Thoughts from the gym 🤔

People often say life is too short.

Is it for you?

Before saying yes think about it properly.

Can you honestly say and know that you squeeze every single drop of time, available to you, out of your day?

Do you enjoy time spent on your own? Are you able to fully engage in what you do whether there are others with you or not?

How much time do you spend ‘inside your own head’ as my teacher puts it?

Can you and do you get out of your head and into your body regularly or are you busy thinking about thinking or busy being busy?

Hard exercise or a physical practice is an accessible way of getting into your body & out of your head.

I think it’s why athletes talk about being ‘in the zone’ more than most other people I can think of.

Have a go at experiencing it for yourself. Set a timer for a few minutes, pick an exercise you find hard and do as many as you can in the time you set. Take a very cold shower. How slow does the time seem to pass? Yet time is always the same as a measurement, it just feels different depending on what we are spending it on.

Once spent you can’t take it back or make more of it.

This is where discipline and hard work beat enthusiasm to get you through these examples.

During these exercises you will be very aware of your breathing, your body & then your mind…probably doing its best to get you to quit!

When it’s hard, discipline & willpower will keep you going, this is where a change occurs.

You find what you are really all about right at this point.

Do you give up or do you keep going and develop some real ‘Grit’ each time you practice it?

Believe it or not mindfulness is a low-key way of experiencing the same thing.

You’re taking the time to focus on yourself, on your breathing, on your body, looking for patterns, notice how your body feels, bit by bit and over time you gain the ability to ignore your ‘monkey mind’, that makes mischief in trying to convince you to stop practicing.

Your mind will normally quit before your body will….you just convince yourself otherwise.

Mindfulness can be practiced all day everyday. You don’t need a video or a soundtrack to follow.

Focus, as much as you are able to, on what you are doing in any given moment. When you lose it, notice, then go back to it again & again.

Walking; feel your feet on the ground, feel your balance, feel how you move, how you breath.

Everything you do can become a practice.

Going back to the original point, I wandered well away from 😂, when we notice the details of the things in our lives, we become engaged in what we are doing, moment to moment, in more & more detail.

That is life, right there.

In doing these things repeatedly we discover how much time we actually have.

So stop being busy & take the time to notice.

It’s your life to take charge of.

No one else can live it for you & you can’t live anyone else’s for them.