Finding peace in hard times

Hey there everyone. Look, it's a very bright day out here today. I ummed and ahed about whether to put sunglasses on or not because I am going to squint all the way through.

But anyway, you'll have to excuse my squinting, I felt sunglasses were kind of a bit impersonal. And so I'm just coming in today, I'm just going to come in live every day and have a bit of chat about either a workout or some way that we can get our head right, or even simple meals that you can be doing at home. So I just wanted to come in and check in with you today about the times that we're going through right now.

These are very interesting times indeed. And to be honest, I do worry about my young people with the whole world sort of system, the economy, because the economy is going to be going down. And so, but I don't think too hard on that for now.

The ones that don't have jobs, hopefully we'll regain those jobs in the next few months. And the ones that do have jobs, great, we'll deal with it. So I don't worry too much about that.

And in fact, to tell you the truth, I don't worry too much about the coronavirus as well, because in our lifetime, we will have so many viruses and bacteria trying to attack our bodies. And that will be something that we'll live with from the time we're a baby to the time we die. We will have things out there that are trying to get us and I don't worry too much about that.

I think that comes from being a nurse. I see people who were incredibly sick, get through it and get through it well, some will die. And then those that you think are great can get very sick.

So, but I don't put my head in that place because I, like many others, can't afford to be in that place. I am a strength trainer and I want to keep doing that albeit outdoors now. And I'm also a nurse.

So if I get, if my head gets into a really dark place and I can't be the best I can be at my job, I can't encourage my clients and I can't be the best me I can be for my family. So it's really important. I just want to share a few tips with you that I do that you could be doing.

I'm not an expert in that field, but saying that I've been around people for many years of my life, either training as a strength trainer or a nurse and your head can actually make or break you at this time as to how well you cope with things. And I often think to myself, you know, if my life seems hard at the moment or your life seems hard at the moment, I get inspired by those people who have lost everything, but retuned their mind, retuned their whole being and system into moving forward from where they're at. And actually years down the track saying, wow, I'm so glad that that event happened to me.

That's not all in all cases, but I get inspired by those people that go, that was a changing time in my life for me then to become the best version of me I could ever have hoped for. And so I just want to kind of put a little different, a bit of a different perspective on it this morning, not downplaying what the coronavirus has done to the world and shutting down the world, but just putting a little different bit of a different perspective on it. So you may kind of think, oh, I hadn't ever thought of it like that because the way that we think is often, you know, can make or break us at times and well, actually our whole life through it can make or break us.

So if we can get this head in a really great place, then that's a great way to be. And more than ever now in this time, we need to find opportunities to create calm in the midst of the storm. And there are so many ways to do it.

I'll come back to that in a moment, but I was just having a look. So a thing that kept coming through my mind this last week is Dr. Phil. I used to watch him every day without fail till he went off our TV channels for a while there.

And so I don't do that anymore. But for years and years, I would tune in at 12 o'clock in the middle of the day to watch Dr. Phil because he comes out with sound, sensible advice. And I love that someone that's trained to just give you sound, sensible advice.

And often he'd say, how's that working for you? So the way you're thinking, the way you're feeling, how's that working for you? So if the way you're thinking right now is in a not good place, how's that working for you?

Maybe you need to make some changes. And I need to make some changes. I've been a bit annoyed of late, a bit peeved with how things are.

And I now need to come back to that place where I really get my mind back into a sensible, normal place. And one of the things that Dr. Phil says every day when you tune into the show, this is going to be a changing day in your life. And so what I'd like to say to some of you at home, let's see what we can do with remembering this time 20 years down the track and going, that's when I made some big changes in my life that have brought me to this wonderful place I am today.

Now, it could be that you want to make some changes in your health and fitness. It could be that you want to make changes with making stronger connections with your family or your friends. Well, now's the time to do it, particularly if you're isolating at home, be on the phone, be in touch with people that you love that build you up, but you can be actually making some changes.

I'll go through some tips in a moment, but even making a change of deciding that, yeah, this is the time I've been not doing well because work has been so busy, but I've got this moment to actually look at what's going on around me and make myself the best me I can be. So in five years' time, 10 years' time, 20 years' time, you'll look back on that time and go, wow, I made changes and they were for the best. Just a couple of Dr. Phil quotes while I was on his site. One of them there was, loss doesn't have to be an end, it can also be a beginning. And I love that because for many of us, we've lost at this point in time, maybe not someone that we love, but it could be that we've lost our job for the moment or we've lost hope in the world and that it doesn't need to be the end. It can be a spark there, a catalyst for change in the way we think.

So I love that. Life doesn't have, loss doesn't have to be an end, it can also be a beginning. So this can be the beginning of the best years of your life.

And the other one he had on there is you can't change the things that have happened in your life, but you can decide how you interpret and respond to them. And I think that's a really good one in this time and these times is that we can respond in a really dark way. We can be angry with people around us.

We can be angry with the world. When we go to the shops, we can fight over the toilet paper and get angry there's not the food that we want on the shelves. But I don't know about you anywhere else in the world, but certainly here in Australia, we have an abundance of fresh supplies on the outside of the stores.

So we have an abundance of all of our food that we normally get from the garden and that are healthy for us. So if you can't get your pasta, think about coming away from pasta and making your own lookalike pasta with cauliflower or some other means. And so there's ways that we can do things that can take us into a far better place.

So reminding you that quote, you can't change the things that have happened in your life, but you can decide how you interpret and respond to them. I love that quote, it's so good. And so I was having a look at some inspiring people last night too.

So Turia Pitt, so Australians would know her well. She was a young lady that was passionate about life, a quarter of the way through 100 kilometre Outback Marathon, going hard. She heard, she had her earphones on the time playing music.

She heard a rumbling sound, which she thought, oh wow, I must be close to the road now. That must be a road truck going through. So she took off her earphones for a minute and started to run harder and then realised there was this mountain of fire coming towards her.

What should she do? She said, I didn't know whether to do, to stay where I was with kind of grass, kind of up around, you know, quite high up around her head. Do I stay here and get burnt or do I try and outrun the fire?

But it's going up a hill and I know that's not the right thing to probably do because the fire will catch me, but that's the way I'm going. So she decided to just go full on and run up the hill. The fire did catch her and she got quite badly burnt.

She's an inspiration today because she got through that. She said, believe me, it was tough times. I had to learn to feed myself again because her arm had gotten so scarred there, she couldn't bend up her arm.

She said, imagine trying to feed yourself with an arm out here. She said, you just can't. So she had to get this, a whole lot of physio, I think, burning into the scars as well, cutting into the scars to allow her to bend her arm again.

But there are a whole pile of things that she needed to relearn even to talk because her face was so badly burnt and scarred that it had her face in a particular way. So she had to learn to talk, walk, do every movement again. And now she's married, happily married to the guy that stood by her all that time with a young baby.

And so she was inspiring to just hear her talk about how she's come through that adversity. And in fact, her life is totally transformed. So she's a speaker now and speaks to groups, trying to motivate them and letting them know that life is not so bad as sometimes what our mind makes us out to be.

And one of her statements she made in her talk, her TED talk actually, so if you want to hear her talk, get onto a TED talk, to Rhea Pitt. And she said, so many of us are trapped by our mind so that we can't get out of that. We can't do things we otherwise could do.

So, so many of us are trapped by our mind. And I think that is a wise word in this, in these times that, you know, if you're trapped in your mind and you feel angry every day and you feed into that anger with other people who are angry and you get just so annoyed with life that you can't see any way out and you're in a dark place, do what you can, whether it's seeing a psychologist or getting around good friends who have a more positive aspect on life is the way to go.

And also she said, we need to uncover the possibilities for each one of us. So we have possibilities, we need to uncover that. And that's why I think it's a good time to sit and reflect, particularly if you're in home isolation, reflect on where you want to go from here, reflect on how this is going to be a good change in your life and not something to be despised for evermore.

And also another inspiring person is Bethany Hamilton, a professional surfer, an American whose arm was bitten off by a shark. She's gone on, she was back and surfing, and I know that things weren't easy for her. I watched the movie made about her life, but within a couple of months, a month, a couple of months, she was back surfing.

Things were hard, but she has been able to stay in the professional circuit and doing well. And, and she would also say persevere, perseverance was one of her things. She didn't let the, the fact that she didn't have an arm and threw off her balance on the board.

She didn't let that stop her. She had to learn a whole new way of surfing with one arm less, because it does throw off your balance. One arm is not there anymore.

And the way you've surfed forever more or before this is different now, has to change. So she's learned to surf a whole different way and learn to do things differently. And I think that's fantastic, good on her.

So just want to go through just some easy tips, some simple tips. And I find I need to use these for me as well. I'm not an expert in this, but I'm just talking about somebody that is also dealing with stuff myself and dealing with worry and anxiety at times.

I don't stay there for long, but have perspective. So, so this is for a period. I know there are people dying.

These people often have other things going on with them. I know maybe a poor heart or poor lungs. And so they don't do too well when the virus comes along.

But find perspective because most of us will recover. Find some great quotes, find some quotes, like I just quoted from Dr. Field, that you can post on your wall, put on your wall, put in your bathroom, on your toilet door. So you see them when you go to tell you that life will go on and you will be okay.

For most of us, we will be okay. And if that we could be the best us that we could ever have been, you know, had we not had that time for reflection and put real effort into feeling good and trying to have a gratitude every day. So try and find something to be thankful for and grateful for.

That does put your head into a whole different perspective. Learn something new. I often think, you know, if I've got downtime, I think, okay, what can I do with this downtime?

I'm not just going to relax and eat all I've got, eat myself into happiness. What's a good online course? Maybe there's a two-week online course you do or something longer, but make something, try something new, learn something new.

It's your chance if you're, particularly if you're home isolating, it's your chance to delve into something different than you would otherwise normally do in your busy day-to-day life. So this is your chance to actually knuckle down and do something new. So I think that's a great, great chance to do it.

A third thing, take pleasure. So take enjoyment in the small things. So I was having a look at some talks by psychologists and they're just talking about, if you take enjoyment in some small things or big things, it helps the mind to feel like it's not all doom and gloom.

So take enjoyment in things like a hot bath, adding candles to your hot bath if you normally have a hot bath, just soak in that and know that things are okay. Go for a long walk. I'm a strength trainer, so I train females, women to have the strongest body they can, not with massive weights, but we do lots of functional things.

So trying to lift and movements that simulate everyday life, like trying to get into a car and needing to bend down to pick something heavy up off the floor. So we do training to simulate all those moves in everyday life. Now, the rules from one day ago in Australia were that gyms and fitness centers can't get together.

So I'm not stopping. I'm taking it outdoors and putting people two metres apart and we're doing our first session tonight. So I've told everyone this is where we'll be.

Everyone's excited. We've got our hand sanitiser there, you know, and everyone will have their own mat, own drink and we'll be apart. But we're going to get a great workout in the great outdoors.

It's a beautiful day here today in Tasmania, Australia, and we're going to be out there having a great time. So if you live in Kingston or somewhere and you want to join us, please just send me a thing down here. But we're going to be doing that tonight.

It's good for beginners or advanced. I wasn't going to promote that, but that's what we're doing. So people in my strength group get great enjoyment and great satisfaction.

They say that their headspace often has come out of a dark place when they can work the body because it gets the endorphins released and it's a wonderful thing to do for your body. So even if you can find yourself wherever you live in outdoors class or take yourself outdoors, go find a remote spot on an oval or somewhere or in your house. We are doing workouts as well for Strong Beyond 50.

If you're not already in the group, just search for Strong Beyond 50 and I'm posting workouts in there three to four times a week that you can do in your own home. So they're not hard. They can be hard if you want it to be hard, but for beginners and advanced.

So please go to that as well or look somewhere in your local neighbourhood. There'll be people like me that refuse to let this get, you know, stop everyone from enjoying what they enjoy and we walk on with that. Then another thing is to strengthen people that you connect with every day.

And I think I talked about that earlier. Get in touch with family. You know, even if you've got to be at a table where you have to isolate two meetings apart, you can be talking to one another.

Get on the phone, having long chats with good friends. It's a wonderful thing. It just brings everything back into perspective again.

Yeah. And be around people. I always think people that build you up is a good thing.

So people that have a positive outlook on life. I know that some naysayers may go that those sort of people don't take this seriously. But you know what?

We all take it seriously. We just choose to not go into that morbid place. We choose to have a whole different outlook on life.

And that's not to say we're not taken seriously, particularly as a nurse that I am. See the good in others as well. You know how good it feels when we help others.

So maybe if you know you've got some elderly people next door, I've been on the phone this morning to a few of my clients who are self isolating and I've said, how are you going? What's going on? And that they've just shared with me how things are.

And that's a good thing, too, because I want to know they're OK. And just having a ring in makes them feel good, like I care. So if you've got neighbors, elderly neighbors beside you down the road, maybe just if you know their phone number, call them, knock on the door, stand back when they come to the door and say, are you OK?

Is there anything I can get you from the shop? I'm going off the shop now and they may need some toilet paper or something that you can help them with. I'll tell you that actually changes our whole headspace and how we feel.

And there's also quite a few places out there doing care packages at the moment. If you know somebody doing that, volunteer to grab an extra can of something at the shop and pop in a can of something. That would be great.

So that's about all I want to talk to you for today. I just want to, those of you that feel like all hope is lost, it's not. Find ways and means.

There is an app out there called Calm. It's a wonderful de-stressing app that you can just close your eyes and play, and it will take you to a different place in your mind. It will make you just calm down, get those stress hormones all calming down and hopefully allow you to get through the day.

And so, yeah, please post your comments here. If there's anything that you need, you can just get a hold of me here. That would be great.

Have a great day, everyone, and enjoy the sunshine.