Sobering as much as life in lock down.

What a month it has been! It has been a roller coaster ride of emotions since this thing began and it’s been very interesting to see everyone’s different approaches to handling life in isolation. When the gyms shut, I’m not going to lie, for the primary two weeks it was a panic. My wife and I, as with many other families, wondered how the hell we were going to make it through with income turned off at the faucet in the future but bills continuing the following. It was crazy!

Looking back, now I do know that I don’t need to begin busking to sing for my supper, it has been interesting to see how different people handled the huge change of routine and the impact on their health and fitness. A day or so after closure and the tears dried up, my wife Richelle, would just pace forwards and backwards. She would wipe down the dinner table and on then to the kitchen bench and back. I truthfully think she could have rubbed half a centimetre of hard wood and stone off those bench tops in the primary week.

I threw myself at work in an effort to change to online training because the world of business threw out its recent Coronavirus catch-cry “PIVOT”. Pivot gave the impression to be the incorrect word to make use of though words like “resurrect” or “resuscitate” made more sense in my experience. It was fair to say we were out of sorts.

Despite having arguably probably the greatest home gym set ups in Perth situated in my carport exercise went out of the window. For some reason I just didn’t need to train. The shelves on the shop were empty and we were in that apocalypse mindset so the freezer was stocked with rubbish frozen meals and if I’m honest I… may… have drunk my weight in Swan Draught in that first week.

Things finally got here to a head in our household the primary day of our son’s home school. It wasn’t the gym closure and unsure future that broke us it was logging onto a spelling workbook where I couldn’t work out if I used to be in the correct place nor did I do know tips on how to turn our microphone on.. with my wife and son in tears at 9:15am and I’d had enough. As I slammed my fist down on the on the makeshift school desk within the study, I declared a pupil free day. Stress makes us do strange things. So, virus aside, how did we get here? I consider health and wellness underpins all the pieces in life. We know after we are fit and healthy we will manage stress, we discover the very best of each situation and we can provide the very best of ourselves to all those around us. But when shit hits the fan and our “Hierarchy of Needs” tumble and we get greater than just a little lost. Our health and fitness goals, are only that, goals. Though we NEED to be healthy our brain understands that having a chiselled 6 pack set of abs or losing 10kg is NOT a necessity and we will only ever achieve such lofty goals if other areas in our lives are satisfied and when these areas aren’t satisfied, or worse, they’re at threat, these goals are the primary things that fly out the window.

SO WHY HAS IT BEEN SO HARD TO EXERCISE DURING LOCK DOWN?

Well, there are two primary aspects, routine and threat to our basic human needs. Our most elementary of human needs are our PHYSIOLOGICAL NEEDS which were put under threat in the primary few weeks of Covid-19.

The foundation of those needs are based around:

Health

Sleep

Food

Shelter

With food being limited on the supermarkets for the primary time in our lifetime and with the mass standing down of staff across the country shit got real!

The primary thing to know with these NEEDS is that the previous level must be fulfilled before we will achieving GOALS ie anything fitness related.

The next level of needs which took a success were out SAFETY NEEDS:

Personal security

Emotional security

Financial security

Safety security

In a nutshell we were stressed, had no financial security and above all we didn’t know we were protected from a Virus that we knew nothing about and was killing people on every channel on TV. For myself personally I fulfilled these NEEDS after I realised that gym would survive and I got a greater understanding of how the virus was being managed through restrictions and the way I used to be to play my part in the neighborhood so I could move to the following level.

BELONGINGNESS, LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP

With the stresses of the primary two levels removed the following phase of the lock down, for me was re-connection with my family. Time to spend together as a family unit might be the very best thing to return out of this virus but, virus aside, if our our relationships are out of whack it’s not hard to know why we won’t be setting the world on fire from goal achievement perspective. I reckon the message has been pretty clear inside our community; “We are all on this together” rings out on every TV and radio channel. Rainbows on side walks and teddy bears propped up in windows, waves from strangers while out walking demonstrates where we’re at straight away as community unit and.. well.. it’s a bloody good thing.

If and only when, we now have a great balance within the 3 previous levels we move up a step within the ladder to our SELF ESTEEM.

At this cut-off date we will get back in the sport. We can begin to pursue again. It’s a comfort-ability with ourselves and our situation. It’s time to again start so as to add value, to offer inward in addition to outward. We have the liberty now to begin recent hobbies or pick up where we left off attributable to the stress of the threats on the previous levels have diminished.

Here is where we will begin to see a capability to attain our GOALS again and get back into the HABITS that we all know will give us success. Habits that may give us SELF ACTUALISATION.

SELF ACTUALISATION

The cherry on top, the carrot on the tip of the stick, achievement of our GOALS. This is where we now have lost those 10kg, ran that marathon, done your first full set of push-ups in your toes. It’s all relative and individual. This is the purpose where you may now develop into the very best version of you to serve oneself and others.

WHERE TO FROM HERE?

So what? We ate an excessive amount of, probably drank an excessive amount of, life was out of whack, we felt we failed our youngsters in homeschooling… We at the moment are on the way in which out. It’s not yet over but it’ll be. Let’s quit with the self beat up and get to the self actualisation and potentially a Swan Draught detox… or perhaps that’s just me…