Mentali(tea?!)

I always struggle with the opening. Now that I think about it, very similar to my speaking to style. I know what I want to talk / write about, but then I don’t know how to open it. If you read any of my stuff then it’s usually dropped with some type of humorous intro mainly because I don’t know how else to start.

In conversation, I’m lucky to even get it started. I know what I want to say, but how to get there without getting too nervous always holds me back. My friends will know that talking isn’t one of my strong points, I’m either on a totally different page, cracking jokes at inappropriate times, or saying things that I probably should’ve just kept to myself. Oh well, that’s me.

Now that I have completed the intro that relates nothing to what I actually wanted to write about, I suppose I can get started now.

Recently, I have been thinking a lot (who’s surprised?!). Thinking a lot about a lot; such as the difference in people that aren’t afraid to say what they are feeling at any given moment, what keeps us from not saying some things, linking words (or lack of words) with behaviours, etc.

Right now, I’m specifically thinking about people and our mentalities. Mentality in terms of certain thoughts towards a given behavior. For example, I want to run 5k today. My mentality, I don’t really want to do it, but I know I will feel better afterwards and I’m going to do it, but how am I going to get there?

The past few weeks I have only been running 3 or 4k.I plug in my headphones, try to find a good TV show or movie on, and then constantly watch the distance tracker hoping that miraculously next time I look it will say 5k. Quite often I’ll look at the distance I’ve ran and then gauge how my body is feeling to get a pretty good indicator of how far I will actually run before calling it quits.

Today, same goal in mind, I decided that I’d watch TV while running, but put the program on full screen and listened to upbeat music instead. I was hoping that the beat of the music would match my running pace and that by covering the screen so I couldn’t see my distance would distract my mind from purely focusing on my performance and pace.

Fast-forward to 27 minutes later and I had completed the 5.15k. For those who stuck with me this far, congrats. I know it may seem like a silly, boring story, but the simple difference in how I approached my run made me think of the similarities in our everyday lives.

(Hopefully) we all have a goal(s) that we want to accomplish. We know what we want to do and how we want to get there, we put our head down, drive forward strongly hoping for success, and looking up occasionally. Depending on our performance and how much we feel we have left in the tank we either continue pushing forward or we settle for where we are. I know that quite often when I set my mind to something, I go all in, and become perhaps unhealthily obsessed and focused on what I am trying to achieve. By the time I reach what I was working for, I’m either completely drained from over working myself, happy in the moment but then thinking of what I’m going to do next, or trying to remind myself why it was a goal to begin with.

My run today reminded me the importance of looking up in the times that seem like there is only one way, that distractions can be healthy allowing us to detach from the things that are occupying are mind more than they should, and that trying new ways to achieve the same goal can be refreshing.

Learning to know yourself is important. I know that I don’t want to get carried away in the distractions, but I also know that I am not going to put myself in a position where my quality of life may falter.

Every situation is different. No matter what it is, good or bad, it’s important to remember that it doesn’t matter what everyone else thinks. Seems cliché, but they aren’t you. Your life could be a life that someone else wants to live, but the way they would live your life, their expectations, their goals, their daily routines, would be different than yours so the input that they have about how you are and how you are doing is irrelevant.

If you are having a hard day, take your mindset and flip it around, look at different ways of getting the same things done. What is important to you does not have to be important to anyone else.

I freak out if I don’t eat breakfast, I don’t like it when the lights are left on or a wet towel goes on the bed, I can’t sleep in pants or long sleeve shirts no matter how cold it is, I think it’s weird when people sleep with socks on. I don’t like prunes. I can’t cut my fingernails without filing them after makes me feel very weird and uneasy. It’s just things and everyone is different!

Do what you want to do and don’t question yourself just because the way you chose to go about life is different than someone else.

Set your goals. Evaluate your mindset daily. Go for it. (Or don’t, it’s up to you).