This series is to make it easier for you to become the person you want to be. Keep in mind that I’m not a therapist, and take my suggestions as you would from a friend.
Try achieving these goals every week. They’re short and doable, and it’s to increase your confidence, step by step.
To keep things simple, we only have 3 categories (external, mental and physical) which will have one goal each.
These are posted every Thursday.
External :
-Compliment someone today.
- It should be something that they can control, such as their shoes, how nice their hair looks, how they did a good job on X project.
- Refrain from talking about body shape, facial features (acne, etc), even if it’s positive. It could be a trigger point for them.
Mental :
- Sit cross legged on your bed as you face south east.
- Set a timer for 5 minutes.
- Close your eyes.
- Take deep inhalations and exhalations.
- Don’t respond to notifications and don’t get distracted for 5 minutes.
Physical :
- Do 10 minutes of light stretching.
- YouTube has a lot of options, choose something that adheres to your level of strength.
- Yoga with Adrienne, Satvic movement, Yoga with Bird are some good options.
Sometimes life is hard on you, sometimes you are hard on yourself, sometimes you are hard to others. Know that your strengths are also your weakness’. Be considerate with all you meet in life. Your physical strength can give you mental strength. Take care of your body and you’ll be good to your soul too..
In the past 2 months, counting private clients and the academy, I taught roughly 235 classes. I understand this is an unreasonable amount, but I had to. In my academy, the only people that teach are my instructor, who is also the owner, and myself.
I was texting a friend about feeling tired, sore and burnt out on teaching from the influx of private lessons I was giving, then I got a text from my instructor, basically telling me he was in an accident and would not be able to teach for some time. The reality of the situation and how much work was now placed in front of me hit me like truck.
I want to make this very clear, he did not tell me to teach this much, in reality he offered to close the gym as much as I’d want, but I couldn’t do that. This is both of our livelihoods, but he has a family, a wife and a daughter to support with the gym and I couldn’t live with myself if I closed the gym because I was tired. Everyone’s tired, shut up, get to work. So for the first 3 weeks, I taught 7 days a week, morning and nights, Monday through Fridays, and mornings, Saturday and Sunday. After week 3 I cowered and asked to close on Sunday’s, to which he obliged.
In month one, because of show I had previously agreed to be on, I only closed 2 nights but I was starting to lose it. Not only was I at the gym every day, I couldn’t pursuit stand-up comedy like I was before the accident. It was hurting me, I knew I wasn’t getting better at comedy, and I knew all my friends were out at shows having fun. I felt like I was grounded. In month two I started to ask for help from the senior guys at the gym. I couldn’t do it alone anymore. They were happy to help and I was happy to sneak some stage time in once or twice a week.
Towards week 7 I still had no real timeline to when he would be back, but I refused to ask. I knew how frustrated he was with not being able to teach, and the last thing I wanted to do was to add to that with questions. “He’ll be back the second he can physically be back on the mats” I kept telling myself. Somehow I was getting booked more and more which meant asking for more help, which I can bet you can tell is not one of my strengths.
Then, on a Tuesday afternoon, I got a text from my instructor telling me he was going to be back to his regular schedule. I almost cried, I re-read the text over and over to make sure I saw it correctly. It’s now been 1 week since I went back to my normal classes and it’s been strange. For how trying and difficult all that teaching was, for how tired and honestly, sick of being on the mats as I was at times, I feel like I was given a beautiful gift. I now look at my work week as a vacation, it’s so goddamn easy now. Every day that I leave the gym feels like I’m playing hooky. I know how hard, I know I can sacrifice and it will only make me stronger. I don’t know what good deeds I must have done in a past life to deserve the life I have now, but I feel so lucky and I won’t forget to appreciate it.
Thank you Prof Roger for trusting me and giving me the gift of MMA, thank you Nate, Brian, Alan and Danny for helping me out with classes, I’ll never forget it.
