Archive for the ‘mindfulness’ Tag
A few posts back I talked about acting with purpose. This is all about keeping your focus on the here and now. We go through a lot of life on auto pilot, doing the same thing over and over again, simply because it’s the habit we’ve developed. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. You couldn’t possibly live your life if you had to make a decision on every thing you do. But when you let it get to the point where you just let your life happen by the patterns you’ve already formed you’ll get the results you’ve always been getting.
The biggest benefit of acting with purpose is it teaches you to evaluate your actions. Why are you doing what you’re doing? What benefit are you getting out of it? What could you be doing differently right now that would make things better? You can’t change things you aren’t aware you’re doing in the first place. Again, this doesn’t mean every little thing you do, just being more mindful of the things you do that have an impact on how you feel about yourself.
Another benefit from acting with purpose is a sense of control. Right or wrong, good or bad, you know you’re making the decisions. You stop feeling like you’re at the mercy of the tides. And that can reduce the overall stress you feel. While a small amount of stress is necessary, and even beneficial for you, being constantly stressed out is not. When you reduce your overall stress levels your body performs better. It can focus more energy on healing. Your mood will improve. And you’ll feel more relaxed.
And finally, acting with purpose teaches us to become more and more comfortable with making decisions. One of the hardest parts of the journey to a better you is just getting started. With all the possible decisions and all the variable and all the possible outcomes, each with a different set of variables and decisions attached to them, it can make the decision making process scary. And fear is the biggest obstacle we have to overcome to get started down the path to a better you. How do we overcome that fear? Just make a decision. Take one small step in any direction. Right or wrong you’ve just demonstrated to yourself that you can make a decision and still be here to make another one. If the decision turned out to be right, keep making decisions to stay on that path. If the decision turned out to be wrong, decide on a different path. Every time you make a decision it’s a reassurance to yourself that it’s ok to make mistakes. It’s also a reminder that you can’t get better if you don’t move from where you are toward where you want to be.
That’s it for today’s post. Hope you all had a great day and I’ll see you tomorrow.
Yesterday I talked briefly about kaizen and making small improvements. Today I’ll share a quick way to make those small steps. And that’s acting with purpose.
How many times have you been engaged in a task that doesn’t require a lot of attention only to realize a good chunk of time has passed? Or, scarily more frequently, been driving down a road or the highway you’ve driven a million times only to realize you blanked out the last few miles?
The thing is you weren’t unaware of what was going on you were just on autopilot. You did it all based on habit and that meant you didn’t need to devote much of any will to accomplishing it.
What if you were focused though? Mindful of what was going on and what you were doing? Think of the things you could accomplish. This is acting with purpose. You choose what you do at each moment based on a desire to do it, not a preprogrammed response.
What could you accomplish if you were focused on the drive? Be more polite to other drivers? Drive in a more efficient manner saving you money? How about just noticing things you may never have paid attention to? Maybe even enjoy the view if, like me, you drive home on a more rural route.
But the best thing you’ll accomplish is developing a sense of control. When you act with purpose you reinforce the idea that you’re in charge of your life. That you decide what happens next. And that can lead to the courage to take those small steps because now you know you’ve got this.
Acting with purpose means taking an active role in your life and being in the present. And that can lead to other benefits, but that’s a post I’ll share with you tomorrow. Hope you enjoy your day.
Ok, so nodded off last night before I got a chance to make a post. So I’m doing this one right after my jog while I have plenty of energy built up. Today’s blog will be about perception.
I’ve been reading up on having a stoic viewpoint. And that is while you can’t control events outside yourself, you can control how you react to them. It’s completely up to you.
Here’s an example. Over the past few days here in Madison it’s been very rainy with thunder and lightening. I happen to love the sound of thunder so it’s been a cool couple of days for me. However, if I had planned on a picnic in these past few days then my perception changes. All of the sudden the rain becomes a bad thing. But in both cases it’s the exact same weather.
How I view it is completely up to me. So the question becomes why would I want to view things in the negative? There’s no real benefit to me being negative. And your body doesn’t know the difference between real danger (I’m being chased by a lion) and imagined trauma (my perception that my life has been ruined by this rain delay). So by dwelling in the negative you’re keeping your body in stress all the time.
Better to try and find the silver lining in things. You could dwell on how the rain has ruined your plans, or maybe you spend your time thinking how much greener the grass will be when you get on your picnic thanks to the rain. You could dwell on how you’re not happy at work and how much you hate your job. Or you could look at it as an opportunity to sharpen up the old resume and maybe learn a new skill or two.
In each case when a situation happens where you could, or possibly do, view it as a negative just stop, take a breath, and think to yourself if you had to name a positive in all this what would it be. Doing this over time will just naturally lead to you being more positive automatically. Certainly a much healthier outlook on life.
Posting this a little late again. I apologize for that. I’ve tried to tell myself that it’s because I’ve not been feeling well. I’ve lived in the great Northwest most my life and now live in Madison, Alabama where this time of year it is both hot and very humid. I’m doing better then I was last year when I first got down here but the bottom line is this weather still doesn’t agree with my Northwest physiology. But that isn’t the real reason, and I know it. For the first time since I started weighing in I’ve gone up in weight without it being connected to my day off from Keto.
Not sure why, or what’s different in this past week. I ate like I normally do and I’ve been good about exercising even in the heat and humidity. It wasn’t much (gained .6 pounds) but I know it was body fat as my body fat percentage went up from 40.3% to 40.5%.
Were I a betting man I’d guess it’s because there have been some personal stresses in my life due to changes I’m making. I’m not happy with my current job and I’ve been looking elsewhere. That creates a bit of uncertainty in my life and that creates stress. I’ve been meditating each day and thought I was keeping it in check but it’s the only thing I can think of, other then the weather. I suppose the weather could be partly to blame, and that would suck as it’ll be a few more weeks of this and I wanted to drop at least 5 more pounds before I fly back to Washington State for a visit. However I’m most inclined to believe it’s the stress.
And that creates a little more stress. That’s the problem with stress is that it so easily builds on itself. The thing is though I know that’s it now. So I’m being hyper vigilant about my thoughts. When a doubt or a criticism creeps in I quickly correct it. On the whole I just know I’m making the right choice. That this is what the universe has in store for me. And I focus on that. I’m working on adding what I call “mini meditations” into my day where I just stop and relax my mind and repeat positive affirmations in my head. I’m also journaling regularly to get the thoughts out on “paper” (my journal is on my iPhone/iPad) which makes it easier to deal with them. I just keep first and foremost in my thoughts that these things are endurable and I’ll be better on the other side. So to that end I’m going to do a daily post for the next week as a trial run to see how that goes. Maybe it helps me, maybe it helps someone who reads it. Either way I’m all about taking steps to be a little better today then I was yesterday, and a little better still tomorrow. Take care.
I mentioned this during my last weigh in and wanted to go into a little more detail about it now. In dieting we tend to get caught up in taking care of the physical aspects of it. Calories in versus calories out. Exercising regularly. Eating healthy. Sleeping well. All these things are great, and you should be mindful of them, but you should be more mindful of being mindful.
The whole point of getting in shape, for me anyway, is to live a better life. And that’s generally how people view the journey. When I get into shape my life will be so much better. When I hit my weight goal things will be so much better. Once I’ve got those amazing six pack abs my life with the ladies will be so much better. Everything is a future event where somewhere down the road when a certain criteria has been met, I’ll be happy. This is a terrible way to live a life. Why wait to be happy, do it now.
Dr. Eric Berg (https://www.youtube.com/user/drericberg123) has said many a time that the problem with our mindset when it comes to losing weight is we feel we have to lose weight to become healthy. He puts it the other way around. He says get healthy so that your body loses the weight naturally. He is a proponent of the ketogenic diet and I highly recommend following him on YouTube.
I think that when it comes to happiness we make the same mistake. We assume we’ll be happy when all these positive things have happened to us. Which is a never ending pursuit. It always puts happiness down the road somewhere. So we need to begin turning our view around on that. Become happy to get the positive things to happen in your life. Adopt a positive mindset and positive things will begin to appear in your life. Whether you believe it’s the Law of Attraction, cause and effect, or you see what you want to see in life, it really doesn’t matter. If you maintain a happy disposition and your life becomes better, who cares about the specifics of how.
Speaking of how, how do you become happier. The simple, and very stoic, answer is you can’t control situations, but you can control how you react to them. So starting today, when you feel sad or angry or bummed, stop and think to yourself “How would things be different right now if I chose to be happy?” I think that happiness is a “muscle” like the rest of your muscles. The more you work at contemplating happiness the stronger your happiness muscle gets. And just like when your real muscles get stronger you can more easily handle heavy loads, as your happiness muscle gets stronger you can handle heavier emotional loads. I’m not suggesting this is a quick and easy fix or that you’ll have results overnight. Far from it. Just like it takes a long while to pack on solid muscle, it’ll take time focusing on happiness to build that level of emotional resilience where you’re just happy all the time. It’ll be a long journey but when you arrive you’ll see the trip was worth it.
This is going to be a shorter post. As expected my weight did go up since last Wednesday was my day off from keto. What wasn’t expected was how little it went up. Just .4 lbs. Between being really consistent about exercise and mindful about the rest of my eating for the week I was able to limit the effects of the one day off. Because the weight gain was so little none of the percentages changed from last week to this week so I won’t run the numbers like I usually do. Hopefully next month I’ll have progressed far enough that the one day off from keto won’t result in any regain of weight, and the month after that it’ll only result in a brief slow down of my weight loss.
Which brings me to another important thing I’ve learned this week. Being positive and making decisions that positively impact your mood and your life. I’ve made a lot of progress since the beginning of the year with my body, but not as much with my mind. Sure I’m generally more positive and feel better about myself, but I haven’t really devoted as much time to being more of a positive individual on the inside. I want to try and keep the posts related to specific topics so I won’t go too far into this here, but I will elaborate in a separate post. I just wanted to say that while it’s important to work on your body, I’ve realized that what’s on the inside is just as important. A lump of coal in shiny Xmas wrapping paper with ribbons and bows is still just a lump of coal. If you’re going to the trouble of creating a fantastic “vehicle” for yourself, make yourself a driver worthy of it. Take care until next week.
Hello again, time for the weekly accountability post. And I’m happy to be held accountable for this. Last week I actually gained weight due to my monthly day off from Keto. This week I not only lost the 3.2 lbs I had gained last week I actually dropped another 1.8 lbs on top of that. This puts me at 304.8 lbs for this weigh in with a body fat percentage of 42.8%. So I’m very near two goals I’ve been looking forward to. The first being to go below 300 lbs weight. It’s been such a long time since I was under 300 I can’t actually recall the last time I was. I know for sure it has to be at least a decade and a half ago. And more likely two decades plus. So looking forward to that in the next few weeks. Maybe even next week if I manage to drop another 5 lbs like I did this week. The second goal I’m looking forward to is being under 40% body fat. I don’t know when I was that because unlike weight I only started tracking my body fat percentage when I started my Keto journey. But I’d wager it’s been well over two decades on that, maybe three. I did the math on how much body fat I had last week and this week and all 5 lbs I lost came from body fat. I’d have liked it if I had gained some muscle mass but on the whole I’m calling this week a big win.
Next week is the monthly update where I’ll include pictures. Another reason to hope this week’s success is next week’s success as well. But no matter what I’ll be happy because the biggest things I’ve learned so far on my self improvement mission is there’s no point in improving if you aren’t happy when you do. And that’s my parting thought for this post. Don’t look at your long term goal and imagine how great life will be then. Don’t wait for happiness to arrive when you reach your destination. Be happy now. And if you aren’t, spend some time meditating on why you aren’t and along with your body, change your mind. There just isn’t a good reason why you can’t be happy now. See you next week.
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