Welcome to Mindset, Mood and Movement. A systemic approach to human behaviour, performance and wellbeing.

Hello and welcome. Today I'm talking about what happens when your health is taken away from you for various reasons and perhaps different ways. I want to share a story which is personal to me and it might vibe with you. Now, I invite you to picture this. I've got to go back like a couple of months. It's nice and simple. Two months before this event, I am in good shape. I'm really training well, so I'm in the gym. I'm probably doing like between three to five days a week. I've got lots of stuff going on. Got some cardio works and swimming. And strength is going up. Fitness is going up. I love it. You know, and I'm not a spring chicken as I've said to many of you fellow listeners before. I'm 52. So it's an utter privilege to be able to move and play perhaps like I did when I was young. And the thing about fitness, when you go to the gym and you're always trying to get, better, you're going to lift some more weight. You might move faster and that feeling is, it's magic. Now, of course, it's hard work, of course, but the feeling is magic and that's why I do it. So it'd be going really, really well. And I'm trained all the time. And it was the start of the year. Now, I had this sneaking dark cloud in the mind that, something might go wrong. And the something that might go wrong is an autoimmune condition, which I've had for 40 years. So I've lived with this, condition. it's a part of me. It's a part of my fabric. I'm going to tell you little bit more about that in a moment. But so there I am going along thinking, this winter I might be all right. You know, I think I might be a get away with this. So the mindset in health and fitness area as with business is of course, it's growth, it's things are getting better. We are improving and that's all great. And what no one tells you on Instagram or posts in their lovely feed is when it all goes to hell. And that's exactly what happened about after this six week window. My super hard training was going. It was all feeling great. everything was good. And the autoimmune condition snuck back in. Now, I have this thing called ulcerative colitis, which essentially means my colon, digestive tract will ulcerate. And if you could imagine, I won't get too much into the, the gruesome, but if you imagine, if you like, you cut your skin on the outside and you just kept rubbing it, of course, that internal system's getting aggravated and it can get worse and worse. What happens. Sometimes is it's okay, and I've got a few meds that can help me steady it. I've got certain practices I do that keep it all at a steady, calm place. However, I had what is called a big flare up. and a crash. And of course, to look at me from the outside, it's yeah, this guy's pretty fit, he's active, good for him, lucky him. But actually what people don't see is when I'm not at the gym nearly two weeks, when I'm on the floor, it's pain, my mind has gone into a very dark place. I feel very bad about myself. and of course, as a man, there's layers of stuff that come up around weakness, feeling shameful, feeling like all the work I've put in is gone away. anyone's got that feeling, particularly my fellow male, listeners, you'll know it when you just feel that bad. And of course this is not something to put on Instagram. that's not what we do. And even if you do, people aren't going to be interested. So I want to share on this podcast because this is more of a personal space where if you're listening, you care. And if you're listening, you might have something which you're wanting help on as well. So there I was in this crash, horrible place, weak, sore, struggling, you know, I'm still running a business and that's, already challenging. And this isn't as bad as it can get. This is just an episode and I've had a lot worse. The moral of this is to really understand that you can't beat nature. You can't beat everything. There's no such thing as a bulletproof mind. It's a silly soundbite. I know we like to say it on social and that, but everyone is breakable. Things can go wrong. And what I've learned is that rather than hoping things don't go wrong, rather than hoping that your training schedule doesn't fall apart, that your business is not taking a low point because of various circumstances, It's to understand, to really understand that things work in sort of spirals and flows. So, if you have your health taken away from you, you've been ill, injured, you've got a condition like me, something like that, then it's about understanding, well, what do we do in that chapter? And my experience of many years of being with this condition, and by the way, resistance doesn't work, it's just crazy, it makes it worse. So my understanding is utter acceptance. It doesn't mean I don't want him. It doesn't mean I like him, but acceptance. It's really interesting. This, in a way it's radical acceptance. It's yeah, I'm in pain. I'm suffering. I can't do what I want to do right now. And it hurts. But there's something really beautiful and powerful about radical acceptance because, of course, that reduces stress. It stops the resistance. And as I've said many times, my dear listener, resistance is suffering. And of course, then you get into a place of, okay, well, what do we need to do with this? So my, work was acceptance, first and foremost. lots of meditation. The right foods. I can barely eat certain foods at all. So pretty much eating plain rice for a week is all I can handle. And just staying as calm as can be and realizing that, you know, this will pass. I've been here before many times and it will pass. And then coming back out of that, that hole, clawing your way back up. Often, imagine it like you're walking along, may picture this, you're walking along in a forest and there's trees and it's all lovely and the sun's cascading through and as you're walking along, you think, Oh, life is good and you don't see big hole that's covered with some leaves and bracken and they slide down and you crash and you hurt yourself. That's what it's like. And of course, if you're at the bottom of a deep hole, you've got to claw yourself up and it's muddy and it's nasty and you're clawing on those walls and you can see the light. ahead of you. It's not with you, but it's ahead of you. You've got to get your hands dirty and you've got to find your way out of that hole. But when you do, then you realize that you can get back on your pathway again. So as our analogy of walking through, or metaphor perhaps, of walking through the woods, you're back on that path, but not ever. under the misapprehension that this will magically never happen again. And I think that's my lesson I wanted to share with you is that these things happen, whether it's an accident, an illness, a condition, something is going to go wrong at some point. If there's no space for it, you're going to be in trouble. If you make space for it, so it's not sitting around in a well of anxiety and fear, that's just pain that has not yet come, as they used to say in the Yoga Sutras. But it's realizing that if something happens, you need to find a way. And the biggest way I've found is self compassion. which has been hard for me because that's not always come easy to me. But self compassion, radical acceptance, and then really listen to what your body needs. And and this is a thing to cycle it back to the sort of the fitness element, which I absolutely love, is that when you truly listen to your body, not in some kind of esoterical way, but in literally what are the sensory feedback systems? What am I getting? What's my intuitive sense? What is in the what we'd often call the subconscious mind of the body. There is information, and it might be like, I need to sleep right now, or I need a hot water bottle, or I need to eat gentle food, whatever it is. The same goes when you're in the gym, running, triathlons, whatever it is you do, that you are listening to the body, even though you might be pushing and pushing those edges. You're never abusing it, you're always working with it. And that's what I've found is one way out of the dark hell that I have to go through from time to time when my health crashes and it feels like everything's taken away from me. I'm like the metaphorical Samson with hair, which is quite funny by the way because I don't have any hair. But Samson had his hair cut off, lost all his strength and that's exactly what I feel like. But what's interesting is that strength comes back. If we have obviously the right ways and systems and hopefully people around us to, to bring that back. So my dear listener, a tale of don't buy into the hype. We all suffer. We all struggle. We can all go down sometimes. But the most important thing is what do you do when you're down on the ground? How do you find self compassion, acceptance and the right processes to help you, to get you through? Because nothing lasts forever. And a great old master used to say that to me. It's remember how dark it ever gets. Nothing lasts forever. And it's such an important point, particularly if we're struggling. I'm delighted to say that I'm feeling a whole lot better in this last few days. Hence the reason for this episode today to share a little brightness. The story has come out. I'm walking down that metaphorical pathway in my forest. Again, the light is glimmering and all is good for now. dear listener, if you are struggling with a health issue, or an injury or something like that, I hope you can take solace in this. If you have an autoimmune condition, particularly the one I have, you're very welcome to reach out to me. I get my thoughts. I work with this a lot in the psychological, emotional space, and I've learned a lot of my, on my own journey. So if you'd like to know more, reach out on, whichever platform or social you have seen this or got to this, podcast on, and until the next time, take care.

Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed the episode, please subscribe. And if a friend would benefit from hearing this, do send it on to them as well. If you would like to get in touch yourself, then you can go to my website. Which is Sal Jeffries dot com, spelt S A L J E F F E R I E S. Sal Jeffries dot com. Hit the get in touch link and there you can send me a direct message. If you'd like to go one step further and learn whether coaching can help you overcome a challenge or a block in your life, then do reach out and I offer a call where we can discuss how this may be able to help you. Until the next time, take care.