My mental state has not been fantastic since my last post. It goes up and down like a roller coaster. I have had a sense of despair, anxiety, and emptiness. Not sure what the causes of this have been. I have had disagreements at work as to the direction we should take with my company. Key disagreement is whether to take on outside investors or grow organically at a steady pace. I have been accused of “avoiding a challenge” as outside investment would help accelerate our growth. I am not sure whether this could be a subconscious reason. But at the same time, I do believe that outside investment is not really needed. We have plenty of cash, are profitable, and growing at a steady pace in my opinion is a better option.
At the same time, I am not sure whether this is the true reason. I also feel the path we are taking with the company no longer aligns with my values.
But is all of this the reason for my dip in my mental state? Confusion around the reasons often feel like they handicap me as I am not sure where I should focus on.
For example, there is so much literature about physical exercise and mental health. I have been doing yoga pretty much daily, I have gone to the gym this week as planned, and I have also gone running as planned. To sum it up, that is daily 25-minute yoga sessions (I started yogo for mindfulness and flexibility & breathing) as well as 3 10km+ runs & 2 full-body workouts with my personal trainer. And despite this, I still feel down. What I am thinking is that if I did not do the physical exercise, I would potentially feel even worse…
Same goes for eating. Since Covid, and the lockdown, I have been eating super well. For example this week, I have pretty much eaten zero junk food and not done any snacking. The food we have eaten is virtually all plant-based & whole foods.
I do really believe in exercise and food, and sometimes feel that these two factors become obsessional. And what I do never seems like it is “enough”. For example, I went running yesterday with the idea of going “slow and easy”. But during the run, I started beating myself up over being “lazy”. So the entire run I am not focused on positivity but on pushing myself on to reach new limits.
At the end of this. I think that the best way to move forward is to keep on “showing up” and “trusting the process”. I do believe that in life you need balance, and at the moment, I am doing very well in certain areas, but not so well in others. For example, I eat well and workout (never been in better shape in my life!), but then my social life, work-life, and family relationships are strained.
But this comes to something else that I would like to mention. Often times, I know what needs to be done, and I am quite good at identifying issues & solutions. However, I am not good at putting together a plan, and on getting things done. I choke. I stop dead in my tracks.
So what next? My mind is now racing with what to do next. It is 11:32 and I need to leave at 11:45 to get my 2nd full-body workout completed. And here, I will be leaving without a plan. But do I need to really dig deep into the causes of what is going wrong in order to find a solution? Or should I just start somewhere? But then the question I have is, will I be able to follow through. I have started to fix different parts of my life so so many times, to just abandon them a couple of days, weeks, months later and find myself back to “square one”.
Ok, lets be quick. This afternoon, when I am back from lunch, I will do the following:
- Talk with my brother about the future of the company. I will try not to get personal and base our conversation on rational arguments. Re-establishing communication channels I have shutdown in the past are always healing.
- I need to choose a path. I will read 10 minutes of “Getting Things Done”. I would rather choose Wim Hof, however, I know that the GTD book will be more helpful than the latter.
So there you have it. The above is what I am going to focus on. I will also check back in here sooner rather than later. The exercise of writing does do me some good. But I guess like with everything, if I don’t “show up”, and “trust the process”, the efforts I put in here will not pay off.
One last thing — I really do need to work on learning and practicing positivity hacks. I feel that I have very mentally negative…
