Have you ever been driving down the road and all of a sudden you realize you’re way farther down the road than you expected? Perhaps you’ve been “working” in your office when you notice an hour has gone by and your cursor is still in the same spot on your monitor as the last time you looked. Or here’s an embarrassing one. You’re talking with someone when you realize they’re looking at you, waiting for your to respond. Problem is you have no idea what they just said. The bottom line in all three cases is that your mind wandered. It happens to most people, so nothing to feel bad about. We all lose focus from time to time. The funny part is that we often don’t even recall our train of thought when we have these lapses in awareness. So here’s a fun little suggestion for figuring out what you spend your time thinking about when your mind wanders and you don’t know where it’s been.
Either on your phone or watch set a timer for a random amount of time. By random I mean avoid times like 15 minutes or 2 hours. Times when you’ll see the alarm coming, like on the hour or half hour. You want the alarm to be a surprise, out of the blue. It’s even better if you can find an app that will alert you at random times during the day.
Every time the alarm goes off, jot down what you were thinking right then. Don’t analyze or critique it, just write it down. If the alarm goes off and you were wondering if Darth Maul could take Darth Vader in a fight, write that down. If you were wondering where all those extra socks you lose in the dryer go, write that down. Do this over the course of a few days. After a few days logging go back and review what you’ve written down.
Now go an extra step. Would you classify the majority of thoughts as happy, sad, or random? While random thoughts, like is it better to put the toilet paper on the roller overhanded or underhanded in orientation, don’t hurt you, they don’t really help you either. If your thoughts are predominantly sad or angry, why? Is life really that bad? Maybe you should police your thoughts better. Focus more on happy thoughts.
Were the majority of the thoughts positive, happy, or uplifting? Then good for you. If you’re writing these down at random and it’s coming up mostly happy that means your mind spends a lot of time in your happy place. Be proud of that.
Either way you get a good glimpse into what’s going on upstairs when you don’t even realize it. Do this exercise from time to time to get a gauge of where you are. Because whether you know your thoughts or not, what you keep your mind on you attract into your life. Best to keep it positive then. Have a happy day. A happy week. And hopefully a happy life. Peace.
When we see our friend after they’ve been to the salon for a new haircut we will often take a moment to compliment them on their new look. When someone we know gets a new car we’ll show all sorts of interest in it and tell them what a great purchase they’ve made. If we haven’t seen an acquaintance for a while and they appear to be more fit than when we saw them last time we’ll ask them if they’ve lost some weight or if they’ve been working out.
When it comes to the people we see regularly we take time to compliment them and build them up. We even do this with people we don’t see very often but are acquainted with. Sadly, the one person we don’t generally pay this courtesy to is ourselves.
Why don’t we do this for the man (or woman) in the mirror? What’s so wrong about taking a moment to compliment ourselves on how nice our hair looks today? If we got something new at a great price, why can’t we be proud of ourselves about it? When we’ve been on point about our diet and exercise and the results are showing, is there anything wrong with taking notice and patting ourselves on the back?
We’ve been told since we were children that the answer is yes. It’s bad. It’s vain. It’s self-serving and therefore wrong. But is it really? Like everything its a matter of moderation. If you’re spending all day looking in the mirror admiring yourself, of course that’s not good. But a quick “looking good” in the morning when you’re looking good is just showing confidence. That’s a good thing. Being proud of yourself for making a wise purchase isn’t egotistical, it’s prudent. We should want to be shrewd in our business deals. Letting yourself know that you’re pleased with the success you’ve had isn’t self serving, it’s reinforcing good behaviour. Behaviour you should want to continue with.
So next time you see yourself in the mirror go ahead and be happy. You’re a good person and you deserve it. Smile and remind yourself you have a right to be happy. Be proud of yourself like you would be for a good friend who was succeeding. It isn’t wrong to be proud of yourself. It should only be worrisome if you can’t. Have a great day. Peace.
Here’s to the power of positive thinking. As those who regularly follow me know I have a YouTube channel where I post a weekly vlog about the ketogenic lifestyle and living a more mindful, conscious life. I started it back in October to create a bit of accountability for me (as the camera will show my progress) but also as a way to try to give back to the community of people out there, some I know really well and some who were complete strangers to me, who’ve helped me along the way.
I try to spend a little time each week working on ways to better track how things are going on my channel and ways I can improve it. I realized that the app I use to track it is nice but I wanted to see the big picture in a different way so I created a spreadsheet to track my views each month, and the minutes people watch. Putting it together I noticed something interesting that made me smile.
Keep in mind that since I started back in October I’ve put at least one video up every week on Wednesday. I have added a few extra videos in there on top of that. But my uploading has been consistent so none of what I’m about to tell you could be explained by being off schedule or failing to upload during the week.
When I first started I was of course nervous, but also very excited about the project. And the numbers reflected that. My channel had the most views and minutes watched since I started. I was very positive about the channel. My introduction video had gotten a lot of views but over the next few weeks the views tapered off a bit. Which of course made me a little nervous. The next month the views and the minutes watched dropped significantly. This added to the nervousness, and the next month (December) the numbers were even lower.
And then a funny thing happened during the first video I did in 2019. I don’t script my videos (as is apparent at times I’m sure) I simply have a topic I want to cover and just talk to the camera. When I first started my channel I had committed to 52 videos, one per week. So I would have been done at the end of September 2019. But as I was talking about 2019 in the video and what I wanted for this year it came to me. I committed in the video to a full year of videos starting with that one so that all of my 2019 journey would be on the record.
Why did this happen? As I was filming the video I had become positive again because it was a new year with new possibilities. And I was excited about tracking them all, not just up to October.
This morning I looked at the number of views and minutes so far for this month and that’s when it hit me. My numbers were back up again. Here we are only two-thirds of the way through the month and my numbers are already beating my second month’s numbers.
I’ve done a little research. January is supposedly a lull month for YouTube so my numbers should be flat or even down. But they’re up. And I think it’s no coincidence that if you track my views, the minutes watched, and how positive and sure I was about my channel you’d see the exact same graph each time.
Could there be other explanations. Sure it’s possible. But as there’s no real downside to being positive I think I’ll just keep on with that game plan as the numbers keep getting better. If you haven’t seen my channel before, I’ll leave my latest vlog below. I hope you enjoy it and I hope you have a happy and positive week ahead of you. Peace.
No matter who you can think of, nobody has spent more time with you than you. Even dear old Mom hasn’t. Sure, the two of you hung out together for around 9 months at the beginning of things for you. She was definitely there for your birth. But from that point forward it’s highly unlikely she’s been there every moment of your life. No matter who it is, even if they were there the moment you were born and have been around in your life since, hasn’t been there for everything.
Why do I mention this? Because we get a lot of advice from well-meaning, well-intentioned people, including dear old Mom. They give this advice based on their best understanding of us. But try as they might, they’ll never understand you as well as you can. And sometimes the people giving the unsolicited advice aren’t well-meaning or well-intentioned.
You see, baring some sort of issue related to amnesia, you’re the only one with all the facts of your life. More importantly, even if there was someone who has managed to be in the same space as you all your life, they still don’t have the insights of what has gone on in your head. How did each and every one of those moments make you feel? What impact did they have on your drive and focus? What things did you consider impactful and what things did you dismiss out of hand?
All of that relevant information is contained in just one individual. You. So answer me this. If nobody else has as great an understanding of you as you do, why do you hold their opinion of you higher than your own?
When someone tells you that you can’t do something, how do they know that better than you? When someone tries to downplay your dreams as unreasonable, who are they to say it? Or when someone cruelly tells you that you aren’t good enough, or worthy enough, or pretty enough why would you listen to what they think about you over what you know?
Why indeed. The answer of course is you shouldn’t. If you’re happy with who you are don’t worry about what other people think of you. They don’t know you like you know you. If you have a dream that others tell you is silly, who cares? It isn’t their dream, so why would they be as invested in it as you are. If you’re happy with the way you look and how you feel, never be swayed by the opinions of others who try to tell you otherwise. Even friends and family who have the best of intentions for you.
Because in the end why would you care about the opinion of someone who is, regardless of intention, trying to bring you down? You’re a light in this world, never forget that. So don’t worry about the fog of negativity people like that try to shroud you in. Burn brightly like you know you can and be a beacon to others. Have a great and bright day.
If you’ve spent any amount of time driving I’m sure this has happened to you at least once. Maybe it’s a billboard you’re trying to read, the police pulled someone over and you just had to see who, or someone on the sidewalk you think is attractive. For whatever reason your eyes go from straight ahead down the road to the right side of the road.
What also happens, although you didn’t intend it to, is your hands go right as well. You generally find this out when you look forward again and realize you’ve drifted to the right. But occasionally you find out when your tire hits the shoulder and your attention is snapped back forward by the sudden change in road feel.
This is the nature of focus. Whether you intend it or not you head in the direction of your focus. And how far off the path you go is directly related to how long you lose focus on your true goal.
So for today make sure to stay focused on your true goal. If your goal is to be more positive, every time you catch yourself looking at negative “billboards” off to the side say to yourself, “remember, eyes forward” and refocus on being positive. If your goal is to lose weight, when you see that fast food outlet coming up, look forward down the road to how you’ll feel in your new body.
Whatever you’re doing keep focus on where you want to go. Because the reality is you’ll wind up where your focus is whether you wanted to go there or not. Have a great day.
Well, I won’t get to know how it went until tomorrow but I feel it went well. This was definitely the most interesting format I’ve interviewed under.
We all met in the same room at first. They explained to everyone the process and that they wouldn’t notify everyone of how they did until tomorrow. This was to insure a fair shot for everybody. They had another group coming in later today and they, quite fairly, didn’t want them to be out of luck before they even arrived.
The format for the interview was simple, just unusual. We were divided into a smaller group and taken into a separate room. Then, going around the table, each candidate was brought forward to be interviewed by the three member panel.
It was much more informal than any interview I’d done in the past. The three guys would give you a chance to tell about yourself and why you were interested in working there. Then based on your answers they’d ask for clarification on points you’d made. It was more of a chat than an interview. I rather liked doing it that way. It was just a little different having other applicants in the room. After you were interviewed you could leave. It was pretty quick.
I feel I did well. I felt comfortable in the format. The three guys were really nice. I’d definitely like to work for them. Best of all it wasn’t the usual pat interview.
I’ll be called tomorrow. If I’m accepted for the job I’ll notify my current employer and will be able to tell you either way tomorrow night. So until then have a great day. See you soon.
Sorry for the delay. My brother is visiting from Alaska so my schedule is a little off. But I wanted to make sure to get my weekly update on my progress posted.
This past week is of course the week that Thanksgiving occurred in. I took my day off from keto for this month for Thanksgiving so I was prepared in advance to be forgiving of myself when I weighed in yesterday.
Turns out it wasn’t needed. I weighed in at 271.2 pounds. That’s down .8 pounds from last week. So I enjoyed the holiday with the family and still managed to go down in weight. Something to definitely be thankful for.
This weigh in my muscle mass was 27.8%. That’s the same as last week. So the difference in pounds is negligible.
Body fat percentage also stayed the same as last week at 36.3%. This, plus a little water weight, would account for the .8 pounds lost.
So while the overall results barely moved the needle, it still did move in the right direction.
I was very good about exercising and closing my rings. I closed all three rings on 6 of the day this week. I closed the stand and move rings every day of the week. I missed out on closing the exercise ring once because I only did one workout on Friday. I didn’t complete the second because that was the day my brother flew in to town. On my days off I got three exercise sessions in each day so my average was over 30 minutes of exercise a day.
Not a lot to say about meditation. Same smooth, but slow, progression there. This is in regards to both quality and quantity. It is also a good description for my improvements in mood. Getting just a little bit better every day.
Some of that has to do with the job hunting as well. That’s been ramped up, including going for an interview tomorrow. Wish me luck.
This brings me to my final update, sleep quality. I’ve noticed that I’m getting better rest. Even on the nights I get up more often because I’ve had too many fluids during the day, I still get a good night’s sleep. I wake up rested and ready to go. So when I’m sleeping I must be sleeping deeper. That no doubt is improving my mood as well.
Speaking of sleep, because I do have the interview tomorrow I’m going to keep this post short so I can get to bed. I’m not sure if I’ll know right away if the interview was successful in getting me the job but I’ll post how I felt it went either way. If I do get the job I’ll need to wait a day or so to post on here as I will need to notify my current employer first. But after them you guys will get to know as well. Hope you’re having a great day and I’ll see you soon.
I restarted this blog on 03/28/2018 to document my keto and mindfulness journey. When I did I had assumed it would probably take a long time to gain any traction. And now, less than 8 months later, I’ve already exceeded 500 views and have 50 followers. Maybe that’s actually lower numbers than I could or should be at. Maybe they’re really good numbers. What I do know is I’m grateful for all the times people stopped by to view my blog, and I’m grateful for the 50 people who decided to come along for the journey. When I get to my first anniversary (of the restart anyway) I hope to have come farther still. Thank you for your support. Have a great day.
Made a little progress with today’s weigh in. Last week I was 273.0 pounds. This week I weighed in at 272.0 pounds.
For muscle mass last week I was at 27.7%. This week it went to 27.8%. In pounds that’s 75.6 for both. Not a gain, but not a loss. I’m good with that.
For body fat last week I was at 36.6%. This week it went down to 36.3%. In pounds that’s 99.9 last week and 98.7 this week. So while I dropped a pound of actual weight, I lost 1.2 pounds of body fat. So I must have put on a little water weight.
Progress was made, so that’s good. Would have liked a little better progress but I’ll take what I can get.
Strategies for getting the ball moving faster again include kicking up the cardio. I mainly walk which keeps using extra fat, but I want to burn faster. So I’ve gone from using just the basic step to adding the first set of risers for it. So now it sits 2 inches higher. And while I do more body weight exercises, I think I’ve been doing it a little too haphazardly. Now I intend to do them more on schedule. That way I’m both being more consistent and more accountable to myself.
In the mindset game, positivity is paying off. I have decided to be out of my current job and into a new job by the beginning of next year, before January is over. I’ve been keeping a positive outlook about my chances, and I’ve just gotten positive feedback. A coworker clued me in about a job I was completely unaware of. It doesn’t pay as high as my current salary, but it does have benefits, and I think I’d be happy doing it. It also strikes me as a job where I might have free time during the job to work on my writing, which is also good. So a good lead, out of the blue, on a job that’ll pay pretty well for what I’m doing, and is located where I work now so it’s a commute I’m used to. I’m very grateful for this lead, and my application has already been submitted.
I also realized today that I’m back to having fun at work again. At least with a few of my coworkers. Which shows a mindset improvement of its own. I am where I am and will be for a few more weeks so why not make the time happy? All the work I’ve done with meditating and positive affirmations has sure made it easier to be happier in all situations.
So to wrap things up, I’m very happy with the way things are going in my life right now. It looks like things are only going to get better. Stress is down and fitness/overall health is improving. And I look pretty well set up to hit the upcoming 2019 year running. Hope things are working out well for you, too. Have a great day.
Did my weekly weigh in this morning. Last week was a disappointing gain in weight. This week was a triumphant comeback. A week ago I weighed in at 277.2 pounds. Today I weighed in at 273.0 pounds. A 4.2 pound drop for the week and that places me 1.4 pounds under what I was 2 weeks ago.
For muscle mass I was at 27.2% last week, and now I’m at 27.7%. In pounds that’s 75.4 pounds last week and 75.6 pounds this week for a gain of .2 pounds of muscle. Not a lot, but a gain none the less.
For body fat I was at 37.3% last week, and now I’m at 36.6%. In pounds that’s 103.4 pounds last week and 99.9 pounds this week. I’m down 3.5 pounds of fat. More importantly I’m now under 100 pounds of body fat. So very excited about that. I even had to redo the math a second time when that came up because it surprised me so much.
Exercise wise it was a great week. I closed all three rings every day of the week. I got in 2 workouts a day of fifteen minutes, or more, each. I’ve been including more body weight exercises in there, which explains the slight gain in muscle. I feel stronger and healthier each day.
Mentally, it’s been a very positive week for me. I’ve noticed at work that I’m not letting things that would have gotten under my skin rattle me anymore. I respond better to customers who are being difficult. And the few times I did start to lose my cool my mind immediately jumped in to remind me I’m a happier person now and it diffused. I’m reading more, and I think a little quicker. As I approach the end of the year I just feel better and better.
Finance wise not much to report. I’m doing better with my money and haven’t wasted it on silly things. I catch myself when I want something and think about whether it’s really a necessary purchase or not. The answer is mainly that it isn’t. Bonus time at work is coming up soon and I plan to use the bonus to pay down credit cards. Overall I feel a lot more positive about my finances.
And I feel a lot more positive about my life in general. I’m less than 2 years from turning 50 and the road ahead of me looks better to me every day. And I’m more confident about my long-term goals, like enjoying life on the road going from place to place as I get older. Kind of a vacation that’ll last the rest of my days.
I hope things are going well for you all, like they are for me. If not, hang in there. With time and patience it can get better. I know because it has for me. Have a great day.
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