Was super confident early in the morning at the gym!
“This is it, it is now that I will be a frequent fitness enthusiast… after finding excuses no to go for the past 2 weeks, or is it 10 years? Not important!”
My playlist was giving me some sort of weird energy and I was feeling like the queen of the world! The only sound I could hear was my music and my heart pounding in my face!
After a good 45 minutes of cardio, being red like a tomato with Rage Against the Machine unleashing my inner anarchist, I walked confident to the free weights and prepared for a series of deadlifts. Was unsure of the weight, and realized I could not even lift the 40kg set from the staging area… Nope, this won’t hurt my ego, 30 will do! I pick it up and bring it slightly unbalanced to the floor.
Ready, set, go! Now is System of a Down… and what a perfect timing. Rep 1 – “Everybody’s going to the party, have a real good time”, Rep 2 – “Dancing in the desert, blowing up the sunshine” – uuu, sharp pain, I’ll be more aware of posture on the next one…, Rep 3 – “Blast off! It’s party time…” Arhg!!!
Broken!
Shake it off, smoothly roll the weights to the corner, just because I am not able to put it back up. Change music, something that brings me back to reality and fades my inner anarchist! Ok 2 free-weights, do something else that does not require squats. Nope, it won’t work.
Upstairs, try to crunch some bones and stretch a little with yoga. Twist, back bends, all kind of bends, twist a bit more, all bones cracked but the bloody hip…
I have always been a hip popper but today I reached a new level in popping a hip! Where is an osteopath when you need one?
Now is Franz Ferdinand… wisely singing “Take me out!” Another 2 weeks of excuses coming up!
Ok, maybe teleport into someone who is currently diving with Whales and had a good night sleep!
The utopia and mind traps of “what if’s”, and the delicate change of life course with simple decisions in the past, is a mind-trap I felt dangerously close to fall into a few times in the past. Leaving 5 minutes later from home, would not led you to meet someone, know about some work opportunity, witness some event. I like to imagine it as a route of synapses in a brain. They follow a certain logic, but possibilities are endless. There is this strange biased force called instinct or “gut” feeling, some sort of intrinsic knowledge that mixes your life experiences, survival skills and a dash of rationality: my very familiar auto-pilot.
Fly away!
I have embedded in me a culture of complaint that is so characteristic of my beautiful country, but I’m happy for everything that happened the way it did. All were valuable lessons. I feel extremely lucky and grateful for what I have, where I am, where I am going (whatever that may be).
Despite being grateful for where I am, I battle with wanting more. Once a boss of mine told me I want to grow too fast, that it was a recipe to be frustrated with life. I’m glad for this impatience, I like to be in constant pursuit. Yes, I’m super tired, sometimes I feel mentally drained and just want to insult people around me, but hey who doesn’t?
There is also value in knowing how to stop, be present for a moment, but it is so hard to do.
This is what happens when you sleep little, you completely lose your mind in a post with unrelated topics that make sense in your head only. Let’s see what the morning brings!
I was once a proud multitasker. I still try to trick my colleagues by saying I am a natural… Spoiler alert: MULTITASKING IS A SCAM, an urban myth spread across to break you down slowly!
Positive side: I am an artist!!
Queen of procrastination and distraction on top of this, and struggling in this moment in time, specifically due to the piles of work needed done and delivered yesterday! Here is how I’m failing at being productive:
1. Overthinking snow-ball effect – Getting stressed when I know I’m falling behind on my schedule. Either because procrastination kicks-in, or (un)expected things require my immediate attention. If these two fail, my brain goes into self-sabotaging mode. I start overthinking about what I should be doing, what I want to do to prove myself I am capable of achieving something, thought that is strengthened by my super self-criticism. As a result, I feel overwhelmed and focus my attention on something that takes that painful sensation away, just to delay it and let it build up in the background into a crushing snowball. Human behaviour 1:1 I guess. Or at least is my excuse to self-sabotage a bit more. That is why so little achieve greatness!
2. Focus on the end goal – It may sound counterintuitive, but this is one of the main feeders of my lack of focus. I tend to take out the binoculars and look on the end-goal alone. Because of this amplified vision, I miss the true dimension and distance, as well as the mountains, valleys, canyons and rivers in between. It is a reflex of wanting knowledge with no discipline for the process. To feel passionate about that vision, but having no idea or plan how to start. I suck at planning. The simple task of planning a dinner, is condensed in booking a place 10 minutes before and whatsapping the ones involved. You can imagine how well that works with my fellow UK friends.
3. Be a collector – Someone once said that as Human beings, we spend half of our time collecting, and the other half deciding what to keep. My grandfather was a master at this. Fierce entrepreneur in his mid 30’s, business and family man in the second half of his life with an outstanding consistency in his actions, always in line with his beliefs. Very genuine man, my grandfather.
As for me, I am a collector, a fierce collector, have experimented several jobs and careers, some of them very short. Have tried dozens of different hobbies (started yesterday to learn python for example, hopefully will finish the course). I feed on the novelty, on the experience and on learning new things. However, I am a terrible juggler (also tried this as a hobby for exactly 3 days).
4. Self-sabotaging – related to overthinking, to procrastination, or derived by a deep fear of not achieving something? Whatever it is, I’m an expert! My boredom scale builds quite quickly. I have constant fights in my own head, self-sabotage vs belief I can be much better; thrive to accomplish a specific goal vs thinking of a million other things to do that take priority for being less important!
Would love to understand better self-sabotaging behaviour. Is there an intrinsic undermining human nature to crash? Or is it based on the “energy saving” theory of evolution, to avoid taking more effort than one actually needs to survive as a species? Whatever it is, I want to kill it!
Either way, once you pass the jumpstart of any task, it somehow becomes a motivator. Just that inertia is a pain to overcome.
5. Be available to people – Fixing problems feels amazing, and working with others to brainstorm solutions is a very good learning tool. Because if this I struggle to say no when asked for help. Once someone told me I am good at serving people. Despite dreading that observation (independence is my thing!), I need to eat up my pride and admit that is a little true. Others expectations, unfortunately, do have an effect on me, specially when I feel I’m helping somehow. I feel a responsibility for fixing things. I just need to channel that same energy towards myself. Should be easier, no? Need a trigger for my selfish gene!
I have tried all the tricks in the book to focus. Meditation, to do lists, gratitude lists, pomodoro timers, visualization techniques, piano music, jazz music, no music, disconnect the phone, clean the house, exercise in the morning, read and learn something, drive with no route, write my mind and my heart out into a paper in hope to make sense of it. If only setting aside time for deep work was easy…
There was a time in my life I was following religiously James Altucher’s life hack into luck. I have to confess I was much more focused, but at that time in my life (2011), I was less busy. Maybe I will give it another go… if I find the consistency to restart a daily ritual.
When you speak to a Portuguese in the UK, 3 topics will come up:
How great our weather is: you could never fully comprehend the impact of 300 days of sun. “Boiling” is quality of life. Fair point to both our nations, we both like to talk about the weather.
How amazing our food is: we actually feel sorry for 95% of the population that has been deprived from our culinary goods. You have not lived! Except if you are a vegetarian, then we have nothing for you.
How impressive our landscape and history are, and we will tell you all about how our small nation has influenced the world and how we have taught the British to drink tea.
A normal winter day in Lisbon!
Some other differences and remarks I have found along the way:
We work to live, British live to work. Or some people say. Despite Portuguese low salaries, we appreciate life to the fullest. Surprisingly, statistics say portuguese work more hours too… of course these statistics probably include all the time we spend chatting about football and the weather while having our 5 daily espresso work breaks. Doesn’t mean we are less productive, we just sense time differently. Since I came to the UK, I do live to work and more hours too… is this what happens when you migrate?
There is no such thing as “it’s boiling”! C’mon, heatwave with 27Cº? Do I need to say more?
No driving latin fever. How I miss calling people names and judge heavily others driving skills! For us, orange means “speed up before it turns red”. Red means “You have 2 seconds to go”. Speed limits to us are more like recommendations. Learned the hard they are not in the UK! Had to attend an extremely boring speed awareness course within my first 4 months here. The crime: I was driving 35mph instead of 30… The lesson effect lasted exactly 10 minutes.
Fish and chips is not food! – When we speak how amazing our fish is, don’t try to empathize by saying you have Fish and Chips… it is not comparable at all! Is like telling an Italian that Pizza Hut is the best pizza in the world, or to serve you microwaved tea. We have 1000 ways to cook codfish, and only 2 include chips. We still have all the remaining dozens of fish and sea food cooked in every imaginable possible way.
Portuguese version of fish and “chips”
Banter – I still don’t get it. Or maybe this post is a proof I’m getting it now? (some people took offense with this post, which means I’m learning the skill). We make fun of our close friends, and comment on people’s lives, but we know exactly that we are joking. Here I never know if people are serious or not. Strange British humour!
Night out – This deserves a whole post, but here is a summary of my Swansea experience:
Portugal: Dinner starts at 9pm. At midnight, after a large meal with proper food, a few beers and a coffee, we go bar hopping until 2am, have a few beers on the street (yes in the open), followed by disco until 6am. For this, we bring extra clothing because it’s cold outside.
UK: Dinner at 8pm is late. Most places stop serving food at this time. The girls are hugging themselves in short summer dresses and open sandals with no coats (with 3ºC), walking in zigzags down the street. No one drinks outside because it is illegal. Drink as fast and as much as you can seems to be the motto. Night ends at midnight. At 1am only a few remaining souls are left in the pub, mostly those who are unable to walk home.
I have to admire though, the strange comfort Britains have from beans on toast for breakfast, horrible weather, package holidays (Portugal will always welcome you in our beautiful Algarve) and little dogs. Also, I have to say I was happily surprised by the warmth of the welsh! Very nice folks with awesome welsh cakes!
Something I have been questioning and obsessed about since 2010, maybe earlier. What am I supposed to do with my life? How will I make my life matter?
I asked this question to numerous people in the past years, and everyone has a prompt answer: create a company and become a millionaire, have a safe family, save dogs, save whales, save sharks, save the reef, dive the world, become a yoga teacher, travel the world, live off the grid, be an accountant, be a lawyer, be a teacher, be a psychologist, sleep with as many women as possible, have as many kids as possible, become a famous actor, teach handstands for a living, run an NGO, watch Benfica play…
I wanna be part of some of these (uuu got you thinking now? Go Benfica!!!), but none resonates with whatever is my life goal. I suffer from severe distraction and procrastination and at the same time I dream big, and some say I’m an idealist. Not sure what that means.
People ask me constantly what is my life plan. It is very hard for everyone to understand that I do not have one. It is extremely hard for me to understand people that do know exactly where they want to be and how to get there.
My short history on this planet has presented me with constant unexpected change (not complaining). Perhaps the fact that I do not know what I want, allows me to be open to every possibility, which contributes further to not knowing what I want.
This blog reflects exactly that, no specific plan, no intentions with it, just make sense out of nonsense, and program synapses to a specific direction, whatever that may be.
Meanwhile, I know what my life purpose is not:
Not to be one more lost in the crowd,
No specifically be a mother,
Fame is something that scares the hell out of me
Tales I once believed to be building:
Wildlife photographer: National Geographic or BBC. I’m still amazed and inspired by how they capture those unbelievable images.
Criminal profiler – Once I thought I found out who Jack the Ripper really was. Still fascinated by twisted minds and underlying human motivation for good and bad.
Writer – Poet, storyteller and opinion writer – It is hard for me to make sense of my own mind, imagine translated into words (you can probably guess this by now)! Will read more Fernando Pessoa…
Freediving Instructor – or just tag sharks for a living
HR superstar in developing teams – my current job is proving me I have a long road ahead
Social Entrepreneur (I still want this one, by the way! Have many ideas!!) – save the world and all that jazz.
Totally out of a lapse. This is how this started… and from a desperate need to rant about life before I make sense of it.
Came out from work after a 13 hour shift, in a job where time is speed up and pumped with adrenaline. The day ends before you realize it. My days have been a blur between learning how to navigate this world, remember to call my parents, try to build a career in the fastest growing company in the world, and create a start-up on my “free time” with a business partner that has a rhythm as fast as his dream sports car (which is not yet invented, I’m sure). Honestly, the man should design a new scale to measure productivity.
In the middle, my best friends sends me a message worrying I may burnout, that I do not look healthy… Really?
The last time I had sun it was exactly for 5 brief minutes this Sunday, before the microclimate ate away that precious star. I was sitting by my window with my laptop open, recharging energy like a thirsty solar panel… Have I mentioned that I live in Swansea? It is not enough to come out from the sunniest country in Europe to the UK, but I had to land on the wettest shore of this Island! Of course I do not look healthy, this is the palest I’ve been in my life. Fair skin, they call it, I don’t see any fairness in this.
Amongst the storm, I swirl in a tornado of reality checks: my leads and my manager counterpart tell me the clock is ticking, I should find a man and have kids… I’m almost 32… not getting any younger… It will be difficult after… and some other details I deliberately chosen to erase from my bruised mind (Thank you guys… have you been talking to my mum?). And finally, my sister who I love to death very sweetly encourages me telling me “I will collect what I am planting”.
My history with plants is disastrous. Keeping a simple life form alive (let alone healthy… I’m talking about cactus) is only comparable to my current pale unhealthy look. I’m pretty sure I won’t be collecting any super power own-grown plant, unless I invent some life form on the surface that can live without light… Hmm is this the idea that will launch me as a self-made entrepreneur? Will me new company save me?
Lapses and Synapses 