Clicky

Search:

Beyond the Average

September 3, 2023 by  
Filed under blog

Over the years, I have written a lot about goal setting and how it can change and improve your brain and life. Am I saying that if you spend a little time setting a few goals then lots of benefits will automatically flow to you? No, I’m not saying that.

What I am saying is, if you seriously want to improve your life, you can, but it takes effort. With enough intense time spent thinking about how your life has been in the past and what you want it to be in the future, you will lift your mind and body to a new and higher level. And that’s over and above the real successes you will derive from goal setting.

Ask yourself, “What do I really want out of life?” I’m pretty sure you don’t want to, as Henry David Thoreau said, “live lives of quiet desperation,” as seems to be the case with most people.

Hinduism tells us that every human being wants four things: pleasure, success, a responsible discharge of duty, and liberation. But you have to find your own version of these things.

To help you figure that out, ask yourself these questions:

1. Do you want your life to be just another life?

2. Do you want to be average?

3. Do you want to make a difference in this world?

4. Does accomplishment mean a lot to you?

5. Do you want to become a better you, a better person?

6. Do you want to be in great physical and mental shape with ideal health your entire life?

7. Do you want to live a very long active life?

8, Do you want to make a fortune –a million dollars, or ten million, or even a hundred million? (Think what good you could do with that money!)

9. Do you want more choices in your life, the kind that making your own fortune could give you?

10. Do you want to leave the world a better place than you found it?

11. Do you want to help others as you help yourself?

12. Do you want to travel and experience the entire world and its cultures?

13. Do you want to substantially raise your level of contentment and fulfillment?

I dare say there’s not a single human on the planet that has not, at one time or another, entertained some great big dream for their life. What have you thought about and dreamed about doing? Are you doing things that will lead you to that goal now, things that will lift your life along with the lives of your friends and family?

There’s no reason to live a life of quiet desperation. You just need those goals and to take those steps to move your life beyond the average.

The Four Pillars of Well-Being

August 27, 2023 by  
Filed under blog

Years ago, I noticed that when I became engrossed in my goal setting state of mind (almost a meditative state of mind) I would, at times, begin to feel very calm and at peace with the world. I focused even more with a pen in hand, writing goals and steps down, and I would feel even more euphoric. I didn’t understand why, I just knew it felt good. In fact, it felt fantastic!

Of course, it was a wonderful triumph to reach or exceed the goals I had set down, but why did the process of thinking about my future goals or writing them down give me such a mental boost, one even more euphoric than the actual accomplishment of my goal?

There is a brilliant scientist who thinks he knows the answer and, in my mind, he has proven it. This University of Wisconsin professor, Richard Davidson, was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine in 2006. He established the four pillars of mental well-being: awareness, connection, insight, and purpose. I think my goal writing does all of that.

Davidson was actually asked by the Dalai Lama to study the possible connection between the meditative state of mind of some of the Buddhist Monks and their emotional and mental lives. So, he hooked up 128 electrodes to the head of a French monk, Mattieu Ricard. When Ricard began to meditate, Davidson recorded an immediate increase in gamma activity, those brainwaves associated with higher functions like cognition and memory. Later, they studied more monks as well as a control group of college students and found that the monks produced gamma brainswaves that were thirty times stronger than the students brainwaves.

But what does all this mean? Simply put, this, along with other research, unveils the real possibility that the brain, like the rest of the body, can be altered intentionally. Just as we build muscle through exercise, we can build our brain through mental exercises.

Davidson actually found that meditation results in a redistribution of gray matter in the brain as well as a decline in the loss of gray matter. A person’s physical health can also be affected by his or her mental state. According to Davidson, it might also be used to modify emotional response like depression.

I think all of this research and the conclusions Davidson came to can be very helpful for all of us as we focus on adding more awareness, connection, insight, and purpose to our lives. We can work on this and, as a result, use our brains to do so much more.

The Brain’s Influence on Age

October 16, 2022 by  
Filed under blog

Recently, my son Marcus gave me a little pamphlet entitled “1944 Remember When: A Nostalgic Look Back in Time”. It’s a great look at 1944 which was the year I was born. I was blown away as I turned the pages and especially when I read about prices in 1944.

A new house was a little bit under $3500, with the average income at only $2378 for an entire year. A new car was only $975, a gallon of gas was just 15 cents, and the average rent came in at about $50 a month. Wow, have things changed since then!

The years since 1944, for me, seemed to have past so fast, and now I’m less than 2 years from the big 80! But the good news is I don’t feel a day older than when I turned 40 or maybe even 30. Yes, I am very careful about what I eat, and I work out my body, including having a daily goal of 20,000 steps. There is a lot of research showing that people who keep moving as they age live much longer and are healthier than the average person.

The older I get, the more I see how our thinking can also make a big difference in our lives. If you think you are going to live a long and healthy life, your body will do everything it can to fulfill those beliefs. Those brain thoughts really do influence your body.  

I’ve quoted before from the book Disrupt Aging: A Bold New Path to Living Your Best Life at Every Age by Jo Ann Jenkins, but much of what she writes needs to be repeated and given a lot of thought and action. Such things include focusing on health and wealth, developing a sense purpose, going from mindless activity to mindful living, and feeling good about where you are age wise.

For instance, don’t ever put yourself down by saying, “Oh, I’m an old man or woman.” Instead, say things like, “Yes, I’m almost 80, but I feel young, like I’m 30.” Also, try new things, take chances, don’t live in fear of aging, and set goals aimed at living past 100 or more.

We all need to realize that our daily choices when it comes to our health, mental fitness, and outlook are very important. Yes, a lot of aging advice focuses on good diet and exercise habits, which are very important, but never forget that your brain and what you think about aging also has a great influence on your health as well as how long, and how well, you live.

Age is Not a Number

July 10, 2022 by  
Filed under blog

Last week I had said I’d planned to add to the list of things you can do to reset yourself and slow your aging. But life got a bit complicated, and I have to postpone creating that list until next week. But here is an update to a post I did some 8 years ago that addresses some of these same things.

On January 8th of 2014, I launched what I called my “90 Day Super Quest”. That quest was an ambitious goal to get myself into the best possible physical and mental shape of my entire life and I was starting that exactly 90 days before I turned 70!

Just one week into my super quest, I was right on schedule with my workouts which included tennis, weightlifting, sit-ups, push-ups, and stretching. I had also worked on the mental side of my quest by keeping up with reading, writing, making new friends, and spending lots of time with old friends and family. However, I noticed a problem right around the one-week mark. It was that old demon—that negative inner self-talk. I had become way too focused on the fact that I was getting older, with that number 70 dominating the chatterbox inside my head, and not in a positive way.

But then I just happened to pick up a book that I’ve read and written about many times, and it flipped open to page 55 where the word “aging” jumped out at me. The book was Susan Jeffers’ Feel the Fear and Beyond, her follow-up book to Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway. And, wow, does she have some great thoughts about aging and what your inner voice should NOT be saying about the subject, such as:

“I am getting older now. Aging is horrible. I wish my body was young again. Look at those wrinkles. Who could love a face that’s old? I hate it. Pretty soon, no one will want to be around me. When I was young, I could dance all night. Now I don’t have the energy. Why do people have to age? I wish I could be young forever.”

Then she goes on to discuss what we should be saying to ourselves:

“I love aging. My children are grown and now I’m free to do the things I put off doing. I’m glad I joined the gym. I don’t think I’ve ever been in such great shape. I’m going to learn all I can about keeping myself in the best of health. I have so much to look forward to. I learn and grow every day of my life. I wouldn’t want to go back one day. Why would I want to go back?”

Reading that, I realized that I needed to get rid of that number 70 that had become so set in my head. Instead, I started asking myself the question that I used to ask so often, something we all should probably ask ourselves whenever we think about aging: “How old would I say I am if I didn’t know?”.

Back then, when I asked myself this question, I could honestly say I felt 44. And for the rest of my 90 Day Super Quest, I thought to myself that, when I was done with this, I would be in the best physical and mental shape of my life as a 45-year-old! That outlook helped me push through the challenge and to this day, with some reminders here and there, I steer my mental chatter toward the positive and try to stay focused on the age I think I am, not just some number that has more to do with the calendar than what great things I have in my life.

Big Challenges on the Brain

November 3, 2018 by  
Filed under blog

Have you ever met someone who has made it to the 29,020-foot summit of Mt. Everest? Yes, I know, most of us think they’re crazy, but maybe they’re not as crazy as we think because their high satisfaction level seems to last for a lifetime! Years ago, I wrote the following.

Again, the tough challenges and hard work over a period of time, equals long-lasting satisfaction and contentment.  One of the big and growing problems in today’s world is that too few people believe or know this simple principle

Or maybe they used to know it and they’ve forgotten it.

We all should never forget the great zen saying, “To know and not to do is not yet to know.” Many people, for example, think they want a ton of money—and fast—so they can sit back and relax and really live. They think they want to sit around the pool and drinking a Mai Tai or watch movies all day. They think that will bring them satisfaction and contentment.

Our very retirement system even promotes that idea. That’s one reason we have so many mid-lifers and beyond who are downright miserable, and it doesn’t seem to matter whether they have a huge net worth or not. With too much of a slowdown, there’s an inevitable letdown, and as you’ve probably noticed, good old Fred or Mary retire at age 65 and pass away at age 67 or 70.

The bottom line is, if you stop challenging yourself, you’ll start dying. It’s almost a one-to-one correlation and all of that usually starts inside your mind. But if you “take a trip inside your mind,” you’ll find there are plenty of ways to program your brain so you’ll avoid the trap that snares so many people.

Next week I want to tell you the great story of Erik Weihenmayer who push himself to climb Mt. Everest. He did it even though he was totally blind – he was the first blind man ever to accomplish that super human feat!  Talk about giving oneself a huge challenge! Wow.  How long did his satisfaction and contentment last?

So, are you and I pushing ourselves and putting big enough challenges in our minds and then going after them to enhance and make our life more exciting and fulfilling? I can’t speak for you but I know now, at age 74, I need to challenge myself much more than I’ve been doing lately. But I really do have to ask you—-do you need to challenge yourself a bit more or maybe even a lot more?  Only you can answer that question.