And don’t forget to play your theme song at the end of every workout, as a celebration cue that you did all the work you said you were going to do. Well done!
Make Your Own Mixtapes . . . Yes, I Said Mixtapes!
Even if I’m in the worst possible mood, I never play sad breakup or emo songs, because they bring me down. I can snap myself out of a state because I make sure to play music that has a happy, sexy, beachy kind of vibe that reminds me of sunshine. It makes me feel good.
You can easily do the same thanks to digital technology. Simply make your own mixtapes to help you set your intentions and get you moving. You can tailor the beat of your songs: a faster one for energy and then a slower one to chill out. Music to distract you from your afternoon sugar cravings; music to give you courage. It is quite amazing how you can begin to amp up the challenge in your workouts just by picking faster-tempo songs. Try googling songs by BPMs (beats per minute) to add speed, and then create your own playlists. Although most people couldn’t care less about BPMs, people in the fitness world are all about them because it’s how we tailor our classes. BPMs are really only relevant to you when you’re syncing music to the pace of your workout.
I know lots of people who love to listen to music when they’re working. After a while it’s just there, a wave to propel them along, a sonic backdrop that helps them do their tasks more efficiently. And, of course, music is the universal soother. It’s why you sing lullabies to babies, or why you hear repetitive melodies when you’re at a spa, about to have a massage. You’ll start relaxing before you know it.
Music Is Vibration
In 2000, I lived in India for two and a half months to study yoga. I went there at my friend Kelly’s suggestion, as she was living there and loving how much yoga was bringing into her life. She could sense I was in need of a similar kind of change in my life, and I have her to thank for my amazing experiences with Pattabhi Jois in Mysore.
Even showing up was pretty crazy, though, because I had never taken even one yoga class, not anywhere. That didn’t stop me from signing on at a center geared to yoga professionals, where everyone else had been doing yoga for, literally, decades. For each session, there would be anywhere from seventy-five to one hundred students at the shala, and at the end of each practice, there would be a chanting moment.
Well, I didn’t know the chant, of course, because I’d never studied yoga before, and I was too inhibited to say that. So I listened to everyone else, and the only thing that got me through the chant, faking it till I was making it, was the fact that I had listened to Madonna’s Ray of Light album so many times and I suddenly realized that the track “Ashanti” contained the actual chant my fellow yogis were saying at the end of class. It didn’t take long before I found myself chanting the song instead of singing it. There I was, in that moment where art imitates life (thanks, Madonna!).
I soon realized that chanting—all kinds of singing, actually—is a form of vibration. What does that really mean? Well, your body is made up primarily of water, and it reacts to all the energy in the atmosphere and surroundings. According to quantum physics, everything in our universe is in constant motion—vibrating at specific frequencies. If, for example, I put a bottle of water on the podium during one of my classes, you’ll see it vibrating from the bass in the songs I’m playing.
So your body will respond in its own way to different vibrations in music. I like to think of it as riding the music as if you were surfing; instead of tapping into the energy of the waves and the water underneath you, you’re going to feel the swell of the rhythm, and it will literally propel you to keep moving.
Think of vibration this way: You know how you say sometimes, “Whoa, that person has good vibes” . . . or the total opposite, “Wow, that person has bad vibes”? That’s because you are actually feeling the vibration of that person.
Even your own thoughts vibrate through your body, so you have to be super careful about what you’re saying to yourself. You don’t want to give your own body bad vibes! Speak nicely with that inner voice. It makes everything a whole lot better.
Moving Meditation Using Music to Energize You
This needs to be done with your eyes closed, so make sure you’re moving in a safe way, such as on a stationary bicycle, marching in place on a cushioned surface, or holding on tight with your hands on the treadmill.
SG TRUTH I see people doing this on the treadmill all the time and think it’s scary. Yikes! If you feel confident about it, just be super careful and go at a very slow pace.
1.Find yourself in the middle of one of your favorite songs, and surround yourself with rhythm. Time to become a better listener. Time to become a better, stronger, more confident you.
2.Close your eyes. Stay connected to your breath. I want you to feel who you are on a cellular level with your eyes closed. This is very important. You can do it, but you have to trust.
3.Keep your eyes closed as you focus on the music and focus on you. There may come a time one day where you’re going to be forced to keep your eyes closed and you’re not going to be in the mood (cue MRI sound). When that happens, you’ll be able to channel this moment, right here, right now, because you practiced closing your eyes when you were in control. Just breathe here. Focus on the timing of your feet and the presence of your mind inside your body. This moment is just about your movement and, simply, your breath.
4.Whatever you’re going for in your life, whatever you’re trying to achieve, bring it. Go for it today, right now. Visualize what you want. You’ll get it—all you have to do is put the action behind the thought. Everything in this universe starts with your thoughts, and then the action comes to life after you put those thoughts into physical motion. Don’t stop thinking about what you want. This is your moment right here. Walk yourself down the mental steps of what you need to do to put that thought into action. Maybe it’s a phone call, a conversation, a text, an e-mail. Imagine yourself doing it, and then when you finish this meditation, go do it!
5.As the music winds down, stay in your Moving Meditation until you feel ready to stop. Do not forget to go. Put it into motion now. . . . Go!
THE POWER OF NO IN THE NOW
So many of my students have told me about what happens when they finally say yes. Yes to the new job. Yes to the new beau. Yes to the dress.
Of course yes is a powerful word, but so is no. By saying no to things that aren’t aligned with your intentions and goals, you are reinforcing and making space for what is important to you. Saying no to the things that take away from your goals creates space for them and tells the universe you are focused on them.
“Saying no can be very empowering.”
Because women, in particular, are programmed early on to be more docile than men—for fear of being called pushy, overbearing, or selfish—even though, of course, they’re not (and a man would never be called any of those words!)—they often have a hard time saying no. We are just conditioned to live in the House of Yes. But we still need to spend time in the House of No. It is important to know what you need to say yes to (the things you need to do to achieve your goals) and what you need to say no to (the things that are wasting your time or taking away from those goals).
When setting your intentions and defining your goals, and when used in the right context and for the right purpose, no can be very empowering. Especially if you aren’t used to saying it. It is a firm statement and an acknowledged choice that gives you a jolt of adrenaline (which is a potent appetite suppressant, by the way).
It also means you’re fully engaged in the now.
I’ve found that many of my students have a difficult time saying no. It’s an avoidance technique that allows them to put off being honest about what they really want if they think it’s going to upset someone. There’s that fear that someone’s going to react in a bad way and that you’re going to have to deal with the repercussions of their anger; plus, you don’t want to make people upset . . . so you say yes so they’re not upset and you
end up unraveling something in your day to compensate for having to take care of someone else’s needs rather than your own.
That said, there’s often a fine line to walk to ensure you’re saying no for a valid reason. You might not want to say no, but logistically, it’s just impossible to say yes. If so, try saying, “I might not be able to get to it today, but how about tomorrow?” Or “I can’t do this, but how about I help you with that?”
The answer is still no in the now, but makes clear that you are available according to both of your schedules. You’re offering alternatives, sort of the way you’d give a stubborn child the choice of three shirts to wear in the morning instead of saying, “No, you can’t wear that.”
Use your no to give someone else a choice—because what you want to avoid is falling into the trap of saying yes to please someone else, and then creating chaos in your own life as a result. This can quickly veer into martyr mode, where you’re doing things out of a sense of obligation and using that to avoid dealing with your needs and your goals. My theory is to manage both the answer yes and the answer no, without feeling guilty about either!
How Saying (or Not Saying) No Ties in to the Lies We All Tell
After years of addiction, I finally reached a tipping point. I knew that if I stayed in the place I was, physically and mentally, not only would have I become even more stuck in a self-destructive cycle, but something bad could have happened. Not only was my common sense screaming at me to get out of my toxic lifestyle, but my gut was throbbing so much it was like having my own internal drum kit.
I had to say no to my entire lifestyle. And I had to say no to all the lying.
I left my home, my family, my friends, my successful career to discover what it was like not to live in lies. When you’re an addict, you lie every day. So your no is actually what’s keeping you going. No was my denial about everything in my life.
I learned very quickly that it can be difficult to be an honest person. Not only was it easy for me to lie, but it was comfortable because I grew up lying, as you know. I lied to my classmates about my family situation and my parents being divorced because I was ashamed. And I lied about being gay. Back in the 1980s when I was growing up, there were no gay people my age. I was wearing my friend’s boys’ underwear underneath my clothes in fifth grade. Now it’s trendy—but I shudder to think what my classmates would have said had they found out back then. No way could I have dealt with it, and, of course, no child should have to worry about such complicated matters, either.
The tightrope of truth is very hard to walk, but your life is so much better when you tell the truth. There may be more discomfort at first when you are honest, but secret-keeping is toxic and can literally make you sick.
And this gets back to setting your intentions and identifying your goals. If you can’t be honest with yourself—even uncomfortably so—then what is the point? One of the hardest things we can ever do is confront our raw selves, with all our flaws and accomplishments, and see who we really are. Once you can do that, you are on your way toward attaining whatever it is you want.
PUSHING PAST PROCRASTINATION
Are you still having trouble setting your intentions and defining your goals? Be honest—are you procrastinating? If so, I feel your pain!
For years, I was a world-class procrastinator. Dealing with adult responsibilities and paying my bills? Forget it. I had the worst credit of anyone I knew, and was basically drowning in off-the-books debt. I never paid any bills, and I owed friends and family money. I basically took forever to pay them back. I didn’t have any credit cards; I asked to be paid in cash for all my gigs and spent the money as soon as it came in. I put off whatever I could. I was running in place. And I used my procrastination as an excuse not to make the changes I knew I needed to make.
Now it’s the complete opposite. All my bills get paid the day they arrive, even if they aren’t due for weeks. I’ve set up autopay for most of them, too, so I don’t have to worry about being late. I can’t stand owing anyone anything, and my credit is crazy good. But it took me years to catch up.
As I was transforming myself from a bill-avoiding slacker into a grown-up, I realized how much my procrastination had wasted years of my life. I was on the train, looking ahead to the tracks stretching out to the future, but I was stuck at the station. I had to get it together and deal.
Typically, the cycle of procrastination starts when whatever we have to do is daunting for some reason. It could be that you’re lacking the energy to do it, or it could be fear-based or shame-based. Or you could just not feel like doing something. I mean, really, who wants to do the paperwork for their taxes, or wax the car, or clean out their overflowing e-mail inbox? But you have to look at those tasks as steps toward reaching your bigger goals.
One of the problems now for procrastinators is that social media and our digital lifestyle are thumbing their noses at you. They make it so easy to pretend you’re doing things when you’re scrolling through your Instagram feed. Before there were search engines, if you had to research something, you knew you had to block off the time to get to the library, riffle through the card catalog, find the book, read through the book, and write notes by hand. Now you can do that in a nano-flash online, freeing up a lot more time for screwing around, right?
Procrastinators also tend to be late. Are you chronically late? If so, you’re the kind of person who doesn’t respect time. But time is something you must respect, because it’s the one thing you can’t ever change. You can reset your watch if you travel to another time zone, but you cannot change the real time. And you can’t change your chronological age. You can have a plastic surgeon make you look younger, but your body is still going to age. You’re on the clock, you’re born, you grow, and you die. Just be on time!
My mom, as an early riser, had late-person anxiety; she was always the first person to arrive anywhere. I followed in her footsteps and was the first kid at school and the last one to leave. I used to get upset by other people’s lateness, but eventually I realized that it was their issue, not mine, and that people explain their lateness in different ways. Some are procrastinators who find every excuse not to get going.
Some like the power it gives them by making others wait for them. Some honestly don’t like or feel comfortable with idle chatter, so they show up late for events so they don’t have to worry about talking to others. Some are late because it honestly doesn’t bother them—they’re the last to board an airplane. That will never be me! If I’m late to a social event, it’s only because I don’t drink, so I typically skip cocktail hour.
I also realized that when it comes to procrastination, there are three types of people: people who wake up with no alarm, people who use the snooze button but don’t really need it, and people who keep hitting snooze over and over and as a result are chronically late.
SG TRUTH I set my alarm so that I have fifteen minutes to slowly wake up. In my head, I begin the conversation about what my day looks like, even though I’m still half asleep!
I figured this out because for the last few years, I have woken up at six fifteen A.M. without an alarm; I set it anyway just in case, as I teach a class at seven thirty and can’t be late. Even if I didn’t teach, I’d still wake up. I hear a certain truck rumbling down the street, and the cars on the nearby avenue, and I know it’s time to get up.
So when my alarm goes off, I hit the snooze button, knowing that I have eight minutes to lie there, eyes closed, taking my time and going over my schedule in my head, until the alarm goes off again. I also know that I have forty-five minutes until I have to really leave—which means I could hit the snooze button five more times if I felt like it. But I don’t. I like my routine. When the alarm goes off the second time, I am ready to get up and start my day.
If you’re not in control of the snooze, it’s going to control you. That’s when I call it Chasing the Eight. (As in pool, not the snooze button!) When you play pool, the last ball you want to hit in the pocket is th
e eight ball—so during the entire game, you’re chasing it so you can win. Sure, you’re craving the extra sleep, but how much better is it to wake up, hit the ball in, and start your day? Chasing the eight ball with intention means you are ready to do the work now, do the workout now, finish the task now.
How to Stop Procrastinating
Like any behavior you want to change, you start by setting your intentions. The mantra should be, “The motivated side is way better than this side. I have to do this. I know I can. It’s way better on the motivated side. I am going to power up and get motivated.”
My favorite tip for doing this is to use an old-fashioned egg timer.
Even though I was a terrible procrastinator about really important things when I lived in Los Angeles, I never put off the house cleaning. Because I have a mild form of what I think is OCD, I just loved getting obsessive with dusting and tidying—it was super satisfying because I could see immediate results. This made my roommate at the time, Chuck, crazy because I was always cleaning. So he’d set the egg timer for an hour, and the rule was I had to stop as soon as it went off. That got me into the very useful habit of blocking off my time to get things done, even the unpleasant ones. Simply set the timer, and force yourself to stop procrastinating when it goes off.
I find that it helps to block out a specific amount of time where your task will fit. When you set your alarm for that task, whatever it is, remind yourself in the block before it that this task is coming up. That way, you can start preparing yourself to start wrapping up what’s in the first block so that by the time you get to the second block, you’re golden.
For example, all my classes are fifty minutes long, yet there are always students who leave early. Not only is it disruptive for my concentration and rude to the other riders, but it takes all the joy out of the late shift’s rides because they’re going to be more worried about the clock than about focusing on the workout. Why, I ask them, are you backing up appointments so close to this class that you have to leave early? Why aren’t you better at managing your time blocks?
Two Turns from Zero Page 9