motivation – Never Give Up PT

Tomorrow

I like to look at the world a bit differently. It’s what inspires me to do things that don’t necessarily fit with the norms. For example, I was inspirational to a few maybe, but mostly bonkers to many who found out I was dropping everything I had done and achieved in England to move to rural Portugal.

Indeed, selling my house, giving up my business and taking my kids out of school to hop on a plane to Portugal with no house, job or school to go to was a little different. But I put my trust in tomorrow. I heard it coming. Ok, now I sound completely bonkers! Let me explain.

I’ll start with a quote from David Bowie. He said,”Tomorrow belongs to those who can hear it coming.”

If you know anything about Bowie then we can understand what he meant by that. From characters like Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane to talking openly about gender fluidity and racial injustice in the 70’s and 80’s, he was always one step ahead of social norms. This was further proven when Jeremy Paxman asked Bowie about his opinion of the internet back in 1999. Bowie said,”I think the potential of what the internet is going to do to society, both good and bad, is unimaginable.” He went on to describe it as an alien life form that will crush our ideas of what mediums are all about.

Well, he wasn’t wrong, was he?

And even up to his recording of his final album, Blackstar, Bowie always knew more than the rest of us. He didn’t have super powers, he just heard tomorrow coming.

It’s possible to hear if you listen hard enough. But why would you want to?!

Tomorrow is a day that can bring hope, ideas and value. And to some extent, if you can hear it, you can prepare much better for it which can mean fresh hope, new ideas and better value to your life. And, seeing as it’s close to a new year, one could say the same for that too.

I heard tomorrow coming and as bonkers as it might sound, with a great deal of determination and preparation, moving to another country with no home, job or school wasn’t too bad. My wife and I planned daily what we would do as soon as we set foot off of the plane. We had planned it daily for some time. In fact, we had heard tomorrow coming for years.

So it might seem like I look at the world differently, but maybe I’m just keeping an ear to the ground… Bowie style.

Rocky Ground

The front of our property has been a bit of a dumping ground since we bought it. Old mattresses, kitchen sinks and rubble have littered it for months whilst the builders have been around.

But since they left and we are now an operating guest house and wellbeing centre we have been busy tidying it up and creating something more eye catching than a building site for our guests!

Below are a few photos of the progression we’ve made. The urns are broken, but we positioned them so that it isn’t obvious. The plants are succulents that will hopefully thrive all year round. We used a sprinkling of stone dust before putting down a layer of decorative pebbles and the rocks are all from the original building that is now the guest house!

At last it’s an entrance to our property that we can be proud of.

The Easter Egg

Some movie directors don’t just make great movies. They know that what they produce will be a master class, but it is the ease in which they can add their subtle in jokes, social commentary, artistic influences or homages to other bodies of work without distracting the audience away from the story.

Think Hitchcock with his cameo appearances or the use of Starbucks cups in almost every scene of Fight Club. These are known as Easter eggs that the viewer can hunt during the movie. Other hunts to look out for is the use of Tarantino’s very own imagined brand of cigarettes throughout his movies, Red Apple. Or the use of oranges in The Godfather trilogy. If you spot an orange in one of those movies, it is likely to lead to the death of a key character.

Fincher added the Starbucks cups as a metaphor for the corporate influence in everyday life.

These aren’t meant as a distraction maybe in the way that a Macguffin is (I’ve written about that too!), but more of a signature from the artist. It is something that can be detected throughout their work. It is uniquely theirs.

Well, although I’m not in Hollywood and I’m not a famous movie director, I want to be a great in the art of movie making. It’s just that this movie will be of my own life.

We’re all making our own movies. We can create the ups and downs of a drama, the twists and turns of a thriller. We can create the laugh out loud comedy moments and, like it or not, direct our own horror.

And a great director can tell the story and even add in the Easter egg too! But it isn’t about being accepted by others. A good director will create something that they want to create, not what is expected of them. Kubrick, Hitchcock and Tarantino are three of my favourite directors, but have never won a best director Oscar. Sergio Leone was never even nominated.

But what do that all have in common? They are blaze trailers at what they do and not just followers of a common theme that satisfies the masses. Sure, they became popular from making great movies. But them ripping up the genre rule book is what made them great, not because they were trying to be popular. This, it seems, irritated mainstream Hollywood to the point that it overlooked some of the greatest directors of our time.

We can still be great directors of our own lives without satisfying everyone. I’d even go as far as to say that, if you don’t piss a few people off you’re not doing it right.

We need to hire the best actors and extras onto our set. We should experiment with different scenery. We can write our own script. And we can do it all without having to please everyone. But remember to spice things up a little and add your own Easter egg hunt. It keeps things interesting!

Ten Months To The Day

How do we gauge our success? What time limit are we supposed to give ourselves? Do we ever truly see our success? I mean, is it supposed to come in the form of money? Great relationships? A fit bod or thriving business?

I’ve found all four of those at various stages of my life, but I’m also good at losing things, so I take nothing for granted.

But success, what is it? At this very moment in my life I think I had the only bit of success that could’ve made me happy this weekend. Not even Liverpool beating Utd tomorrow could top this one.

At 6:30 this evening we had a phone call from another local business person asking if we had a vacancy for their friends. As I spoke to them, casually flicking through my empty diary, I replied that we could fit his friends in for the evening. In my head I was Jurgen Klopp fist pumping to 60,000 scousers at Anfield. But I stayed calm.

From landing in Sertá on the 31st of October to this day, it has been ten months. We have our first booking. Success.

Success can be going for a walk to clear your head. Success can be scoring goals for fun in the Premier League like Haarland. Success can be having a special moment with your partner. Success can be getting a PB in the gym. Success can be getting your dream job. Success can be buying the Oasis reunion tickets. Success can be winning the lottery. Success can be getting your first guests into your holiday home.

It’s different for everyone. But have a think about what has brought you a little bit of joy today. You might not think that its life-changing, but it could be just the seed that needs the chance to grow. Cherish that bit of success. The more you notice it, the more it happens.

Estacionamento

It might seem excessive to be creating a car park (estacionamento) at our property for ten cars. After all, so far we only have one holiday rental home with one bedroom. But we are in the process of readying ourselves for the bigger picture.

That picture involves private parking for our own vehicles, the guest’s vehicle, space for the private gym and massage therapy room and small group training. There’s also an opportunity to expand the holiday rental side with another small building which is probably way down the line. We need to make the first one work first!

Here are a few pics of me clearing some space by the road side and filling it with stone dust. Also, we have recently dug up the stretch of land (with the help of a man with a tractor) which is a football field long and home to fruit and olive trees. It is also a great space for the boys to ride their bikes!

Getting Ready For A Photo Day And A Lifestyle Shoot

We’re having to get extra stuff done today. We have declared next Wednesday ‘photo day’, where we will take photographs of our Alojamento Local rental property and put it onto booking sites.

But there’s still a bit to do such as varnish and put up the furniture, sort out the decorative side of it and touch up any scuffs and scratches. There’s a stack of paperwork that needs doing too.

But tomorrow we aren’t able to do any of this due to A New Life In The Sun arriving for the ‘lifestyle’ shoot. This is the day Lou and I get to hold hands and skip along the beach while the kids splash in the river surrounded by a picturesque mountainous backdrop while being filmed for TV.

So far they’ve just filmed us clearing the forest, doing building work and generally getting stressed about timelines and budgets. So tomorrow will be nice to see a different side to us and the meaning of our move to Portugal. We want to work hard and be successful, but our family and quality of life is important to us and getting a reminder of that with occasions by a river beach or at a lively festa is integral to that.

But we’re obsessed with making this whole move work. Which means working harder than we’ve ever had to work, mostly done in heat I’ve never encountered before. If we want to enjoy more days at the river beach, then making the business a success is vital. The master plan unravels without it. And Ralph Waldo Emerson was spot on when he said,”Always do what you are afraid to do.”

Being afraid keeps me hungry. Less complacent.

So anyway, I’ll leave you with a few pics from today. It’s not the finished photos for the booking sites, of course, but it is starting to take shape!

Let me know what you think so far!

Manufactured In The Gym

Since around this time last year I have had no gym membership. My time, despite efforts in keeping up ‘sort sort’ of a routine outside of a gym, have been entirely preoccupied in my family’s move, house and business set up in Portugal.

I knew it had to be like that. I knew I’d have to take the hit on something that I loved. And training in the gym is what I love.

A few things that I’ve kept in my head have been comforting though…

1. It’s not forever. I’m creating my own gym on the property.

2. I’ve trained 3-5 days a week for the past 27 years (even on my honeymoon). Taking a year out isn’t going to harm all of my good work.

3. I’m keeping calories to around 2,500 to 3000. I’m not counting. By now I just know what I’m eating, but using a calorie counter can be useful too.

4. I’m not sedentary. I’m probably more active than ever seeing as I’m working in the forest and doing building works. So my energy consumption, along with my energy intake, keeps my weight balanced.

But, despite knowing this, I am really missing training. That is because I am not getting the buzz (adrenaline) from the repetition of a lift or push that has become a part of me.

At 18 I had to quit most sports that I enjoyed. Contact sports such as football, boxing and martial arts left my body in bits. And most of the pain came from my back or the sciatic nerve. The sharp pain that drives from the lower back into the buttock and down the leg made me struggle to even get dressed each morning. The anger that I had towards this pain and how it had practically ended my passion for playing sports affected me not just physically but mentally too.

Sports can give us ambition and focus on something positive. Especially for a young person trying to discover themselves. Joining a team, goal setting, planning and staying active weren’t on my radar anymore. Instead, smoking, drinking, clubbing and generally finding substances to enable me to continue clubbing into the wee hours became my focus.

‘When Saturday Comes’ is an expression to highlight the thrill of a football game. For me, my Saturday just became another chance to get into town and party. Now, don’t get me wrong, I have some great memories too! As George Best said,’ I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I squandered .’ I didn’t have his fame or riches, but I gave it a bloody good go for a period of time!

That is until I found the gym. After a few months of training I noticed that my muscles were becoming firmer and I was filling out a T in all the right places. But something more significant was taking place. My back pain was slowly easing, I was quicker, more agile, stronger. And mentally I had a more positive outlook and I didn’t want a weekend of mistreating myself to hinder my hard work in the gym. I had found a lifeline. Furthermore, I had given my career a boost. My confidence grew and helped me to find a vocation which I enjoyed. Things started clicking into place. The gym, I believe, is what started it. My attitude to life was manufactured in the gym.

So then, you can see why it is so important to me. So much so I retrained as a PT some years later to spread the word. ‘How many people could I help?’ I thought. My aim was to just get people active and learn new, interesting exercises. I knew that for the most people that I trained in a commercial gym that strict programs weren’t entirely necessary. They just had to turn up and move to begin with. Push, pull, jump, skip, squat and run. Anything that got them excited about being there. And, no doubt, even for those who hated the gym, there was one aspect that interested them, be it a speed trial, a PB lift, calisthenics or a tyre flip. Something would trigger anyone’s adrenaline. It made me a decent PT because I was like anybody else. I wasn’t a bodybuilder or athlete. I just knew how the average gym goer operated. For me personally, anything heavy that I could push or pull got me out of bed in the morning. ‘How many reps at X weight can I do today?’ was my motivation.

And it will be again, albeit in a very different setting. But it can’t come soon enough. For how beautiful my surroundings are and how well our business preparations are going, I still don’t have a gym!

Drinking mojito in the outdoor kitchen at 40°

Mind Mapping

Yesterday was a productive day. We got stuff done. And it was important that we did as the kids were at the coast with a holiday club which meant that we had more hours in the day to complete tasks. But it did come at a price.

When the evening came and the kids were in bed we simply had nothing else to give to each other. We worked through very hot temperatures and met appointments in town to get relevant licences filed which meant that we were knackered both physically and mentally. At one point Lou mentioned that we were like Challenge Aneka as she put a coat of paint on here, spreading compost there and signing documents to be emailed.

The Challenge Aneka analogy is very accurate. We have a deadline, we are being followed by a camera person and I look good in lycra and a blonde wig.

Ok, forget the last one. But the others are true.

The last couple of hours of the day, however, was a case of us silently watching Superstore on Netflix and not communicating with each other. Talking, it seemed, had become too difficult to do. One after the other the episodes of Superstore turned into seasons. Each one becoming not as good as the previous series. ‘No wonder they cancelled it’, I thought to myself. I wanted to say that to Lou, but the words didn’t come out.

We’re not unique. This is a trap that we sometimes fall into just like many of my trainees. We can lose track of the important stuff. We try to juggle too much, often worrying about the little things. We forget about prioritising and we end up spinning plates only to see them all crash to the floor.

Our particular plates, albeit wavering rather than spinning at full throttle, haven’t quite crashed. But if we don’t address it quickly, we will find ourselves in a rut of simply existing and not living the life that we want.

So as productive as yesterday was, our relationship and our personal mental health suffered. Today we needed to strike a balance. We decided on a mind map.

We all plan differently. For me, I like to write down what I need to do. Whether it be for the day ahead, for over the weekend or for the full week. It’s the personal trainer in me. I’ve written thousands of training plans that require following a plan. I’ve always remained flexible with my plans, after all, stuff happens. Life happens. But generally, the very fact that I have a written plan of action that I can attempt to execute lowers my anxiety and, most importantly, enables me to methodically work my way through the plan.

Trainees didn’t just come to me in the gym to help with their clean and press. There is often an underlying issue in why they seem to struggle in reaching a particular goal.

Likewise, I don’t need help in how to paint, treat wood, mix cement or plaster. But I found that I do need help in how to juggle my time and plan when to do this while simultaneously being a fun loving father and husband.

So this morning we didn’t get stuck into the painting, grouting and fixing. We spent the first hour mind mapping.

We scheduled what needed to be done. We gave timelines to each activity. We organised the day onto paper, ticking off each one as we completed it. We even made sure that one of these activities was to take a trip into Sertá for lunch together. We don’t always want our leisure time to be written into our list of jobs for the day but if life gets a little on top of us now and again then why not?! It is important to recognise these things.

Author Alan Lakein wrote,”Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now.”

We can’t achieve anything without planning, however one chooses to do it. After all, if you don’t plan which way the wind is blowing, you could end up pissing into it. It gets messy.

Mind planning got us another productive day today, but it also got us some important time together where we could chat and enjoy each other’s company and not just drift through day to day, barely having conversation. After all, we won’t achieve our family goals if we can’t survive as a family. No matter how good I am at painting.

Rat Park

Despite an easier VISA process to live in Portugal from the UK there were many factors why Portugal began to be a very attractive country to live in.

There were hours and hours of research done by my wife and I to discover the cost of living, how good the education system was, we wanted to know more about the crime rates, the policing, the government structure and the tax system. We especially wanted to know what the quality of life could be expected for our young children. What is Portugal like to grow up in and to become young adults?

And yes, Rishi, we wanted to know if National Service existed in Portugal. It doesn’t. That was important to us. You see, my idea of a country expecting their young citizens to serve mandatory time in the armed forces strikes me as a country with a social problem often brought about by a lack of funding to those who need it the most and, crucially, who the wider society depends on. The youth. They are, after all, the ones who will be taking that particular country forward. Therefore we need to create well rounded young people with opportunities to develop.

Yes, the armed forces can get a great opportunity to learn many skills, but only if that person wishes to enrol in the first place.

So, after our conclusion that Portugal, albeit not perfect (which country is?!) gave us good vibes, we decided to move there.

One thing that caught my attention during my research was Portugal’s drug laws. Since 2001, drugs have been decriminalised. This includes cocaine and heroin. It was the first to do so in the EU. So although it is an offence to carry drugs it is not punishable by imprisonment, it does not result in a criminal record or lead to associated stigmas which may affect the ability to find work.

Instead, drug abusers are treated as patients instead of criminals. Those who remain clean from drug use are given incentives to reconnect with society. The government set up job creation schemes and loans for small businesses, directly intended for an individual to focus on getting their lives back on track and away from drug use.

Portugal had one of the highest number of drug related HIV cases in Europe prior to 2000. It has seen a reduction in new HIV cases by 17%.

Portugal’s drug related death toll is 3 people per million compared to the EU average of almost 18 per million people.

The street value of these illicit drugs massively decreased. Courts and prisons became less crowded. The number of adolescents using drugs declined. All because the government at the time decided to invest in tackling the problem.

A series of experiments were conducted in the early 20th century where they would put a rat in a cage with two water bottles. One was water and the other was water laced with heroin. Almost every rat would keep going back to the water laced with heroin where it would eventually overdose and die.

Then came along a professor in psychology, Bruce Alexander who noticed that, if the rat had nothing to do other than choose from these two bottles then maybe it is an unfair experiment. So he set up a Rat Park. As well as the two bottles, he introduced several rats into a cage so that they could play together, have sex and interact. He placed tunnels into the cages, food and climbing frames.

Professor Alexander noticed that the rats hardly ever went to the drugged water. It didn’t interest them. It went from 100% overdose when they were isolated and 0% when they had happy and connected lives.

What if addiction isn’t about our chemical hooks but instead about our cage?

If we can surround ourselves with a supportive network of people, be excited by a safe and happy future, eat well, exercise, laugh, love and play, then surely our cage is worth staying around for. And the need for turning to the drugged water is less attractive.

And I can say with some experience that it is only when I found a purpose to my life did I stop routinely taking cocaine, ecstasy and steroids.

Much like the rats in the Rat Park I found friendship, pathways, exercise and reasons to live. I also found Blair’s New Deal which got me off of my arse to learn a trade. I gained NVQ level 2 qualifications in bricklaying and construction for £50 a week. Not bad at the time.

Maybe if we change our cage, we can all find happiness. And with upcoming elections in the UK looming, its citizens have an opportunity to vote for who will help them find their cage.

There’s Always Time For A Tony Bourdain Quote

Just before I left the UK for Portugal I spoke to many younger people who were intrigued about my move. And come to think about it, these younger people were the ones who asked me why I moved to Scarborough from Leeds.

“Why would you want to leave Leeds for Scarborough?!” They scoffed.

My answer was ‘to live’. By that I mean that ‘to live’ to me means to experience as much as possible out of this relatively short existence. I wanted to wake up by the sea. I wanted my children to go to a smaller school. I wanted to test myself as a PT in a new gym. I wanted to feel the nostalgia of saving up my 2p coins and putting them in the slot machines at the arcades like I did as a kid. I wanted new challenges.

That, to me, is living.

Now, I never expected to live my entire life in the UK, it’s just that the 2016 referendum gave me the kick up the arse to do something about it. I didn’t want to live in a country where people wanted to stand still and, in doing so, not allow others to move where they wanted to either. The Freedom Of Movement is one of the greatest privileges the EU citizens could have.

I didn’t travel when I was younger. But when the younger people at the gym asked me about my move to Portugal I urged them to do the same while they were young. Not necessarily to make a permanent move, but to travel. Discover new cultures, try different foods, learn new languages and skills.

Heck! This isn’t just about younger people either. It’s just in my experience, deciding to live in a different country is a lot more difficult when you have two little kids.

I don’t know how many of my readers are aware of the chef and travel documentary maker Anthony Bourdain. His travel series, Parts Unknown, are available on YouTube. Unfortunately he passed away in 2018 but he has made a lasting impression on me.

I’ll leave you with one of his quotes that has stuck with me.

“If you’re young, physically fit, hungry to learn and be better, I urge you to travel – as far and as wide as possible. Sleep on floors if you have to. Find out how other people live, eat and cook. Learn from them – wherever you go.”

And I have a feeling that, wherever he is, Tony is still travelling somewhere.