Since my last blog on the 4th January a lot has gone on, I was getting very down at work, I felt I was spending more and more time covering myself than doing my job, things had to give and I’ve since resigned. I felt disappointed for the first day then realised my mood was improving, that weight on my shoulders was suddenly lifted! I even got to spend some quality time with my little monkey
For the first few days I was trying to decide if I wanted to go back driving or be office based again, I’m think driving would be a lot less stressful so that may be the route to take! Recently I have got to spend time with our granddaughter, little things like that are priceless and makes you think ‘is the stress worth it?’ I have got to do a few jobs around the house and got back into my running 🏃♀️
I started listening to more of my Feel Good, Live More podcast from Dr Rangan Chatterjee which was great, listening to positive people talking passionately about what they believe, if you’ve never listened to any of these podcasts then make sure you download a few and give it a go. I also make sure I have 10 minutes every day meditating using the Calm app, I’m sure there’s others that are as good but one of the FGLM podcasts was by the founder of Calm (another great listen) so that’s why I chose that one. It’s surprisingly effective when you let your brain rest for a few minutes each day. Then there’s the running …
Just after the Manchester bombing I signed up for my first virtual race with Virtual Runner UK, I was a bit wary as you can imagine, is it legit, are the medals any good? I have since done quite a few of them and got a good collection of medals now. Let me explain how it works, if you enjoy running and raising money then this is perfect, you sign up for a race, they vary from no minimum distance, 5km, 10km and as much as you can do in a month, once completed (at your own pace) you upload your proof, a percentage of the fee goes to a specific charity and a very good quality medal gets delivered to your door. I digress, how has this helped my mental health you may ask? Running is supposed to be one of the better things you can do for your mental health, there has been a few podcasts on it! I can only explain it as you seem to be in your own world for a while, your mind is on the breathing, the aches in your legs, the distance covered, are you improving with each run, you get the idea. The trouble with depression is that you get into a cycle of ‘I can’t be arsed’ and the longer you go without running the harder it becomes. As I mentioned before, I did always enjoy it and wanted to get back into it, my mood was improving, I was happier and then the perfect ‘race’ comes up, the medal/race is called running is my happy pace, and the charity is Mental Health UK, the challenge is to run (or walk) as many km as you can in the month (at least 10km) what more motivation do you need? So now I’m back into it, enjoying it again and signed up for a couple more already! Thank you to all at vitualrunneruk.com
The long and short of this blog is that I’m definitely improving, looking forward to each day, enjoying my meditation and the podcasts and generally enjoying life again. I’ll even post my total distance in the next blog.
Steve Braim 