Catalysts & Change

Before late last year, I had a sporadic relationship with my fitness. I would start working out and going to the gym 3-4 times a week. Then come the weekend, all bets were off. 

It starts off with going out for drinks with friends on Friday night then leads to eating junk after. The next day I would wake up with a bad hangover. This of course often led to 2 things —> trying to fix the headaches with pain meds (sometimes several times a day) and eating more junk. 

Now, depending on that particular Saturday and whether there were any good events, this cycle would repeat. 

Come Monday - It was either: guilt myself into working out and eating healthy, or giving up and continuing the weekend trend.

Even the times when the guilt won, going to the gym and having a healthy meal was mentally painful. It was as if there was an on-going war in my mind. The resistance within was more draining than any workout I ever did.

But then in May 2021, I had my mobility taken away for 4 months. I had a car accident and had to have 2 ankle surgeries. What I took for granted was no longer there. Not being able to walk for that long and then having to go through rehab was excruciating but then it became humbling. 

More often than not what’s holding us back is a thought pattern or a mental model that’s so ingrained within us - that either it runs on autopilot or worse it protects our ego so we hold on at all costs. 

However, an unexpected catalyst can jolt us into action or into making a change. 

This catalyst often causes us a lot of pain. 

And the way through that pain is to either modify our model of the world that matches with reality or we stubbornly hold on to that faulty model and soothe the pain by blaming the world and other people.

One of them solves the pain at its root. The other only solves the symptoms.

Here are 2 mental exercises that have helped me become aware of my own faulty mental models and  destructive thought patterns →

• I started questioning ‘Where did this come from?’ Whenever I catch myself having an unhealthy thought or realize I am telling myself a fictional story about a situation rather than working with the actual facts. 

• My 2nd prompt is asking myself ‘when did this thought pattern show up last ? And how did that go? 

• I then take some time to write this down and further explore other options or mental models that can be applied to that specific situation. 

This does not necessarily help all the time but it does help create a much needed pause. 

As Viktor Frankl once said: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom” 

Now going back to my story above, once my rehab was done, I was so grateful that my body let me walk again that I couldn’t help but honor It by taking care of it. 

As it turned out, the struggle that I had before the accident was not about the actions that it took to be healthy i.e. working out or making meals. 

But it was about the dissonance in how I viewed myself under a lens that cast a shadow of self-doubt and lack of love, and the person that I want to project to the world.

They were always in conflict and mostly the one that lived in my head won.

The sporadic relationship was in fact not with my fitness, but it was with myself. 

The accident was my catalyst to confront these thought patterns and grow compassion towards my own self.

The compassion eventually grew into self-love and strength - which made me go through that painful experience and come out on the other side - first re-learning how to walk then being able to run. And now working out and eating healthy is just part of my identity with no resistance.

Don’t get me wrong - I am not a saint now. I still eat my favorite junk food and have a drink here and there, but it no longer leads to a spiral or changes how I relate to myself. It just became something that’s fun to do as an indulgence every once in a while.

---

Quote that really stuck with me this week:

“ Putting a label on a person is like putting a label

on the water in a river.

It’s ignoring the flow of time. “

Derek Sivers 

---

Tweets that I found powerful:

1.

2.