Believe and inspire!

Melting point

Week 5 was my melting point. The physical training was becoming so intense  and the harsh critic in my mind was so nervous about posing and being on stage, that I broke down in tears on a number of occasions over 3 days (at work, at the gym, in the car). I thought “what the hell am I doing”? I started to lose faith in myself and wonder how fitness models and bodybuilders could do this continuously.  “This hurts, I can’t do this, I can’t pose, will make a fool of myself on stage against all the other beautiful girls, embarrass  myself in front of family, disappoint my coach”…. the mental chatter went on and on like a crazy bee buzzing around  in a small jar. I lost belief and confidence in myself.

I reached out to my Ben and pretty much had verbal diahorrea.. boy did he cop an earful. Throughout a number of leg exercises (which I feared the most), Ben said something which resonated “I believe in you, even if you don’t”.  In my delicate state, I thought ok, maybe I am doing something right.

Lifted by Luke

Whilst Ben was off preparing to get married to his gorgeous Ukrainian lady, I trained with Luke, who took me through the next leg workout. Luke knew I was quite fragile mentally at that point and what ensued what pivotal in my journey . For those of you who don’t know Luke Tan, he is a phenomenal plant-based strength and conditioning coach, who could give Anthony Robbins a run for his money. We started off with a visualisation exercise where I closed my eyes and imagined myself on stage. Luke read a number of positive “one-liner self-talks” I had pre-prepared earlier, in relation to confidence, poise, grace, posing, etc. I visualised what it would feel like to be at the competition, imagined what I would look like, my posture, my confidence, visualised the judges and the audience excited and impressed, hearing their cheers. I keep this list at home, at work and believe it or not- stuck inside the passenger’s door of my car. I glance over it periodically to re-affirm my beliefs and re-connect with the visualisation.

Luke picked me up when I was feeling low and lacking belief in myself.  He transformed my mindset and even helped me increase the weights for squats, prowlers and leg extensions. I did not feel it, my mind was so focused and I felt very proud of myself after the session. There is a warrior within me and it's finally being unleashed! For the first time, I can truly say that I didn't

walk away from a leg session with anxiety, but rather a big smile and feeling a sense of accomplishment. So much so, that I actually wrote some motivational quotes for myself “I enjoy training legs and with every repetition, I know I am getting stronger and fitter”, “each squat is getting me one step closer to strutting my shapely booty on stage”.

 

Kudos to stage performers

My session with Luke preceded some Buddhist Meditation workshops. Kudos to musicians, actors, models- anyone who has the courage to be on stage! Never having competed in a fitness competition before, I was extremely anxious about being on stage. Despite how much I discussed this with my coach, practised posing, researched etc, I felt overcome with nerves and fear. I decided to tap back into meditation to help me through this. I found some excellent Buddhist Meditation classes in my local area. One class was called ‘Overcoming Anxiety’, which taught me some simple meditations to help keep a calm and flexible mind and the other was called ‘Self Esteem’, to overcome critical thoughts towards myself, develop a positive self-view, inner confidence and self-acceptance.

Steps to overcoming anxiety

I’d like to share the three main points covered in ‘Overcoming Anxiety’ as I am sure you may find some (or all parts) of this useful. Anxiety seems to be endemic is today’s society. The mind cannot hold happiness and anger/fear at the same time. Negative emotions consume all the space and cloud judgement through deluded and negative states of mind. Delusions completely filter the way we see things, like looking in the those distorted mirrors at the circus, when we know in fact, what we are viewing, isn’t reality. Buddhist philosophy teaches us to maintain a flexible mind, which moves easily with the situations. Visualise a willow tree, bending and stretching in the wind vs a dry, stringy tree which snaps - it’s the same as our minds. If there is no remedy within our control, then there is no point being unhappy or worrying. Another beautiful Buddhist term I learnt was the notion of “inappropriate attention”. This is when we replay something which bothered us over and over and perpetuates negative states of mind. 

So, what can we do about it?  

1) Stop and name it (label the emotion).

2) Apply some wisdom, which resonates (e.g. “I can feel this anxiety but I know it’s temporary, like a grey cloud passing over me”. “It’s just an emotion, I can feel it, it’s uncomfortable but it’s temporary”).

3) Breathe (follow your breath when you feel the emotion pulling at you. You can do a quick meditation focusing on your breath and you would look completely normal, no one has to know).

Destiny “shakin your bon bons”

Being a huge Ricky Martin fan, I ventured solo over to Puerto Rico in December 2011 and Miami (where he currently lives), thinking I would “bump” into him. What actually happened was, I met some amazing local Puerto Rican girls (Steffania and Dimaris) on the first day, whilst lounging around on a sunbed in San Juan. It felt like we had met before. We were inseparable for the next week. We spent the days sunning, shopping and sightseeing and in the evenings we partied. One afternoon we walked past a tattoo shop, checked out their collections inside and came across a tattoo “Destiny”, written in Arabic. We looked at each other instantaneously and needed no words to confirm this was the one we all wanted. We all had it done on our left wrists. It felt like we all met for a reason. I re-told this story to an Argentine in my hostel and he was so moved by it that he went and got the same tattoo the following day but in Spanish (Destino), which was what resonated for him. Hence when I look at my tattoo now, I have a renewed sense of drive and it reaffirms my purpose. I have now learnt to enjoy the journey; confident that I will do the very best I can and leave the rest up to ‘destiny’.

 

"Destiny" in Puerto Rico. Image bottom right: Steffania in the centre and Dimaris on the right.

Take aways:

I would like to share a collection of my favourite inspirational images, which are plastered all over the walls at home and leave you with the following two quotes:

1)  “The mind is the strongest tool we have to help us secure the riches within the universe”    Stephen Richards

2) “When you do what you fear the most, then you can do anything”     Stephen Richards

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My favourite, the infamous Brazilian booty.