Good Vibes - Toolkit for Motivation

Covid 3rd wave has literally reached every home and this has forced us to postpone the #100Day challenge by a week (more on this at the end of the newsletter). I hope and wish we are seeing the last of Covid and life will get to normalcy soon.

We all are blessed with far more healing power than we maybe aware of. In my opinion, we rely too much on medicine and quick fixes and we need to understand, everything can not be fixed with a pill. While medicines play a crucial role in curing illness, I think we all can strive towards a more smarter goal; avoiding to get sick in the first place.

I don’t get sick often. In fact, don’t remember in last three- four years when I had flu or cold. I think this is more because of my lifestyle than genetics or luck. Practising smart, overall strategies will go a long way in fending off sickness and diseases.

All the toolkits, I bring in the newsletters are a step towards that direction.

If you enjoy reading the newsletter, and believe it helps in your journey to deep health, you have a zero-cost way to support this endeavour by sharing with your friends, family and on your social media.

And, as always, please give me feedback on Twitter. Which article did you like most? What do you want to read more or less of? Any other suggestion? Just send a tweet to @SandeepMall and add #GoodVibesWithSandeepMall at the end for me to find it.

Stay strong, stay fit and stay healthy.

Thanks

Make time: Book an appointment with yourself. Making time declares that YOU matter to yourself. It is a commitment to YOU for YOUR values, priorities, and goals. Making time is a crucial survival habit. If you don’t make time, time will be taken away from you. You will be pulled and pushed by other obligations. Something will always come up and there’s never a perfect time. Whether it’s for your job or education or fitness, the practice of ‘making time for SELF’ also helps you practise many valuable life skills, such as:

Identifying what’s important to you. How you spend your time reveals what you really value. If you value your health, give it time and attention.

Negotiate for what you need and want. Be your own advocate.

Realistically asses your capability. Calibrate your expectations.

Anticipate obstacles You will probably need a plan B or C.

Treat unexpected challenges as Normal. Rather than getting knocked off the track, you can flow with what life offers you, Practise resilience.

Taking even a 5 minute action helps you get moving. It’s always easy to get stuck in analysis. So many thoughts. So many worries. So many suggestions. So many ideas. So many beliefs. So many pressumptions. None of these helps, unless we do something. Nothing will work for you if it’s on paper only.

Action often comes before motivation. Not the other way around.

A tiny action helps us get out of procrastination. All we have to do is get started.

Often all we need is a push, through the first few minutes of resistance.

Small action creates a momentum. 5 minutes on a small task can lead to another 5 minutes.

Action is empowering. The more we act, the more we feel better.

Action is satisfying. It is real. It has happened. If you exercise, you feel good about it.

Action is evidence. It can be measured. It gives us data. It gives us results.

I was on first wildlife trip of my life. It was five months since my surgery and I was recouping well. The constant pain on the left side of my body bothered me for which I was prescribed nerve relaxing pills and pain killers. Doctors had told me that I have to live my whole life with this pain as the damage to some nerves was irreparable. I was wearing a thick neck collar to protect me from the jerks of the wildlife safari. I had never been to a jungle before. In fact, I had never heard of Ranthambore National Park. One of our Canadian customers was visiting and happened to be a wildlife photographer. He wanted to go to Ranthambore National Park and I decided to accompany him. Through a common friend, I got in touch with Aditya Singh who had a resort  there and arranged everything for both of us. We spent a wonderful two days there doing four safaris. Though we didn’t see any tigers, the trip was magical for me. All the pain that I used to have 24x7 just didn’t surface during the trip. I didn’t even take my pain killers and other medicines. I had a small camera and I took whatever pics it was capable of. I also knew nothing about photography. I could not differentiate between a Deer and a Sambhar. But these two days made me realize that I too can have a pain-free life. This was my first ever jungle trip and I think it’s fair to say that I was now completely hooked on the wonders, i.e. wildlife and photography. I was genuinely happy. Maybe for the first time in many many years. This became the first hobby of my adult life. 

The first thing I did on my return was to buy a new camera and long lens suitable for wildlife photography. Weekends were now trips to Okhla, Sultanpur, Dadri, Bharatpur – bird sanctuaries near my home. I started reading a lot about our natural history. I found few mentors and reached out to them and they were all very helpful to teach and fine-tune my photography skills. Exploring different Jungles became a monthly routine and I visited almost all big parks in India and Africa over the years. These trips to the jungles worked like therapy. In couple of years I was off pain killers and took them few times in a year only. I am completely off them now for almost 4 years. My hobby cured me of the pain, I was told, I have to live with all my life. All the past negative incidents that were reducing my ability to perceive a negative situation positively, and accepting it, were pushed back and forgotten. I became a new person, from one with a negative past to one with a fresh mind, eager to fill new positive experiences in life. This helped me in crossing an uncertain present and constructing a positive future.  Staying in nature brought me closer to God. When I am in the jungle, I am with myself. It’s me and the camera and the sound of the shutter clicking the beautiful animals and birds.

Thanks to social media my images were noticed. My pictures were published in various national and international magazines. And this hobby started making me some money too. Recognitions also came along. In 2014, I won the DJ Memorial Photography Award. In 2015 I won the ICICI Camaraderie award. Apart from huge prize money, I won a Car and a holiday to Australia. Also won Honourable mentions at various International and national awards. 

It was somewhere out there in the wilderness that an idea was born. An idea called SAEVUS (www.saevus.in).  Saevus is India’s premium wildlife and natural history web portal and magazine.  A dream, a vision, an idea to bring India’s amazing bio-diversity to every home. To celebrate the bold, beautiful and dynamic India, much of it unseen and unexplored.

Saevus was the coming together of seasoned entrepreneurs, ace photographers, naturalists, and storytellers, to captivate everyone’s imagination and arouse their consciousness. Saevus was my giving back to this community. The prizes and money earned through photography went back to the community. 

It cured me of my pain.

It got me recognition.

I made new friends who also had wildlife photography as a passion. 

It boosted my confidence which helped me be more productive at work.

It rejuvenated me and removed negative stress.

It helped me in developing professionally also, as some of the skills I learnt, came useful at my work.

If you look at all the famous people, they all were avid hobbyist. Roosevelt enjoyed hunting, boxing, horseback riding, hiking, reading and writing.  Einstein was an avid sailor. Brad Pitt does pottery.  Julia Roberts knits, Tom Cruise does fencing, John Lennon collected stamps, Warren Buffet plays Bridge, US Past President Donald Trump plays Golf, Churchill did more than 500 paintings. Closer home – Rajnikant is an avid reader, Shah Rukh Khan is into gaming, Anil Ambani is a marathon runner, Alia Bhatt is a charcoal painter. If all these busy people have time for a hobby, so can you.

A hobby is needed to rest the mind that is often wearied by the stresses of life. As a professional, even 24 hours in a day seem too short a time. Hobbies and passions tend to take a back seat. You will burn out, which is why it is important to have some hobby outside your day job. Gardening, reading, running, collecting stamps, photography – whatever it is – let the hobby relax you and give you peace. A hobby brings stillness in life. It helps live a balanced life. A hobby is an investment. It gives you fulfilment and joy. Schedule them. Cultivate them. Take out time. 

These are popular queries I get on my twitter DM. My answer typically reads the following:

If you’re looking to improve your diet, a great place to start is with a 3-day food journal. It’s not essential, but it’s a useful exercise that will make you more aware of your current eating habits and daily nutrition intake.

From there, you can use a simple calorie-count method to assess your current diet - how many calories you’re consuming and a rough estimate of the macronutrient split (carbs, protein, fat).

Forget smartphones, calculators and scales. Precision Nutrition (from where I did my course on Nutrition Science) came up with a quick and simple calorie-counting method that uses your hands to measure. It’s genius. You can find the info-graphic here.

Once you have mapped out your current diet, it’s easy to highlight areas for improvement. Then you can simply adjust your eating habits, according to your body composition goals.

To guarantee success - make ONE simple change at a time. Small changes add up.

It won’t be long before you learn to eyeball the food you’re eating and auto-regulate your diet on the fly (using the hand-measuring method). This ‘flexible diet ‘ approach is lot more sustainable and will help you to maintain a body composition you’re happy with, for the long haul. 

The One Thing explains the success habit to overcome the six lies that block our success, beat the seven thieves that steal time, and leverage the laws of purpose, priority, and productivity.

The One Thing was written by two authors, viz. Gary W. Keller and Jay Papasan. Gary is known for authoring books on real estate investments and is also the chairman of a real estate franchising company, Keller Williams Realty. Papasan is one of the authors of the best-seller, The Millionaire Real Estate Agent.

The law of life decrees that we must give before we receive. Yet our conditioning, rooted in lack, says we must take what we can get, to survive. Today too many people are waiting to ‘Get’, not enough people are looking to ‘Give’.

Dr. David Sinclair is a professor of genetics and co-director of Harvard Medical School’s Paul F. Glenn Center for Biology of Aging Research. Its an 8 episode podcast with new episode releasing on Wednesday. Topics discussed include: why aging is a disease, the impact of dietary choices, fasting and exercise on aging, how various supplements and prescription drugs can protect against aging, why cosmetic aging occurs and how to combat it, the benefits and advancements of biotracking, and the future of age reversal.

If you have registered for the 100 Day Health Challenge 2.0, you must have received a mail from me, announcing the postponement of the Challenge by a week. The revised start date for the Challenge is Saturday, January 22.

This tough call was taken for several reasons:

We are working to simplify the process to make it easier for all the participants, removing the dependency on a specific app. We are also considering reopening the registration briefly as many missed to register due to health reasons or not willing to use Strava. We will send an announcement on my Twitter handle for all updates about the Challenge. Those who have signed up already, will be receiving all updates in email.

A big thanks to all the registered participants for their recommendations and understanding. Just 7 days away to a rocking fitness journey together. For any query regarding the Challenge, please write to healthchallenge@sandeepmall.com.