Proactively Combatting Hopelessness
Lockdown has a way of making us feel hopeless. In this episode of the Reality Check Podcast, I discuss how to combat lockdown fatigue and build mental toughness. I have started the 75HARD challenge. For 75 days I will be: - Exercising 1.5 hrs - No sugar, fast food, or alcohol - Drinking 3l + water - Reading 10+ pages non-fiction - Cold showers - Daily progress pics These steps will give my days a level of meaning and purpose, beyond just survival.
Transcript
Welcome to the Reality Check Podcast.
I'm Zachary Phillips.
So,
As of recording,
My state,
Victoria of Australia,
Is in another lockdown.
We've been in it for quite a while and it's quite extensive.
There's a curfew so we can't leave the home past nine o'clock.
We can't travel more than five kilometres and a lot of us can't work.
We – unless you know,
You're an essential worker,
Which thankfully I am – we can't socialise until very recently.
Kids weren't allowed in the playground and even so,
They can only have one parent with them.
It's a mess.
A lot of people are struggling.
It's a mental health crisis,
To be honest.
There's a lot of talk of people turning to drugs and alcohol,
Self-harming,
And taking their own life.
It makes sense.
You take away someone's ability to earn money,
To socialise,
To do their normal routines and structures and all that sort of stuff,
And of course they're going to suffer.
Considering how significant the mental health crisis is normally,
In normal times,
It makes sense that if you apply extra pressures to that,
It will cause an uptick in issues.
I know I am personally struggling.
I usually train Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and that's almost every day and that's a massive social outlet for me.
I have a lot of social anxiety.
I have a lot of issues personally and I struggle with socialising.
I struggle with friends.
It's something that I'm working on,
But doing a sports club is a great way to socialise without the stress of like we're catching up to do something social or the phone calls and all that sort of stuff because that sort of stuff really gets to me.
It's really taken away a lot of my ability to connect.
It's hard.
It sort of has this way of sort of stripping meaning from life because you get yourself built up.
I do this.
This is me.
You identify with your work.
You're socialising your hobbies and it's taken away.
Now,
This isn't to comment on the political situation,
The rollout of the vaccines,
The efficacy of the lockdown as a response to COVID.
That's not really relevant and the reason it isn't relevant to this discussion is I have zero ability to impact that.
It's more that I'm in this situation and my state is in this situation.
As an individual,
What can we do about it?
What can I do about it?
I found that sort of having as much open and honest communication with my partner and my kids has been good.
Dedicating self-care,
Personal time has been good and sort of trying to push back.
It's really the pushback that I wanted to make the crux of this podcast today.
For the last 20 days,
Today is the 20th day.
For the last 20 days,
I've been doing 75 Hard,
The 75 Hard Challenge.
You've probably heard of it.
Basically,
It's a pledge,
A challenge,
A system,
I don't know,
That for 75 days straight,
You'll do the following.
The equivalent of one and a half hours of exercise,
No sugar and no fast foods,
Drink three litres or more of water,
Read 10 pages of a non-fiction book and take daily progress pictures.
I've added to that cold chalice.
Now,
That sounds extreme and it is.
I told my brother about it and he's like,
Oh,
Who would have thought,
Zach doing something extreme as a form of self-care slash self-improvement.
He's right,
It is extreme.
The reason I'm doing it is that I noticed within myself,
Oh,
Sorry,
And no alcohol.
I missed that bit,
But yeah,
No alcohol as well.
The reason I'm doing this is because I find an internal push to just fall into malaise,
Fall to those pressures.
It is hard.
It's not easy to just go through this lockdown without anything.
My response to it when I heard we're going back into lockdown again was to decide,
It's like,
Okay,
This is getting extreme.
We're not going to be out until who knows when and I have zero control over that,
But what do I have control over?
I have control over what I eat,
What I do and how I fuel my mind and my body.
The daily exercise thing is relatively easy for me.
I'm already exercising quite a lot because it's just great for my mental health,
But I wasn't drinking enough water.
I was turning to sugar and fast foods and alcohol a bit,
Particularly over the lockdown.
I could see the future that I was drinking almost every night.
Just one,
Two,
But then I would get a bit more and creep in.
I found that I wasn't reading non-fiction.
That's okay.
It's not really the biggest issue,
But this does force me to do that.
It's like that self-improvement bent,
Which is good.
The daily progress pictures,
I've talked about in the past,
But I have issues with my body.
Due to a history of trauma and other things,
I've had issues with eating and self-harm and body connection and even gender issues in a way.
There have been times where I haven't felt like myself.
I haven't felt like my body belongs to me or that it suits who I should be.
There have been times where I felt that I've associated more with the feminine.
Those times are fleeting.
It's not an ongoing thing in the sense that it doesn't last for a long time,
But those feelings keep reoccurring.
I also have issues with the way my body looks when I'm feeling masculine.
I would like to be more trim,
More strong.
Basically,
It's just a general dissatisfaction with my body.
Not always,
But it's there.
The daily progress pics is a way to push back on that.
The cold showers is,
For me,
It's challenging.
It's hard.
It's a way of.
.
.
I don't know,
There's supposedly a lot of benefits.
You have your normal shower more,
And then at the end,
You blast yourself with a cold shower until you can handle it,
In the sense that when you first start,
It's like,
Oh,
It's so much.
Then over time,
It gets easier and easier until you're breathing calmly.
Then your body temperature is quite low,
And your body has to get itself back up to normal functioning temperature,
And that's supposed to be quite good for you.
And the water intake as well.
The water intake helps me to not gorge on food.
I find myself,
Once again,
Struggling with the body,
Struggling with my body connection to feel when I'm hungry,
To feel when I'm full.
Having the water there and having this minimum intake of water that's quite a lot has been good.
Over these 20 days,
It's given me something to push back on.
It's like,
Okay,
Well,
What am I doing today?
Well,
I can't go out.
I can't see friends.
I can't do jiu-jitsu.
I can work some of the days of the week.
What can I do?
Okay,
Well,
I'm definitely going to do these things.
I'm definitely going to exercise.
I'm definitely going to drink that water.
I'm definitely going to read the book.
Definitely going to have a cold shower.
What am I not going to do?
I'm not going to have sugar.
I'm not going to have fast food.
I'm not going to have alcohol.
I am going to take that daily progress picture every day uploaded to my social media.
If you're not following me on Instagram,
Do so at Zach P.
Phillips,
And you can see those progress pictures.
It's what I'm doing every day.
It gives me some sort of purpose.
And it's,
To be honest,
It's quite hard.
The 75 Hard Challenge,
It is hard.
I find the exercise component quite easy because I'm quite physical in that sense.
Other people that are joining in or have done it found other aspects of it hard.
I find,
Like I said,
The exercise easy,
But the cravings for alcohol and sugar are a bit harder.
The daily progress picks is quite hard.
But it's a way to push back against lockdown fatigue,
And I suppose against malaise in general.
I invite you,
If you are interested,
If you're keen,
If you're wanting some sort of excuse,
Maybe this is your excuse to do so.
Maybe this is the push that you need to be like,
Oh,
Okay,
Maybe I can and should and will do something.
You could make it this challenge.
You could make it something else.
Other people have seen this and be like,
Oh,
Well,
I'm not going to do that,
But I suppose over lockdown,
I'll meditate and do a little bit of exercise every day.
I said it for you.
As my brother said,
I do go for the extreme,
But that's just who I am.
I've been thinking about doing this challenge for quite a while,
And this was just the impetus to do it.
I invite you to join me.
Like I said,
I'll put a picture up in the show notes.
If you click the link back to the website,
My website where this is hosted,
There'll be a picture of what I'm doing as well as a list of a rundown in the show notes,
Hopefully.
Basically,
Like I said,
It's the hour and a half of exercise,
No sugar,
Fast food,
Or alcohol,
Drink three liters of water a day,
Read 10 pages of nonfiction,
Daily progress pictures,
And the cold showers.
That's what I'm doing.
I invite you to join in and push back against lockdown,
Get some mental toughness,
And improve your mind,
Body,
And soul.
What can I say?
