Physical impact on mental health

Tommy met him at work, starting the day with a meeting with a very important client. Shortly into the meeting, the client told Tommy they were looking for new opportunities because they were unsatisfied with the value. Tommy was taken by surprise, as the client was so open already and felt it was a bit of an attack.

However, the client didn’t hesitate and told Tommy that they expected a new proposal to increase the value for them. Tommy didn’t manage to get a word out before the client got up and left the room, where he said the deadline was Monday.

Tommy responded, “It is Thursday.”

The client didn’t say a word and left the room.

Tommy spent the next hours analyzing markets and new ways they could create value for the client, as they were responsible for 30% of the revenue. Tommy was running around in the office, speaking to the various teams and coordinating efforts.

As Tommy was brainstorming and trying to create new ideas, he kept getting interrupted because he had set so many people to work and help him that he had to spend more time on managing and coordinating than working directly on the proposal, even though he had to spend a lot of time on coming up with a new idea.

In the creative process, he kept being interrupted and had to get back in the zone.

He came home and was completely out of it. Tommy’s mind was spinning around about what he should do with the client. It became hard for Tommy to sleep, and he had to lay in bed for 2 hours.

Tommy began to Google how he could relax his mind and fall asleep.

He came across a guy who was teaching meditation on YouTube, and Tommy thought, “Let’s see what it is and can do. It cannot be worse than it is right now.” Tommy started the video and followed the guided meditation.

After 5 minutes, Tommy thought to himself that it did not work, but the video was 20 minutes, and he would just finish it. A few minutes later, Tommy noticed he began to observe his thoughts and didn’t let them control him or follow them.

His mind became quiet and relaxed as he let his thoughts go. The meditation video stopped, and Tommy sat there for another 5 minutes before he went over to the bed.

He kept breathing and fell asleep.

The next day he woke up a bit late and quickly went for a workout while he was running out of the door. He was thinking about what he had to do at work, and his mind was going again.

Tommy went into his workout with his mind spinning around and couldn’t really seem to concentrate and focus on doing the exercise. He lost track multiple times of the repetitions he had done. He decided to go to the bench press as the next exercise and just go low on weight and continue until he could not do any more repetitions.

As he was going, and his muscles began to burn, the thoughts about his work began to disappear because he had to drive all his attention to keep lifting the barbell up and down.

Tommy finally put back the barbell to rest for a few minutes before he went back. But now his mind was calm as he all of a sudden had the physical stress of lifting the barbell.

Tommy went to work with a calm mind and started the day out mapping out the work for the proposal. He looked at all the parts and various ideas that he had generated, but for some reason, everything became so clear. It was very clear where the problem was and how to fix it.

Tommy called the teams to speak to them all and align on what they needed to do. Everyone agreed on the issues and worked together on a solution. Within 2 hours, Tommy had a proposal ready, which he sent to the client.