One of the things I began to notice with people that wanted my help as a coach was that it wasn’t only a weightloss or fitness issue.
So many of us in modern society feel overwhelmed, a lot.
I am sure you have had deadlines approaching at work that you were dreading.
A friend’s destination wedding is coming up.
Need to register and insure the car.
Trying to juggle social, work, family, and community commitments and sometimes feeling like you can never fit it all in
You just got that anxious feeling in your tummy hearing all those things didn’t you?!
I apologise for that.
It is definitely a lot more common than we think. And for plenty of people we think that we need to lose weight or get fit, that these are the problem, however they aren’t a big enough problem so we put it off.
We think all the other things need fixing first.
But we can fix several things at once. And it isn’t as hard as you might think it is.
I found there are four things that if we pay attention to these and look to improve them, even ever so slightly each day, then it works like compound interest in a savings account.
All the little bits become bigger and bigger in time, and you really can go from overwhelmed to in control.
Each day we should be looking at our Movement, did we do any?
Was it good? (ie, did we enjoy it and feel better afterwards)
Look at how we are Eating, is it supporting our life and goals and where we really would like to be?
What is my Sleep like? Do I feel rested when I wake up, or am I sluggish throughout the day?
How’s my Headspace? Clear? Cluttered?
Now, if you come to CrossFit Armidale, we take care of the movement for you right off the bat.
We can also look after your nutrition.
Sleep, well, we can help you a little there, but the coaches might not really be able to come round to read you a story and tuck you into bed! Haha. But believe me when I say that a bedtime story as an adult is actually fantastic! There are a bunch of good apps for this out there, one is the Calm app, it has a free version and is pretty inexpensive if you want the premium version.
And headspace, one of the things we do here each day is have a question of the day. It is there for a few reasons. We have an incredible community of people and this is a fairly simple way to get to know each other with a sometimes silly, sometimes deeper question .It helps people ‘change gear’, if it is the morning and you are still a bit bleary eyed, or have had a very hectic workday, then this Q is about leaving that outside and starting to be in training mode!
Little activities like this can help us shift our thinking from being in work mode etc to getting into a different state. For some it is doing the wordle daily, sudokus, or even the trusty old crossword puzzle.
Talking with a member recently and he finds that doing jigsaw puzzles is an activity to help him feel better.
It might sound counterintuitive to do activities like crosswords and jigsaws, hey, for me it is a bit of colouring in at times, but these activities can actually help us feel clearer, more focused and hence much more in control.
Look there isn’t all that much really in life we have control over, how we act on something or react to an event is basically about it, but with the right activities each day we can feel like we have a bit of a reign over areas of our life we may not ordinarily.
General activities that take a little brain power but are not too taxing or complex can get us into what is known as flow state. Once there things seem clearer.
For me a session here at CrossFit Armidale can really help me find that flow.
I will use this blog/pod as an example. The ideas for it were just not hitting me with the inspiration I would normally like. So I paused on this yesterday and lifted a barbell a bit, read some last night, ate a nutritious dinner and breakfast, did my journaling, listened to a bedtime story while I drifted off to sleep and came back to it this morning refreshed and with a much better flow and idea of what I wanted to try to help you with.
I know not everyone has the luxury of taking that pause from their work like that at times, I just wanted to use and example of what can happen when you do even the tiniest things, in a small amount of time to the four pillars of MESH. From 6:15pm on Monday, to 7:00am Tuesday I managed to get something in for movement, eating, sleeping, and my headspace to help me hit Tuesday running.
So I am going to ask you if you can try to do something small for each of those four pillars like that at least one evening/morning period this coming week.
You might surprise yourself with what you manage!