Josh in Lockdown – His Personal Journey

Hi, I am Josh and I work in our Quality and Development team. 

I wanted to share my story about lockdown as I feel it may help others and create a more positive outlook on lockdown. In April of last year, I was furloughed for a period of around 2 and half months – this gave me a lot of free time. I will not lie, at the start I was watching a lot of TV, scrolling on my phone for hours at a time, and not doing much with regards to being proactive and productive. 

One day I woke up and thought to myself: “I can be doing a lot more with my time, achieve a lot of things that I have always wanted to but have not because work & general day to day life has come first’’. I decided to set myself some goals, habits, and things that I would do/achieve in lockdown, starting with working out every single day, walking my dogs more often, cooking & eating a healthier, more balanced diet & I even started meditating daily. At first, it was hard, I was completely creating a routine and there were days where my motivation was lacking but I had to understand that I am human, and this is okay. 

Throughout lockdown I was participating in online things such as Zoom Quiz’s with friends and family; I remember receiving a couple of positive comments about my appearance on these and I was taken back as not only was this virtual, but it made me more motivated to continue as other people were seeing results and noticing a difference in me.

I continued to work on myself and now, 10 months later, I have lost a total of 4 stone in weight; not only this, I have grown in every aspect of my life:

Physically – I am much fitter, more active, and am so happy with my weight/body now

Mentally – I made more time for reading & things that enhance my brain & as a result, I am more mentally developed

Emotionally – Meditation I would recommend to anyone & everyone; it is an amazing way to channel your emotions and control them.

Spiritually – I have always been fascinated and wanting to learn more about astrology, spirituality, and the law of attraction etc. Lockdown gave me the chance to really put my time and energy into this.

Financially – I have managed to save a lot of money in lockdown which would normally be spent, this has also made me more aware of budgeting and saving.

These are just some of the ways in which I have benefitted from lockdown, understandably not everyone will have had the same experience and it was not easy at times. There were times when I felt alone, not being able to see my friends & family or do the things I love such as eating out, bowling & going to the cinema, nights out & festivals, was really hard, however, I think if we can try and shift our perspective from looking at what we don’t have or can’t do, to practising gratitude for what we do have and appreciating the time we spend with people when we are out of lockdown, it changes your life and makes you become happier as you notice all the positives in your life rather than focusing on the negatives.

I know some may consider me lucky as I understand some people were not furloughed and may not have had the free time that I had to start this journey, having said that I now get up at 6.30 am every morning to make sure I can complete my routine before I start work at 9 am, I have made the change which was needed but I now need to maintain the same mindset and not let myself fall into old habits. There will always be days where I may skip a workout, eat a lot of junk food, and have a lazy day with Netflix on the sofa, but I think we must recognise that this is fine, we can do this and not deprive ourselves of things that bring us joy and allow us to relax.

I hope my story highlights some positives from lockdown and may help people start to think differently or do one thing that they may have been putting off and never got round to, I promise you will not regret it!