Going to the Gym Helped Me Embrace Slow Living & My Dreams
Why you will never be able to achieve your dreams
I have been planning to go to the gym for the past year. I knew my body needed it. At first, I wanted to go because, well, it’s a good habit. A good lifestyle choice. But then, gradually, I observed my health withering away.
There were signs all around, from my inconsistent menstruation cycle to my heart going out of breath just after climbing two floors. Yet, I chose to ignore all those signs. I let them slide away at the back of my head. I knew I should go to the gym, and pay attention to my health but somehow I always ignored it all.
Why?
Because I was stupid.
You see, I am a big believer in slow living. I honestly think if something should be done, it is worth doing with ease and comfort. In this philosophy, I felt gym wasn’t settling in. When you go to the gym, you rush. You speed up things.
I don’t know how to put it into words but I always thought that the gym is the place where you are running against your body. Idiot that I am, I thought that would be such a useless way of maintaining one’s health.
I hated the very idea of a gym. I thought, I can do Yoga, and pilates at home. I can go for morning runs and maintain an overall active lifestyle without going to the gym.
It started off great. But gradually, with more work, clutter, and ups-downs of life, I kind of lost track of my health.
In October 2023, I went through one of the most difficult times of my life. I had lost all my work, all my money and I was clueless. I felt anxiety on such a deep level as if my heart was stuck in my throat and I was unable to breathe.
Even when things got back on track, that mental and emotional shock didn’t go away. It left a big impact on my psyche. I became lazy. Staying in bed all day felt like an escape.
Gradually, after months of slowly working on my mental health, I was able to overcome that negative experience.
Then, the first two months were really good. I felt comfortable in my body. I was eating healthier and constantly making choices that could help me be physically active.
But just after that, my grandmother was hospitalized. I came back home. My family needed each other. My grandmother never recovered. She died 4 months later. These four months were tough on all of us, especially my mother.
I don’t know how or when it started but soon after her death, I started eating a lot of junk food. It never crossed my mind that I was actually abusing my body. I thought I was having fun by trying all these new kinds of cuisines and going out with my siblings and friends. I thought I was taking care of myself by eating whatever I wanted.
Long story short, three months later, I observed fat building up in my body.
Note: Please note that I am not body-shaming anyone. Just my own experience.
My arms were so fat I felt like I was caged in someone else’s body. It occurred to me then what have I done to myself in these past three months.
I have been working with a health expert for the past year on some projects. He has done his courses from Harvard, and Standford and has read all kinds of great books on health.
I asked him for some advice. To which he said, the fat in your body represents two things:
a) You are eating food that is high in calories and low in fiber and protein. This means you are giving the kind of food to your body that doesn’t give you any energy but rather stores the excess of it in your body as ‘fat.’
b) It represents that your body has excessive glucose due to the constant high-calorie food intake. It means you are not burning what you are eating — showing a lazy lifestyle.
He asked me to join a gym. He even said, ‘You have to go to the gym. Not because you want a glamorous body that just looks good but you need a healthy body that can support your dreams.’
I don’t know what came over me and I said okay.
How I Learned to Embrace Slow Living:
‘Humans are good at living in their own mind-made illusions.’
I had a belief that I am good at embracing slow living. I never rush. I never give in to the temptation to buy something I see on social media. I take my sweet time doing my work. And almost all the time, I feel at ease. I must be a master of slow living.
But my myth broke into thousands of pieces when I started working out at the gym.
How?
Every time, my trainer asked me to do a certain exercise or lift weights, automatically, I would try to get it done as soon as possible. It felt like a challenge that I needed to just finish.
As a result, I used to get tired easily. Not only that, I wasn’t able to complete the given workout. In the midst of it, I would feel completely worn out.
My trainer saw this for a few days and then said to me, ‘Slowly. Slowly. Take it easy.’ He was telling me how to do that butterfly workout.
I took my time with that workout. I didn’t just push it back and forth as fast as I could. In fact, I took a few seconds with every pull-in and pull-out. And when I felt like giving up, I did so. After giving up, I would take two to three minutes of rest. Stretch a bit and then get back to it.
Result?
Not only was I able to complete the set, but I also enjoyed it. With those extra seconds of pause with every pull-in and out, I could pay attention to my body and feel how it was opening up. And after the workout, I felt so good that I couldn’t wait for the day I could do it again. (As a beginner, you take breaks to let your muscles recover)
This whole experience made me realize that ‘rushing’ is rooted deep within our minds. Irrespective of what we think, we are trained like a rat in a lab who keeps running for the cheese until the poor guy tires himself out and dies.
I had a belief that I was good at embracing slow living but as it turns out, I am not that good. My mind has some trained beliefs, and behavior that cannot be seen or touched but at times, it just pops up and reminds you ‘how unconscious we are of our own nature.’
We have no idea how or what the world has done to our minds. What did they teach us when we were kids? How did they train us to be rats? How did they make us believe that everything has to be a race? How did they create a belief in our minds that everything and everyone is a competition and we need to be fast, and rush if we want to prove ourselves as any ‘good.’
I wonder, ‘how many more self-limiting beliefs are hidden in our minds that we cannot see but they always come back to scare our dreams away. Do we even realize that the dream we didn’t go for or the person we hurt unknowingly was because there was a belief that silently woke up, destroyed our lives, and went back to sleep? And left us to wonder, ‘Why don’t things ever work out for me? Maybe there is something wrong with me.’
What Did You Learn:
Think about it. Take a second. Go back in time and try to replay your life as if you are watching a movie. Pay attention to your past actions and thoughts and try to see if you can observe a limiting belief always ghosting your dreams away. Any particular idea you subconsciously believe that haunts your life. Something that makes you believe that you are not good enough or that you are the bad thing that ruins everything it touches.
If you pay attention, you will find a belief, an idea, or a thought that has been walking as your shadow all along. Hidden from you but always ruining things for you. Always creating darkness for you.
And before you say, ‘No, Renuka, there is no such thought in my mind. I know I am the bad thing or I am really not good enough.’
Let me stop you and ask you this, ‘How did that innocent little kid be a bad thing? How can you be not good enough? How did you learn to hate yourself so much?’
It is taught. The hate you have against yourself or the world. The limiting belief you have against your dreams and your potential is taught otherwise if you tell a five-year-old kid that she can be a dancer, she would dance like a monkey and still think ‘If she practices daily then surely she will be the greatest dancer of all time.’
It is all, as I said earlier, taught and trained behavior. That’s the scary thing. You don’t even know what you believe in. You have no idea that there are thoughts, words, and beliefs from your childhood or teenage that you picked from your surroundings might be standing tall as a wall and making you believe that ‘what you want is so out of your reach.’
The truth, however, is your dreams are not out of your reach. Your beliefs are. If you can control what you believe, you can control the kind of life you live and how peaceful or happy you want to be.
But, if you can control that, then there won’t be money for people who are living their best lives by making money from your insecurities.
Oh, what a system. Such a twist.
Conclusion:
It’s either, you learn to stop believing what the world says or the world making money out of you.
Now, it’s really on you whether you want to do charity and support those who make out of you.
Or you want to slow down, take a pause whenever you like, travel into the depths of your mind, and with the light of hope and self-trust kill the darkness of your self-limiting belief and thoughts.
I leave the choice to be on you. My job is to make you aware. To wake you up from this deep sleep. Your job is to make a choice.
If you need any more help in making a choice that helps you build a life that sings the song of your desire and turns that ‘fear’ into ‘confidence’, you can read my book — ‘The Magic of Creative Living; A Conscious Path to a Joyful Life.’
