Introducing... Vi Saez

I wouldn't normally post twice a week, but I have been working on a few different ideas lately that go hand in hand with my podcast and the upcoming book. My hope with both the podcast and this blog was always to get other people's insights into mental health, mental strength and tools to help with the mind. One of these new ideas is to let other people do the talking, or rather writing. 

So I am signing off here until next week, but I want to introduce you to my friend Vi. She is a talented, beautiful person that I knew was on the same wavelength as me from the moment we had a proper conversation. To coin a phrase I use it was "real talk" and in that five minute chat over lunch I knew I needed to find out more. 

Stay tuned to hear from more inspirational people in the coming weeks.

"Rather than being your thoughts and emotions, be the awareness behind them" - Eckhart Tolle

For the past 10 years spirituality has been an imperative part of my personal growth. I understand that life can be tough, confusing, mysterious, amazing, unique, crazy and it can even suck! Of course it can! BUT it is all in our choices every moment and every single day we wake up we have choices, it is also in how we choose to react to every situation that has or will occur in our lives. This is how I see it, life is about experiences, good, bad and ambiguous, sometimes you get to choose these experiences and most times they just happen, you have no choice or say at all in them, you have to flow with it, but as any human being would, we resist or we just don't accept certain situations. These particular moments allow us to learn a lot about ourselves, to know who we really are,… nobody ever told our great grandparents, grandparents or our parents... or anyone that we needed to live through experiences in order to grow spiritually and learn from them to find our true selves.

Today, all we think about is the future, many families, parents or family friends ask their children or grandchildren all the time: "What would you like to be when u grow up?" "Have you thought about what you want to study in university?" ...And when we get married "when are you having children?" ...if we have partners they ask "when is the engagement/wedding?" "When are you moving in together?" "When are you buying a home together?" So on and so on. 

We are constantly living in the future or the past, our parents, our environment, our culture programs us to be this way, society programs us to be this way, and this is the beauty of it all… well, sort of... well not really, BUT imagine if we knew everything and we didn't need to go through these experiences? It would be boring, right?. 

Let me share with you part of my journey. A few months ago, I felt as if there was a deep deep sense of emptiness in my heart, I had never felt this way before, it felt like I had no purpose in my life,... this was very unlike me, I felt lost for the very first time in my 39 years, this went on for months, I had feelings of depression and anxiety, all I wanted to do was retrieve myself from everything in my life, yet, I forced myself to be present everyday, I had to be aware of what I was feeling at that moment and work with what I had... I had to do my best to understand where all these feelings were coming from, I had to face past experiences that I thought I had left very deep deep down in my heart and I thought I was over them. I thought... wait a minute, if I don't face these now, then I could possibly keep falling even further into this deep sadness surrounded by very unloving feelings towards myself and my past would keep creeping out very slowly, It would have been worse, so, I didn't give myself a choice to give up to these feelings, and of course I couldn't do this to my son... I had to show him that if I was capable of getting out of this, that life is what it is, good and bad, that if he ever went through this he would be like me, find out where these feelings are coming from, understand them, work daily to overcome the difficult journey and come out the other end having learnt something about himself and that experience.

During this journey, my mind wondered around non stop everyday, day and night, it travelled to the future and back to my past, I spent a lot of my time wondering about how I could or would have changed certain situations and how I could avoid certain things in the future. It was all very confusing and hurtful. At this point, I would live every single day surrounded by assumptions and my imagination (both ego driven of course, because anything that is unlike love is ego driven). I now know that I had to let go of the past, and the worst part is… that we all somehow allow the past (mistake or choices) define who we are today, which is completely crazy to do! This robs us of having a great life now! There is no use holding on to that past... or the future in that matter, these don't change a thing, if you think about it, these only waste your time, are you willing to spend your time (or life) today thinking about tomorrow or even yesterday? Are these beneficial in anyway? Can you change your past? Do you know what the future holds for you?... I bet your answer will be no, of course not. 

I ended up finding a way to improve my life,... let me tell you, it is a very slow process but it works, you have to be consistent and disciplined, respect what you feel and acknowledge it. I was able to work with the feelings of being lost, the sadness, emptiness, anxiety and depression by turning the attention towards the essence of who I am today (right now, NOT yesterday or years ago or tomorrow or a couple of years in the future,...right now),... so for me, meditation and working towards living a life with daily intentions has helped me very much. Everyday I work towards being a better version of myself for me, for my family and people around me, it is all about self love, compassion and acceptance of who we truly are.

Now let's do a little exercise, you can do this everyday anywhere you want, it only takes a couple of minutes, give yourself 10-15 minutes of you whole day:

Close your eyes, take a nice deep healing breath and feel how the hot air comes out of your nose slowly, repeated this 3 times, feel the place you are in, listen to your surroundings, observe how your heart beats in your chest, observe how you physical body feels, listen, just be the observer of your feelings and thoughts at that moment and let them pass, if you feel like your mind drifts off bring it back to your breath, observe from the inside out, now ask yourself who is the observer?

Open your eyes observe how you feel, are you feeling stillness? Peaceful?

That... that is you, you are the present moment, you are that stillness, you are the peaceful feeling, you are not what happens outside you. Always remember that.

A huge thank you to my fellow spiritual friend Tom for allowing me to pour my heart out about life experiences and spirituality.

With infinite love and gratitude,

Vi 

Tools

As I am having a writing block at the moment I thought I would tap out a short blog post to update you on what's been going on lately.

After speaking with my mate Justin on the last Grumpy Man podcast episode I took a leaf out of his book and got organised. If you haven't listened to the episode I'm speaking of then I'll explain it to you briefly here. In each episode I ask what daily habits my friend has that help them to keep a calm mind day to day. Justin told me that he writes down one daily, weekly and monthly goal. When he completes his daily goal he ticks it off, giving a sense of accomplishment to his day. If he doesn't do it he doesn't stress about it, but just rolls it over to the next day. His weekly tasks might be a little larger and range from the necessary chores to more personal aims. Naturally his monthly goals might be to do with personal projects or to further career or life goals. The importance of writing down what your goals are and organising the small details can't be stressed enough.

Another habit that Justin spoke of is also one of my personal favourites. Each morning he makes his bed. That's it! It's that bloody simple. It is a habit that I had years ago and let wane as I let my depression get the better of every facet of my life, even the simplest tasks. But I found it again and it is one of the small things I do each day in order to set myself up for success with my day. After all if you cannot take care of the small, simple things in your life then what hope is there for the big stuff?

On a different note Catherine and I recently found out that we have permanent residency in Australia, so at least we can't get kicked out of the country for outstaying our welcome!

I''l leave you with the words that inspired me to take care of the little things in life. I'd encourage you to read or listen to Admiral McCraven's book: Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life...And Maybe the World

Tom :)

"If you make your bed every morning you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride, and it will encourage you to do another task and another and another. By the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed. Making your bed will also reinforce the fact that little things in life matter. If you can't do the little things right, you will never do the big things right.

And, if by chance you have a miserable day, you will come home to a bed that is made — that you made — and a made bed gives you encouragement that tomorrow will be better.

If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed." - Naval Adm. William H. McRaven

Distractions

I am nothing if consistent. Consistently bad at posting consistently that is. So here I am at 10pm at night tapping out a post because I have been inspired by what a friend told me this evening. I may have had many distractions over the weeks, but for now I have given up the temptation of bed in order to spill a little ink on the page. For some reason this always seems the best time for me to write, the moment when I am too tired to think and what comes to mind is guided straight onto the page without editing. Naturally this doesn't mean that any of what you will read is any good, but it feels good to type it nonetheless. I believe that we could all benefit from creating something just for the process of it, without care or thought for the outcome, nor what others may think. It's taken me a damn long time to come to that conclusion in my mind and boy does it feel good.

So other than distractions what do I have to share on this occasion? Well in brief but exciting news I have a new role at work, Catherine and I got permanent residency and my mind continues to behave itself. The latter being because it has been kept busy with the former and with the help of my work friends who are a constant source of inspiration. In short this means that I can stay in Australia indefinitely in order to continue my work on myself and hopefully for other people with mental health improvement.

Over the last few weeks I have begun on a new fitness journey with DK Fitness, doing two sessions a week of functional training. Aside from not walking properly in the days after I have noticed the fitness improvement. My test? The Coogee stairs. Having completed it last week with a much lower average heart rate and less tired legs I am glad to see the fruits of my labours already. The aim is to do it once per week along with functional training and a little commuter cycling in order to get fitter than I was ten years ago. Bloody hell let's hope I can survive!

My writing has taken a decided downturn of late as I have focused on work and my new podcast The Grumpy Man in which I talk to friends about their passions and their daily habits. The aim is to see how they keep a calm and stable mind day to day and identify tools and patterns that we could all benefit from using ourselves. It has been a great exercise as I have learnt so much about my friends and also engaged in open and honest discussion with other men around mental health. Something I don't think we do enough of in today's society. My long term goal is to speak to 100 different men and not only learn from them, but share their experiences with mental health in order to help other men talk about theirs.

As I said above my writing has been on the back burner, but I have still managed to make some edits to the Grumpy Man book. I am going to set a final release date here and now in order to make myself accountable to you. Yes you, the internet, the blank face that I talk to. By doing this I can at least release something at long last, stop my pathetic procrastination and ADD tendencies and publish this bloody book! Alright here goes. I will release the Grumpy Man book on...hang on what month is it now? May? Ok. Damn it's May already? Ok. Well I kind of had this thing on in May, so maybe... no dammit I will publish this book on June 1st. Yes let's do this! Oh shit...

One of the things I have discovered with my writing, the podcast and my recent fitness escapades is that the less I include my brain on the deal the better. If I could leave my head at home and trudge around headless I would invariably screw up more often, I mean I'd bump into a lot of stuff to start with, but I'd also just get shit done. That's what I have found with the podcast. I had no idea how to make a podcast a month ago (some might say I still don't), but after some brief research I discovered it isn't that difficult. You set yourself up with a mike and just talk. It helps if you have somebody to talk to admittedly and it's better still if they are interesting or funny. But ultimately the basics are a piece of cake, the rest is icing and sprinkles. 

So without thought I have produced something in very little time. It may not change the world, but it may well change mine. Consistently showing my brain that it isn't needed and that I can produce content without it raining negativity is a huge step in my mental health. Perhaps the next step is to keep doing it consistently and improve. Hmm there's a decent thought.

This week I will be speaking to a couple of guests and as usual I will have a new episode out on Friday morning. If you'd like to contribute to the podcast or blog or just want to speak with a grumpy man then drop me a line at tjalfry@icloud.com

Tom :)


"You will never reach your destination if you stop and throw stones at every dog that barks." - Winston Churchill