Are you (still) down?

Hello reader! I am back after a hiatus. I do not see a reason why you should care much about it. But my blog after a break is about all that. Getting back!

The year was a transformational one for me in all aspects, be it personally, professionally, emotionally, mentally and physically. The transformation does not imply I have been only scaling mountain tops and flashing a victory sign. The transformation has also been in cutting through the demons operating in my head, the failures and the injuries. For example, my physical routine took a hit about a month ago as we were shifting houses and me shifting jobs. The entire strain of dealing with this change in the past 3 months came out on my right knee. This cut me out of running or doing weights for about 2 weeks, where I sulked and wondered if I could get back to my regime that I had maintained successfully for about 4 years.

The only way this could be answered after the doctor’s consultation and medication was to test the road again. Thankfully for me in a stress and rest method I was able to hit the straps and regain the lost momentum pretty quickly. All the bullshit that was going through my head of not being able to cope was falsified by action than pondering over it repetitively.

On a slightly larger issue, I was also able to regain my control on floundering thoughts that were defeating to say the least. This year through writing about them in varied blogs and chapters I became the observer of my damaging emotions than being a victim to it. We are great as an observer and peacemaker on an altercation between two individuals than a victim where two voices play in our own head. I realised it is better to observe than be a part of those voices.

Let them come, have their own chat and then let them leave you. For all that goes around in your little heads, it is really this simple solution that would help you ignore and be nonchalant to the drama. Again, bringing these thoughts out in the open helped me douse them as an unbiased third party. This was akin to hitting the road with my injury and testing the waters with some practical tests.

Learning

The above 2 personal experiences etched some deep learning within with which I prep myself to enter into the new year. These are as follows:

• The person you are and the shit you are going through are separate entities. The worst you can do for yourself is to amalgamate the 2 entities and make it your destiny. Being sad about something for few hours or few days does not make you a depressed soul for life. A small loss in a business does not make you a loser in life either. Nor does the love of your life walking away from you make you a bad or shitty person. The sad, depressing or fearful emotions are just visitors in your head through a triggered event. And just as uncalled visitors they ought to leave. Ensure you don’t pay them enough attention, isolate them alone in the waiting area of your living room looking for you. Don’t forget to come out with a smile and serve them your stale cookies. This would ensure they visit you less often than desired and their random visits would not bother you much. Ask them to visit you again as they please (after all the stale cookies are not been wasted). Always remember the golden rule, “They are just visitors, they aren’t you!”

• The only way to test any hypothesis to your capabilities of getting back to your best is by getting into the action of being your best. A minor injury to your toe in the gym need not push you out of fitness permanently. A bad chapter in a book should not cease your learning. A toxic relationship need not deprive you of love for life turning you into a grumpy sadist. Neither a failed idea should bring down the curtains on your creative mindset. We nevertheless cling onto these failures as our fate and unanimously reject all efforts to stand up again through entitlement. If you see yourself in any such situations, take a U-turn and meet your goals head on at other side of the crevasse. In no time you would encounter alternate solutions to your method and why the failure was just a diversion than the end of road. You have just learned another method of doing it right than not doing it at all.

Coping with change

Being down and getting back you might argue are at the opposite ends of the spectrum theoretically. Being down refers the inability to deliver at an optimum level, while getting back insinuates of coming to terms with your optimum level. Yet for all practical observations, we would find ample examples of people in our circles or even us being down with a jolt and eventually fading away than getting back in the ring.

Alternatively, what are the techniques for you to get back being your best in a limited or faster time span? An athlete running a 100m sprint has all of 9-12 seconds to get back to top gear if she is feeling low before the run. Do they step out of the race fearing a backlash? A doctor has to be absolutely focused in an operation theater while performing a procedure or a surgery. Would he step out of the OT at the cost of the patient’s survival? Professionals around the world in varied walks of life turn into champions by taming and exiting their damaging emotions in the fastest turn around time.

Some retort to diversion by humming their favourite song or developing the mental construct of regaining absolute focus on the task despite their challenges or circumstances or thinking about a loved one to alter their moods. The method would be customised to each one of them, but stays highly effective in getting them out of mental rut. Go ahead and devise your own method.

Success and Winning

For the world we live in is least bothered to know your problems, but will hail you a hero when you stand tall despite those adversities. The new decade that awaits us might define success and winning in life considerably different from what we have known of these terms all this while. Mental diseases continue to be on the rise worldwide and seem to offer no reprieve. Success and winning would not be your bank balance or the number of cars parked in your porch or the number of promotions you garner.

These terms in the new age would relate to a lot on your mental stability, conditioning and getting back to normalcy after a hit. The new age success might just talk more about people moving from a blip to regaining composure and being themselves than people walking to the podium and picking trophies. This we shall see in the decade that awaits!