Have you changed for the better?
In most places, it was around a year ago this week when things started to change pretty dramatically.
Shutdowns. Lockdowns. Suffering on a scale we’ve never seen before.
I certainly didn’t prefer how COVID turned things upside-down over the past 12 months.
But I’m pretty sure I changed for the better as a result.
We all had to adapt. So as things continue to trend in the right direction and some “normal” activities resume, I wanted to share some insight I’ve gained and some ways I’ve been able to change for the better.
I’m more resilient than I thought: Running a fitness studio when nobody was allowed to be there for months was pretty challenging, to say the least. What worked for me was always looking for the positives and doing what I could do … instead of wasting time and energy complaining about what I couldn’t. As a result, my gym now has an online training program that’s as good or better than the in-person training program I had before … and an in-person training program that is second to none in my market. Speaking honestly, it’s not even close.
Sleep is even more important than I thought. With the rest of my life pretty much turned upside-down, the one thing I decided to make non-negotiable during COVID was at least 7-8 hours of sleep every night. Sometimes, that meant missing out on a late-night movie with the kids or family game night. Don’t get me wrong, those things are important, too. But I just decided that, with stress coming from so many different directions, I couldn’t afford to add more stress from lack of sleep. Your body can’t tell the difference between different kinds of stress. This was a way for me to control the stress that I could control … and I’m glad I did.
Mindset matters. So much of how we behave is dictated by our mindset. What’s a mindset? It’s basically what you believe. And your beliefs produce feelings, which lead to actions, which produce results. So if you believe something is going to be hard (or even impossible), then guess what? It will be. I invested some time studying mindset and behavior psychology, and made a conscious effort to decide what I believed (rather than being a victim of my previously ingrained beliefs). What a difference! Which leads me to …
Let go. When things go a certain way … and that’s not what we had in mind … there’s a tendency to despair and fall into the same old trap of, “Why is this happening to me?” Much better to accept all outcomes as if they were meant to be (because they were). If things are going to happen … let them happen. Even if that’s not what you prefer. The magic happens on the other side, when you realize that you never would’ve experienced a certain benefit or opportunity if not for something happening that you didn’t like.
I’m curious … in what ways have you changed for the better over the last 12 months? Shoot me a reply and let me know.
Coach Aaron