Back in 2006 when I started this blog if you asked me to meditate or to visit a yoga class, I would have told you that you were out of your mind. Fast forward twelve years and almost every day of my life starts with and includes some form of Yoga, fitness workouts and/or meditation. Sometimes, the things we laugh at when we are young become an integral part of our life. Sometimes, we just ‘grow into’ things.
My first attempt at finding balance came back in 2010 with fitness and workouts. I started resistance training at an office gym and was instantly hooked. Over the years that followed, I did Resistance Training, Weight training, cardio and every other form of fitness workouts I could find.
I ran half marathons and 10K’s and when it comes to fitness, it would not be an understatement to say that I… got my act together. I went from being grossly underweight to being the right weight. I went from being moody and temperamental to being calmer and happier, and I went from being tried all the time to being functionally fit and feeling good. Fitness, changed me as a person.
Even today, I am a big proponent of physical fitness, especially for nerds. Till date, I go for long runs and like to break a sweat at my very own personal home gym. Workouts do as much for your mind as they do for your body. There are books that cover this topic and then there are books dedicated on research that describes how workouts rewire your brain.
But workouts, for me were just the tipping point that introduced me to the idea of overall wellness and understanding how changing small external habits on the outside, can have so much impact on the inside.
I’m an Indian, and I’ve been unknowingly mediating for most of my adult life through prayers, but I formally met meditation when my professional life started taking it’s toll on me. Physical fitness is great, but sometimes, your monkey mind creates more problems for you than it solves and I first met mediation through videos on YouTube, like this one and this one when I was tired of run on the proverbial corporate treadmill and was mindlessly surfing random videos on YouTube out of burnout and frustration. When I did Meditation, it seemed like a natural next step from fitness so I immersed myself into it and never looked back. Soon I met Yoga, and yoga seemed like a natural next step to meditation so I started tinkering around with Yoga too.
As I grew older, I became more and more interested in going from ‘playing the games’ that we all play in life, to plugging myself out of the game. I leaned more and more towards practices like Mindfulness, Meditation and even Yoga. Every once in a while, I loose balance and indulge in the act of cribbing, arguments, complaining or playing ‘the game’ at work or even my personal life, but then life tools like mindfulness, mediation and yoga help bring the balance back in my life and they help me disconnect from the fast moving mindless-life-on-auto-pilot, take a much needed brief pause and look within.
These tools even make me a better programmer. I agree with Joe Previte when he describes how meditation can make you a better programmer, and draws similarities between programming and meditation:
In the world of programming, we often need focused attention when building programs and writing code without repetitions. Think of it as being “in the zone” or as some know it, in the “flow” state. This is when you submerge yourself in your text editor and forget about everything else. Your mind is only thinking of that present moment. Being in this mode, you fully experience that “coding high” of writing functions that make or do things to achieve a bigger goal.
Though the experience is mostly anecdotal, I’ve seen how I am much more productive during the months when I meditate compared to the months when I don’t. But then, most of mindfulness, meditation, yoga or even physical fitness is not just about making you a better programmer or making you more productive. It is all about giving yourself some time to step back and look within. It’s about making You a better… You.
As I grow older, I am starting to realize that while the latest, hottest version of Angular may have an impact on my career; my mind, my body and my own well being are things which have a much deeper impact on my life and the lives of those I love.
As I grow older, when I flash a new rom on my phone, I am realizing that having apps like Headspace on my phone is much more important than having Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp and dozen other noise creating apps. I use Greenify and silent apps like WhatsApp and Twitter and check them not more than once a day (or preferably a week); and as I grow older, I’ve started realizing the importance of keeping your phone away and scheduling some time to disconnect from life-on-auto-pilot and take a pause.
And if there one idea I want to leave you with at the end of this post, it is to take out an hour (or two) a day for yourself – your own body and your own mind. For some it might be fitness, for some meditation, for some yoga and for some it might just include going on really long runs or a mix and match of all of these. Whatever it is that you do, use that hour or two every day to indulge in the act of mindfully nudging yourself to become a better You. Because when you become a better – happier – you, you automatically become a better programmer.
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