Changes

I haven’t posted anything in quite some time and now I have decided to get back to it. There are various reasons why but the main one was certainly time. It was just taking too much of my time to post and promote my blog and I found that there was less time for the actual writing. So I decided to take a break and with a step back came a new perspective. I haven’t stopped writing, it’s just all in my notebooks and for my eyes only, up until now anyway.

I also decided that major changes needed to happen in my life, for my own wellbeing as well as for those closest to me. It became apparent to me that I needed to repurpose and reprioritise my days and my life as a whole. I have done this through various means, some have been successful and are still a part of my life and some have fallen by the wayside. But all have been valuable experiences which I may return to one day, who knows?

It all started with running, that was over a year ago now and I am still going. Slowly getting faster, going further, feeling better and stronger. That was to be the start of my physical improvement and help mentally too, it feels good to be out there in nature getting plenty of fresh air and even better to be able to chase my kids around. But I was still stressed and anxious, some days were worse than others but something just wasn’t right. So I decided to make changes, do some of the things that I had read about and listened to people discussing. Once you hear several people recommending the same ideas it is perhaps time to listen.

Before I go into it all I would like to thank two people who I would credit with inspiring me on this journey. First of all Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, who is a British doctor and television personality, and I can’t recommend his books and podcast enough. You should read The 4 Pillar Plan and The Stress Solution, they both contain so much wisdom and I still find them enjoyable just to look at, leave alone read. I have taken several ideas from both books and included them in my daily routine. If you have a bad back do the exercises in the first book, if I wasn’t an atheist I would believe in miracles. Seriously I have had a bad back for 20 years and it disappeared after 2 weeks! The second person is Mr. Rich Roll, an American athlete and wellness influencer, whose personal story in the book Finding Ultra and even more importantly his podcasts have proved incredibly inspiring and influential to me. It is so easy to find inspiration in the modern world we live in, you just have to open your eyes and look.

The biggest change I made was firstly to give myself the time to do some of the things I wanted. I was always guilty of thinking there just weren’t enough hours in the day. How could I possibly find more time? I did it in a very simple way, I started getting up earlier. This concept was always slightly scary to me, I already got up at 6am every day. But I started getting up at 5 am to allow myself more me time before the rest of my household awoke. Once I realised that this was achievable by simply going to bed earlier and not wasting time in the evening watching television or YouTube then it wasn’t that difficult. I would say though that you need the agreement of your partner, he or she needs to be going to bed early too or you won’t sleep properly.

So what is my morning routine? It consists of stretching and light exercise, glute exercises for my back, journalling, meditation, pranameyic breathing, an affirmation and away I go. Sounds like a lot, doesn’t it? But all in all it takes around 75 minutes, then I am in the shower, have breakfast and after 2 hours I am awake, alert and ready to start the working day.

There are many parts to this routine and they all work together but the most important, and the one I never miss, is my journalling or Morning Pages. That last phrase comes from the author Julia Cameron and her book The Artist’s Way. This is not a diary, it is free form writing where you just let your thoughts flow onto the page. You can also have particular ideas which you would like to explore but you think about them on the page. I find it a wonderful way to start my day, it slows the mind and allows you to really think things through, you can only write so quickly after all. As I said, this is the one morning practice which I never miss. Normally I would write 3 A4 pages but if there is some reason where time is a problem, when I am on holiday for instance, I will shorten my writing. But I will always do at least a page. I have been doing this every day for more than 150 days now and I have only had to change my routine on a handful of occasions.

All of these things add up to making a calm and purposeful start to the day and they have improved my levels of stress and anxiety immensely. Some people might still claim that I am a grumpy bugger, and they would be right, but I certainly feel better and that has to transfer to others too. I am a work in progress, it hasn’t even been a year and there were 47 years before that of totally different behaviour and routines to make up for!

Then that brings me to the latest change, I have stopped drinking alcohol. It started with a 28 day challenge and when that finished I felt good and not especially like starting to drink again, so I haven’t. I am not saying I have given up forever but I have done these types of challenges before and I was dying for a drink by the end of them. But this time it felt different, I finished the challenge with a shrug of the shoulders and haven’t really been tempted. Again there was a book involved, The 28 Day Alcohol-Free Challenge by Andy Ramage and Ruari Fairbairns. Reading this book whilst doing the challenge seemed to help convert a short term change into a long term lifestyle decision. I never drank that much, just Fridays and Saturdays, a few beers and maybe a whiskey, but I feel so much better with none in my life. No more fuzzy head on the weekend mornings, less grumpiness, more energy and I am ready to get up and get out there with my family.

Perhaps there will be more changes to come, I am sure I will read more books, listen to more podcasts and try new things. Some of them may work and replace things that do not but I will certainly be keeping the things that still work for me. As I said, I am still a work in progress, as are we all.

© Neil Hayes and neilsworldofenglish

First 5K Run, Against Cancer

I still can’t believe I did it. I really have to cast my mind back to this time last year, and get inside my head back then. The sheer idea of me running in an organised 5K run would have filled me with, I don’t know. Disbelief, laughter, incredulity, bemusement. Take your pick, it would not have seemed to be remotely on my horizon.

But now I have done it and, actually, that first sentence was a lie. Because I can believe I did it, now. But that is because I am a different person now. Now, it doesn’t seem too far-fetched for my next run to be 10K. Well, maybe next year anyway. Because one thing I have learnt from my running experience is that small steps are the way to go. Small steps building slowly to more. If you go from not running at all, to trying to run a 5K, you will probably fail. Similarly with the next step up, don’t try for giant leaps.

As for the run itself, it was a great day. Running for a cause, against cancer, and being part of a large organised event for the first time. Running with my lovely wife, who has been very supportive throughout. But I have to admit to suffering with a bit of a nervous belly in the morning, but once I was in the starting area I was fine. It was a different feeling, running with a large group. People of all different fitness levels were present, but my race was a fun run so there wasn’t too much pressure there.

I was familiar with where we were running but, as I said, running in a pack was different. Before the race, a wise man told me, ‘Don’t run too fast in the first kilometre, everyone does!’ And what did I do? What everyone does, of course. Then I settled into my own pace and started to feel a bit more in control. Slow and steady wins the day, well I won my own race anyway. My own personal race, which is, of course, the most important.

What a great feeling it was to cross that line, get my bottle of water and have ran my personal best 5K. And then to take off the sweatiest headband I have ever seen!

© Neil Hayes and neilsworldofenglish

5k, I made it!

After finishing the 9-week Couch to 5k program, and being able to run for 30 minutes, I have been continuing to run and slowly built to running 4k. And believe me I was more than happy with that. But 5 kilometres still seemed like a long way away.

Then one day I thought, why not just keep going? Just a little bit further, just another 250 metres, easy. Well it wasn’t so easy but I did it. Now I had run more than 4k for the first time, and my comment on my running app was ‘5k here I come’. Little did I think that it would come with my next run.

When I went for that next run I felt good and thought, why not go for it? So I ran for 2.5k, turned around and started running back. Now, in the back of my mind, I was always thinking that if I didn’t make it there would be no shame. But as I started to visualise the feeling of achievement if I made it, I just knew I had to go for it. And I did it.

Now, there wasn’t an immediate sense of elation, I was too tired for that. But, as I recovered and my legs stopped wobbling, it soon began to dawn on me. I just ran 5 kilometres, me. 47 years old, still overweight, never been running in my life before this spring. And I ran 5 kilometres. Was it really me? I still can’t quite believe it.

© Neil Hayes and neilsworldofenglish

I’m a runner, apparently?

Yes! I did it, C25k completed. Ok, at the moment, it’s more like couch to 30 minutes, but I still can’t believe it. When I think back to the first week of this program, when I was out of breath after running for 1 minute, the progress has been amazing. At time of writing I have done four 30 minute runs and each time I am going a little further, a little faster. So now, of course, the challenge is to keep going.

There was a great sense of satisfaction, seeing the little trophy light up on the application and hearing Michael Johnson say ‘You’ve done it!’. But this is just the first step, I’m still only running just over 3k but the goal is 5k. There is a charity 5k run in my town in October, and that is my target for my first organised run.

So my plan is to keep running for 30 minutes every other day and try and build to around 4k in that time. Then extend the time and do 5k, and then more. So I have about 3 months, but after what I have achieved in the last 10 weeks, I don’t see why not. It’s only my knees that sometimes disagree.

© Neil Hayes and neilsworldofenglish

Running! Who Me?

Running? Me? Really? Come on! Yes, really! It’s only the beginning, but, at least, I have begun. Inspired by my sister to join the Couch to 5k challenge. I’d never heard of it before, but when I did, something clicked and I was out of the door within a couple of hours.

If you don’t know it, the idea is that you follow a 9-week training plan and go from being a couch potato to being able to run 5 kilometres. That’s the target, and a target is what I need to get me off my backside.

So far, I have just completed Week 1. That’s 3 walks/runs of 30 minutes each. Day 1 was painful, Day 2 was agony, Day 3 hurt but…Eureka! I recovered quickly and had a great feeling at the end.

So now I get a couple of days off and it’s on to Week 2, which doesn’t look too scary. I already know I can do it. And that seems to be the great thing about this idea. It hurts, but it’s a slow build up. I know it will get much harder, believe me the idea that I could run 5k is still very far fetched for me, but I have to focus on the now.

And right now, it feels great and I’m actually looking forward to my next run. Me? Who would have believed it?

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© Neil Hayes and neilsworldofenglish