Mindset
Why a bad day is a state of mind you can change
In a live broadcast called You Only Live Once, Garth Delikan, the Lifestyle Guy, explains why mood is a daily choice and how exercise, music and soulful eating keep it on track.
Video from The Lifestyle Guy.
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How can you stop a bad start from turning into a bad day?
Garth Delikan treats a bad day as a state of mind rather than a fixed event. Each morning offers a choice between a negative and a positive direction, and he notes the negative one takes just as much energy. When mood dips, he moves: fifty burpees, loud music and a deliberate memory anchor lift the state and keep it there.
A favourite James Bond line about only living twice nudged Garth Delikan towards the title of a live broadcast: You Only Live Once. Speaking straight to camera as the Lifestyle Guy, he made the case that life is there to be gobbled up rather than watched from the sidelines, and that staying young means drinking from what he calls the Fountain of Youth.
The urgency is personal. Garth spent a weekend with his son, who had just turned 25, and his daughter, about to turn 24, and still pictured them as toddlers. Life, he says, whizzes by in the blink of an eye, and too many people reach the end regretting the dreams they never followed and the things they never tried.
His answer is practical rather than poetic. A low mood can be shifted with movement, music and a habit of anchoring good feelings, and food can be enjoyed without the guilt of another diet. Underneath it all sits one idea: the state of mind a person carries into a day is something that person gets to choose.
Key takeaways
- A bad day is a state of mind, and so is a good one, which means the direction can be chosen each morning.
- Choosing negativity takes no less energy than choosing positivity, so the positive direction costs nothing extra.
- When mood dips, physical effort such as fifty burpees with loud music raises energy and lifts the state quickly.
- Soulful eating means enjoying food without a diet, so the heart and mind rejoice in the way each meal is eaten.
1. Choose the direction before the day chooses it
Garth Delikan has a simple test for the start of each morning. On waking, there is a choice: go one way and be negative, or go the other way and be positive. He points out that it takes no more energy to be negative than it does to be positive, so wasting that energy on the negative path makes little sense.
He knows how easily a good morning tips over. Something unwelcome arrives in the post, or a toe gets stubbed, and suddenly the whole day is labelled bad. His view is that a bad day does not have to last. It is a state of mind, and a good day is a state of mind too, which means it can be ridden out and turned around.
To make that turn easier, he borrows from Peter Pan. When something looks difficult, he deliberately switches into fun mode and asks what kind of adventure he can have with it. Sprinkling pixie dust on friends, plans and challenges, as he puts it, makes things glitter and fly, and turns a threat into something much closer to play.
2. Move the body to move the mood
For years Garth believed he could simply push through pain and adversity without feeling much at all. He admits he rarely got in touch with his feelings and thought pushing on was the right way to cope. Getting older, and mellowing a little, showed him there were better ways to handle hard moments than gritting his teeth.
Exercise became his main tool. If you are feeling down, he says, get down and do 50 burpees: squat, drop into a horizontal press up, push back and jump up. Take as long as needed to reach fifty. Before long the heart is pounding, endorphins are high and the low mood has lifted, which is exactly the point of the exercise.
He adds loud music he loves, so the workout becomes a physical, emotional and auditory experience at once. Then he anchors the feeling. Using what he calls the finger of power and the thumb of awesomeness, he stores that high in memory, along with beautiful moments from daily life, so he can click back into it whenever he needs it.
3. Eat soulfully and lead by example
Garth Delikan is just as clear that enjoyment belongs at the table. Eat cake, eat chocolate, drink beer or wine, he says, just do not overindulge. Food, life and drink are there to be enjoyed, and if the fruits of the earth cannot be enjoyed, he asks, what is the point of being here at all?
The idea he was developing at the time is soulful eating: eating without a diet, in a way that makes the heart and mind rejoice. He describes the body as the temple of the soul and the heart as its altar. Living, eating and exercising soulfully keeps mind, body and heart in tune, rather than at war through another restrictive plan.
He also believes the message only works if the messenger lives it. Garth describes himself as living proof of the Fountain of Youth because he lives and breathes lifestyle, exercise, healthy eating, nutrition and meditation. Anyone who wants to lead, he argues, has to walk the walk and talk the talk, or nobody will respect the advice.
