The weekly YouTube vlog is up and running. The first four videos were devoted to the Keto diet. The channel is called Ketoconscience because it’s about improving yourself in body and mind. So this week I decided it was time to start talking about the mind aspect. I give a brief overview on what I’m doing in my life to improve my mind along with my body.
It’s important to remember that doing things to make you live longer sounds great, but living longer just to live longer misses the point. If you’re going to live longer you need to be able to enjoy the extra time here. That’s why it’s just as important to improve your mind. How it functions, and how it feels. I want to live a very long time, and I want to be sharp and happy when I do.
So here’s the video. If you like the video please leave a like on it at YouTube. Also, feel free to leave a comment about what you liked. Or even what you didn’t like. Comments on how I can improve my YouTube or here are also welcome. Subscribe and click the notification bell if you’d like to keep up on my channel and get immediate notifications when I post new material. Hope you’re having a great day.
I did my weekly weigh in this morning. I came in at 274.4 pounds. I’m very happy with that as it’s a 2.2 pound loss from last week. My muscle mass went from 27.2% to 27.4%. In terms of pounds that’s pretty much the same muscle weight, but it is the one percentage I do like to see go up. My body fat went from 37.5% to 37.1%, or from 103.7 pounds to 101.8 pounds. So most of my weight loss this week was body fat. Great news there, and I’m excited to be so close to having less then 100 pounds of body fat.
Exercise wise I was a bit under expectations. I traveled to Nashville on Thursday and caught a bug while I was there. Spent a couple of days in bed, so very low activity level. On the plus side, being in ketosis I weather being in bed much better. Back on my glucose diet that would have led to me being starved by the end and making really bad food choices the day after recovery. On the ketogenic diet my body just relied a little more on itself for fuel, which explains the 2 pound fat drop, even though I didn’t exercise as much.
Meditation wise I did improve. When you’re laying in bed for a couple of days you have plenty of time to get some done. I think that also made the recovery a lot more agreeable. Even when sick, if you’re keeping a positive, meditative mindset you still feel happy overall.
On the YouTube channel, I’m doing really well. Already up to four videos and I’ll post my fifth in two days. View wise, things are going well better than I had hoped. I had planned on real slow going at the start. Maybe 5-10 views tops per video. My lowest views is the last video I posted at 13. Altogether I’ve gotten 116 views, nearly triple my highest expectation. As of last night my videos have been watched for a total of 385 minutes. I even have 6 subscribers, and I thought it would take a month or two before getting my first. This is a situation like I talked about in yesterday’s post. I just set an intention for success on my YouTube channel instead of specific benchmarks and the universe is providing better results than I imagined. I still understand that this is a long-term success project, and I’ll keep putting up new videos every week, but I’m certainly satisfied with how things are starting.
On the book front, sadly the results aren’t as good. When I got started on the YouTube channel I let that take priority. And it became my sole focus. While the book is mostly complete from a first draft perspective, it should be in the final draft stage by now. Since the YouTube channel is moving along nicely I’ll devote more of my time in the next few weeks to the book.
On the money front, some old habits crept back in. Mainly in the form of books. I enjoy downloading samples to my Kindle so I get an idea if I’ll like a book before I buy. Unfortunately some habits die hard. After reading a few samples and liking the books I jumped on Amazon and bought them. Although the books are ones that are good reads for being a better person, they weren’t necessary purchases so they were a violation of the rules. So I’m posting it here for accountability reasons.
That wraps up this weeks update. Had a few shortfalls but mainly I feel like this week was a move in the right direction. I’m focusing on keeping it going and closing the year out strong in these last two months. Next week will be my monthly update with pics. See you then.
Consider this. You’re driving down the road with the stereo on. It’s tuned to a station playing exactly the kind of music you love. Or perhaps its a talk radio station. Whatever it is, you enjoy it immensely. As luck would have it, you have your smart phone there with you too. So you pull it out and start playing a station or podcast with similar content at the same time. Now you’re really enjoying the drive listening to two different sources of entertainment or information at the same time. It’s like stereo, only better.
Of course I’m being silly. Having two different stations going on at the same time would only be confusing. You couldn’t possibly enjoy one station or the other because the one broadcast would interfere with the other. To get good entertainment “results” in this situation you need to have one radio tuned to one station. So how do you pick that station? You need to focus on not just what sounds good, but what is truly informing or entertaining you.
Silly as this scenario sounds, it’s exactly what we do all the time with the Law of Attraction (LOA). We focus on many things at once and we often play conflicting messages. Each comes with its own set of problems.
First up, we focus on too many things at once. Instead of focusing on one goal and devoting our attention to it, we take the shotgun approach. Just blast a lot of mental buckshot out there hoping to hit something. The problem with buckshot though is it’s only truly effective at shorter ranges. If you want to hit a specific target at a distance you want one well targeted round.
So instead of using the LOA to attract health and wealth and relationships and cars and mansions and whatever, take time to aim the LOA. Pick a target. A specific target. And zero in on it. If health is your target of choice, what constitutes a bullseye for you? Is it being able to go the whole day feeling full of energy? Is it running very fast? Is it having chiseled cheeks and six-pack abs? Don’t just go for the target, go for the bullseye. Put time in considering what it is your truly want. Then focus your mind on it. Visualize yourself as that specific view of “healthy” you have for yourself. Meditate on it for some time in the morning, and then again before bed. Perhaps even throw in some visualizations throughout the day. Not to excess mind you. As any marksman will tell you, you can aim the bullet only so well. At some point you need to pull the trigger and let the round fly towards the target. So put in a little effort a few times a day and then let it go and see what happens. Once you’ve gotten what you desired from the LOA, then go on to the next target. It gets a little easier each time, just like shooting. The more you hit a bullseye the more confident you are that you can do it again, which improves your results.
The second issue we have is conflicting messages. A prime example of this is what most people want to use the LOA for, a big pile of cash. Well why do you want a big pile of cash? A big pile of cash in itself doesn’t do anything good for you. It’s only good if you spend it, and then it isn’t a pile anymore. So what do you really want with your pile of cash? Is it a Tesla? Well focus on the Tesla then. If you send out the desire for a big pile of cash to the LOA it’ll be confused by the side broadcast about the Tesla. Have you ever tuned your radio to a frequency that is close to two different stations? Didn’t work so well did it? It’s the same for the LOA. If it’s receiving interference from what you say you want, it can’t materialize what you do want.
And this works for another reason. Let’s say that you focus on your big pile of cash. But that isn’t your real goal. Your real goal is feeling safe because you don’t want to worry about having enough money to survive. The LOA is getting a mixed message, one part of which is a big pile of cash. So it’s going to do it’s best with the mixed signal to get you a pile of cash. But even if it does cut through the static and crossed signals that’s just one avenue of “safety.” Suppose you just asked for what you really wanted, safety? Then the LOA is open to provide anything that gets you your safety. It could provide you with a nicer apartment in a better neighborhood at a cheaper rent. It could provide you with a more reliable car won through a contest. It could provide you with a better job or a promotion. Because you just asked for what you really wanted, safety, the LOA is wide open in how it can provide that for you.
So take a little time and ask yourself why you picked the target you did. What is the true nature of that target that makes it of interest to you. If you were initially interested in having the body of a Greek god, decide why. If it’s really because you want to attract more women, use the LOA to ask for the women instead. But maybe it isn’t the women you want but the love. Even better, ask the LOA for love. Let it decide the best way to provide that love to you. Or maybe you really do want a big pile of money. It’s ok to ask for that too, if that’s what you want.
Suppose you just asked the LOA for what you wanted. Suppose you just asked the LOA for that one thing you wanted most, in specific detail. I think when you can get to the point where you can focus on one desire and make it a true desire, that’s when you’ll go from supposing to succeeding. The LOA is here to help you have a better life. So why not help the LOA along by asking for just want you truly want. Have a great day.
This one is about the Keto Flu. Check it out. Feel free to leave a like and a comment. Subscribe to the channel and enable notifications if you’d like to know when new posts go up as soon as they happen. Enjoy.
Another week of progress, which surprised me as I had my day off from keto this past week. Usually this results in a weight gain, but I still managed to lose weight. I came in at 276.6 pounds, a 1.2 pound drop from last week.
My muscle mass went from 27.1% to 27.2%. That’s from 75.3 pounds to 75.2, so a slight loss there. Body fat stayed consistent at 37.5%, but in terms of pounds went from 104.2 pounds down to 104.0 pounds. So closing in on carrying less than 100 pounds of body fat. Very excited about that. So basically I dropped about a pound of water weight. Again this was surprising as the intake of carbs during my day off from keto should have resulted in my retaining more water.
I closed all three progress rings on my Apple Watch every day except one last week. So doing well with the exercise program. I’ve included more jump rope sessions into the mix. That might explain why what should have been a minor back slide week turned into progress one.
On the mental front I’m doing much better. I meditate every day and I feel I’m going deeper each time. I also started a positivity journal a bit back and I’m doing better about listing my small victories in it. This has definitely helped with the positivity. Seeing a list of good things grow is a wonderful reminder to be happy with your life. It’s easy to do and I highly recommend it. Just get a journal or small notebook (or like me you could use a separate notebook in Evernote on my phone) and just log the positive things that happened to you that day. Doesn’t have to be anything major, just anything you’d identify as positive.
I’m also reminding myself to smile more. And for no particular reason other than to smile. It’s especially nice to remind myself to smile when I’m looking at others. They, for the most part, smile back and that reinforces the happiness. And it makes their day too, so bonus. Along with the smile I think a positive affirmation in my head. It’s having noticeable improvements on my disposition.
So another week of moving forward on all fronts. Sure I’d like it if the progress were faster but on the whole I’ll take any forward movement, no matter how small. And I try to take the lessons I learn and reapply them to my life. The cumulative effect is amazing. Each day I try to be a little better and I think I’m succeeding. We’ll see next week I suppose. Have a great day. See you in a week.
I’ve been looking into ways to grow my blog. Although I’m thankful for the followers I already have, this blog has been about helping people and I’d like to reach more people because of it. So I’ve been studying ways to improve the number of followers I have.
One of the things I’ve been studying is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Before blogging I had never heard of SEO. It’s not really important to someone who just has an Instagram and Facebook page that’s mainly followed by friends. But now I want to reach a bigger audience so SEO is a lot more relevant to me.
Now I’m just learning about SEO so I’m by no means an expert on the subject, but the concept seems pretty straight forward. Doing things that increase your chances of being discovered during a search. There are many ways to do this but the one that has caught my attention is using more effective keywords or tags.
The reason it caught my attention is that SEO using effective keywords seems remarkably similar to me as the Law of Attraction (LOA). Whereas you use keywords and tags for SEO, you do a similar thing with affirmations and thoughts with LOA. And much like SEO and how well chosen your keywords are, how well you choose your thoughts will greatly determine your success with LOA.
Take SEO for my blog as an example. The two big focal areas of my blog are the Ketogenic lifestyle and improved inner well-being. If for this post I chose keywords like “diet”, “fats”, and “thinking” I’m probably not going to have a lot of success. Even though each of those keywords actually applies to my blog, they’re very vague. As an example I’ll type “diets” into Google and see what happens. Oh look, about 1,150,000,000 results come back. And my page would be just one of those. So the odds of someone landing on my page would seem to be 1 in 1,150,000,000, but in fact it’s well lower. The odds of someone flipping through enough search results to get to my page is pretty much nil. Now what happens if I use the keyword search “ketogenic lifestyle”? I’m down to 154,000,000 results. My chances still wouldn’t be great, but they’d be well better than when the results were over a billion. So the more specific and relevant I make my keywords and tags, the more likely people are to find my page.
How does this relate to LOA? Well if you want abundance, or health, or relationships to find you it’s crucial that you use the right “keywords” in your thoughts. Lets start with the concept of abundance. Abundance is a very vague term. It just means a lot of something, but doesn’t really define what that something is. Therefore if you want the LOA to work best for you, you’ll need to be more specific about an abundance of what. If you define abundance as lots of friends, then you don’t want the universe providing you with an abundance of coffee. I on the other hand love coffee so I’d be ok with an abundance of it.
Or lets look at the LOA and relationships. If all you ask for is the vague term relationships, you could wind up with a ton of friends. There’s nothing wrong with having lots of friends, but if you’re looking for romance, friends aren’t going to cut it. The opposite is true, as well. If you’re just wanting stronger friendships but ask the universe for relationships, you could wind up with a lot of women or men showing romantic interest in you. This would be great if that’s what you wanted, but doesn’t really help make your friendships stronger.
So with the LOA you need to use good keywords. Don’t just think about being healthy, focus on what that truly means to you. If healthy means having a level of fitness that creates a great body that is capable of participating in any activity you want, ask for that instead of just wanting “health”. If healthy to you means disease and illness free, think specifically about that. Instead of the vague abundance, ask for an abundance of what you specifically want like happiness, or comic books, or business leads, or money.
Spend time considering what it truly is you want, boiled down to its specific form. Picture what that would be in your mind. Visualize it in as great a detail as you can. Let the LOA know exactly what you want so it returns search results more relevant and helpful to you. After all how can you expect the LOA to know what you want if you can’t even figure it out yourself.
Let me know what you think about this comparison. Agree? Disagree? Are you picking up what I’m putting down? Do I have a totally incorrect view about SEO? At the least I hope this has given you some fun thinking to do. The LOA is a great tool when used correctly. Just remember that it works no matter how you use it. Give it good keywords and you’ll get what you desire. Use bad ones and, well it’ll return lots of results for those too. So keep those thoughts positive and on point. I hope you’re having a great day. See you next time.
Along with my body I’ve been working on improving my mind. This is both in the functional sense (reading faster, thinking more clearly, having better focus) and in the focal sense. I’ve come to realize that there’s no point in creating a better body and a longer life if it’s going to be an unhappy one. So I’ve worked hard at improving my mindset.
This has been done via a number of methods. I meditate more. I reorganize my thoughts to favor the positive. I reject negative thoughts and negative conclusions. And the more I do this the more I see things that reinforce a positive point of view.
In the movie Batman Begins, Alfred chides Batman about how he can’t be living a double life if he isn’t living the life of Bruce Wayne. He teases Bruce by saying “Who knows Master Wayne, if you start pretending to have fun, you might have a little by accident.”
Although meant as a playful jab, there’s a certain amount of truth to this. Positivity is infectious. If you start spending your time looking for the positives in life you’ll start seeing them more and more. As Earl Nightingale said “you are now, and you do become, what you think about.”
The more you focus on the positive the more you see positive things. The more positive things you see, the more positive you become. The more positive you become the more you think positively, and the cycle repeats itself. You just have to be open to being positive.
Many will look around at the state of the world, or the state of their life and ask, “what do I have to be positive about?” It’s a great question to ask yourself, if you’re willing to answer it.
So here’s a little challenge for you this week. Keep a little notebook on you. Or if you prefer the tech route, start a new note or document on your phone. I personally have a separate Evernote folder just for this challenge. Every time you have something positive happen to you write it down. It doesn’t have to be anything super special. This is about writing down anything that you feel is a win.
Did someone smile at you for no reason? Write it down. Was the drive home a little quicker than usual, or the traffic a little lighter? Put that on the list. Perhaps you find a penny while walking into work today. That counts too. Anything where the needle moves towards the positive. No matter how small. If you’re not sure if it counts, write it down anyway. Chances are if you had to wonder if it does, you think it could be a win.
After a week, go back and look at your list. If you did a reasonably good job of remembering to write things down I’m betting you have a nice long list. This is what you have to be positive about. Over the next few weeks keep adding to the list. Make it enough of a habit that you enjoy adding entries. Add that you enjoy adding entries onto your list of positivity. There’s really no wrong way to do this other than to not do it.
When you start going back each week and reviewing your list you’ll be amazed at just how many positive things happen to you all the time. Take an example from me today. I got an award at work today. I met a cool bulldog named Leon. A attractive woman looked my way and smiled. The drive home was so easy because the traffic was light. I met my fitness goal of closing all three rings today. That’s five easy to find positives I had today. That’s 35 for the week if I do it every day. That’s a lot of positives that just happen to you if you bother to look.
And again, it’s all about what you focus on. When you keep looking for positives you’ll keep finding them. If you’re looking for positives you’ll also start overlooking negatives because you aren’t focusing on them anymore. At a certain point if you keep looking for positives enough you might even accidentally feel positive. Just kidding, you’ll feel positive but it won’t be an accident. It’ll be a way of life for you.
“You are now, and you do become, what you think about.” Blessed or cursed. Happy or sad. Positive or negative. They’re your thoughts. Choose the ones you want to live the life you desire. It’s all in your hands. Or your mind. However you want to look at it. I recommend looking at it the positive way. Have a great day.
Here’s my latest video. Check it out. Go to YouTube and leave a like if you enjoyed it. Feel free to subscribe and get notifications if you want to keep up with me on YouTube.
Did my weekly weigh in this morning. Down another .6 pounds from last week. I’m now at 277.8 pounds. My muscle mass is 27.1% and my body fat is 37.5%. Last week they were at 27.0% and 37.7% respectively. In terms of pounds that comes in at 75.3 pounds of muscle and 104.2 pounds of fat this week. That puts me up .1 pounds of muscle mass and down .8 pounds of fat.
So not a lot of big changes but they were all changes in the right direction. As the speed at which I lose weight varies from week to week I try to keep an eye more on the averages. I still think that when looking at the averages I’m on target to be at the weight I want by mid next year. I’ll be at my first goal of 230 pounds by about April I’d imagine. Now that doesn’t take into account any issues with loose skin I might need to take care of. This is more a timeline of how I’ll do losing what I can without surgery. If I can lose the weight and the skin retracts nicely so I don’t need the surgery, all the better.
In terms of exercise progress so far this month I’m really on target. Since the 1st of the month there has only been one day that I didn’t close all three rings. So that’s two fifteen minute workouts a day for all but one day so far. They’ve been mainly walking workouts. I’m planning on including at least one, maybe two, jump rope workouts a week to try to get the weight loss revved up again. I’ll keep you posted on that.
Food wise, I’m considering upping my calories by increasing fat intake. I think another possible reason I’m losing more slowly is my body needs to have the fires stoked again. Temporarily taking in more fat will accomplish that goal.
Meditation wise I’m doing well. I get my morning meditation in almost every morning. I’ve started adding a nightly routine where I listen to subliminal messages. Right now I’m doing the ones on lucid dreaming. I’ve been interested in lucid dreaming for a while. It’s happened a couple of times in my life but I’d really like it if I were to be able to lucid dream more regularly. I figure worst case scenario, even if the subliminal messages don’t work as planned it’s still another 30 minutes of meditation a day. And that can’t hurt.
So I’m liking the progress I’m making. I’m feeling better and stronger every day. That’s both on the inside and the outside. I’ve lost more already then I have to go so happy about that. I can see a finish line, which is very motivating. And each day I visualize a better future then I did the day before. And each day I become that more certain the future will come true. I’ve had a great day today and I hope you have too. I’ll see you again in a week for another weigh in and tomorrow for another post. Take care.
Have you ever started doing something and for some reason it just started feeling like a bad idea? Have you ever wanted to buy something and you get this nagging sensation that you shouldn’t? Have you met someone before that seemed nice enough to you but for some reason you just feel uncomfortable around them?
I think we all would answer yes to those questions. We don’t know how we know, or why we know, but sometimes we just know things are amiss. That knowledge is coming from your inner voice. And the reason why we don’t know how or why we feel a certain way is because we sometimes do a bad job of listening to our inner voice.
Why is that? It’s our inner voice, so surely it’s working in our best interest. It’s a part of us so we should be able to trust it. And we probably would if we recognized it as our voice. The problem is that we don’t hear it clearly so we dismiss it as nerves, or a chill in the room. We rationalize it away because our conscious mind has come to a conclusion on the subject and we accept it must be the right one.
So why would our inner voice be at odds with our conscious mind? Because our conscious mind is easily swayed in the direction we want to go. When you started doing whatever it was you’re doing right now your conscious mind had a “good” reason for doing it. You don’t just start doing something for no reason at all. Your conscious mind decided this was the action you’ll take because it viewed it as the correct action. It’s therefor biased towards that decision. Or when you go to the store to get something your conscious mind has already decided that it should purchase that item. The decision is already made presumably with rational facts to back it up. And when you’ve already decided you like someone then surely they must be a good person. Your conscious mind wouldn’t allow you to befriend a bad person. And you’re a pretty smart cookie so it isn’t likely they could be fooling you into thinking their nice when they aren’t.
Your conscious mind is acting on the principle of confirmation bias. It will seek out all the facts that justify its position. Finding facts to support your position is a good thing. At least it is when you aren’t overlooking facts that suggest you’re wrong. That’s confirmation bias. We only accept the facts that confirm our point of view.
Your inner voice is different. It’s your subconscious mind. It isn’t interested in right or wrong. It’s merely going by what history tells it. It will access all the information pertinent to a decision, whether it confirms a position or not. It’s noticing all the facts and is seeing something wrong. So when it’s giving you that off putting feeling about the person you’re talking to it’s because it knows from previous patterns that there’s something wrong with this guy. It doesn’t care that he “seems nice” or comes off as a “good guy”. It is picking up on subtle hints that your conscious mind is overlooking that lets it know there’s reason to be concerned.
It’s like your own built-in “spidey sense.” You just have to tune in to it. How do you learn to hear your inner voice more clearly? The same way you hear outer voices better. You stop and listen. If you get that tingly feeling at the back of your neck, question why. If you’re looking at that new TV you wanted and something about it doesn’t feel right, pause a moment and ask yourself “what am I missing?” And then listen to what your inner voice tells you. You don’t have to blindly follow everything it says, just give it a chance to be heard.
Another way to hear your inner voice better is similar to what you do when you are trying to listen to music or are on a phone call in a noisy environment. You change your location to a quieter one. The way you change to a quieter location in your mind is through meditation. Breathe in and out slowly and rhythmically, focusing on your breath. When you feel your body relaxing let your mind relax as well. As thoughts pop into your head that aren’t related to what you’re trying to figure out just gently release them without judgement. When your body is relaxed and your mind is calm start asking yourself questions about the area you’re looking for insight into. Do this often enough and it will become a habit where you can quickly slip into the relaxed and self-aware state.
Like many changes you can make in your life, if you’ve been ignoring your inner voice for a long time it’ll take a while to get back into the habit of listening to it. But it’s a habit worth spending time on developing. Your inner voice can be a great and helpful guide if you allow it to be in your life. As with all things the choice is yours. Have a nice day.
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