Breathe a little, live a little

I was walking the familiar path towards my office, a path I take every day on my way to work, when I noticed these fuchsia flowers sticking quite conspicuously out of an office building. Surprised I didn’t notice them before in the past, and also because I’m a flower person, I commented about them to my friend who was with me at that time. He simply said it was because I was “being in the present”. And that struck a poignant chord within me because of how many times I’ve trod on the same path looking downwards or rushing to get to a certain place or just too occupied to just BE in the present moment.

I’m a person who thrives on making plans. Planning helps me to stay calm when I organize the clutter in my mind and sort them into manageable chunks. It also gets me super excited especially when I’m planning my next vacation, outing, you name it. It gives me something to look forward to as I go through my mundane day-to-day schedule. But the problem with planning and anticipating something that is yet to happen is this: that I am so caught up in the ‘what could happen’ that I forget to just enjoy the current moment. So much so that when I’m actually in highly awaited moment, I’m just grazing the surface while my mind is furiously churning out ideas on what to do next. On the outside, I’m living the life floating in the clear turquoise waters of the Andaman Sea, but in actuality, I’m thinking of catchy Instagram captions or Googling places to have drinks later. I’m afraid I’ll actually forget how to revel in a moment, how to just… be.

Sometimes I really wonder why I rush so much. It’s not like I have to urgently be somewhere all the time. Why do I always feel so kancheong inside? Maybe if I learnt how to slow down and look around more, I would feel that my humdrum workaday life had more colour to it. That I didn’t have to look to seasonal activities to keep me motivated. Because right now is exactly the place that I want to be in.

So, how does one start to just be present? 

It looks so tranquil, a lone boat on a river, but there were heaps of tourists all around, just not captured in this frame

On Wellness

My journey to wellness. Actually, starting it like this sounds like i’ve already achieved wellness nirvana and ready to start open my own gym. No. The reality is far far from it. Fact is, I’ve only started taking baby steps on this journey but I’m running with it to see how far I can go with it. Hopefully, it’s not just the post-resolution making January in me speaking.

In Bride Wars, there was a scene where Kate Hudson’s character gained a little weight and asked if the salesperson could alter her wedding dress only to have the saleslady haughtily retort, “you don’t alter a Vera Wang to fit you, you alter yourself to fit Vera”. Like a majority of well-meaning females in the world, I started this journey because of a dress one Saturday in November. Having chosen and bought a bridesmaid dress for my friend’s wedding, i brought it home only to realise it was a tad tight across the waist. Meaning I CANNOT GAIN ANY EXTRA WEIGHT until the wedding. This inspired more than a little panic which had me frantically counting calories for everything I ate and manically running on the treadmill for a whole week. Yup, it lasted exactly 1 week before I regressed and went back to my slovenly sugar eating ways. I mean, life is already hard without calorie counting and feeling hungry and deprived all the time. And food just makes me happy, ya know? Thinking of eating, planning my meals, reading eatery reviews, looking up recipes, I derive as much joy from them as the actual act of eating. It was truly miserable going into my second week of this new lifestyle.

On the eating front, I haven’t done so well. But I’m glad to report that the exercising part stuck at least. From exercising 2 days a week, I increased to 4 times a week, and now, I’m aiming to stay active at least 6 days of the week with 1 total rest day. To be honest, I didn’t want to tell anyone about my goal outside of my immediate family because at the back of my mind there were thoughts of, “what if I fail halfway?”; “what if people expect some kind of result like having 6 packs and I still have flab?!”. Or when looking at friends or influencers with bodies to die for, I felt inadequate and more than a bit envious. How on earth did they do it??? But I’ve decided that I won’t be dictated by how others look or what other people think anymore. It isn’t healthy. Everyone’s bodies are built differently and I’ve just got to run with what works for me and makes me feel good about myself. Maybe I will never get that 6 pack, but at least I’ve got better stamina than I had before. And I’m stronger than I was yesterday.

My 2019 goal really is to turn this into a habit so it sticks as part of my lifestyle. I’ve still got a long way to go, especially when it comes to governing my habit of snacking at night. As they say in all those fitness articles, diet is even more important that exercise itself. But as for whether I’ll be able to look slim sans unsightly tummy bulge in my dinner dress, well… the moment of reckoning comes all too soon (next week). Wish me all the best!

(insert poster of a motivational quote here)