PerChronicles: Take time out to tune in

Simone Biles became the most decorated gymnast – male or female – in history. What’s equally incredible is that she had taken a two-year break from the sport after the 2021 Olympics to focus on her mental health. Now she is stronger than ever.

This was a pivotal moment, because what we've learned from Simone is that you can put yourself first and you can still remain highly competitive. She's mastered marketing by showing the world how to deal with negativity and maintain her brand in a positive light.

The most common question you hear is probably the one you most ignore:

How are you doing?

Oh sure. When a clerk asks you that question, you say, “Fine, thanks.” When a coworker asks you that question, you say, “Hanging in there.”. When your best friend asks you, you launch into a diatribe. Sure it’s easy to answer “How are you doing?” if it’s a surface-level conversation starter. But if you want to peek a little deeper into the recesses of your brain, your heart and your everything else, the question is a little more difficult.

HOW ARE YOU DOING?

Most people are like health ostriches – nope, nothing to see here, don’t want to know my weight, what that lump means, or why my knees creak like the floors of a 1964 attap house. Staying ignorant about your health status is essentially an express-lane pass to the ER (or an urn, to be blunt).

It seems like everyone I know these days is way too stressed out. Whether they’re friends, or colleagues, I hear the same complaints from all of them: They’re tired. They’re working too much or not enough sleep. It’s the same one and over again. Everyone is completely drained.

It doesn’t have to be a high-profile person. They’re everyday ordinary people, but they’re just people who are very high on self-discipline and personal drive. For people who have a lot of drive. It’s about starting to recognize that rest is not in competition with drive — it actually is supporting drive.

Driven people can get so goal focused and so mission oriented, that one of our skills is learning how to put aside mild discomfort. We can almost get too good at that to the point where we don’t register them until they’re kind of at a fire alarm mode.

We all know how stress can feel – as if we’re the nail and life is the hammer. We get pounded and pounded and pounded, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it. Have you ever felt like a hamster on a wheel, furiously churning your way through life but somehow going nowhere?

Why is depression so dramatically on the rise? In the past year, Prozac was prescribed for over 40million people. Domestic violence occurs in one out of 6 households. 50% of drivers who’re cut off respond with horn honking, yelling, obscene gestures, or even road rage. Half of all marriages end in divorce.

None of this is how we want life to be.

Scientists have discovered that we can determine our emotions by steering our thoughts. I have begun to view my emotions as vehicles for transformation, rather than simply feelings that make me happy or miserable.

What you go through – what we all go through – has a greater purpose. To make this a reality, you must begin to see each event of your life, uplifting or hurtful, earthshaking or mundane, as a chance to grow stronger, smarter.

I have no idea what’s going on in your life as you read these words. What I do know is that we will all face challenges, heartaches, things we didn’t see coming. There will be moments when we wish we could rewrite chapters of our stories. Life is not out of control, even if it feels as if it is. I promise you that.