Since the beginning of this pandemic, everything changed for everyone. Every routine, ritual, reality, belief changed. We were forced to stay home no matter what for a long time and it was the first time this happened in history. Since this moment with everything changing, each human on this planet Earth had to adapt to this new situation with their resources. But I think at least at the beginning it was something hard to adjust for everyone, me included.

I want to share my journey and experience during these uncertain times. I had the feeling that since the pandemic started everything was unknown for everyone and this global pandemic started with an emotion called fear and my opinion didn’t change two years later. For me, the government feeds fear to people with the start of the pandemic and in a way that’s making people sick. The fear of being sick, the fear of making someone sick, the fear of putting their beliefs and their opinion in the spotlight, the fear of being judged by others, and finally the fear of change happening in their life. That being said I think one thing that’s this pandemic brought is the evidence of change, how our life can completely change without any control from us. That triggers a lot of deep patterns and beliefs for each individual. Nothing is permanent even if we are deeply sure about it and the pandemic showed exactly that.

That little introduction being said I want to go deeper about the reflection of my thoughts in that situation and life in general brought to me. As I was in isolation like everyone at the beginning of 2020, it was new and scary at that time we didn’t have any explanations we just were told to stay home for our security and others. We had so much time to ourselves, at first, it felt like some cool days off but then it felt weird and wrong to be at home isolated from everyone. I began to start thinking about how I was going to spend this time with eight other people + a dog. Even deeper how I am going to make this time count even tho I didn’t decide or agree on anything about it.

The first thing I thought was how I was going to stay active because at that time I was going to the gym at least 4x times a week so that was taking away from me as well. I worried about the results I got in the gym and how I will lose everything while staying at home without any weights to lift or any program to follow. Thanks for social media and meeting Ciara London, I was following her back then. She is a PT in London, at that time she couldn’t work either since the gym was closed everywhere. She came up with the idea of doing lives workouts on Instagram. I began doing these lives once a day and it brings so much excitement because it was the first solution I found that will bring me to sweat and movement even tho I was stuck at home.

At first, it was really hard because I didn’t train this way before so I wasn’t at this level of cardio but I decided to pursue and commit myself to it because I felt so good afterward and so proud of myself. This is my physical and mental journey with bodybyciara because it’s not just workouts with a physical benefit for me the mental clarity and the space to let my stress and emotions flow was more important than the physical results I was seeing or feeling. After a workout with this kind of vibe and energy that Ciara brings every day even on a screen you’ll feel complete and at peace at the end, it’s just as simple as that.

I would say months or maybe a year after the beginning of my journey I wanted more for myself. I wanted to educate myself about the potential inner work I could do for being the best version of myself and lift myself as well. My deep personal belief is that every human is on a constantly evolving process that is called life. You are constantly changing in and out every day. Maybe and probably you’ll not see that change physically but it’s happening and the purpose I found is to flow with it. Sometimes a change will be hard to take on and process with it but the others times the change will be revealing and soothing. I told you this because I experienced it and that’s me sharing with you about it.

I began to feel stuck mentally with the pandemic trying to take all the place in our heads. I was so over it, I just realized we talked about this every day with everyone. That was the most unhealthy thing to do, but the government got us to do that with evidence to the contrary released each day we can’t decide which one to believe. I couldn’t see myself improving mentally because this situation was getting in my way to my journey. As I loved reading books, I was searching for new ones in the self-development area and more spiritual area too. I just spoke about it in my last article if you want to take a look.  

These books helped me so much to find a new way to improve my thoughts and my vision of life in general. I was able to think differently, it brought me so much perspective because I was able to get the bigger picture of myself and my life. Sometimes you just need to get a little distance and perspective from all your thoughts and your actual routine. Does it fulfill you now, it may be good yesterday but you’re changing every day so it is as good now as the days before, or do you need to step up the game? Think about that. 

I was ready to take the time to be comfortable in my own company. I’m sure you’re heard about that but society tells you to be always be surrounded by people, because like those people seeing you can tell that you’re not lonely. That’s not true at all. Some people are in need to be every time with people to feel whole or good, some like social life but need some alone time too, and others are more loners because it fulfills them more than having a busy social life. And that’s okay, the goal is for yourself to find what you need in the present time in order to feel good and at peace not to please or make others good.

At that time for me, I wanted to experiment with my own company and to be able to feel good on my own without thinking about the opinions of others. I think that’s the most important thing, being able to stop seeing the potential opinion of others to have the right to stop you from doing something that you need or want to do for yourself. I started to go on walks alone and to be present at that time, then I began going on a little one-day getaway in Zürich by myself (because I love this city). The first time I didn’t feel as comfortable as I hoped but then I started thinking how silly that sounded and I finally started to enjoy these moments.

It’s all about the little steps you make, it’s not about being where you want to be right away, it isn’t healthy in the long term to want all the things you want right away. You need to ask yourself how I am going to be where I want to be for myself and what I am going to do to lift myself there. Especially during this time life just reminded all of us to enjoy the simple things, they create so much peace and happiness inside and out that we have forgotten with all the chaos that today’s society brings. It makes us believe how we should live our lives in order to be happy. According to them, we need things right away and they make us believe we need some things we didn’t even think about before. It’s all about a marketing and consumer point of view and what that shows us is that it’s not healthy, we are not necessarily happier with adding more into our life. 

Another thing I think it’s important; try new things; renew your routine and rituals, they will serve you more if you adapt them to your current self and needs. For example, I try for a couple of weeks the morning positive affirmations. I can’t express really how it affected me but one thing I’m sure about is that it made me feel good and I surprised myself by thinking differently. I was way less worried about anything that could trigger me and I think that brought me the inner peace I needed. I began listening consciously to different self-development podcast channels. That brought me so many answers too and I found the perfect combo walking by the lake while listening to a podcast to educate myself.

To finish this long article I really think that the most important thing to do is to ask yourself what are your needs right now to feel and embrace happiness, being at peace. Because happiness is not a place to be or to go, is a state of mind in the present, you need to feel it. To bring some answers to these questions you need to search your answers it can be a long process but it will be worth it. That’s for me the purpose of inner work and it will reflect on the outside.