Join us on this episode of the Be Well, Do Well podcast where Amin shares a quote and discusses 3 ways to improve your overall health and well being.
Transcript
I recently read a quote that really got me thinking about how finite
Speaker:our time is here on this earth.
Speaker:When we're young, we feel invincible.
Speaker:We can do whatever we want with our bodies.
Speaker:We can drink whatever we want, eat, whatever we want,
Speaker:stay up as late as we want.
Speaker:But as we age our bodies and our mind can't really keep up as
Speaker:they could when we were younger.
Speaker:The quote that I heard goes, something like this.
Speaker:He who has his health has a thousand dreams.
Speaker:He who did not have his health has only one.
Speaker:So this really got me thinking.
Speaker:The challenge is that our society put so much emphasis on financial wealth and
Speaker:financial wellbeing that we often put our mental and our physical wellbeing aside.
Speaker:So if you find that you've neglected your body or your mind, or your mental health
Speaker:for the last few decades of your life, I'm here to tell you that it's not too late.
Speaker:In this episode, I'm going to be talking about a few things that may
Speaker:surprise you when it comes to your physical and your mental health.
Speaker:I'm Amin Ahmed and welcome to be.
Speaker:Well do.
Speaker:Well,
Speaker:The first point I wanna make is about your mental health.
Speaker:And I've probably said this before on previous episodes is meditation.
Speaker:Meditation is something that is just so helpful and even just a few minutes
Speaker:a day can make a profound difference.
Speaker:If you've never meditated before, it can be a bit challenging initially,
Speaker:but there's lots of apps available.
Speaker:There's lots of tutorials or YouTube videos.
Speaker:I can show you how to do it.
Speaker:And when I talk about meditation, I'm not talking about sitting in
Speaker:an uncomfortable, lotus position on the ground, on a meditation pillow.
Speaker:You can sit on a couch, sit on your chair, even in your car.
Speaker:And even a minute, two or three minutes to start is more than enough.
Speaker:Now, if you remember when computers first came out, they had this
Speaker:thing in windows called defrag.
Speaker:And what it would do is essentially it would take your files that were scattered
Speaker:across your hard drive, and it would put them all together, nicely and neatly,
Speaker:and it would organize them for you.
Speaker:If you remember, it was this big colorful grid and all the picked, all
Speaker:the colors were in different spots.
Speaker:And then when you hit the defrag button, it would take the colors and
Speaker:it would just arrange them and it would put them in a nice little pattern.
Speaker:So meditation is kind of like that for your brain.
Speaker:I like to think of it as defrag for your brain.
Speaker:If you're feeling scattered, if you're feeling distracted and you feel like
Speaker:things are all over the place, just sitting down, settling your body, settling
Speaker:your mind, and just maybe focusing on your breath initially, or if you feel like
Speaker:getting a little bit more advanced, you can do a body scan where you go top to
Speaker:bottom on your body and back and forth.
Speaker:And you just notice the sensations in your body.
Speaker:It's a really good way to meditate, especially if you're just a beginner.
Speaker:The second point I'd like to make here is about movement.
Speaker:Now notice, I didn't say exercise.
Speaker:I said movement, and there's a big difference between exercise and movement.
Speaker:The difference between exercise and movement is that with exercise, you go
Speaker:to the gym in the morning and you do your workout and then you come back.
Speaker:Movement happens throughout your day.
Speaker:Now I sit at my desk all day and so I'm working maybe 5, 6, 7,
Speaker:sometimes 10 hours a day at my desk.
Speaker:And it's really challenging sometimes because I don't move around and
Speaker:I can tell my body starts to ache and I start to feel sluggish and
Speaker:I lose energy throughout the day.
Speaker:Those days that I actually plan my movement throughout
Speaker:my days, I feel a lot better.
Speaker:I feel like I have more energy throughout the day.
Speaker:Some of the ways that you can do that is by setting a timer.
Speaker:A pomodoro timer is a great way to do it.
Speaker:Every 25 minutes, you take a five minute break and then after your third
Speaker:cycle, you take a 15 minute break.
Speaker:In order to incorporate more movement into my day, I started looking into ergonomics.
Speaker:So I tried using a standing desk and that was okay for a little while, but
Speaker:I found that I was restless and I was just moving around a little bit too
Speaker:much and I wasn't very comfortable.
Speaker:And so I decided to go back to a sitting desk and look for some ergonomic chairs.
Speaker:Now, when I was doing a search for ergonomic chair, two things came up.
Speaker:One was the really expensive chairs that looked like an
Speaker:airplane captain's pilot chair.
Speaker:And those were sometimes five, seven, $800 or thousands of dollars.
Speaker:Out of my budget at the time and I didn't want to invest in
Speaker:something like that, that I wasn't sure was going to work for me.
Speaker:On the opposite end of the spectrum I found that some of the health
Speaker:professionals like physiotherapists and occupational therapists, they
Speaker:were recommending sitting on a body ball or a big, large ball,
Speaker:and having that is your office.
Speaker:I tried that too in the past and it was really good.
Speaker:I found it was great, but I had to keep pumping up the ball or it was squeaky and
Speaker:I had to make adjustments while I was in a meeting and it just wasn't professional.
Speaker:So in doing more research, I actually came across something called the
Speaker:Core Chair and I ended up buying it.
Speaker:I really like it.
Speaker:And the way that the Core Chair is designed is that the platform,
Speaker:the base that you sit on first is extremely comfortable and
Speaker:there's not a tall back support.
Speaker:It's just a little lumbar support that supports your lower back.
Speaker:Then you can actually move side to side, front and back.
Speaker:And actually it goes 360.
Speaker:So you can rotate or you can actually pivot in every different direction.
Speaker:It's made a huge difference in my productivity throughout the day.
Speaker:After getting the Core Chair I actually work longer because I don't feel as
Speaker:uncomfortable, but you still have to make sure that you use the Core Chair for what
Speaker:it's intended, which is active sitting.
Speaker:So you can move around while you're sitting, but still get up and do some
Speaker:movement breaks throughout your day.
Speaker:So, you're interested in learning more about the Core Chair, I'll put a link
Speaker:down in the show notes here as well.
Speaker:The final point I wanna make is about setting boundaries.
Speaker:This is a combination between mental health and physical health.
Speaker:Sometimes we find that we work a lot, especially during the pandemic, when
Speaker:everybody was working from home, we were working a lot longer hours and
Speaker:the boundaries between what was work and what was life totally got blurred.
Speaker:And so what I wanna recommend to you, and I wanna suggest is that you think
Speaker:about setting and end time for your day.
Speaker:You might start your work day at eight.
Speaker:But do you have an end time?
Speaker:It's really hard for us to work eight hours straight at
Speaker:deep work and intense focus.
Speaker:If you think about athletes, they don't go from morning to night and just nonstop.
Speaker:They take breaks they rest their bodies.
Speaker:In fact, I recently learned that Roger Federer, a professional tennis
Speaker:player, one of the best tennis players in the world prefers to sleep
Speaker:11 hours a day, which is amazing.
Speaker:That just blew my mind to hear that that's how much rest he likes to get.
Speaker:Some football players also try to get 10, 11, 12 hours of rest in a day.
Speaker:Setting your end time can really help make a big difference in how much
Speaker:you exercise during the day, how much time you spend with your family and
Speaker:just generally enjoy life a lot more.
Speaker:By simply committing to an end time, I'm sure you'll see a big difference as well.
Speaker:Now to recap, three points was the first was meditation.
Speaker:You don't have to meditate for a long time and start slow, start
Speaker:small and just increase it.
Speaker:Maybe every week you increase it by a minute, maybe increase it by five
Speaker:minutes, whatever works for you do that.
Speaker:The second is include movement in addition to exercise throughout your
Speaker:day, getting a Core Chair or something similar to that can help, but make
Speaker:sure that you're also moving around.
Speaker:And the third and final point is setting boundaries.
Speaker:If you've got your boundries, make sure that people know about it, make
Speaker:sure that people respect that your coworkers, your family respect those
Speaker:boundaries and you let them know that this is why you're doing it because in
Speaker:the end it actually benefits everyone.
Speaker:I hope this episode has been helpful for you.
Speaker:I really enjoyed putting this together.
Speaker:In our next episode, we're gonna be talking about self worth versus net worth.
Speaker:It's a conversation that I've had with people and it's an eye opener.
Speaker:So I look forward to seeing you then.