For many years I was a bodybuilding athlete.
From 17 to 33, I can say I took my diet, gym training, rest and mental attitude very seriously.
I believe that the greatest legacy of this phase has been to enter into the knowledge and processes of the attitude mind.
Mental attitude is a sentinel that you put guarding your thoughts.
In competitive sport, early on you learn that whatever it is, a result will be obtained. A clear, measurable, recorded result that will tell you whether you win or lose.
Win or lose.
Nobody enters competitive sport to learn how to lose. You enter to win. But you learn to lose.
The goal being victory, everything you plan and do will be set against the question: Does this help me get closer?
I remember for example that there was a trip scheduled to the beach with my family. That was a long time ago.
I must have been around 22 years old. I went on the trip and while everyone else was eating shrimp, breaded squid, chips, washed down with wine, sodas and beers, I measured out my portions of egg whites, spinach, pineapple and sodium-free water to avoid retention.
There was a clear purpose of body weight and lean mass that I was to achieve.
I remember another time I went to the cinema and took a tapper with roast beef, because during the film it was time for a protein meal. There were no shakes much less wheyprotein in those years.
When I opened the tapper the worst smell that anyone can feel inside a cinema came out. It was that embarrassment. I kept shaking the air. "Stavros, you're rotten man!"
That's apart from waking up at 5am to eat 30 egg whites and other things that only a set goal can explain.
The results of my daily attitudes meant winning or losing in a competition.
Those who seek results live in permanent anxiety. Because of the high energy you put into it and the self-imposed discipline (which also charges a very high price) you clamor for results. That is the payment you receive.
And it was like that in my studies too. Same thing. You study hard, stay up all night, take exams, give up a lot of fun and approach teachers in the classroom and in the teachers' room because you need the grade (result).
So far so normal and well known.
Now, how to deal with the anxiety that comes in the package?
In sales, when your mission is to get customers into your company, the result is also binary.
You made your goal or you didn't make your goal. You closed that contract or you didn't close that contract.
Everything else, everything else falls into the little box "we are heating up the market, we are learning, it's the beginning, the clients have no budget, it's the end of the year, it's the middle of the year, it's before the World Cup, it's an election year, it's software that doesn't work, it's a competitor that is more aggressive, etc."
So every care and planning to gauge your goals and to deal with anxiety.
The more challenging your goal, the more you will grow and the greater your anxiety along the way.
That equation will dictate your quality of life.
There is no solution to anxiety. It is part of the mechanism of your growth.
It is a feeling that "catastrophe is just around the corner waiting for us". It is the feeling that things are far from happening the way we need them to happen.
Except for pharmacological solutions (anxiolytics and others), only meditation can relieve some of the noise that rings in our minds every day.
Now, who can meditate? I can't. I swear I have tried. Maybe I need to get rid of the anxiety of having to meditate and see the activity as a result to be achieved.
But then I will have to give up other results that are in the queue of needs.
One client told me that after the age of 60, he decided to take his wife and travel at least 3 times a year abroad.
Today he is 70 and has managed to stick to his travel plan of the last decade. But he is still very anxious. Because he still wants to grow up.
Ok to be looking forward to having a coffee strolling around the Champs-Élysées in Paris 🙂 🙂
In any case, those who wish to, "buy" anxiety. It's like that here and in Australia, through Nepal and Fiji.
Anxiety is an intrinsic condition of the will to power, a human condition that is "the will to perform".
One way to reduce this discomfort is binary thinking.
First, awareness. Results take much longer to come than we would like. Things of real value are not easy. The price to pay is exactly that: how much they are worth.
Second, focus. Ask yourself if "it" (whatever it is) adds up, adds up to your bottom line.
Yeah? Keep it up.
No? Discard it. Briefly.
This will reduce your anxiety and not leave your mind spinning seeking to deeply evaluate every situation, putting everything on standby etc.
In fact, every decision demands energy. If you think too much to cope with most of the situations you face every day, you will have exhausted your energy. And you need every drop of that energy to maintain your discipline.
You open the guard, all the zombies will invade your castle.
These zombies are "catastrophic" thoughts, self-doubt of yourself and your ability to achieve your results and worst, mental exhaustion.
Thought control is a fallacy. But it is possible to reduce to very bearable levels the unnecessary noise that rings in the minds of those who achieve and want more.
That's the journey after all and we're here for something really worthwhile.
