Surviving the Lockdown.

on september

2019 my wife and i we

achieved our very first milestone in our

marriage

we bought our very first home something

i’m sure all of you can relate to

my family constitutes at that point of

time my five cats

my mother-in-law is not very happy about

that

i have an innumerable number of

transformations i feel like i’ve made it

in life

sponsored athlete successful known

but then on the 14th of march 2020

there was a curfew announced in

bangalore

and a week later a national lockdown

suddenly the sense of success

invincibility that i had

no matter what happens i think i’ll be

fine

that wasn’t there anymore i felt

crumbled

i felt a little lost very helpless

as the dear host just introduced me my

name is arnaud

acharya i’m a sports nutritionist i’m a

personal trainer

so on and so forth but on that

particular day when i woke up

i didn’t feel anything

my main hero of my life has been my

brother

he’s sort of like this pseudo father

figure that i have

at very critical junctions in my life

he’s

instead of giving me advice he would ask

me

very important questions so he knows

that the decision has to come from

within

and he knows i’m a rebel if he tells me

something

i’m not gonna listen so my brother being

the smart man that he is he would always

ask me these questions which would make

me think

so i thought okay what what is it my

brother gonna tell me this time has life

advice because

he’s my hero he’s always had a solution

for me

so he called me up on the lockdown was

enforced and

he said i don’t have anything to ask of

you

i don’t have any lecture changing

philosophy to share everything

i just have one thing to tell you

your business is finished the way

you work is done nobody needs your

services anymore

now this is coming from the man who has

always had some sort of perspective and

solution for me

how am i supposed to feel now

any sense of stability god any sense of

invincibility

god

further to that uh

maybe i’m a little sadistic as a person

so i could always have this

random conversation with my wife various

points in our marriage i will just

randomly ask her something so one day i

asked her like

priya what’s the worst thing that you

think that can happen to me

on my professional front

one day i would have no clients left

no work left no business moving

that return redundant conversation has

now become

my nightmarish reality

the lockdown destroyed my business

whatever investments i had

became stagnant

it completely crushed my willpower to

add to that

whenever i was getting a call or a

message from a client

they basically told me okay look i don’t

we don’t require your services right now

my brother was right nobody was thinking

about being fit that time

you always wake up with a sense of

purpose right like you have something to

look forward to

so every day morning when i would wake

up i would look forward to getting on my

bike

riding all the way to work starting my

day training my clients

now that sense of rhythm is gone

that sense of peace god my identity

as a coach god

to top it all the so-called fitness

expert

now has lost track of his own nutrition

on 17th of may as i was asleep

on my couch jobless

goalless living a pointless life that i

felt

very defeated my wife took a picture of

me

i was lying down on my couch with my

hands rested on my stomach now i’m not

trying to body shame anybody of course

but that’s not how a fitness expert

should look like

and i saw that photo and it it played

very

hard and it did a very strong image on

my mind like

wow i’ve allowed myself to become this

and even if i tried to gather any kind

of sanity

i would wake up and the headlines

would create more uncertainty and

there goes any sanity that i’ve managed

to revive for myself

as a coach i’m always expected

to be the best version of myself

no matter what but it got the best of me

i think you will all agree it got the

best of all of us

and most hard hit aspect of my life was

my marriage

the wife and i she’s going through her

own stresses

we were constantly locking horns

quarreling

criticizing each other over things

throughout the day

which didn’t really matter beyond the

lockdown inception

how are we supposed to cope with this

why is something happening in my life

that is not even in my control it’s not

even my fault

when will the seth rogen movie end

there’s one thing i’ve learnt in life

at least about myself life has always

put me in these

situations which i never thought i would

be

parents try to protect me from them

whether it was

death in the family whether it was any

kind of tragic loss

if my dad is going through something mom

is going through something anything

they’ve always protected me but life did

not protect me

life kept throwing throwing things at me

so there’s one thing that i knew don’t

brood over

what is not in on your control

like the rest of us like honestly if

there was any comfort

that i managed to draw in my situation

in my

time of misery is that you’re not the

only one

everyone is going through this stop

blaming life

the situation would pan out the way it

has to

the universe will pan out the way it’s

supposed to it will restructure itself

but of course coming back to my marriage

things got really bad like really bad

exchange of harsh words

this lack of communication maybe because

there was not enough space between my

wife and i

my sorrows turned into depressions

that was the final nail in my coffin

that’s when i realized

you have to take control of your

personal life

you have to take control of your

professional situation before

it gets the better of you

so ladies and gentlemen that was when i

hit

ground zero can’t go below that that’s

it rock bottom

have you guys heard of this song

californication by red hot chili peppers

there’s a line in that song that always

rings with me

and i hope you guys don’t mean singing

one that line

destruction leads to a very rough road

but it also breeds creation

that line stuck by me i don’t know how

many times i’ve stand that song

throughout my life but that

particular line especially during these

times it started by me

so i finally decided i will do that one

thing that i know

and which is that be a coach

and whose coach am i gonna be my coach

it was time i coached myself

and i used my trustworthy

raw trustworthy four-step recipe

for an applause worthy poach

i’m going to observe

i’m gonna meticulously plan

i’m gonna establish control and i’m

gonna be patient

i revived this nine-year-old kid

that at one point of time was in

boarding school i felt the same way

i had this sense of no fear

no boundaries no barriers in my

adult amidst my adult rationality i was

trying to dig

and find my childish faith

while i was going through my own

personal introspection i also realized

that there was some sort of awakening

happening amongst

people amongst my clients amongst my

peers amongst my loved ones

people started worrying about their

health

everybody was really worried about their

immunity

there was a lack of activity there was

malnutrition people were

overworked my wife was doing work from

home then and suddenly work from home

was not a very popular concept

still isn’t it there is no concept of

when work starts and when working

so people are stressed they’re

overworked they’re malnourished

all right something had to be done i’m

not able to train these people i’m not

able to reach out to these people

something has to be done to change this

so this self-created enthusiasm

was failing to achieve the intensity

that i was hoping for but one finding

this really amazing client that i have

he called me up and he said arun

things cannot go on like this let’s get

on a video call

i said sure sir and he stood there

in the middle of his living room with a

pair of two and a half kilo dumbbells

tiny dumbbells

eyes to make him lift 20 kilos in the

gym but they were just steve’s two and a

half kilo dumbbells

he was in the middle of the living room

and he said

let’s start working let’s start training

that’s the point i knew that nothing can

hold me back

[Applause]

believe me i’m reliving that moment

right now

with me all your illusions will be

shattered

i will shatter all illusions i will

annoy you

i will irritate you because that is how

i

work and function i will sabotage you

down to your very roots

but without you completely destroyed as

a mind

there is no hope for you this is a quote

from osho but i think in some sense it’s

a joke

where you can personify the whole

lockdown as it is

so what did i do once this epiphany in

my life happened

so i started adapting i started evolving

i dropped my

coaching fees i dropped my grades i

started

you know becoming more available to my

clients

my work became a bigger priority than

just

making money at the same time

my wife who was going through our own

difficult journey

nobody would have thought that during a

lockdown where people are losing jobs

you should start hunting for a job but i

said hey you have to do that there is no

choice

she got another job in a company where

the company gave her a 46

hike over the existing job that she had

yeah looking at her i started getting

inspired

and i take the full credit for all her

all her hard work

in exercise physiology we have a very

interesting concept it’s called lactate

threshold

not sure if you guys are aware of it but

basically what it means is

the more you train the body its ability

to work

increases similarly

the more you keep performing in your own

job your ability to deal with the stress

of the job goes up

i also realized that i’m in a position

where i can create a lot of awareness

other than being a coach i use my social

media influence to create

awareness of what i was doing

i was training at home i was training my

clients

i started talking about that i started

talking about

how you can improve your immunity how

you can improve

and manage your stress better

all of this led to a lot of other

influencers who wanted to collaborate

with me

suddenly a lot of doors started opening

for me

if there is one thing that the lockdown

did for me

instead of pulling me down it actually

reset

my career i started coming up with new

ideas

and one such idea came from a client of

mine who said hey

you’re pretty good at nutrition why

don’t you teach us

really okay i’ll start teaching it as

nutrition

i put it up on my instagram next thing i

know

i got one batch of students there are

more students

a second batch a third batch a fourth

batch wow

i didn’t know i could do this for a

living

if one thing has kept me sane throughout

my life it’s my training

as much as i love to train others as

much as to coach others my own training

is my anchorage and so

i decided that with another fellow brand

that was based out of bangalore i gave

them a simple concept

so let’s make a machine that will be

purely for home use okay what’s the idea

here

minimum space maximum functionality

i want to convert somebody’s bedroom

or maybe even a living room into a gym

so i started working with them

side by side whenever they were locked

on relaxation

i would go i would be testing the

machine with them in its bare bones

and then we came up with something which

i am still using in my house

to coach my clients i could not believe

that my clients were open to the idea of

walking through somebody’s living room

these are people who were

very much willing to come to a gym but

suddenly the concept of going to a gym

was scary coming to someone’s house

to exercise i started taking a lot of

inspiration from that

in the process i also started coaching

my wife

she lost about close to 12 kilos so her

mental health improved and suddenly

our marriage improved

garnered a lot of appreciation started

garnering all my sponsors again

great life’s going really really good

and then a big breakthrough happened

one of the biggest celebrity trainers in

the industry

reached out to me and said arun i’ve

been looking at all the work you’ve been

doing

i’ve been looking at all the positivity

of spreading why don’t we collaborate

i want you to do the nutrition for all

my clients

wow i did not expect that would happen

and i’ll tell you why it was a vlog to

me

because i’m not a team player but rather

i was never a team player

i always thought i can do this that’s it

nobody can do it better than me

one of the reasons i would tell a lot of

my friends and clients that i don’t want

to work for a corporate

is because i cannot withstand authority

suddenly

i was more than happy to seek his

mentorship

next thing i know i started building a

team because the demand became so high

in the midst of all this i’m gonna very

quickly tell you a story of my

sixth cat

i remember i don’t know if i told you

guys but i have five cats but during the

lockdown just when the lockdown happened

i got a sixth cat

and with him i learned a few things this

kitten was born with inflamed joints

so he could not jump up very high he

could not even walk properly

so as my wife and i were nurturing him

during the lockdown days and he kept our

entire focus on him

i would look at one thing of his which

gave me a lot of strength

this little thing that cannot even jump

he would look at

a small stool and look it up just look

up at it and he’d be like

i want to jump there once he managed to

jump up that stool he started looking at

my dining table

then he started observing my other cats

who were jumping much higher

and he would keep looking up and every

few

weeks and as the ones when i noticed

that

not only is he now able to walk and run

he’s galloping

this spirit that he had inside him that

no matter what i’m not gonna eat a

lifetime

i’m just gonna keep looking up so what

if i was born

a certain way i’m just gonna keep

fighting and he’s a cat

there’s so much that we as humans can

learn from him

[Applause]

in short guys and ladies and gentlemen

if there is any takeaway that i want you

guys to have from my talk today it’s

this

learn to evolve

be adaptable

seek opportunities be a team player

be flexible and most of all

don’t stop living thank you so much