Fit for Life: Who Wants “NORMAL” Again?

Fit for Life: Who Wants “NORMAL” Again?

The new buzz words on the street are “The New Normal”

What is normal? How do we define what normal is to us?

The definition in the dictionary is:

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ADJECTIVE 1 conforming to a standard; usual, typical or expected,

*(of a person) free from physical or mental disorders)

 

What is the time limit to consider something normal?

Does a week of doing the same thing classify it as normal?

A month, a year?

Who decides how much time it takes to consider something “normal”?

 

As far as the definition “free from physical or mental disorders”, who determines this?

And who doesn’t have some sort of mental disorder this day and age?

 

Who isn’t stressed?

How many people do you know with anxiety?

Depression?

 

Normal is ever-changing:

We lived differently 10 years ago when we used to pick up the phone and call people, drive to the market and purchase food, and had the ability to walk into a bookstore, enjoy a coffee and read books. Everything wasn’t automated and digital, and we didn’t rely on our phones to do everything for us. GPS systems in cars wasn’t a standard feature yet, and we still wrote checks to pay our bills. Back then all that stuff was normal, but today you would be tabled a dinosaur for doing such things.

We lived differently 20 years ago when flat-screen televisions were thousands of dollars and still a novelty. Flip cell phones were the coolest invention, and there were still payphones located in every convenience store parking lot. The biggest fear then was the Y2K rumor that the world was coming to an end, and all our technology was going to be wiped out. Facebook wasn’t a thing, so people actually had to make an effort to find out what their friends and family were doing. How abnormal of a time was that?

We also lived differently 30 years ago, when I carried a pager, wore my hair in a ponytail and listened to Backstreet Boys and Bell Biv Devoe in night clubs. When you needed information, you had to research it in a book, and there were only a few sources and minimal opinions. We ordered things through the mail and waited weeks for them to arrive. What a horrible way to live. We even had to dial people’s numbers because SIRI wasn’t born yet, and if we needed a cab, we would look in the yellow pages for the phone number. There wasn’t an app for everything back in those days, and every convenience wasn’t at our fingertips. Talk about a struggle!!

 

So what is normal?

What’s the bar we have set for ourselves?

What’s the standard?

 

Let’s discuss this…

Years ago, it was normal for our forefathers to go hunt and kill their own food. Try doing that now. Most people would starve if that was the criteria in order to get a good meat-based meal.  

Not long ago, it was also normal to make home-cooked meals every day and sit around and eat natural single ingredient foods with your family.

Now it’s normal for lines to be 12 cars long at Kentucky fried chicken, Starbucks, and Mc Donalds, and for families to rely on packaged processed garbage to get their fill at dinnertime.

Now it’s normal to go to Walmart in pajamas and spend money on things you don’t need. We used to care how we looked in public, and back in the day, when money was tight, people didn’t spend frivolously or run up credit card debt. If you didn’t have the money, you went without.

Now it’s normal to have an electromagnetic cancer-causing device pressed up against the side of your face on a normal daily basis. It’s also normal to be on prescription drugs, pay bills online, and have your groceries delivered to your house. Social isolation is going to be worse after this episode, because now even more than ever, people realize that they don’t need to leave the house for anything but fresh air.

Normal basically means to do what everybody else is doing regardless of it being good or bad for us.

People have been telling me for years that I am not normal because I am so obsessed with my health and fitness routine, and I don’t eat fast or processed food on a regular basis. I was also one of the last people in the world to get a cell phone, and fold to the new technology age, so that makes me abnormal, and stubborn.

This whole episode really showed us what a bunch of entitled spoiled Americans we really are. When you think about it, our problems are first world problems. We don’t live in a war-torn environment, we all still have homes, food, and the ability to get resourceful when we fall out of our normal living routines. Staying home to prevent a widespread disease isn’t the worst thing that could’ve happened to us. Whether it was warranted or not, closing down for a few months shouldn’t kill us.

When we can’t do everything our “normal” way, people will holler and complain every step of the way. “We want our normal lives back”.

So instead of adapting to the circumstances, pivoting to make a change, some people moan, groan, complain and cry that things aren’t the way we are accustomed to.

I must confess that this pandemic opened my eyes and showed me that some of us are resilient, and have the ability to adapt to the circumstances, and others are so hung up with their daily routines, that when forced to change, they go into a crisis mode.

Yes, this hurt my business, and it will make my life waaaaay more difficult in the near future, but I enjoyed taking a break from “normal”. I liked working from home, eating home-cooked meals, and not sitting in traffic or being in crowded places.

I am working twice as hard because of this; however, I feel like this will go down as another one of life’s obstacles that we NEED to get over.

I have always been a germaphobe, so I am glad that more people will be conscious about hygiene and washing their hands, as well as paying more attention to their health, and not spreading germs everywhere.

In my opinion, being normal is overrated.

Create your own normal, live by your own set of standards, and be willing to make a fast change when things disrupt your “normal” way of life.

Committed to your success,

Matt