This one will be short but sweet. Yesterday I crossed a milestone with my blog here on WordPress. I now have over 100 followers. I enjoy putting posts up on here but there really wouldn’t be much of a point if it wasn’t for all of you following me and reading (and sometimes watching) them. I am eternally grateful for your support and truly hope that what I am sharing with you is helping you to be the best versions of yourselves. Have a great day today. Peace.
Archive for the ‘writing’ Tag
Thank You All So Much Leave a comment
Your Brain the Hard Drive Leave a comment
When your phone or computer starts running out of storage you’ll get a little message telling you so. The device is prompting you to look at what you have on it and determine what you feel is important and what you can afford to get rid of. And then you start deleting to make more room.
In a way, your brain works the same way. It’s constantly determining what’s important and what isn’t. What you want to keep, and what you can get rid of because it isn’t serving you anymore. The big difference is how it goes about doing it.
Your phone or computer, should you ignore the initial warning, will simply send you another message soon enough. Storage is full. It won’t allow you to add anything else until you take the steps mentioned before to create more room.
Your brain does this automatically. It’ll just start deleting things it feels you don’t need anymore while increasing the storage density of the things you do.
So how does your brain determine what’s important and you should keep? Or how does it know what to delete? It’s all summed up in the old phrase “use it or lose it.”
If you spend your day focusing on negative thoughts it assumes negative thoughts are important to you. So it starts doubling down on saving negativity. The areas of your brain focused on negativity will actually become more dense. Your brain will start making connections between this negativity and that to reinforce the negative mindset for you. And the more negative you get the less your brain feels you need positivity. So guess what? It’ll start spring cleaning out your positivity in favor of making room for more negativity.
The thing is that it works just as well the other way around. If you focus on positivity your brain will assume that’s important to you. It’ll make the areas of your brain focused on positivity more dense. It’ll start viewing negativity as unimportant and will start deleting the negativity files on your brain’s hard drive.
The easiest way to accomplish this goal is planned input. Start a gratitude journal so you have to focus on what’s good in your life. When you find a positive affirmation you like write it down on a piece of paper and hang it where you frequently walk by so you’ll be constantly reminded of it. Get a blank business card and write something motivational on it. I carry one around in my wallet at all times. On one side I wrote my name over the title “YouTube Influencer” because I’m trying to grow my YouTube channel. Every time I look at the card I’m not only reminded of that goal, it’s presented to me as if it has already occurred. On the other side I’ve written my favorite affirmation. “Every day in every way, I AM getting better and better.” I look at that a lot too.
Maybe you’re more visual. Keep pictures around your house that give you happy thoughts. Make a point of stopping in front of them and take time to appreciate them. Watch videos on YouTube that increase your positive vibes.
Maybe you’re more auditory focused. Perhaps the Superman theme song gets you revved up and motivated. Play it in your car on the way to work. They make apps that recite positive affirmations for you. You could play that as well, or instead. Have an area of your life you want to improve on? Find a podcast devoted to that area and take time each day to listen to it.
However you accomplish the goal of adding positive input into your hard drive you’ll slowly build up the positive connections in your brain. Over time that will tell your internal hard drive management system to free up more space for it. That means you’ll start being less negative naturally. And a snowball effect will occur. With less negative programming in your brain you become more positive. When you become more positive your brain increases the positive files and density. That in turn makes you less negative. And again and again.
Your brain has been working this way all along, you just may not have been mindful of the data you’re inputting. Make a choice today to only upload that which benefits you. At the same time you’ve made the choice to release that which does not. Over time, if you stick with the program, you’ll become the person you want to be instead of the person you happen to be. And hopefully that’ll be a very positive person indeed. Have a great day. Peace.
Quick Thought Leave a comment
It’s all very well and good that you want to lose weight to be healthier. Who wouldn’t want that? How many people do you know who go around thinking “If only I were less healthy how much better would things be?”
Don’t just focus on being healthier. Consider what you mean by being healthier. Does that just mean being lighter? Well if you lose a couple of pounds of muscle you’d be lighter, but I’m guessing you wouldn’t really be happier.
Does being healthier mean being sick less often? Does it mean running faster? Perhaps, to you, it means changing, lowering, or possibly even not having to take medications you’re currently on. Or even just sleeping better.
There aren’t any right or wrong answers here. Just follow the train of thought where it leads. You start out with wanting to be healthier. Healthier to you means having lower body fat. Better muscle definition. A chiseled jaw line. You realize you want to be healthier to be more attractive.
Or maybe carrying all the extra weight you do means you don’t move as well. So you want to be healthier to be more mobile. And once you become more mobile you’ll go out and do more in nature. You just want to be able to explore the world of nature around you.
Again, there’s no right or wrong here, just follow the path to the end. And when you arrive mentally at your destination put a pin in it like you would on Google Maps to always have it available to look up later.
Because some days you may not feel like eating as healthy. Some days you may be tired and don’t feel like exercising. Some days you might not feel like taking a few extra minutes out of your day to do a blog post. You’d rather call it an early day and get to dreaming.
And then you pull out your mental map with the pin in it. You remember where you’re headed. You recall how much you want to be there. Suddenly that cheat meal doesn’t seem so tasty. Suddenly you realize you need to at least start the workout and see where it goes. Suddenly you know that the dreams will be waiting for you in a few minutes, after you’ve shared on your blog.
Nice thing about maps is that they’re there when you need them. You don’t have to study it all day. Just occasionally take a gander every now and again to keep yourself on track. Check your map every so often and you’re sure to reach your destination. Have a great day. Peace.
Weekly Weigh In Leave a comment
I didn’t forget this weeks weigh in I just decided I’m going to try a new format. I usually just typed it in but that just seems so clinical and cold. So I’m going to start doing a video talking with you about my progress for the week. I might still do an occassional progress pics update here as well. The nice thing about the videos is you’ll see me in motion from week to week and how much better I’m doing. I’ll try to get them done Monday night after work since I weigh in Monday morning when I get up. If not Monday night I should have it done on Tuesday moving forward as it’s a day off for me. So here’s this weeks progress video. Peace.
Day One 2 comments
Today is the first day of the new year, 2019. You have 364 more days to come after this one. If you’re like most people you made a number of resolutions today on what you’d like to accomplish using those 364 remaining days. Here are a few tips on how to do just that.
First and foremost, reconsider your resolutions one more time before you set them in stone. Are they reasonable? If you resolve to lose 200 pounds next year, maybe you need to take it down a notch to a more reasonable 100 pounds. That’s still not an easy task and will challenge you to accomplish it, but it can be done. 200 pounds, not so much. Are they within your power to accomplish? Even with the law of attraction you need to believe you can get it done. If you resolve to do something that your heart doesn’t truly believe you can, you’re setting yourself up for failure. So if your resolution is to find the love of your life, but you doubt your ability to attract the love of your life, change your resolution to something that helps you move towards that initial resolution, and you feel you can accomplish. Perhaps resolve to have greater self-love. Or resolve to build a characteristic of yourself that you think will help attract the kind of person into your life that you’d like to have a romantic relationship with.
Second, once you’ve settled on resolutions that are reasonable and that you feel you can accomplish, create a game plan for how you can accomplish them. Give each month, or week if suitable, a mini goal that moves you towards accomplishing your resolution. By breaking it down into more manageable steps you’ll not view that task as so daunting. It’s the difference between trying to jump to the second floor versus taking the stairs.
Third, track your progress. Keeping a journal of your journey serves two purposes. First, as you accomplish each goal you create a reminder of it for yourself to review in the future. Feeling a little stuck or unsure if you can reach the next mini goal? Just go back and look over all the progress you’ve made in reaching prior mini goals to remind and motivate yourself. Second, it gives you a better overview to see what is and isn’t working. An example would be in your journal you see that every time you have a cheat day your progress lags a bit. So obviously you’d want to forgo the cheat day. Or maybe you’ve resolved to be more positive, but you’re struggling a bit. You look back at your journal and see that when you hang out with a certain friend your mood gets dragged down. Time to start making tough decisions about who you spend your time with.
Fourth, remember to be flexible. You thought that your resolution was reasonable and achievable but a few months in it’s clear you aimed a little too high. It’s okay to change the resolution to a more reasonable and achievable one. Or hopefully it’s the other way around. Your resolution turns out to be a little too easy to achieve. Move the goal posts farther away. Maybe four months in you realized that what you thought you wanted to achieve with a resolution isn’t your true goal. Your resolution was to live a more minimalist lifestyle. You’ve gotten rid of a lot of your stuff but you don’t feel better for it. Then it dawns on you that it wasn’t the clutter in your apartment that was bothering you, it was the apartment itself. Change your resolution to finding a new apartment.
Finally, and this goes hand in hand with flexibility, remember that Day One isn’t the only day you can make resolutions on. Anytime during the year you realize that a resolution isn’t working out for you, drop it. But replace it with a new one. Halfway through the year you’re well on your way to meeting your resolution to be a better athlete and you want to up the ante. Make a resolution to enter a Spartan race before year’s end. Three months in and you’re making excellent progress on writing that book you resolved to get done before 2019 is over, resolve to start another book as well. Or maybe resolve to increase your creativity in another area like drawing or painting happy little trees. You could be doing really well with resolutions in one area of your life, like finances, and decide you’d like to improve other areas, like fitness. So create a new fitness resolution. You don’t have to wait until Day One 2020 to do that.
Hopefully these tips will help you along your journey with your resolutions this year. But the most important tip I can give you is to take the first step. Michael Jordan correctly said that you miss all the shots you don’t take. So try. Even if you don’t complete the resolution, if you’ve moved from where you were to down the road a bit to where you are, you’ve done a great thing because you’re better for it.
And that’s the resolution we should make every day. To be a little better than we were the day before. So here’s to being better. Have a great day.
Weigh In 12/10/2018 Leave a comment
Time for the weekly weigh in. Good news this week. As you know I actually gained a pound last week during the weigh in, and for the monthly update no less. This week I’m happy to report that I’ve bounced back. Last week I weighed in at 272.2 pounds. This week I weighed in at 269.6 pounds. So I not only lost the pound I gained last week, I lost an additional 1.6 pounds on top of that. Sweet. On top of that I’ve breached 270 pounds which means I’m either at, or very near, what I used to weigh in high school.
For muscle mass I was 27.7% last week and 27.9% this week. In terms of pounds that’s 75.4 pounds last week, and 75.2 pounds this week. Lost a little muscle possibly, but at .2 pounds that could be a measuring error. Not too worried about it, although I’d be happier if it were definitively climbing.
For body fat I was 36.4% last week and 36.1% this week. In terms of pounds that’s 99.1 pounds last week and 97.3 this week. So 1.8 pounds of fat lost. Between that and the muscle loss that still leaves about .6 pounds of weight to account for which I would assume is water weight.
So exactly three weeks from today will be December 31st. Last day of the year and last weigh in of the year. If I lose another 7 pounds between then and now I’ll have lost 90 pounds on the nose for the year. 7.5 pounds a month on average. I’d be very happy with that goal. To have lost a full 100 pounds this year I’d have to lose 17 pounds, which I don’t see happening.
Not a lot of change in my meditation or exercise routines this week other than small incremental increases. Same with mood and mindset. Just a little better than last week, nothing major to report.
When it comes to finances I have to admit I’ve slipped a little. I purchased an LED salt lamp I didn’t need, I just wanted. I justified it by telling myself that it was for creating a better ambience in the room while I meditated. The reality is that I don’t need to create ambience, especially since I meditate with the eyes closed most of the time. Other then that I’ve done well with spending and getting debt paid off.
YouTube is going pretty well. Nearly at 200 views. Excited about that. And I’ve begun recording an extra video on Wednesday’s to put up later in the week. Starting with the new year I’d like to make a goal of getting at least two videos up a week. I think that by doing so my views will go up a little quicker which brings me that much closer to being monetized, which is a big goal of the channel. The primary being to put out videos that reach people and help people. I’d like to spend more of my time doing that and that’s why I want to monetize. If I could make a living off of it I could devote myself full-time to it.
The book has been revised a bit, but I should be putting in a bit more time on it. With the end of the year three weeks away I’m working under the assumption that it won’t be out for sale by end of 2018. But it still should be out early 2019. We’ll see how it goes.
That wraps up this weeks update. Let me know what you think. The final goal I’ll mention this week is doing better about getting a post up every day here. It may just be to get a quick thought up, but I’d like something every day. So to that end I’ll wish you a good day and plan on seeing you tomorrow. Later.
Book Update Leave a comment
Tonight’s post will just be a quick update on my keto book. I’m happy to report that the 1st draft is done. It took a bit longer then it should have to get to here, but I did get here.
The next few steps will take a bit because some of them will require outside help. The first one is to give the book a day or two off so I can come back in a little while and look at the book from a fresh perspective. That will help me in my first revision. If you revise the book right after you complete the 1st draft you remember too much of what you were trying to get at. So when you read the text it may appear more coherent and easy to understand than it actually is. Giving the time off allows for a more honest revision.
After I finish the revision I’ll give a copy of the book to a few of my friends for review. The trick here is picking the right friends. Friends who are supportive of your writing efforts are great, but they don’t always make the best editors. They want you to succeed, which is a good thing, but that often means they won’t critique the book thoroughly enough. So I’ll have to make sure to hand it off to friends who meet three criteria. First, they care enough to be honest in their review, even if it’s to point out problems. Second, they know and understand me well enough to get that I’ll only be upset if they aren’t completely honest with me, even if it’s bad. And third, they can do all that in a timely manner. Of course I have to be a little negotiable on the last one as I can’t exactly claim to have been exceptionally timely myself.
Once I get their feedback I incorporate their corrections, criticisms, and ideas into a final draft. I’ll have them give that a quick once over and if it passes muster I’ll finalize the book. Then I’ll need to design a cover for it. After that it seems to be an easy process of putting it all together and up for sale on the Amazon Kindle store. I say seems because the instructions are simple enough to follow, but this will be my first shot so who knows if “looks easy” and “is easy” wind up being the same thing. Once the book is live I’ll post about it here.
Not sure what the time frame for all this is as it’s my first book, but I’m hoping all done by the end of the year. My intention is to offer it as a Kindle Unlimited book and for $0.99 if you want to buy it outright. I don’t see myself charging more because it’s a small book.
So that’s my update on the keto book. Hopefully more updates to come soon, especially the going on sale update. Hope you’re having a great day and see you soon.
Shred the Past Leave a comment
A popular plot in movies involves a person, or persons, who are able to go back into the past to change something. The movies generally end one of two ways. First, the person somehow makes a change and returns to the present and finds a ton of unintended consequences, like in the Butterfly Effect. Second, the person tries and tries to change the past but no matter what happens the future seems immutable. The person might create minor changes but the future that is meant to be will be, like in the Terminator series.
Both ways teach us one thing, the past is the past. And it really needs to stay the past. Bringing the past into our present (or making your present the past) never ends very well for us. Thankfully, movie plots aside, you can’t actually change the past. However, as many prove, you can live in it.
Every time you made a decision, the decision led to a result. Some good, some bad. Take me for example. In the past I decided to eat what I wanted and not exercise a lot. The result was I put on a lot of weight. Other examples might be you have had an unpleasant disposition in the past. The result is nobody wants to be your friend. Maybe you were very poor, or just had little skill in managing your money. The result is you experienced a lot of lack in your life.
The thing is that when you look at these traits you used to have, sometimes you identify with them in the here and now. Even if you’ve made a lot of changes in that area. You might have, like I did, lost a lot of weight via dieting and exercise. Or you’ve learned to be happier. You’ve created budgets for yourself so that your obligations are met and you aren’t in debt anymore. All of these are good things, but you won’t be able to move forward if you’re still stuck in the past.
If you identify yourself as always fat, always lonely, or always poor even after you’ve made all those changes you’re definitely living in the past. And no matter what progress you make if you keep your focus on your past self you’ll sooner or later bring your past back into the present. It’s the Law of Attraction. What you think about and dwell on most will be attracted into your life. In psychological terms it would be refered to as self-sabotage.
Maybe it’s time to get rid of those past beliefs. But how would you do that? You can shred that past. Here’s how it goes. Take out a piece of paper and a pen. I think this exercise works better going old school and actually writing it out because it’s more personal when you move the pen across the paper. Having said that, if you won’t do it other than on a computer and printing it, by all means do that. It’s better to do it that way than not at all. Now start writing out past qualities about yourself that you feel you’ve moved away from. Include things you’ve done that you regret doing and wouldn’t do again. Avoid writing down things you know still are in the present. Like if you had a habit of needlessly complaining, and don’t complain nearly as much any more, but still find yourself complaining about things sometimes, don’t include that. It all needs to be things you’ve moved on from. Anything that is in your past, you know isn’t relevant in the present, and you don’t want interfering with your future. You don’t have to make sure and get it all down on paper. So don’t wrack your mind and stress yourself out making the list. Also, keep in mind these are past qualities that don’t apply to you anymore. So make the list without judgement. This is who you were, not who you are, so no need to judge at all.
When you’ve jotted down your list and feel good that it’s complete enough, hold the list in your hand. Tell yourself (out loud or in your head, whichever your prefer) that this is a list of the past. Tell yourself that as it’s the list of the past you, it holds no weight in the present. These are things that don’t apply to you anymore and you don’t need to carry with you anymore. Then walk over to your shredder and shred it. Or if you don’t have a shredder, walk over to the trash can and rip it to shreds and toss it away. Shred your past. I’ve heard of doing the same thing by burning the list as well. If that’s how you’d prefer to destroy the list, feel free, just be safe doing so (preferably in a fireplace or fire pit designed to contain the fire).
Once you’re done shredding (or burning) just let it go. Relax. Take in a deep breath, then breath out. It’s gone. Destroyed. Out of your life. Keep it that way. If you feel the past is creeping back in again, repeat the process. Every time you remind yourself the past doesn’t control your present. Remind yourself enough of this, and you’ll be more positive about your future. Have a great day.
10/29/2018 Weigh In Leave a comment
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.
Being Open to Positivity Leave a comment
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.
Senso1970's Blog 
You must be logged in to post a comment.