The meaning of meditation

In part three of my Art of Chill series with Gillette, I’m getting mindful with meditation and looking at how it can help you reduce the irritations life throws your way.

So after last week’s 10 Steps to Change Your Life Starting Today post a lot of you messaged me about the meditation section, so I thought I would answer some of your questions in this week’s Monday Motivation as a bit of advice on meditation for beginners.

Meditation has become very important to me, it helps me keep focus, clarity and optimism. Meditation is proven to reduce stress, improve sleep, boost energy and can even help you lose weight.

Now, obviously I am not an expert, I just do my own thing and it works for me. I’ve picked up random tips and info from people and places over the years that have helped me find something that suits.

I’ve never been the biggest fan of New Year resolutions. I kind of see them as a larger scale version of ‘I’ll start on Monday’, and I’ve always been a solid believer in starting now, not putting something off until it’s convenient. That said, for 2019 I have decided to set myself some goals. These are things I want to achieve. They may not be achievable in a year, and they may not all start on January 1st, but these are the next things on my I want to achieve in my life.

How to make New Year resolutions that you’ll keep

I think if you are thinking about making your own resolutions, it’s about creating realistic goals, but also goals that are flexible. I don’t say that so that they can easily be gotten out of, but that we often make such strict, far-reaching goals and unfortunately, as we all know, life isn’t that strict, it demands that we change and adapt to unforeseen circumstances. So if you add a bit of flexibility to your goals, so can adapt them to your life and they are more likely to be achieved. For example, if your goal is weight loss, don’t set a goal of ‘X amount of weight lost in X amount of time’, say ‘in the next year I want to begin my journey to a healthier and happier me’. Then say to yourself that it can be measured in the following ways; I feel fitter, I can walk/run further and I am stronger. I feel happier. I look healthier. And finally, the weight on the scale is going down. All of these measures are valid and show success, you may achieve them all, you may not. But staying the same weight but being able to walk 10km is still a success. don’t narrow your window for succeeding by setting narrow goals.

My New Year Resolutions

 

Making saving a priority

I’ve always been a pretty good budgeter. When I need to save, I’ve always been able to knuckle down and do it, whether it was to buy something or save for a holiday. But 2019 is going to mark the start of probably the most ambitious savings project we ever have; saving for a house. It’s not a small feat to achieve, but I’m at the stage in my life where I really want a space to call my own. so the budgets have been worked on, still allowing space for fun, and my spending limits are set. I’ve forcing myself to have a very spartan start to the year in order to kick-start the fund, then I plan on spending, or not as the case may be, the rest of the year focusing on putting money away as the priority. So long-haul holiday dreams will be on hold for now.

Meditating everyday

You all know I’m a big fan of meditation, and I’ve also discussed how it can be difficult to keep up. My practice works in ebbs and flows, but for 2019 I aim to solidify it into my everyday. I try to aim for 20 minutes a day, either in one block, or two sessions of 10 minutes, but I often get distracted or overloaded and I don’t manage it. so next year, my goal is to simply do it every day. No time limits or expectations. It could be 2 minutes, it could be twenty, but my focus is to make it second nature to think about and incorporate to help me find balance.

 

 

Fitness First

I’m on a lifelong fitness journey. but 2018 was definitely a career-first, life-first year. My fitness took a back seat and while I still trained 4-6 times a week, it wasn’t a focus. If I had to eat out, I did. I didn’t sacrifice for training and that’s OK as that’s’ what I needed to do during a job change and difficult times personally. Next year I’d like to give it back a bit focus now things have settled and I have the time. My aim is to get back to prepping my work lunches and setting specific monthly exercise goals, by compartmentalising it I think it’s more achievable than an epic 6-month or yearly goal.

Spend more time in the kitchen

This resolution is thanks to Samin Nosrat. Now, if you don’t know who Samin is, you need to introduce yourself, stat. Samin is an Iranian-American chef and food writer and author of the book Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, a not-so-ordinary cookbook that focuses on mastering the core elements of cooking rather than simply offering recipes to follow. This book isn’t about helping you make a one-off dish, it’s about turning you into a chef. For those of you that aren’t big readers, you are in luck as the folk of Netflix have turned the book into a truly brilliant four-part documentary, fronted by Samin herself. She’s funny and endearing and her passion for food is so infectious I watched all four in one sitting. It inspired me to get back to the kitchen.

I’ve always loved cooking, having been taught to cook and bake by my mum and nan respectively. But over the years, true cooking has been replaced by survival eating. I cook for nutritional value, making sure I have protein, carbs, fat etc. for training, with taste and experience coming second, if at all. After watching the series I followed Samin’s advice, seasoning and tasting as I go, adding new ingredients and experimenting with staple dishes I batch cook, and they turned out better than they ever have before. Here’s to a tasty 2019!

What are your New Year resolutions? Do you keep them? Do you think they are rubbish? Let me know below!

A bit of personal post today. It’s been a crazy tough few weeks. From dealing with the grief of my grandfather passing and my auntie being diagnosed with cancer to starting a new job and getting dumped. I’m not going to lie, guys, I hit my limit with bad news. It’s driven my stress levels through the roof and increased feelings of anxiety, which I’ve been trying to manage. I wanted to share a little bit of my story with you and then talk about how to deal with stress and anxiety. I hadn’t intended on putting this on the blog, when I’m stressed I’ve learnt to write things down because seeing the words written in front of me helps me to compartmentalise and deal with what I’m feeling. Looking at the list, I thought that this should actually be something I talk to you guys about on here as most likely many of you have the same issues, and I need to practice what I preach; it’s so important to have these conversations when we are vulnerable, especially men, because they way we’ve been programmed to have a ‘stiff upper lip’ is just 100% not the fucking one.

What is stress and what causes stress?

Stress is usually caused by external factors, it’s the feeling of being under too much mental or emotional pressure due to things like workloads in the office, running a family and financial worries. Stress can make us feel unhappy, worried and irritable to name a few.

What’s the difference between stress and anxiety?

There’s a really fine line with stress and anxiety as they have many overlapping symptoms, but in short, the NHS defines stress as “the reaction to a problem, whereas anxiety is the reaction to stress.” While stress is usually short-lived, prolonged levels of anxiety can become chronic and begin to be triggered by things unrelated to you and you have a heightened sense of worry daily. Anxiety is a disorder and is usually diagnosed when it’s symptoms have persisted for six months or more.

A couple years ago I was in a similar situation, life was beating me down; a tumultuous personal life, my mother going through her second fight with cancer and the worry of what was going to happen meant that my stress level was on an eight minimum most days. I’d felt stress before and had never had issues managing it. I’d just fight on through until whatever was causing me stress ended. But in this situation, I couldn’t quite get over the hill due to the long-term nature of the issues I was dealing with and things started to feel different. I begun worrying about pretty much everything. Even the things not directly affecting me. I was becoming full of unease and fear, for myself, the future and the world and I couldn’t seem to get on top it.

Then things came to head one day at work. I’d not been sleeping properly, I was a bit of a state. I was out on my lunch break when, all of a sudden, I started having chest pains. My chest was tight, my heart was racing and arm was feeling numb and tingly. I was freaking out. I got back to the office and told a colleague as I began to break down. I called 111, the non-emergency NHS line to see what was happening. After going through my symptoms, the woman said she was calling an ambulance. Though I’m not exactly the typical demographic for it, I was showing all of the symptoms of a heart attack. The ambulance arrived at the office and I was hooked up to and ECG machine and my blood pressure was taken. My pressure had spiked.

My ECG, however, showed no signs of a heart attack, though I did coincidentally find out I had a slight, although unrelated, arrhythmia to my heart beat. I spoke with the ambulance crew who asked about my current life balance. I said I’d been dealing with some things and they then asked if I’d been to a doctor about anxiety. I hadn’t, but I very quickly booked in to see my GP.

The signs and symptoms of stress and anxiety

While we all know about the usual signs of stress, from feelings of being overwhelmed, irritable, anxiousness which can lead to irritability, worry and concentrating, the NHS also notes the following physical symptoms:

• headaches
• muscle tension or pain
• dizziness
• sleep problems
• fatigue
• lack of or increased appetite

After speaking to my doctor and doing further research, I couldn’t believe that stress and anxiety could lead to such real physical symptoms. And while anxiety symptoms are very similar, long term anxiety can lead to increased physical reactions in the body such as:

• a noticeably strong, fast or irregular heartbeat (palpitations)
• trembling or shaking
• dry mouth
• excessive sweating
• shortness of breath
• stomach ache
• feeling sick
• pins and needles
• difficulty falling or staying asleep (insomnia)

Many things started clicking into place for me. On the list was the heart racing, the pins and needles and shortness of breath. Everything I had suffered from. There were other things, including insomnia which I have regular bouts of but had never attributed to being caused by the same thing. But after talking to doctor about how my insomnia started at uni, he said it would have been triggered by the stress of a new environment, being out on my own for the first time. Though I was having fun, my body was in a heightened state of stress with all of the new experiences.

How can I manage stress and anxiety?

While I was suffering from anxiety, I don’t have anxiety disorder, which is an important difference. While I’ve had a couple bouts of this heightened experience, it’s not a daily and consistent feeling. So for me, it’s about managing stress levels.

There are many different ways that you can deal with stress and anxiety, below are some of the things I do to manage my stress levels, but your first port of call should be your doctor as I’m not one. It’s important to speak to a professional to figure out if your issues are stress related or part of an anxiety disorder. When it comes to Anxiety disorder, they are more medical interventions that can take place including psychotherapy, CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) and medication.

Stress can usually be managed by learning what your triggers are so you notice when they are happening and you can begin to mitigate the situation.

Like I mentioned, when I’m stressed I like to make lists, to physically write things down so I can visualise. I then begin to tackle it piece by piece. The biggest thing I’ve learnt is not to avoid the feelings and symptoms. You need to acknowledge them and feel them in order for them to pass. If you try to keep ignoring them, you just put them back down to grow strong for their next appearance.

Increased sleep, physical exercise, and ‘me time’, are also all great ways to relieve stress. You should also talk to some like a friend or colleague. Saying things out loud and talking them through can help to make them seem less of a deal.

I also started to practice meditation daily as a way to alter my daily mindset. It also really helped during bouts of insomnia. I also recommend reading everything ever written by Brené Brown, a researcher who has specialised in studying concepts and affects of courage, vulnerability, shame, and empathy. Her work has really opened my eyes and helped me see the world differently, which has inadvertently reduced my stress levels. I’ll be writing more about her very soon.

Hopefully something in the above helps you, and I’m always here if you need to talk. Comment below, email me or slide in a DM somewhere. I’d love for you to share any of your own stories or ways of dealing with stress in the comment section below.

 

Are New Year resolutions destined to fail?

I’ve never been a fan of New Year resolutions. I kind of see it as the annual version of ‘I’ll start on Monday’. As a rule, I don’t believe in putting something off until tomorrow that you can start today. I also think the biggest problem with New Years resolutions is they are often too big, too ambitious, too vague and lacking in a plan of action to be achievable.

But to avoid being too much of a Debbie Downer, my attitude remains open. I admit that resolutions are not with out merit. It’s important to always set goals for ourselves, to strive for more. I just think we tend to go about them the wrong way.

I love discovering new grooming products, and lucky for me there are plenty of new and amazing brands hitting the men’s market all the time. One of those is Triumph & Disaster, a new range from New Zealand. Blending the best in skincare science with the purest natural products, Triumph & Disaster is also dedicated to being an authentic and honest brand that is also sustainable.

I got the chance to talk to Dion Nash, former cricketer and founder of Triumph & Disaster to find out more.

So it’s been a long while since we last spoke, apologies for that, I’ve been in Australia for the best part of two months! I decided to take the time off to focus on the point of the trip; to recharge, realign, and reflect on the craziness of the past 18 months.

As many of you know, most of 2014, for me, was about recovery. It was about starting again and rebuilding many aspects of my life are a rather tumultuous time.

I’ve learnt so much about myself, others, the world around me and how they affect each other over the last year. It’s been an interesting path to walk along and I couldn’t have done it without some amazing people I’ve met in the past year.

I’ve never been one for New Year resolutions and I firmly disbelieve in the phrase ‘I’ll start Monday”. I believe if you want something, you start now, in the moment – you make the mental acknowledgement that you are going to achieve something and you begin to work towards it.

So, for today’s Monday Motivation I want to show you the things I am doing, no just this year but forever, to keep myself on the path I wish to follow. They are things I have learnt and they have helped change my life, maybe you might find they help you, too.