Understanding the realities of living abroad

I’m back in London for the final time this year.

My family doesn’t celebrate Christmas, so I much prefer to come back a little before – it’s both more economical and far less stressful that way.

There’s something about spending a few days at home that gives space to notice the things that can easily pass you by. Perhaps because I have more time and space whilst I’m here. It’s a refuge from the responsibilities: even the most banal ones like doing the washing up.

But for me, going home also means going back to my home country. I’m fortunate that for me it is a very easy ride – a two hour train from Brussels means that I can get from door to door in around 4 to 5 hours.

Yet despite the close proximity, the undeniable fact is that I now live in a different country completely. It has its own rules, customs, administration(!) and language. Coming back to the UK, there are all the familiar ways that things work for me – knowing how the banking system works, general way that government works here, and wider connection to people and culture. I’ve become so used to the switch back that I can jump off the train and go about my business in London like I’d never been gone.

When people talk about moving abroad, it’s often done in an idealised state. Perhaps to live the glamorous ‘continental’ lifestyle. Some speak of shifting to the hot weather in the south. Others fantasize of going off to live the American dream.

These aren’t necessarily untrue – I do feel happy and settled in Brussels, and I have no desire to leave any time soon. Yet the bit that is often missed out from this fantastical imagery are the things we leave behind.

I’ve been away from the UK for about 4 years now, and yet I would say I probably still have more connections to people in London than I do in Brussels. There’s also so many opportunities to do more things, connections to make here, and old networks to tap into.

I do feel a sense of loss by no longer living here. These things that I had built around me for many years are now harder to connect with. It’s a basic cost to being geographically distant. I say that as well as someone who can come back quite easily too – there are people who live on the other ends of the planet and only return every year or two.

With reflection, I realise that I also get caught up in the rose-tinted version of being at home. I think spending too much time staying with my parents would probably drive me crazy. Meanwhile, the tiring lifestyle of London, along with its exuberant prices, were the reason I wanted to move away in the first place.

The paradox of this place is that there are more people here than you could ever hope for to connect with. Yet finding genuine connection is tricky, both due to the culture and the additional logistical pressures. After all, who wants to travel 90 minutes to go see a friend at a round trip cost of £14? If you dare to go for a drink, that will be an additional £8 (per drink!).

This weekend has been a helpful reminder of the life choices I’ve made. It’s reaffirmed the reasons that I chose the things I did. There’s a general sense of euphoria I get by living in a different culture to the one I grow up in. Everything is a little bit more of an adventure.

But it also helps me understand why it often feels like there are additional barriers. The things that naturally come from staying close to home aren’t things I have access to as easily.

In the search for freedom, we cast away the comfortable safety net.

And it’s okay to miss that safety net

Insights for finding meaning in the modern world [new book]

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Next week, I’m releasing my second book, Become Your Best Self: Insights for finding meaning in the modern world. The book is a compilation of my writing here.

If you’ve been reading my articles over the last four years, I would love for you to consider buying my book – either for yourself or as a Christmas gift.

I have been freely giving my labour for thousands of hours. I am very unlikely to make substantial money in any case, but it will at least help support me as I continue on my path of learning. This way, I can ensure I can continue providing more value in the years to come.

I started writing publicly in August 2020. I wanted to share my thoughts in a way that others could get something from them too.

It’s no coincidence that I had just finished my coaching qualification. It suddenly occurred to me how much I had to say. I also realised that sharing these thoughts could help other people.

200 articles, 160,000 words and four years later, I’ve decided to put this my learning into a book.

It’s hard to describe, but now I feel like the words flow through me. When I restarted with avengeance at the beginning of 2022, I just found myself in a much better groove.

By the end of the year, I realised that I hadn’t missed a week. This trend continued into 2023. Then into 2024. Suddenly I had written two years’ worth of articles without missing a week. I’m soon to close in on doing this for a third year.

Yet this was not without its challenges. 2024 was a tricky year. It’s probably the least energetic I’ve been ever in my life. Yet partly through knowing that the routine helped me, and partly through a sheer will not to let my writing streak stop, I carried on writing.

The creation of this book has been a fun endeavour. If nothing else, it allows me to see how much I’ve created despite having next to no actual financial gain attached (this would be the first time I’m using the content in a way that has some sort of pricing on it).

But it’s also allowed me to see how much I’ve grown, and how much my depth of thought and living has really progressed. My writing has also come on leaps and bounds from the beginning too.

If you’re wondering, I never ‘pre-cook’ articles. Every article I’ve written has been actually written that week. Don’t get me wrong, I have no issues with those that batch create content, but for me, it wouldn’t feel natural.

The book is available on Amazon via this link here [available in US/UK/EU/Aus]. You can order it on Amazon Kindle now and Paperback from 9 December.

Getting comfortable with life’s uncontrollables

I’ve gained ten kilos in the last 2-3 months.

I find this fact totally confounding. It’s not clear what’s really changed. If anything, I’ve probably been more healthy in the last few months. I’m exercising more, and paying more attention to what I eat.

Logic would say that I ought to have lost weight rather than gain it. In fact, I think it would be a challenge for anyone to gain 10 kilos in such a short amount of time even if they tried.

So how do I wrap my head around the facts in front of me?

Weirdly, this has also not been a visible thing. I’ve looked at myself in the mirror, and it doesn’t look like I’ve gained weight. I even looked back at photos over the last few months. I don’t see a dramatic change – perhaps it’s hidden by the fact that I’ve shaved my face now so I look different anyway. I’ve even asked others, and they haven’t noticed a particular difference either.

The only logical explanation I can give is that I came off antidepressants around the time the weight started to rise. It’s not unheard of that weight can increase after stopping them. Though usually it’s the other way around – people gain weight whilst taking them, then drop it afterwards.

My hope is that this will therefore have a natural rebalancing effect. The weight will drop down with time on its own. In the meantime, I’ll look to live healthier (without overdoing it either).

But even then, this is only speculation. In reality, I don’t actually understand what’s happening.

From a philosophical perspective, this demonstrates a viewpoint I learnt recently. We often hear to accept what is not in our control, but then to change the things that are in our control.

This is helpful to bring back the idea that we need to change things that are beyond our reach. But the issue is that our control of any external event is flimsy at best.

In this way of thinking, my weight is in my ‘control’. And to some extent it is. If I eat a lot more, my weight will probably go up. But it only tells half the story. I heard John Patrick Morgan talking about this instead as a ‘dance’. For something to happen, we have to show up. But we need someone, or the world, to dance with us. We cannot unilaterally make things happen. In this sense, we are not in control. Because we do not get to single handedly make things happen.

Now for some, that can sound quite triggering. The idea that we cannot control things can be scary, and shift us into an idea of having no agency or purpose in life.

That’s not the point here. Instead, it’s highlighting that we are never fully in control. If things don’t turn out the way we wanted, we can recognise that there are more factors at play than simply our willingness or effort. This gives us the saving grace to be kind to ourselves when things don’t work.

Playing with this perspective, I can see that my actions are not the cause of the outcome. I can see that I’ve done the best I could in the circumstances given to me. And yet, the way it has played out hasn’t been what I wanted. And that’s okay. It’s not my fault. It could just be a result of hormonal shifts, or something else.

It also doesn’t negate the progress that I have made – I am definitely more muscular than I was before, and my understanding of nutrition and health is far better than it was three months ago.

I won’t pretend it’s not frustrating. Simple logic would suggest that putting effort into something will yield results. But the world has too many factors at play for simplistic views to work all the time. They might do for many cases, but not all. And apparently not mine.

But by seeing that this isn’t my ‘fault’ or a failure of me as a person, the less time I spend feeling bad or guilty. Instead, I can put myself in a place where I can keep progressing, rather than giving up.

Understanding life as a dance is a great way to accept things that don’t go our way. Sometimes we do everything perfectly as planned, but the result doesn’t go how we want.

That’s life.

Where there is discomfort there is growth

Yesterday I had the authentic German experience.

I woke up after an overnight coach in Hamburg. I had a few hours to kill before the train arrived.

Well, it turns out I had longer than that. My train was delayed. At the beginning it said by 30 minutes. No big deal I thought. Until it got delayed again, by 20 minutes. And again. Eventually it came 80 minutes later.

The experience was a testing one for my level of zen.

I had woken up from my coach with a mediocre level of sleep. I felt caught unawares of my surroundings. I’m usually someone who is very conscious about where I am, yet here I suddenly was in Germany, a country I somewhat have forgotten about over the last year.

I felt like I had hit a bit of a blindspot. I do travel a fair bit, yet recently this has mainly been through countries that I speak the language and know pretty well. I barely count going to London as travel since it’s just going back to my parent’s home.

I noticed that I had an extra level of vigilence to my surroundings. I remembered small points around road crossings being far stricter in Germany and that you had to wait for the green sign. I felt a lot more exposed as well with not understanding the language.

Waiting for the train was generally okay, but it was a test of patience. When I got on it though there were a lot of announcements in German which I didn’t really understand. I had brought a bigger luggage which didn’t actually fit properly in the overhead spaces. I put it in as best I can and I didn’t feel it was particularly secure.

At one point it actually fell down mid train ride and caused quite a ruckus. In the past I would probably have felt super embarrassed by this, though here I carried on quite industriously and moved it to a space at the front of the carriage. People around me settled down.

Later, one of the conductors told me I couldn’t leave my luggage where I put it. When I asked where I could put it, she replied in German basically just telling me to move it. I tried shifting it to a place which was less out of the way. Later I saw the conductor move my luggage across to the other side of the carriageway.

It’s a little bit embarrassing to admit, but I thought I might have been put into some sort of ‘naughty space’ because I had done something wrong. I had this anxiety building, to the point where I ended up checking where it was after. It turns out that she had just put it in a space on the other end. Perhaps it would have been nice for her to tell me, but at least I noticed her moving it anyway.

In the end the travel was fine. But my experience brought out quite a lot of interesting things.

I noticed that I generally want to be a good citizen/customer. I try rather a lot to do so. Whilst this sounds like a positive trait, I’m not really sure it always is. In a world where lots of people don’t seem to care so much about the rules, the level of extra energy (and often anxiety) I place at doing things right seems quite mismatched to the world.

This totally corresponds to a profile of an Autistic person – I like to follow rules. But in a world where the rules often don’t make sense and many people don’t follow them anyway, it’s not actually in my interest to care so much about them. It’s actually where a lot of Autistic people get stuck.

The other thing I noticed about myself was how important it is for me to understand my surroundings. My brain went into overdrive the moment I walked out of my coach and into the cold air of Hamburg. I become hypervigilant of people and the way things worked. I wanted to make sure I didn’t accidentally do something wrong. I noticed a lot of these prompts were based upon fear, rather than curiosity.

For a lot of people, the point of growth when travelling is to open our minds. For me, it’s probably the opposite. It’s to relax, and not get so caught up in mimicking the behaviour of the people around me.

I haven’t lost sight of the fact that my ability to blend into new spaces has served me extremely well through my life. It’s allowed me to navigate different cultures, languages and countries with relative ease. Yet it can also be a way in which I lose touch with myself as I reflect other people’s behaviour rather than my own.

The key point here is that the discomfort I experienced was life’s way of demonstrating that the way I operated which was creating additional stress.

So by examining the stress, I can see that a shift in my mindset can actually make such experiences actually a lot more enjoyable. For me, that means becoming more comfortable with the unknown, and getting back in the habit of experiencing it.

In fact, we can go even further and love this process. Life is giving me a gift with these new challenges, and it’s showing me ways in which I can grow further. It’s something I’ve been telling myself a lot recently – love the process.

Each of us have particular challenges, and that’s okay. The more we embrace them, the more we grow.

The way you do anything is the way you do everything

Photo by Jeremy Thomas on Unsplash

Who knows someone who is so focused on their own goals that they totally forget how they’re showing up in the other parts of their life?

For example, the friend who no longer turns up now that they’re in a relationship. Or the colleague who is so caught up in work that they fail to see that the deadline is not actually life-or-death.

It’s annoying right?

Well, newsflash. This also includes you.

The concept of consistency in action is well known. Yet even then, we fail to do what we said we were going to do. We want to lose weight, but we fail to take the actions needed to make it happen.

So often, the idea is to overcompensate. We decide to suddenly commit lots of time and energy to that one thing of weight loss to get the results. We go through the fad of health shakes, gym classes in the morning and skinny salads.

Aside from the fact that these behaviours are not likely to last, they also fall into the trap of over-absorption into a single goal.

When we write ambitious goals, we forget about the context of the rest of our lives. And so suddenly, we start to neglect other things. But these things are important – spouses, friends, family, health, wellbeing.

As a coach, I invite people towards a different way of looking at things. Let’s look at your life as a whole. Because that’s where the real clues will come up on what is holding you back.

The reason this is so powerful is because it demonstrates the unhealthy behaviour that is probably the reason we’re not attaining the goal in the first place. To carry on with the weight loss analogy, we might get so hyperfocussed on it that we forget to actually listen to our own body. The sudden shift of diet leads to dramatic mood swings and unhappiness. But rather than listening to ourselves, we power on, through ‘willpower’. Until we don’t. Because this is not a system for success. If we’re not listening to our gut instinct when it comes to health, well no wonder we’re still also in a relationship with someone who doesn’t treat us right.

Most fundamentally, I see people who are frustrated that they aren’t getting the things they want in life. Issues around finding a suitable partner, or wanting a better role or promotion. Yet what they also fail to see is how the way they are showing up in their life is having a large impact on that.

I know a lot of people who disappear off the face of the earth for a few months. Now, I’m empathetic to mental health issues, and I understand the importance of taking time if we need it.

Yet, there is a failure to see that this also has an impact on their relationships. Unsurprisingly these people feel lonely, when they return. This leads to a period of intense socialisation, often with new people. But to cultivate truly valuable relationships, there needs to be a better level of reciprocity, even during ‘difficult’ periods.

I’ve made a conscious decision to spend less time with certain people, because I know that the energy flow was based upon only when the other person was available. Honestly, I’m recognising that I can do much better.

In a workplace setting, the one thing I never understood was how acceptable it became to simply not reply to emails. It’s a systemic failure – so many people don’t know how to manage their email inbox (despite spending over 30 hours a week in front of them, and will do so for the next 30 years). And so they miss crucial information. These are letting key opportunities go by, and it comes from a lack of recognising that sorting out your email inbox ought to be much, much higher a priority if you want to be more effective in your job.

These same people also want promotions. Sure, I’m not naive to the realities of how promotions work, in that it is often very much not meritocratic. Yet, it doesn’t hurt to actually demonstrate that you’re good at your job. And most fundamentally, it’s worthwhile to get to a place where you can actually manage your newfound responsibility because you’ve actually worked on your blind spots.

I replied to an Instagram story asking for advice in Brussels: they were visiting the week after. I received a response today – 3 weeks afterwards about something different (probably because they forgot about the request). It’s an extreme example, but it’s what we do so often.

The most successful people are the ones that realise that life is beyond just getting good at a single goal. It’s about building a wider life, and building ourselves as well-rounded, good human beings with a proper support system and life perspectives.

So take this as an opportunity to really look at how you’re showing up in your life. If you’re struggling with your goals or with finding clarity, it’s probably because you’re neglecting what other areas which are crying out for your attention.

Maybe we don’t actually need a purpose

Photo by patrickltr on Unsplash

Photo by patrickltr on Unsplash

On Monday, I facilitated a session for a local Toastmasters. The aim of it was to be motivational, and help people strive for their purpose. Or at least so I thought.

My instinct was that people could do with a bit of a pep-talk. A reminder that there is something bigger out there for them. This wasn’t necessarily bad, but it wasn’t actually what most people wanted.

It turns out, a lot of people are actually exhausted in being told that they need to chase their dreams and have a big purpose.

It’s why I love being in contact with people. It shows us the real challenges they are facing, rather than what we assume that they think or need. So many policies and programmes go awry because they don’t take the time to see what people actually want.

When I opened the floor up, it became apparent that the idea of having a big purpose was actually making some people feel more stressed rather than motivating them. We’re so bombarded with the idea that we all have to go out and change the world that it’s actually more giving feelings of inadequacy rather than actually helping us.

It reminds me of something I read around goals. The only reason to have a goal is for it to be a fun challenge. When it’s fun, we have a good drive to achieve them. Through this, we improve ourselves and gain a greater level of mastery. But the moment a goal stops being a motivator, it no longer is actually useful. If a goal is actually making us feel miserable, we’re better of just not having the goal at all. That doesn’t mean giving up at the first sign of trouble, but it does mean that holding on to a goal for 10 years which is only making us more depressed about our current state really isn’t worth it.

Perhaps we should forego the idea that we need a purpose. When we played with this idea during the workshop, the goal then could be simply living a happy and fulfilled life. I really enjoyed this idea – we can simply put ourselves wanting to be happy first. After that, everything else is simply a bonus.

Yet the idea of not having a purpose can quickly lend ourselves to some big existential questioning. Is it really true?

Well, in some senses it doesn’t really matter. It’s what we choose to believe. If believing in a purpose is helping you right now in your life, then great. If it’s putting pressure on you, then, well it’s not something you have to believe.

The thing with working around our mindset is to use the tools at our disposal to give ourselves greater clarity with the world. It doesn’t really matter what internal mental gymnastics we use, as long as we create the peace or motivation that we’re looking for.

I personally see it that there is some sort of life path for all of us. We’re going to end up where we’re going to end up one way or another, but the way that we get there is up to us. We can choose to take pleasure in it and enjoy the fruits along the way, or we can try to deny it. We can have great success in the things that we want to do, or we can shy away because we are held back by fear.

So my invitation for you this week is to play with some of these bigger ideas around purpose.

You may not realise it, but these beliefs can actually be playing a massive part in the way you’re living right now.

Daring to dream of a crazy, beautiful life

Photo by Courtnie Tosana on Unsplash

The more I talk to people, the more I’m struck at how every one of us have beautiful dreams for our lives.

Unfortunately, many of us get resigned to the idea that such ideas are simply the tale of fiction. After all, we could never ever achieve something as preposterous as that.

But we were born to dream. It wasn’t a mistake. Nor was it a cruel torturous method to dangle a carrot in front of our faces that we were never destined to reach.

Instead, it’s life’s way of pushing us out of our comfort zone. To yearn for something bigger, better, more exciting, more fulfilling. Without the dream, we would stay sitting where we ar3e right now.

Dreams don’t need to be something crazy or radical (but it could be). What this is really about is you living a fulfilled life without regrets for never having tried. This means overcoming the safety in seeing our dreams as unachievable. If we simply label our dreams as impossible, we renege on dealing with our real fears.

I’ve become a Chappell Roan cult fan over the last few months (#callmehotnotpretty). On her Instagram, she posted a Facebook post in 2011 saying that she was determined to be on Saturday Night Live. She starred on it yesterday. Such things are possible.

I crossed back to the poem by Marianne Williamson this week, which encapsulates it so beautifully:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

― Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of “A Course in Miracles”

I find this poem so powerful because of how confronting it is. One of the biggest things holding people back is the idea that we could actually be something totally amazing. But the idea of expressing greatness would mean coming out of our comfort zone, and entering a new arena. If we’re truly great, we can no longer be the big fish in the small pond.

What I particularly love about this poem is that it also puts the imperative on us to share our gifts with the world. It’s bordering on a moral obligation – it explicitly states that playing small means we are not serving the world. And it also demonstrates that when we become our full authentic selves, it nourishes other people too.

One thing I did randomly this week was an Instagram story with a ‘send me any comments’ annonymised or not (sidenote, if you don’t follow me there, my account is https://www.instagram.com/tahmid.chowdhury/. I actually post a lot more there than LinkedIn)

Two comments I got were the following:

“I appreciate the way you are genuine. You don’t bull***t around”

“I really admire your way of being so free to express yourself. It’s inspiring :)”

It’s both heartwarming to hear how people see me, but it also demonstrates the effect I am having on their lives. This is also intentiaonl. I work on myself and share what I do with the explicit intent to inspire others. On my deathbed, I want to be sure that I’ve done more good in the world than harm.

My experience in being more forthright with who I am is that it tends to shock people at first. When I want to change, it can elicit surprise, and sometimes a negative reaction. But when I hold firm that this is who I am, it actually elicits a shift and often a newfound respect.

Weirdly, relationships often improve rather than get worse the more that I am bold with who I am. Some disappear, but that’s okay too. It gives space for people with a higher energetic resonance that lift me up rather than pull me down.

So my simple message to you this week is this:

Dare to dream. Maybe, just maybe, your incredible, beautiful, crazy life is waiting for you.

Getting clear on what you really want

Photo by Gary Walker-Jones on Unsplash

I don’t doubt you do a lot of different things in your life. But have you ever stopped to ask why you’re doing them?

Whilst it may sound obvious, if we’re not clear about what we want, the chances of us getting it are nigh on impossible. We can easily end up meandering through life. We get ourselves into activities, relationships and jobs without really knowing why we ended up there.

But to have a truly meaningful life, it’s so vital to get really intentional about what the ‘why’.

For me, I had a reexamination of a few different areas of my life. Most notably, I had an appointment with a personal trainer at my gym for the first time. Health is an area that has really gone up in the priority list for me. I’m about as physically active as I’ve ever been, and I feel healthy too. Yet I also have actually gained a bit of weight rather than losing it.

Whilst some of this is weight gain is muscle, evidently there’s some level of misalignment. Talking to a personal trainer made this fact obvious, and so now I’m shifting to actually addressing my nutrition in a much more meaningful way.

My biggest challenge is satiety. I generally eat clean and at home these days. Yet dealing with hunger is very difficult. I can eat healthy, but the issue for me has been still feeling hungry. So the switch up now is really focusing on increasing protein in my diet.

The magic touch is making it fit into my life and my peculiarities. I’m happy to eat very similar food regularly, so I’ve ended up stocking up on tin lentils and beans rather than carb heavy food of oven potatoes. The key here is that I know I can make it easily without much thought, but with some flexibility for creativity. The two are key for me. Early signs are positive, though I think I need to add more texture – I crave crunchy foods. Perhaps I can add some peanuts or croutons on top.

This theme also came out with my coaching clients. When we are so caught up in our world, everything feels so complex. There are so many different things to consider amidst the external pressures and opinions around us. When I first ask people what they want, the answer is often just a solution to the problem in front of them. But that’s not what they want. Well, not really.

Deep down, our desires can be actually very clear. Usually, these things are spoken from the heart, rather than the mind. The sign of this is that they’re usually short, simple statements, rather than complex ones.

For example, it’s the difference in me saying:

“I think I should lose some weight because I am getting older and my BMI is high, so the doctor advised me to do it so I probably should. It will also stop people commenting on my weight”

to:

“I want to lose weight.

Why? I want to be able to do more acrobatic moves in pole dance and fit into a wider range of clothes.”.

It’s very clear, and simple, and the difference is even more stark when saying it out loud. The next step after this is putting in place the ‘how’. But we can only put in place the ‘how’ when we’re clear with the ‘why’.

The magic to making great change in our lives is getting clear around our desires. It cuts through so much of the noise in our lives, as well as our own internal b******t.

If this is something you’re looking at help for, drop me a message.

Navigating the challenges of being different

Photo by Steffen Junginger on Unsplash

I’ve known for a long time that I’m different.

Growing up in the UK from a Bangladeshi background, I was one of the few non-white faces within school.

But it was only until I got to my first office job that I first realised that my differences would provoke additional challenges. Before that, I naively thought that the workplace was a space that was genuinely open, and driven towards the most effective way of working.

With my recent autism diagnosis, I feel like I’m having this experience all over again. With this new lens, I’m seeing all the ways that I’ve been navigating additional barriers, often without even realising they existed.

On Tuesday, I went to a ‘begin to workout’ gym class. The description stated it was a light class to help people begin strength training workouts. But in practice, my personal trainer decided to do what was essentially a High Intensity Internal Training style class. There was little explanation, instead it was about doing several different movements in quick time to maximise an ‘efficient’ workout.

I was p***ed off. The trainer kept trying to ‘motivate’ me by telling me to have less breaks and just to try harder. At one point I actually explained to him that the reason I came to this class was just to get a basic introduction to strength exercises and see how I can add them into my practice. It was not push my body to its limit. He then explained to me that this was not possible, as there were too many people (there were four of us, in a class with a max total of 6).

I did the class, only to find myself barely being able to walk the next day. I had to subsequently cancel a dance class that I really wanted to do because it would have been a terrible idea.

The really annoying thing about this was that I knew this was the case as it was happening. A lesser, younger version of me wouldn’t have dared question a personal trainer. But now I knew that some of the exercises were pushing me beyond a reasonable limit.

My autism diagnosis has helped me make sense of episodes like these.

For starters, when I follow instructions, I take them literally. My tendency is to carry on, even if I’m overexerting myself. Because I thought that this was what everyone was experiencing, I would push through anyway. Unsurprisingly, I would injure myself a lot.

I also find the instructions in classes so contradictory. On the one hand, I had this personal trainer telling me that ‘everyone goes at their own rhythm’, but then we went to the next exercise which explicitly was around ‘no breaks beyond 15 seconds between exercises’. These two facts are very contradictory.

My modus operandi is to follow through on instructions. This means I will try very hard to do what I’m told, to a fault. the actual advice I’ve needed is not to go harder, but actually to go slower. Unfortunately, this sort of advice doesn’t seem to exist in Personal Trainer training 101. The answer to everything seems to be about pushing people harder. This has meant I’ve experienced a cycle of pushing myself so hard I get injured. And when I return, I’m even further away from my fitness goals than I was in the first place. I then blame myself for not being able to follow through with an exercise regime. At no point did anyone tell me that these are meant to be moderate workouts where you aren’t meant to always feel terrible after them.

I’ve felt betrayed by the experts that have guided me in many situations. Rather than properly assessing what I need, I’ve been instead told to follow a cookie-cutter solution that was not meant for me.

When it doesn’t work, I internalised the idea that it was my fault because I was too lazy. Even now, when I push back around poor advice that I know won’t work for me, I end up getting judged for this. Either I’m making excuses for being lazy, or I’m too arrogant to take people’s advice.

For better or for worse, I’m learning to accept that people will judge me for being different. It won’t necessarily be directly because of things such as my skin colour. Instead it will be the fact that my needs and truths are very different. For example, I will know in my heart that someone’s well meaning advice would be terrible for me. Expressing this however, will simply mean that the narrative of the ungrateful, aggressive minority gets further forged.

There is no silver bullet that will magically dismantle inequalities. But recognising these exist are an important step. For me, the autism diagnosis set this out clearly.

For those of us who are different, being clear in who we are and what we believe becomes even more paramount. Following the crowd will probably not work for us, so we need to be able to actively stand for our particular needs.

It won’t be like a Hollywood movie. Backlash happens, friends are lost.

But if we want the best life for ourselves, we don’t have any other choice. We must learn to take a stand for what we really need.

Moving on from the mediocrity of our living

Photo by Alex Plesovskich on Unsplash

Try having some fruit, that will give you some good vitamins’.

During my burnout period, I went basically into total hibernation mode. My eating was repetitive, easy to make food.

Fruit slowly disappeared from my meals, whilst vegetables also were less visible in my plate. It’s essentially been whatever I can put in the oven that requires minimal effort.

But in this one moment of eating an apple, my body suddenly felt a surge of energy. Rather than relying on a sugar boost from a fizzy drink or falling back on an energy drink, I was getting genuine, healthy nutrition.

It didn’t take long for my body to start craving fruit again. And so, without necessarily trying too hard, I’ve been buying more fruit.

None of this is exactly mind blowing. We all know eating fruit is generally good for us. Yet when I was stuck in a rut of mediocrity, I lost sight of what is genuinely nourishing.

The striking thing about mediocre living is that how easy we can become comfortable with it. Yet once we get a taste for a higher form of living, returning back to mediocrity is no longer be appealing. Suddenly my desire for a more rounded diet is returning, and in the meantime so is my energy and a more rounded lifestyle.

I’m not ‘trying’ to eat healthier. I’m just naturally being pulled towards doing it. I don’t need a bucket list of accountability statements, affirmations or manifestations. I’m in sync with living better, so I just do it. It’s like getting a whole package of benefits without needing to even try.

Understanding and self-compassion is important. My mediocre living was necessary for that moment – it was a period where I was toughing it out. By accepting this, and treating myself with kindness and grace, I don’t feel guilty for living this way.

Guilt-tripping ourselves into change is very rarely successful. It takes far more effort, is far less fun, and can have adverse negative effects. Whenever I guilt myself, It also only serves to add to my unhappiness. The unhappiness can then undermine my original intent. If I’m feeling so low that I want quick comfort food, well I’m going to find it hard to eat healthy the next time. Worse, it’ll just fuel a next cycle of guilt.

As I start socialising with people again, I’m seeing far more instances of people living in a mediocre way. Rushing around, often being stressed, or just being unable to really get a grip of their lives. The issue is never that people don’t have hopes and dreams, it’s that the hopes and dreams are buried under a pile of life admin and stress.

But change is possible, and often easier than you think. Often, the change is not actually about the subject itself. Instead, it’s about how we view and treat ourselves. Shifting our internal feelings does wonders for dealing with the practical elements of our lives.

For example, today I woke up early, and ended up spending an hour or so tidying my room. It’s something I haven’t really done in months. I’ve been kind to myself to allow my room to be messy, instead foccussing on my basic needs of energy and sustenance. But as I have became more content with life, my desire for better also has reawakened.

My want for a clean room drove me to tidy it up. I can already feel the benefits that this gives me. What was nice is that this wasn’t something I had to force myself to do either.

My room is just an analogy for a wider point (which I actually made in an article a year ago). When we create the right conditions for ourselves, change can be remarkably easy. We end up making changes within weeks that we thought would take us years.

If you want better in life, it’s possible. If it’s something you’d like to pursue, drop me a message and I can see if there’s anything I can do to help.