The Focus Project

My mindfulness journey....

[thefocusproject-blog]

Breaking Free #1

As part of the No More Mister Nice Guy book there are a series of breaking free activities that need to be done. I am going to write them down and put my notes here.... #1 - What real reason is there to not be yourself?? In reality there is NO reason to not be yourself. To close off part of who you are is breaking so many values. Its deeper than that for me. It created anxiety, delays problem resolution as I begin to become hard to understand as I filter different things to different people.

[thefocusproject-blog]

NMMNG

Its been a week since I posted and well.. I have been pretty focussed on driving change in my life. I began searching through podcasts, soundcloud motivation, reading about mind body connection and more. Really seeking what it means to be me, 100% me, problems, no problems, true to everything in my being. Its been hard because I started being direct (and trying to be tactful with my delivery). Not so easy when you conditioned to filter your responses to people. One of the things that was mentioned in a lot of my research was the concept of Nice Guys. We've all heard the term nice guys finish last... Well who knows?.. I decided to purchase a book by Robert Glover called No More Mister Nice Guy.. and as I began reading this book it took me through the reason Nice Guys exist - some of these were social conditioning, lack of a father figure, controlling mother etc and so many more. It really made me think back in my life to when I began to sacrafice my true values for some sort of alternative gain or fear/conflict avoidance. 2 key situations came to mind. One theme from when I was a child and 1 from my professional life. 1. When I was a child, my parents pushed us to be "the good children" we went to church each sunday, we werent allowed to sit with our friends, we had to sit with mum and dad, we werent allowed (or rarely allowed) to go out with our friends to Mcdonalds afterwards, we had to call everyone mister/mrs - One situation I remember being hit for was I called my soccer coach by his name (instead of mister) and didnt look him in the eye when I said good bye (WTF). I dont know why they were so strick but oh well they were Another situation was common at home, was doing things properly. When doing the washing up, I hated wearing the gloves around my hands. I prefered to drop the water temp back a little and wash the dishes with my bare hand. I would get into trouble for this on a regular basis - even smacked - The water was as hot as I could stand so more when hot enough to wash the dishes in. Over-time I developed a fear of doing the wrong thing. It was wasnt so much the fact that I minded being diciplined but the fact that it was so extreme - I went to school with bruises on me for doing the washing up the wrong way. (WTF) - Take that embarressment into my school dressing room and I got teased.. I just learnt to be Nice to everyone and not be myself or stand up for my independance - FUCKING BIG MISTAKE. 2. I worked in a big US company in their IT department in Sydney. I loved working there. I got into their sales team after about 7 years and I moved from a collaborative environment a game of politics where people were taking credit for each others work, postulating and generally being two faced - this was something I didnt understand or know how to handle. I was responsble for selling large outsourcing deals (50 million and above) at age 24 - Dont know how they thought I'd be good at that but they did.. haha - "I'm 24 years old mister CEO, let me show you how much money I can save you from my YEARS of experience" - haha. I found a few opportunties which the organsation got behind but as our competition was doing everything offshore. I built a simple budget of doing the services offshore vs onshore and this would have given us a competitive advantage (as we already had an offshore business). When I presented it, I was unaware of the politics in the room, my boss had told management it was not possible or do the service offshore - (It was and is running that way today) Over the next week, my access to the corporate systems was taken away and I got a call from my mentor that people we suggesting I wasnt performing and I should keep my head down. This was when I really began to live treading on egg shells and got the concept that I was not Ok how I was - I used to come in and sit at my desk wondering what to do. In the end after almost 9 years I talked to my boss, asked for a redundancy and he said flat no. I resigned the next day and this was a great decision for me.

[thefocusproject-blog]

A little more history...

In September 2015 I injured my right shoulder and this has taken a long time to get better including doing daily rehab exercises and icing the shoulder. It’s still not good. As is common in so many soft tissue injuries the muscles around the shoulder tightened up and I ended up getting Golfers elbow also. A month later the second elbow started aching and now I have golfers elbow in both elbows.

At this point I had seen 3 doctors, a physiotherapist, a chiropractor and had x-rays to rule out any major damage to the shoulder structure. To me this was not normal, there were no reasons I was aware of why my body not healing itself. I wonder if there is something a little more systemic going on with my body.

I began to explore more about my body and symptoms however I could not find anything consistent online about my symptoms. I’ve now been tested for Rheumatoid Arthritis and had blood inflammatory markers tested, all of which came back negative to anything outside the normal.

I decided to go for a run in January this year and my heel began to ache after the run (20 minutes easy, low impact). I thought nothing of it other than to ice this and see how it went. This has led into inflammation of the heel at the insertion site of the Achilles tendon. I am now seeing a podiatrist about this.

I’ve taken a nutritional based approach to bringing my body toward optimum function with most of my daily in-take now whole foods. My daily food consumption follows the pattern below during the week

Breakfast: Fresh bowl of fruit (mainly berries but inc apple, banana and grapes) with organic yoghurt and a black coffee or two Or 2 poached eggs, ½ avocado and either smoked salmon, short-cut bacon or haloumi cheese.

Lunch: Steamed sweet-potato, steamed broccoli and poached or dry-fried chicken breast

Dinner: Finally chopped kale, ½  avocado, ½ grape-fruit and crispy skinned salmon or blue-eye cod fish.

Supplements: 1000mg or Curcumin, 495mg of magnesium supplements and fish-oil supplements.

I had occasionally smoked marijuana on the weekends and had a big night one night on the weekends. This has stopped and I am now limiting alcohol intake to 3-4 drinks over the weekend and no alcohol during the week days.

Why do I write about this? It takes focus to work through the rehab program for soft tissue injuries and given I now have 4 areas in my body which are all actively causing issues I am finding the rehab process is almost impossible to follow given the required time investment.

[thefocusproject-blog]

A little bit of history...

Over the last few years I have found it a challenge to focus on any one thing for a period of time. Call it procrastination, call it lack of purpose, call it whatever the psychologists say it is but in reality I don’t care what you call it, its fucked. To give you an example. “I will sit down to read an article related to my work and within 30 seconds I am responding to an email, on my phone, looking at something potentially more interesting. I generally get to the executive summary, make some assumptions and never return to look at the depth of the article that I intended to read” This inability to sustain focus leads to so many problems in my life. I start many things that I never finish, I move to the next best thing while I am half-way through working on my previous ‘best thing’ and so in the end nothing gets done… this in itself proves to be a problem as I then judge myself for my lack of productivity and focus. I then determine to resolve this issue and load my calendar full of ‘important’ things that I need to focus on and resolve… and then the cycle starts again, with the exception that I am double judging by the time the cycle comes to its end again. Load up the pressure :( As I unravel these behaviours it will be interesting to see if I keep this blog going or just ‘lose focus’ on the journey. The purpose of this blog is an outlet of my frustration and a helpful journey for those who find themselves on a similar path…