me be clear right now about your latest derailing of your goals; it will not define you.
The extra food that you ate, the missed fitness class, the duvet day or the excessive alcohol that you drank will not define your success or your failure.
You have simply experienced a moment in time that didn’t fit in with your goals. Fuck it. Move on.
I like to give the occasional quote by some literary genius or scientist to emphasize my point in my blogs, but this time I present to you a football manager… Liverpool’s Jürgen klopp. This week, in the same week that I lost the sale of my house, thus waving goodbye to a very nice house in Bem De Fe, practically having a none existent exercise routine creating an appetite for poor nutritional food and Liverpool facing knockout in the Champions League against Real Madrid, Klopp gave me a golden piece of wisdom.
“Just try. If we can do it, wonderful. If not, then fail in the most beautiful way.”
Fail in the most beautiful way. I love that sentence. We fail all the time. And when we do, we have two options. We can either crumble and give in, or we can learn something from it and go again.
How do we fail? In our daily lives we get situations that let us down, we divert from our personal goals, we forget something important, we are disappointed in our behaviour or don’t give a good account of ourselves. These are all things that we have to deal with. Managing this and responding to it is where the real success happens.
Failure does not define you, but your reaction to it will.
So when you fail, do it in the most beautiful way.
It’s 5pm. I’m gonna close the curtains now. The gloomy Scarborough sky made me do it. Ok, it’s still fairly light now that we’re in March, but I don’t fancy Joe Pesci peering in from the window while I’m home alone.
My wife would have a go at me if she knew that I had shut the curtains so early. There is, after all, another good hour of daylight to be had, but I’d rather watch The Chase without the world looking in. Or Joe Pesci.
It’s not strictly true that I’m home alone. I have my youngest with me. But having picked him up from school he went straight upstairs to put his headphones on and speak American to his mates on Fortnight. I occasionally hear occasional outbursts of “Bro! What?!” So I assume he’s ok.
My eldest boy is on a school trip this week. It’s a big deal for him as it is his first ever trip away from his family. I know that he was very nervous about it but I’m so proud of him that he decided to go. It’s all about creating experiences and memories after all.
And to complete one of the strangest weeks of my life, my wife is in Portugal this week to find us a house and open up a bank account. I remember when nipping into town on the bus with a quid to start a Barclays account was sufficient enough. In 15 years of being together it’s going to be the longest that we’ve been apart.
It is, of course, all in aid of our Portugal move and VISA application. We’re taking each step in our stride. There are many hurdles to cross yet, but we want it so much I believe in the process. We’re following our dreams and, as the saying goes, if you want your dreams to come true the first thing you must do is wake up. We’re awake.
Unless my wife has a Shirley Valentine moment, what could go wrong? What a blog post that would be! How would I begin writing about fending off villains in my home with an iron while my wife sails off with Afonso?!!
My wife doesn’t think I know how to use the washing machine. And it’s true, my wife is in charge of washing the family’s clothes. But I am the designated dish washer operator. I’m good at that. But I do know how to use the washing machine, it’s just that I have visions of shrinking our work outfits, so I tend to stay away from it! My wife also asked me if she needed to cook some meals for me and our youngest while she was away. It’s a very nice offer, but our youngest hasn’t got the most varied tastes in food. I think I can manage beans on toast or chicken dippers.
So, there we go. The curtains are closed, the Chaser has just caught the team with 31 seconds to spare and I’m just about to look on YouTube to find out which compartment the detergent goes into. As a family, when we’re all together, we usually have a good routine going on. Yes, we sometimes bicker and it all gets a bit hectic now and again. But it’s our bickering. It’s our hectic. It’s our life and we’re happy. But sacrifices have to be made when you follow your dreams. They’re not meant to be easy to catch.
So having my wife and eldest son back will be nice. In the meantime though, my youngest will keep me company and, if I’m lucky, he’ll give me one of his chicken dippers.
We are all in a constant process of change. How you choose to adapt and evolve is largely down to you as an individual.
Your thoughts and feelings are probably very different to those of 20 years ago. Or 10 years ago. Or one year ago. And even less.
In the time that you click onto this page and read up to this point, your brain has inputted, stored and refreshed this information and it will keep happening every 15 seconds of your life. This continuity field allows the brain to call upon past experiences, snapshots and perceptions and use it in present situations. And because the brain is constantly collecting this information and storing it, we adapt our beliefs, thoughts and feelings along with it.
Once we know and understand this, the quote by Soren Kierkegaard starts to make sense…
“Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.”
The brain is constantly traveling back in time to recall each moment that is relevant for the present experience of the individual. Collecting stored data to form appropriate actions. This is how we are able to scan words when we read.
But, despite these most amazing things happening to our brains, we are the director of change and evolution. This is how habits can be broken and how past experiences can be used for strength, positivity and future happiness.
Heraclitus said…
“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”
What did he mean? My interpretation of this is that once you step into a river the water is displaced with new water and the nature of the river is changed permanently. You are also changing.
Just because you have experienced a moment in your life does not mean that you must replay it. It just needs a little rethink, or in the case of your brain, a rewire. We can train our brain to do as we want. We can change what we don’t like, but your brain needs new material to process.
Neuroplasticity is the term used to describe the brain’s ability to adapt to different circumstances throughout your life. Affirmations, which is a technique to instill a positive mindset through repeated words and sentences, is the most popular way of achieving this brain rewire.
Affirmations are often short sentences that can be easily remembered and stored in your brain. And as we have discovered, once your brain has inputted this into its system, it will roll it out when needed.
Governments and ad companies use them too! So it’s not some hocus pocus stuff that some people want to believe.
I’m lovin’ it. Just do it. Get Brexit done. Build a wall. These are just a few examples of successful catchy earworms that are/were repeated to us constantly but there are actually thousands and thousands of other examples of clever affirmations that are instilled into our brain in order for us to act how that particular campaign wants us to act. Well, the good news is that it is actually YOU in control as long as you can counter the influences from around us.
You just need to keep telling yourself and reminding yourself of your aspirations, needs and life goals. If a burger company can make us keep going back to eat burgers with the same texture of cardboard and a government can instruct a whole nation to strip themselves of their rights and leave the EU whilst they titter all the way to their offshore accounts, then I’m sure that we can all manipulate our brains with our own affirmations. Positive affirmations.
When you stand in the river, it changes. Make sure that you change what you want to change too by giving your brain positive things to process. Because when it comes to it, your brain will be using this information to enable you to make those changes.
Continue to remind yourself who and what gets you out of bed each morning. Keep telling yourself how well you could do the new job that you have applied for and repeatedly remind yourself of your health and fitness goals. Write stuff down. Put it on a white board or on the fridge door. Keep your favourite affirmation as a screen saver. Anything at all to allow your brain to compute those words and keep them.
Everything keeps changing. You don’t have to be the one thing that doesn’t.
I must have spent what equates to years of my life worrying about what people think about me. Certainly as a teenager I wanted to feel accepted by my peers in some way. And then in adulthood along came social media, where ‘likes’ and ‘thumbs up’ became far more important in my life than they should have. In job interviews, social settings and on social media, I wanted to be liked and wanted.
But then it stopped.
I didn’t suddenly turn into a person who didn’t care about what others thought about me, but I did become very aware of my change in attitude on whether or not somebody liked my personality, accepted my dress sense, my political opinions and my interests. I care, but don’t cry about it if somebody doesn’t like me for whatever reason. I do me. They can do them.
My ‘resting bitch face’ can be a hindrance. Maybe I can look angry or disinterested when actually that’s just my face! I don’t just walk around with a smile. I need to be approachable in my profession, whether in the gym or in my future projects. Yet I can only continue doing me, otherwise people wouldn’t get me, they’d get fake me.
Did age change my attitude to being accepted or not?! In my experience, older people tend to have less of a filter. Am I just getting old?!
My appearance is deceiving. I’m bald, so I shave whatever bits of hair grows on my head. I weight train and eat a lot, so I am of a larger size. I have tattoos including flags of communist countries, guerilla warfare leaders and football club badges. People might judge me on this. Also, I’m open about my politics. Just the other day a parent at my son’s football match asked me why we chose Portugal to be our next place to live. Without hesitation I said it was because Portugal is in the EU and we want to get out of Brexit Britain. I could have just said ‘For the weather’, but then it wouldn’t be me.
Yes, if I make friends, I can lose them pretty quickly. I just can’t say what I think people might want to hear. And I appreciate transparency in a friend. They can call me a dick if I’m being a dick. No hard feelings. It’s the people that can’t take it when I pull them up on something. It needs to work both ways. I don’t need them as friends. They can fake it elsewhere.
Remaining calm and focussed when I get labelled, misquoted or misrepresented is something that I still have to learn to deal with. After all, I am human with all the same sensitive emotions as the next person. I’m not a robot. But a piece of good advice from author Morgan Richard Olivier is something that I always refer back to.
She said…”Letting people be wrong about you or a situation while keeping your peace and focus is the most misunderstood power move you will ever make.”
You see, becoming comfortable with yourself is one of the greatest super powers that you can possess. You can spend a lifetime trying to impress people. How we look, think and behave are being judged all of the time, and yet, by whose standards?
Will my life be any different if Graham from Dudley gives me an angry face emoji because I am happy to refer to Sam Smith as ‘they/them’ on the internet?
Would I feel any better if I were to explain to Sally on the Co-Op till that I’m not a far right football hooligan, just a follicy challenged lover of Liverpool FC?
I don’t need to explain myself. And you don’t have to explain yourself.
I don’t have a device that tells me how many steps I do each day, but if I did, this past week would’ve been off the scale.
During the half term holidays I have been helping out at a sports club for children aged from 5 to 10. The idea is to get the kids as active as possible and to encourage teamwork, movement and healthier eating. And of course if the kids are moving, the coaches are too! One of the coaches did wear a gadget to track his steps and they were over 20,000 by the time the kids had gone home for the day.
During half terms my usual training routine of gym work gets out to one side. This is fine as I schedule these events into my annual training plan. In effect, I know that I don’t need to use the treadmills in the gym for my cardio if I have a productive NEAT (Non Exercise Activity Thermogenesis) regime. And whether it be staying active with my own children or being active with 50 other children, I am comfortable with my activity levels. So I don’t particularly need a device to tell me that.
However, just like tracking my calorie intake, it’s good to check in from time to time and keep myself on my toes! So using such a device is always a credible way of keeping on top of things.
So if we take a look at what 10,000 steps a day can do for your body, hopefully we can all achieve a healthy and balanced lifestyle without slogging it in the gym every day or feeling depressed because we haven’t managed to get to a fitness class this week.
According to research, 10,000 steps a day can strengthen your heart and keep blood pressure under control. It can reduce body fat and maintain a healthy weight (with a sensible eating plan). It can improve stability, muscle tone and strengthen the core. Getting your steps in each day can also improve brain function and help with lowering anxiety and depression.
And we don’t have to panic if we only manage 5,000 steps on some days. We all need to sit and binge watch the new series of You, right?! But it just means that we average out our steps throughout the week. Some days you’ll probably hit the 20,000 mark if you are generally active.
So have a think about how you can achieve more steps into your week. Also, check out a device that will count your steps. It doesn’t have to be expensive, a free app can give you an idea of your activity levels.
And once you find the activities that you enjoy, you’ll find that you don’t even need to be running with 50 kids every day to achieve your steps!
The next time you get a moment (and you should make sure that you do) just close your eyes and visualise yourself in an environment that you consider the most calming, tranquil place in the universe.
It could be standing by the sea or on a mountain top. You could imagine yourself sitting on a cloud or even a star. You could be in a safe place with a loved one. Anywhere at all.
And then breathe these images from your mind deeply into your lungs. Let them fill your body right down to your toes.
This is a form of meditation. So many people tell me that they can’t meditate or don’t know how to. Perhaps for some they might feel a bit silly. They think of sitting cross legged, humming, chanting and emptying your mind or turning off your senses. And yet it doesn’t have to be that at all. It’s just about taking a moment.
My favourite images when I close my eyes are of the sun’s rays shining through the branches of a tree. The rays gently dance around as the dappled light warms my thoughts.
The scientific term for this light is called Crepuscular rays and the Japanese call it Komorebi, which is made up of the Kanji characters for tree, shine through and sun.
I like the Japanese description, but many great poets have attempted to describe this beautiful pure and spontaneous natural pleasure. Gerard Manley Hopkins called it Shivelight and wrote about…”the lances of sunlight that pierce the canopy of a wood.”
CS Lewis wrote…”Any patch of sunlight in a wood will show you something about the sun which you could never get from reading books on astronomy.”
I agree.
And as wonderful as it is to see this in real life, it also exists in my head. Just by closing my eyes and taking a step back from the 100 miles an hour daily life, I can be anywhere and see anything that I like.
Now take a moment. Close your eyes. Breath. And discover what you can find.
Never Give Up PT