Jan 14, 2020 - Resigned from my job of 7 years
Feb 6 – Feb 14 - Quarantine
March 21 – 31 - Stay Home Notice (unofficial)
April 7 – Present - Circuit Breaker
This is how my year started.
I’ve spent more time at home than I have at work (the gym). Yet, up until now, I’ve been able to maintain my physique and not lose any strength. Why? The first thought most people reading this will have is “Oh, it’s easy for him because he’s a personal trainer. There should be no excuse”.
Let me tell you something: I am human.
I like to snack. I like to indulge in food and wine. I like a good burger or a pizza every so often. I like dessert. I am just like you. The only difference is that over a number of years, I’ve figured out how to enjoy my food, train, and sleep optimally so that I can maintain a physique that I'm happy with all year round.
The secret? Mindset. The even bigger secret? It can be taught.
Mindset is the established set of attitudes held by someone. Plain and simple, your mindset are your beliefs. If you believe you are going to suck at something, you probably will. If you believe you are going to be good at something, there’s no guarantee, but I bet you’ll try harder to be good.
It’s all in your mindset.
Let’s give this some context from a health & fitness perspective. It’s 2020 and you decided that this was the year that you were finally going to lose 10kgs by June. No matter what, by hook or by crook, come hell or high water, this is your year.
You started on your weight loss journey and within a month you lost 3kgs and felt amazing! February rolled around, it was your birthday month so you had a big indulgent weekend with your friends and family to celebrate, so you only lost 2kg this time. Then, the COVID-19 outbreak came around. You’re stuck working from home, super stressed out not knowing if you’re going to get laid off or get paid, or worst yet, have to shut down your business indefinitely or for good. Now we’ve just completed March and with all the chaos, you gained back the 2kgs you lost in February.
Now what?
Scenario 1 - you go off on a downward spiral, gaining all your weight back and then some because life and this virus that no one saw coming, got in the way. You decide to put off your weight loss goal that you were so pumped about to 2021.
Scenario 2 - you accept that you can’t control everything but what you can control is how you respond to your stress. Everyone has stress in their lives, but stress is not something we can control. All we can control is our response to it, and again, that’s a mindset. So, you re-evaluate. You’ve still lost 3kg since January. You’ve got 3 months left to lose 7kg but COVID-19 has other plans for you. Instead of 10kg, you accept that you may only lose 7 or 8kgs come June, and you carry on.
Scenario 3 - you’ve lost 3kg since January and you now have 7kgs left in 3 months. You get more aggressive with your diet (with or without the help of a personal trainer or a nutritionist), you ramp up the frequency of your activity and you prioritize this because you yourself decided in January that this was going to be your year! So why let anything slow you down?
Control what you can and figure out how to respond to things you can’t.
In all the above scenarios, it’s your mindset that’s going to determine which situation you land yourself in. Your mindset will determine the end result long before the end result is even in sight. Your mindset is, and always will be, the one thing that determines the outcome of anything that you do and whether or not you will be successful at it.
“You can do anything you set your mind to” - Ben Franklin.
I have a feeling he knew what he was talking about.
Written by Rishi Mirpuri,
Personal Trainer and Co-Founder of SURGE Strength & Results
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Contributor:
SURGE Strength & Results was the brainchild of Sam Gallo and Rishi Mirpuri - two of the most reputable personal trainers in Singapore with a common goal in mind; to take clients and forge them into a stronger, higher-performing and more durable version of themselves.