I found myself the other day, as I often do with a sense of cabin fever having spent the last few days sat glued working at the computer. 

It can often feel, that despite the hours spent working on a project, nothing seems to be happening in terms of progress. It’s that familiar feeling of busy verses productive.  

The hard part is distinguishing between whether I’m being productive and have just underestimated the time it will take to produce a lucrative product, or whether I’m just distracting myself in being busy but with no direction. 

I am also aware that being busy inside of what I find interesting, is often really procrastination and distraction techniques that translate to ‘I’m not sure I even believe this shit so keep looking.’ 

It reminded me of, as quoted from the Star Wars site, when ‘Yoda is being brutally honest with Luke, who breathlessly says, “I don’t believe it,” after his Master raises an X-wing from the Dagobah swamp. Yoda replies – That is why you fail’.  

It’s a definitive statement that comes from Yoda’s years and years of experience as a Jedi and a teacher, and it cuts through both to Luke and the audience.’ It’s easy to be evangelical when we are naive to the facts. It’s easy to be driven to create a ‘perceived product’ that can offer us an escape from our daily grind and do the thing we love, so often popularised these days but rarely demonstrated even by the instigators. 

We can easily get lost in the fact that people are willing to buy this and disregard the fact that it doesn’t really work as we’ve sold it – especially not for us. 

The more we learn and the more we discover, the more cynical we can become towards what we want to create.

As congruent individuals it’s hard to sell something that we know as a singular ideal is BS. I recently wrote about the power of going for a walk to get out of negative mind cycles or overwhelm.  

This simple act can really make a difference, if for no other reason than it gets us out of our current environment and stimulated by the surroundings.  Going for a walk gives us space to think.

It’s a time out inside a proven idea that our physiology changes our psychology, even if it’s just for the time we are walking, it gives us a break.

Even if like me, you would rather be walking in the country side or by the sea, just getting out can really help.  

At times I feel like a zoo animal wandering in an artificial urban landscape that has me question ‘what the bloody hell am I doing?’  

And it’s not perfect.

Solutions that work often are not shiny.

They are often ‘tempered old tools’ that have stood the test of time in the real world. 

As I walk along I deliberately take a road I’ve never been up so I’m stimulated with new data and the potential for a new experience. 

And as I walked this time along the streets, I wrestled as I often do with that idea that on one hand I’m advocating certain ways we are told make our lives better and yet, here I am using these things and still walking the streets as lost as everyone else.  Often I think, even more so.  

But what I clarified for myself was ‘no one thing’ is going to make the difference.  

I’m a big advocate for breath work and meditation for example and for creating habits and building resilience but none of these will stop us being lonely, or depressed, or anxious.

Nothing in and of its self will make us confident, or get the job we want.  

We won’t meet the person we want to fall in love with sitting there visualising them. 

It’s how it’s had to be sold, but I haven’t found it to be so.

Because life fluctuates. It’s full of surprises. It can lure us in and trip us up. It can give us what we want and take it away.

One day its bad the next it’s great.  

Our emotions change day to day as does our perspective on our situation.

 Not all of us can be at the top of the pyramid and it’s because we have been tricked to believe we can that creates even more disruption and distraction from what ‘incredible lives most of us actually have’ and instead towards those things that we don’t have. 

On my walk I recognised the necessity of certain components to strengthen our mental resolve, but equally, if not more importantly, the necessity to examine individual area of our complaints whether that’s our work, relationships, our finances, our mental states and anything in between.

Nothing is in isolation.  

It’s crazy to hope it might be and that there’s a blanket solution that will make what we don’t want go away and what we do want magically appear.  
It’s what the marketing does, but it’s unethical.My reality on my walk was not to throw the baby out with the bath water, but to accept things for what they are rather than creating or offering ‘the panacea’ of change and be honest about that, even if it that means it’s not marketable for the masses. 

Secondly it’s being willing to divide the big picture up and to look at what we need to add to our lives rather than in my case to remove everything to feel xyz – aka safe. 

I also had that thought that here I am peddling these ideas that help shift other people, but not me. 

I thought to myself that my advice should be simply – ‘If you do everything that I don’t do, and none of what I do, you should be successful!’ 

And although that sounds perhaps very defeatist, it’s isn’t when it stops becoming about others, but about ourselves.About looking at our results based on our current and past actions and where we’ve perhaps got it wrong and being willing to try the polar opposite. 

And I’m not talking about manically just doing the opposite of everything we do and expecting our dream lives to appear.

If we eat a healthy diet doesn’t mean we should pig out on KFC.But rather, in my case, what are we doing, for perfectly legitimate reasons that may still make sense, but are possibly and paradoxically working towards and adding to our sense of misalignment. 

But also being very aware that this will be bloody hard work, especially when it’s us against us. 

But bit by bit, inside the idea of experimentation and curiosity maybe it just might work. 

Divide and conquer.

To understand ourselves, to be self aware, takes work. Lots of it.

Lots of times in reflection, self analysis, diagnostics and explanations of others behaviour towards us and developing emotional intelligence to name a few, but most importantly, time in uncomfortable environments.

Becoming ‘wise’, of being more present, of creating a growth mindset when we currently inhabit a predominately fixed one is tiring.

‘How to’ can be learnt from a book, but it can’t really be understood.

That happens in the field.

To do so, we have to be willing to be vulnerable if we want to train our emotional capacity, and that takes courage especially when we are by default, controlled by the fear of other people’s opinions and the potential consequences of those perspectives.

I looked down at my desk today whilst listening to a relevant podcast, at all the post-it notes, my journal, the scribbling s on old envelopes, the notes on my white board, my phone notes, which are all conducive of this process.

They are all from the weeks thoughts and introspection’s on how I think and how, I have broken both these down and other people’s patterns in order to utilise and enable me to grow out of a old and negative fixed mindset.

It’s the volume and time I spend doing this that I know how much needs to be done and that it never ends.

But it works.

Not always as the marketing suggests, because much of my life doesn’t work and I don’t have a Ferrari yet . But it works in the micro details.

The everyday areas that get overlooked but, when added up, eventually contribute to everything.

I often wonder if I’d be better off being ignorant to this type of thinking.

But what I do know is that every time I get an insight, a moment to catch myself and to stop, consider, re-calibrate and grow from that micro moment, I love it.

Growing our emotional capacity takes work, but it’s work spent in conscious resolution and growth rather than unconsciously in conflict and defence.

Comparison is only useful if it’s for acquiring knowledge.

Outside of that it’s usually a negative force that takes our focus towards asking questions around ‘what’s wrong with me?’ or equally as detrimental generalisations as ‘I’m better than them’.
Neither of the latter mindsets serve in helping us to develop our own individual potential or the capability (or indeed the desire to do so in others.)

With the best will in the world, we all compare ourselves with others. We judge ourselves as much as we judge everyone else. However hard we try, we are always going to have an opinion.

However if we can use those moments to reflect and be conscious of why we are thinking those things we have an opportunity to ask better questions.

If we are falling into a state of self pity of self degradation because of what someone else has done or got, its worth asking ourselves what they are doing differently to us.

Some people are lucky, but most of the time it’s because they are just doing something differently to us, that if we are willing to spend the time, we can emulate and get similar results.

And not only this but it’s also worth considering the idea that ‘one aspect’ of someone’s life in comparison to ours doesn’t create the totality of their lives.

Even the most successful people are struggling somewhere, often in places that we excel in, or have total freedom from that particular hardship.

Nothing is in isolation, so it’s worth pulling back from tunnel vision at times of judgement and see the bigger picture.

In doing so we can ask better questions and create better mindsets and behaviours.

I’m under pressure. I’m excited. I’m nervous. I’m anxious.

The doors have opened and it’s race to get into the pool before all the Scubbies – (scuba divers)- get into the water and break the clear glass transparency of the water with the bubbles from their tanks.

All of us freedivers want to be the first in. To experience the clear solitude of this cylindrical Elysium.

I’m trying to not panic. I’m having to accept I’m not going to be first in. I may not even get in before the scubbies.

It’s not a case of legging it into the pool and diving in. It’s imperative to stay calm.

I’m remembering all my training so far and how to deal with anticipation.

I’m using my breath work, of attempting to go slow to go fast. I’m not rushing. I refuse to rush. Rushing just fucks everything up.

I get into the shower to warm yesterday’s wet and cold wetsuit up instead of desperately racing to get suited and booted pool side.

Standing in the shower block, I’m even further from the pool, but I again fight the urge to rush, even though the time is ticking by.

I breathe slowly as I stand in the shower and slide the skin-tight suit on, making sure to align my arms into the sleeves better than yesterday’s hurried attempt, which ended up with one of the team having to blow down my sleeve in an attempt to inflate and then rotate the arm to realign it.

I’m done.

I exit the changing area and walk to the pool edge and some of our group have already taken the prime spot.

It’s the line for the deep dive. This is the Prime spot. No one else in the pool and 20m of aquatic tranquillity.

Again the familiar sense of FOMO (fear of missing out) builds up.

I’m missing out.  I want to be the first in, I want to be on the best dive, and I want to be first, I want , I want……

As all this internal acoustic interference from my internal child chatter bombards me and I attempt to close it down. I need to relax.

I remember the coaching talk from this morning breakfast pre dive prep.

My coach tells us ‘Set the first dive up right, as it will dictate the rest of the days dives.
Get it wrong and the day’s dives are likely to be shit in one form or another.’

I stand in the prep area of the pool where some of my group are warming up on the shallow water ropes doing the right thing and warming up nice and slow.

Again I glance up at the couple already on the deep dives. ‘Fuck, I just want to get over there’ I say to myself!

Stop. Regroup. Backup. Focus.

Set the first dive up right.

If I don’t wrap this up now and get my head straight, the day could be a disaster.

I close the loop of vision down to my immediate area and away from the other divers out in the middle.

I need to stop feeling like a dog in a car who knows he’s just arrived at the park and is desperate to get out and run.

I buddy up and agree to do a warm up on the shallow rope.

I breathe up and go down the rope, equalising as I go and attempting to quieten my mind.

Everything needs to be brought into this moment and nowhere else.

There is nothing else. No needs, no expectation, no future pacing. My mind begins to calm as a stand at the bottom of the rope.

I come up and safety my buddy, and then attempt to go again, but the feeling of ‘this is dull’ is starting to leak into my psyche.

I go again, to go through the motions, but I’m still not quiet in my head. I’m still barking in the back of the car to be let out.

And then I see one of the seniors simply sit down on the floor of the shallow shelf we are stood on.

It’s no more than chest deep but enough to fully submerge a person sitting down.

It was reminiscent of how I set up my breathing sessions up at home. Sat on the floor with my back against the radiator.

It was the perfect setup for what I needed.

I took a breath and sat down holding onto the railing behind my back to keep me held under water.

I gazed out at the 360 degree view opening up before me and felt as though I was sitting inside a giant HD television watching an underwater film on freediving.

I could see my friends at the rope I initially wanted to be on, but this time I was still.

Just a silent spectator looking out, almost with a sense of being invisible but at the same time all seeing.

Everything slows down and I check in on how I feel.

It seems as though I’ve been sat here a while, but I can feel I have more time to just sit and look out.

I come up and say nothing.

I allow myself to let the calm do its thing, rather than interrupt it and chatting on the side lines.

I wait a while, breath up again and sit down to dose up again on the stillness.

It feels quite surreal.

I’m sitting in an underwater viewing gallery, not breathing and feeling totally calm as the sense of de-concentration kicks in, where I can see everything, but focus on nothing.

I come up and I’m ready. I know I’ve set my first dive up right for the day. I can just feel it now.

The sense of missing out has gone and is replaced with a sense of having all the time I need.

I don’t need to test it. It shows me. In this moment I’m not racing to get anywhere. I no longer have the sense of missing out and that sense of needing to accomplish something significant.

In these moments it’s the sense of peace that saturates me and it’s that feeling that I want more of.

So I slip over the side and into a sunken oversized rowing boat that’s sits under water just below where I am stood. I sit inside it and peer over the bow into the 20m void and just watch.

It’s a flow state. And right now it feels timeless.

It sets me up and keeps me calm, but only until I later leave the comfort zone of my experience, or when the little voice breaks through unexpectedly and disturbs the silence with a challenge of going just a bit further which tips me off this sense of equilibrium.

And it always will. This is not permanent.

But each time this happens we climb back on the line.

Each time we climb back on, the lines gets a bit longer as we grow and our experience expands our knowledge of the things that, up until falling off, we had never felt before.

We also need people around us to snap us out of the detrimental trances we all live inside of at times – to pull us back so we can re-calibrate and move forwards before we do any serious damage.

This isn’t just about freediving. It’s just a metaphor for every day.

If we set up every day right first thing in the morning, then it’s more likely to determine how the rest of our day goes.

It’s never going to be fool proof or perfect by any means.

Some days just kick the ass out of anything we try and do to salvage them.

Then we just have to accept that just going to bed and trying again tomorrow is the only way back!

But by setting each day up as a habit, it enables us to build more mental muscle.

We are more likely to recognise and then react quicker to when we are spinning out.

By learning techniques to set our day up we will respond and resolve stressful situations much more effectively and in a much quicker time frame.

By setting up our day we train ourselves to focus internally rather than what we can’t control externally.

But setting up our day takes work.

It takes time. It takes commitment and willingness to experiment. To find better, faster ways that work specifically for us as individuals rather than some generic idea that’s been generated all takes effort. It takes failure to go further in the end.

But if we can do this – to set up our day first thing – we stand a better chance of staying present in each moment rather than being anxious that we are not somewhere else.

Set your day up and see where it takes you.

It’s Wednesday which means Another Iron Mike Kettle bell session courtesy of @cjmswaby and @mikemahler73.

Up’d the KB’s to 20’s tonight and once again the session stepped up a gear and at the end of the session – well by set 3,  I understood a bit more why Cj looked cream crackered when he introduced the workout. It’s quite Nasty when the weight goes up but the rest stays the same!!

Tonight like many nights, I feel tired and don’t fancy going into my cold garage to train alone.

But I’m good a sticking to a plan especially if I’ve said I’m going to do something.

I knew if I didn’t train Iron Mike tonight and up the weight I may never return to it.

A trick I use is simply to break things down and do deals with myself.

I say ‘just get in there and just do a warm up and then just do a slow set on the 16’s. If you feel crap at least you tried.

Then after I’ve warmed up I put some music on and get my head in the right space. Then I do as I say. Slow and light to trick myself that it’s all ok and it feels ok. This also gives me the bump start I need and gets me warm.

I know it’s lying to myself, and I know I’m doing it to myself and why, but it works. Because I know after I get passed this stage the curiosity will kick in. ‘I wonder what the 20’s will be like? Tell you what let’s just do 1 set and then go back to the 16’s.’ Again deep down I know if I make the set there’s no way I’m going back to 16’s. And the game goes on….’ok do the 3rd set…..ok you’ve done the 3rd you have to go all the way now with 20’s!’

And throughout the sets I’m breaking down reps when my mind can’t handle big numbers that make the last rep seem to far away.

For example on the 4th set of Clean and Press, 8 reps may be counted as 4 and 4 or even 2,2,2,2. Counting to 2 and repeating until I get to 8 seems mental easier than looking miles into the distance to rep 8!

The same with the renegades – 5,5,5,5 because counting all the way to 20 makes my mind think this is to much!

Same Reps, one after another with no break just counted differently to Fox the fatigued mind.

Then freezing shower to finish off the mind games!

Here’s a picture of me and my dad enjoying an ice cream in the Sunshine.

I’ve no intention of stopping having an ice cream in the sunshine because I enjoy it.

But there’s times when we really need to knock things on the head because it’s detrimental to us.

I know I’m pragmatic and my methods are often simplistic but I’ve experimented many times with stopping doing things I enjoy or are habitual to understand what drives me to really do them, what I need to do to override that desire and what I need to do to continue to do so.

In fact in order to do so, I find it very hard to go back to doing those things even though I have no real reason to stop doing them after the experiment.

Something I’ve found that works for me when I’m tempted to do something I’m attempting to stop and temptation is creeping in is to ask myself s really simply question.

So what? Or when I’m really going for it ‘so fucking what!’

So for example when we are tempted by something we say to ourselves ‘I want Xyz’. We behave like a child or teenager. I want, I want. And we try and solve or resist it from that mind set. We try to solve it from the position of the child. No wonder we give in so easily. Instead try becoming the parent who’s fed up with the winging and says ‘so what that you want that thing, what off it? Who cares what you’d rather?’ I know this sounds simple but there’s method in the madness.

By changing identity, by challenging the emotion we break what is known as ‘the cycle of dysfunctional behaviour’ which works by first thinking of something, then fantasising about it and then acting on or trying to resist it. But by the time we fantasise about eating cake it’s hard to resist.

But we all know times when just as we’ve thought ‘I’m desperate for a coffee, I can’t function, that the boss comes in and barks an order we jump to attention, do what we are told and forget all about the coffee until much later when we think ‘fuck I never got that coffee after all’ (we never go as far as recognising we didn’t die after all from not having it!)

The point is, to stop anything, we need to find ways to break patterns, to be the boss or the parent and not the child.

I love being out with my nephews as they remind me of me.

When I turn up I think they see a kindred spirit or a least someone who still wants to explore and encourages them to ‘give it a go’. (It’s easy when I can give them back wet and muddy and take no responsibility for the aftermath!)

But a lot of the time we try to, like having energetic kids, the desire is often to ‘close it down’, to get some peace and quiet which no one can blame people with kids like my nephews.

And yet all to often we try to make others stop doing whats good for them because its not fitting in with how we want things to be.

And this all to often manifests into our adult lives from children, where all to often we feel we need to comply, to fit in, to say the right thing to be accepted or acknowledged –  and often it’s the best thing to do in civilised society especially if we don’t want to be ostracised from the groups we inhabit.

However it’s worth paying attention to the areas we feel we are trying to fit in and examine whether or not we are in the right groups that both nurture us and that we feel we are contributing to rather than being constrictive.

Get around people who make you grow rather than who want to control you.

And at the same time seek out those who are caged and help to set them free!

There’s lots of theory out there, but how does that relate to you?

Most experiments are set up inside of certain parameters to insure consistency.

However all of these environments are not those we as individuals inhabit and therefore results will be different or may not even work at all.

Also when we are told something won’t work it’s just an opinion not a fact.

When we are told there’s not much we can do that fix certain issues it’s often just coming from a frame of reference rather than an absolute.

Be your own Lab Rat for me is about doing our own research. Looking at our own habits. Profiling ourselves and bio hacking ourselves. It’s about collecting as much individual data as we can and making a plan from there often from trial and error.

Don’t let anyone tell you your limitations. They don’t know.

Take advice and then go away and learn from doing.