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