2021 & Beyond - Good Health

Good Health is my first priority for 2021 and beyond.

I will start with physical health. Over the last several years, I understood that certain aspects of health were not under my control. 2021 made me realize that fully. So, I just told myself that “ to become and staying happy”, I just need to set aside the things that were not under my control. After this became a lifestyle mantra, other things started to follow easily.

My plan for good physical health started with good eating, sleeping and physical activity. 

Good diet was not much of a problem, given that I could eat or should not eat was governed by my doctor. Therefore the focus turned on to eating on time or rather not eating at untimely hours. Starting November, I slowly started to get this into some bit of control. I started following some of the things that I was told earlier by either my Pranic healer or by a nutritionist. My Pranic healer used to say that its very bad to drink coffee or tea first thing in the morning, as both these (especially coffee) are highly acidic. He advised me to drink a glass of warm or chilled milk first thing in the morning and drink my coffee after 45-60 minutes. I started this on a daily basis. Also, due to realignment of my medications, was forced to have breakfast around 8 am. While I have not seen much of a benefit in the short time, I think this will definitely lead to an improvement over a period of time.  

The next focus was on physical activity. I used to run a fair bit before May (including during lockdown, when I used to run inside my house or my apartment complex), but then a 2-month flare up of my ulcerative colitis put a stop to this. So had to restart my running. After about month being locked up due to my corona illness, when i first started to run, I could not do my usual distance or pace. I attributed this to a combination of my lack of activities for over 3 months and post COVID issues. Therefore, I started walking again. At the same time, I started some of the yoga stretches I used to do a few years ago to improve my flexibility as well as strengthen my lower back. This became a routine for about 4-5 weeks. Then out of the blue, Netflix said you can watch stuff for free for a weekend. I downloaded so much stuff that I am still watching for 3 weeks, that my walking / yoga sessions have almost literally stopped. The last 2 weeks made me realize that getting into discipline is very hard. You cannot have distractions. So, starting the whole routine again this week. The plan now is to start regular morning and evening walks, morning yoga and may be weekend cycling. Let’s see how this goes. I will update this routine again at the end of January.

The third leg of my 3-legged stool called good physical health is good sleep. A lot of us, including myself in my earlier days give the least importance to sleep - both the duration and the quality. While I used to get  my quota of sleep, I always felt that I could do better on the quality of sleep. My doctor kept telling me for last 5 years to sleep early and wake up early. We all learnt in this in primary school - “Early bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise”. Somehow, our later education made us “wise enough” to both forget this proverb and discard it as unnecessary. Add to this our technology advancement. A couple of decades ago, not many in India new about baseball, basketball or American football. In the last twenty years, with friends and relatives in the US, and technology bringing these sports to our living rooms (and to our handheld devices, in the recent past months), our sleep patterns has been disturbed by “live sports”. I used to watch sports, movies etc sometimes beyond midnight. To correct this, I told myself that I will get to bed early. But because I was used to sleeping late, just by getting to bed early did not make me sleep early. I turned the way around - I started getting up by 5 am. After a few days, my body became tired and I had to sleep by 9:30 pm. This became a routine, and for last 4 weeks or so, i am sticking to a 9:30 pm bed time and 5 am wake up alarm. While I have not felt any benefits of this now, this helped me in my next step to happiness - good mental health. More on that tomorrow.

 

2021 and Beyond ...

As I said yesterday, the last 6 weeks has made me think of what next, including coming up with a plan for 2021 and more importantly, for the rest of my life..

I always like to put pen to paper when i think. As I started writing, the first thing i wrote was what i wanted in life / out of life - the answer was a single, simple word, “happiness”. This seemed to simplistic and kind of unrealistic. The next question that came up was “what is happiness”. This answer somehow was too difficult and I am yet to get it. I therefore focused my thoughts on “what i need to do to achieve happiness”. This question, seemed a lot more easier one to answer, but i found that there was no single or simple answer. A few more days, hacking my brain, a bit of reading some of our scriptures, a book about an elite athlete and a coupe of courses gave me some pointers.

This is what I found. To be happy, I need to

1. Be in good health - physically and mentally
2. Look back in the past, think of good times and try to repeat or do similar activities
3. Be useful, or helpful to everyone who asked for my help.

After some more time of thinking, I felt everything that I could think of, could be put into one of these three things.

Before I elaborate on the above, I will take a step back and explain my philosophy of life. For more than 15 years, I have always felt that everything in our life can be put into 2 buckets: Needs and Wants. The more we confine ourselves to our needs and minimize our wants, we can lead a happy and a fulfilling life. Now, with this is the background, I started to detail out a plan for 2021 and rest of my life.

1. Be in good health:

For over 15 years, i have suffered severe back pain on and off due to disc degeneration. I have visited multiple doctors, gone through a whole lot of treatment and therapy, starting from physiotherapy sessions to Ayurvedic treatments to yoga. At a point 12 years ago, a doctor said I have to wear an orthopedic belt to support my back for the rest of my life and have to be extremely careful even when doing small things like getting up and down a footpath on the road. It took me several years to get over that (after I changed the doctor and the mode of treatment), when one fine day in 2015 I ran my first 10 km race.

Over the last 5 years, my ulcerative colitis, an autoimmune disorder (which is supposed to be part of my life) has put in a lot of restrictions on what i can do and cannot. These have taught me the importance of good physical health. I realized that if I need to have happiness, I should be healthy. While somethings cannot be changed, others are under our control. This line of thinking made me realize this most important truth of my life: “try to control the controllables, and leave to God the uncontrollables”. This was also the first step to my next part of the plan - good mental health. A strong mind leads to a strong body. We have all read this, or been told or taught this. But more often than not, we neglect this. I now decided to put a plan for building my mental health as well.

2. Repeat past good things

As I progressed further, I thought of what made me happy in the past. I identified several things that made me happy including temple visits, travel, books, unplanned trips etc. So, the key was to repeat these things in the future to get happiness. As they say, invest in experiences instead of things, because experiences makes us happy over a longer period than things. 

Having identified the areas, I started my plan. More importantly, I decided i would do things that would change my life one step at a time. Wait until tomorrow to read my plan and the runway, and if the early successes and failures.

2020 - The Googly Year

I recently read a tweet - “Hindsight is 2020 was a probably said by a time traveler from the future”. 😁 How true. No one saw such a year coming, including all the astrologers who came on TV on 1st Jan 2020 and predicted a wonderful 2020.

The year had turned the lives of a lot of people beyond recognition - people lost their lives, lost their loved ones, lost jobs, had to walk hundreds of kilometers without food and water back to their homes and many more. These were, as usual, the people who were less fortunate.

On the personal front, I was better off, with just some minor inconveniences. I belong to the more fortunate group of people, having never bothered about a roof over my head, or walls to protect me from natures vagaries, always comfortable to know that my next hot meal will be served when due and nicely clothed. So, while this year, did not affect me much, I had my own ups and downs. Some very positive happenings, time periods to pretty bad periods. 

The first two months, like for most of us, were very good. I was into my fitness routine, clocking 20 km of running every week, reading a fair bit, and in general trying to enjoy lie. A trip to Puri in February was a highlight for this year. I had booked a trip about year ago, and had to cancel it then. May be, Lord Jaganath did not want me to come and see Him then. While this time, I was blessed to spend 5 days in Puri, with close to 10 hours every day inside the temple complex, either at the Darshan, listening to the Bhajans or watching the flag changing ceremony. A few more days at Bhubaneswar and Konark rounded a beautiful trip. This trip made me understand myself a bit more. One, I could travel without knowing the local language or Hindi. Two, I could survive on rice and curd and idly for 10 days and still enjoy my travel. It also threw a couple of surprises - the local bus travel without understanding anything but just buying a ticket to the destination, trying hard to get curd rice which did not contain onion, chillies or mustard seasoning.

Come March, while people were yet to start washing their hands and maintaining social distance, I had a trailer about 10 days before lock down. I contracted the famed “madras eye” or conjunctivitis of the eye, and for a week was washing my hands at least 20 times, and staying away from family. When the lock down was announced and the washing and distancing was mandated, i felt it was more an extension of my previous 10 days. While the early days of lockdown didn’t affect me much, unfortunately, my ulcerative colitis found a good time for flare up. Between mid-may and end-June, things were pretty horrible - my health was not so good, unfortunately none of my doctors were available, therefore no medicinal assistance to treat me. I was just running blind. This was the time, my belief in “karma” strengthened and I just took things one day at a time. Post July, with weekly consultations health improved and by end July I was almost my usual self, the only downside was losing a few kilos of weight.

The year had a couple of more health scares, including testing positive for corona, and forced into isolation for 17 days, plus more medication. As they say, “this too shall pass”, was true. The isolation was a blessing in disguise. I saw many movies that were in pipeline. It also gave me time to think on what next. As the year progressed, a voluntary decision to get off network - no facebook, 2 hours of internet time, no phone calls and many more restrictions helped me a lot. I thought a lot on the past, present and future. Introspection and Reflection makes a person to improve self. I used this period to plan for future as well as to write a a fair number of personal “thank you” notes to people who made an impact on my life. 

Finally, as the new year begins, what did I learn from 2020:

1. Believe in “this too shall pass”, whenever you face difficult situations
2. Be grateful for all the good things that you have in life
3. Once in a while, try to get out of “comfort zone”, as someone sad ‘ Life begins at the end of your comfort zone’
4. Help others, especially people who are less fortunate than you.

The last 6 week also helped me to prepare a plan for myself. More on that later.

Wishing all readers a happy, prosperous, safe and healthy new year.