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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
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I recently read a quote that really got me thinking about how finite

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our time is here on this earth.

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When we're young, we feel invincible.

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We can do whatever we want with our bodies.

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We can drink whatever we want, eat, whatever we want,

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stay up as late as we want.

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But as we age our bodies and our mind can't really keep up as

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they could when we were younger.

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The quote that I heard goes, something like this.

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He who has his health has a thousand dreams.

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He who did not have his health has only one.

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So this really got me thinking.

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The challenge is that our society put so much emphasis on financial wealth and

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financial wellbeing that we often put our mental and our physical wellbeing aside.

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So if you find that you've neglected your body or your mind, or your mental health

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for the last few decades of your life, I'm here to tell you that it's not too late.

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In this episode, I'm going to be talking about a few things that may

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surprise you when it comes to your physical and your mental health.

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I'm Amin Ahmed and welcome to be.

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Well do.

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Well,

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The first point I wanna make is about your mental health.

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And I've probably said this before on previous episodes is meditation.

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Meditation is something that is just so helpful and even just a few minutes

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a day can make a profound difference.

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If you've never meditated before, it can be a bit challenging initially,

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but there's lots of apps available.

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There's lots of tutorials or YouTube videos.

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I can show you how to do it.

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And when I talk about meditation, I'm not talking about sitting in

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an uncomfortable, lotus position on the ground, on a meditation pillow.

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You can sit on a couch, sit on your chair, even in your car.

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And even a minute, two or three minutes to start is more than enough.

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Now, if you remember when computers first came out, they had this

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thing in windows called defrag.

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And what it would do is essentially it would take your files that were scattered

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across your hard drive, and it would put them all together, nicely and neatly,

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and it would organize them for you.

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If you remember, it was this big colorful grid and all the picked, all

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the colors were in different spots.

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And then when you hit the defrag button, it would take the colors and

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it would just arrange them and it would put them in a nice little pattern.

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So meditation is kind of like that for your brain.

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I like to think of it as defrag for your brain.

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If you're feeling scattered, if you're feeling distracted and you feel like

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things are all over the place, just sitting down, settling your body, settling

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your mind, and just maybe focusing on your breath initially, or if you feel like

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getting a little bit more advanced, you can do a body scan where you go top to

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bottom on your body and back and forth.

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And you just notice the sensations in your body.

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It's a really good way to meditate, especially if you're just a beginner.

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The second point I'd like to make here is about movement.

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Now notice, I didn't say exercise.

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I said movement, and there's a big difference between exercise and movement.

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The difference between exercise and movement is that with exercise, you go

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to the gym in the morning and you do your workout and then you come back.

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Movement happens throughout your day.

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Now I sit at my desk all day and so I'm working maybe 5, 6, 7,

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sometimes 10 hours a day at my desk.

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And it's really challenging sometimes because I don't move around and

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I can tell my body starts to ache and I start to feel sluggish and

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I lose energy throughout the day.

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Those days that I actually plan my movement throughout

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my days, I feel a lot better.

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I feel like I have more energy throughout the day.

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Some of the ways that you can do that is by setting a timer.

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A pomodoro timer is a great way to do it.

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Every 25 minutes, you take a five minute break and then after your third

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cycle, you take a 15 minute break.

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In order to incorporate more movement into my day, I started looking into ergonomics.

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So I tried using a standing desk and that was okay for a little while, but

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I found that I was restless and I was just moving around a little bit too

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much and I wasn't very comfortable.

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And so I decided to go back to a sitting desk and look for some ergonomic chairs.

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Now, when I was doing a search for ergonomic chair, two things came up.

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One was the really expensive chairs that looked like an

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airplane captain's pilot chair.

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And those were sometimes five, seven, $800 or thousands of dollars.

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Out of my budget at the time and I didn't want to invest in

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something like that, that I wasn't sure was going to work for me.

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On the opposite end of the spectrum I found that some of the health

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professionals like physiotherapists and occupational therapists, they

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were recommending sitting on a body ball or a big, large ball,

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and having that is your office.

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I tried that too in the past and it was really good.

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I found it was great, but I had to keep pumping up the ball or it was squeaky and

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I had to make adjustments while I was in a meeting and it just wasn't professional.

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So in doing more research, I actually came across something called the

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Core Chair and I ended up buying it.

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I really like it.

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And the way that the Core Chair is designed is that the platform,

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the base that you sit on first is extremely comfortable and

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there's not a tall back support.

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It's just a little lumbar support that supports your lower back.

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Then you can actually move side to side, front and back.

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And actually it goes 360.

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So you can rotate or you can actually pivot in every different direction.

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It's made a huge difference in my productivity throughout the day.

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After getting the Core Chair I actually work longer because I don't feel as

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uncomfortable, but you still have to make sure that you use the Core Chair for what

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it's intended, which is active sitting.

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So you can move around while you're sitting, but still get up and do some

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movement breaks throughout your day.

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So, you're interested in learning more about the Core Chair, I'll put a link

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down in the show notes here as well.

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The final point I wanna make is about setting boundaries.

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This is a combination between mental health and physical health.

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Sometimes we find that we work a lot, especially during the pandemic, when

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everybody was working from home, we were working a lot longer hours and

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the boundaries between what was work and what was life totally got blurred.

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And so what I wanna recommend to you, and I wanna suggest is that you think

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about setting and end time for your day.

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You might start your work day at eight.

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But do you have an end time?

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It's really hard for us to work eight hours straight at

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deep work and intense focus.

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If you think about athletes, they don't go from morning to night and just nonstop.

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They take breaks they rest their bodies.

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In fact, I recently learned that Roger Federer, a professional tennis

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player, one of the best tennis players in the world prefers to sleep

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11 hours a day, which is amazing.

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That just blew my mind to hear that that's how much rest he likes to get.

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Some football players also try to get 10, 11, 12 hours of rest in a day.

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Setting your end time can really help make a big difference in how much

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you exercise during the day, how much time you spend with your family and

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just generally enjoy life a lot more.

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By simply committing to an end time, I'm sure you'll see a big difference as well.

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Now to recap, three points was the first was meditation.

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You don't have to meditate for a long time and start slow, start

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small and just increase it.

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Maybe every week you increase it by a minute, maybe increase it by five

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minutes, whatever works for you do that.

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The second is include movement in addition to exercise throughout your

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day, getting a Core Chair or something similar to that can help, but make

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sure that you're also moving around.

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And the third and final point is setting boundaries.

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If you've got your boundries, make sure that people know about it, make

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sure that people respect that your coworkers, your family respect those

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boundaries and you let them know that this is why you're doing it because in

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the end it actually benefits everyone.

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I hope this episode has been helpful for you.

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I really enjoyed putting this together.

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In our next episode, we're gonna be talking about self worth versus net worth.

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It's a conversation that I've had with people and it's an eye opener.

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So I look forward to seeing you then.