Deanne Panday - I Am Not Stressed

RANDOM HOUSE INDIA

Published by Random House India in 2011

Copyright Deanne Panday 2011
Deannes workout gear courtesy Bia Brazil
Exercise photographs in the book by Vishal Mull

Random House Publishers India Private Limited
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Random House Group Limited
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United Kingdom

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EPUB ISBN 9788184002287

To both my dads,

Alistair Charles Woodham Rogers
and
Dr Sharad Panday

I still remember the day I first met Deanne in 1991. My first film Deewana was yet to be released and I had gone to pick up Gauri after a fashion show. It was there that Gauri introduced me to Deanne, her young and shy friend. I met her husband (then boyfriend), Chikki, the same day when we went to drop her off, and although decades have zipped by we have remained fast friends.

Deanne and Chikki were my first friends in Mumbai. I used to call them the beauty and the beast, the beauty, of course, being Deanne. During those days, LCDs had just been launched so the four of us would gather in Chikkis house and watch movies every night. On most days, after shooting and dinner, I would head there. We loved to hang around, chat, and watch films. It was so much fun. In 1992, when I bought my first house in Mumbai, the rendezvous shifted to my flat, where we would chat late into the night. Soon enough, our dear friends decided to get married and Gauri hosted Deannes mehndi ceremony at our house.

Deanne has always been extremely fit and exercised regularly even back then, when fitness had not hit Bollywood and India in a big way. After she had her daughter Alanna, she got back into shape quickly and returned to modelling. Friends would often tease her about it because they thought it was sheer vanity. But for Deanne it has always been a way of life. She doesnt smoke and drinks rarely. She is the same even today. She would often sit at the bar in my house and sip tea unperturbed, much to the shock of many of our friends.

I wasnt surprised when Deanne opened her studio Play in 2007 as I had always known about her passion for health and fitness. But what did surprise me was her overall transformation from shy friend to confident and successful professional. It almost seemed as though she was always meant to do this.

Its been almost twenty years but our friendship is still rock solid. I have seen Deanne grow and evolve over the years as a wife, a mother of two children, and a professional who handles the ups and downs of life gracefully and with ease. She is full of knowledge, experience, warmth and optimism, and promotes health through natural methods that endure. According to me, the best quality she possesses is that she preaches only what she practises herself, and would never recommend current fads, fat burners, or shortcuts that could harm the body. This is what has made her the most popular fitness and lifestyle trainer in the country.

I believe that the key to a good lifestyle is the combination of a healthy mind and body. In fact, a healthy mind comes before a healthy body. So when Deanne told me she was writing a book on stress, I couldnt be happier. Stress is, after all, one of the most common and persistent health problems and has both long and short term effects.

For me, stress is the inability to deal with too many things at the same time. I feel sometimes it is self-inflicted. Maybe things are not as difficult as you think. All that is required is to get down to it. I define stress as an unclean work table where you keep feeling, Oh, my God, Ive got so much work to do! But if you sit down and start at one corner, you can work towards cleaning it up. A lot of people collect stress because they let it build up. If my table is cluttered, and if I start forgetting about it or say, I just refuse to do anything about it, it will only pile up. Today was cleaning day for me, as far as work was concerned. I sat down for five hours, and started from A and went up to the end. So I think all you need to do is compartmentalize and organize the cluttered set of things to do in your mind.

When Im stressed, I dont take any outside help. Stress affects me in a different way. I dont start sweating, I go silent. I know that if you are stressed, its best to face it head on or to accept that some types of stress cant be sorted till the work is done. The kind of work I do sometimes takes years to finish. In fact, my work is always stressful because Im making a highly expensive product and will never know if its going to work or not. I have been working in stressful situations for twenty years so I know that getting agitated will not solve things. Doing something about a situation will. However, being paranoid is equal to doing nothing, so I try to avoid that. But I do worry, I do think about it. Thats why I write it down. Once Ive put it down on paper or on my computer, I know its been compartmentalized. Then, I open that piece of paper and try to solve it.

Sometimes, for me, the best stress buster is to play it down, whether through a video game, a workout, football or hockey. I dont swim; I wish I knew how to. I take it out physically. Instead of doing the work Im supposed to do, I go and play with the kids or have a game of football. Or sometimes, I feel like cancelling everything and just lying in bed. Right now, my phone has 2,000 messages, of which 1,200 need to be replied to. But my logic is simple: if I have to play Barbie dolls with my daughter when theres a huge amount of work to be done or an important person to meetIll choose the Barbie dolls. I know Ill pay for it. Maybe Ill lose out on a good opportunity, but I know playing with my son and daughter is going to hold me in good stead twenty years from now when I actually have no work. At that point, when Im 65 or 70 years old, I will not miss work because Ill have my kids to keep me happy without thinking, Damn, I wish I was working! But when I do work, I am very diligent. Im full of energy because I really want to do that work. Ive never said Yes to something I didnt want to do. If Im doing it, it means I took time to decide to do it and that I really liked it over and above playing with Barbie dolls. Thats why when I come to work, Im really happy and give my best. I guess all of us need to prioritize and make our choices to avoid stress later. This is what I believe in.

Deanne, with her positive outlook, rich experience, and expert advice is the ideal spokesperson to help people deal with stress. Today, she is stress-free despite going through all sorts of ups and downs, both personally and professionally. Each time she has been in a difficult situation, she has come out stronger and maintained her natural warmth and positive attitude towards life. So Im glad that in her first book, my DD Bachcha, as I call her affectionately, has chosen to write about stress, and share the tips and secrets she has collected over decades. I hope you will find the book as fun and useful as I did.