Category: Conversations With Des

This category covers things that I have discussed with my brother Des. He is a couple of years older than me and has a variety of interests, a good memory, and a keen ability to find and share with me things that make my brain go into over-drive. The fact that he is a good listener comes in handy because I have a tendency to use conversation as a way of thinking.

6 Ways To Create A Better Life

Ever see one of those people who is always happy and wonder what they are doing different that seems to bring everything they want into their life? The people will the big smile, the positive energy and a willingness to go along with whatever seems to come their way, as though it was exactly what was supposed to happen? If you ever sit down and talk to them, you’ll uncover some very surprising things about how they engage the world that seem to open closed doors and create a better life at every moment.

Having a great life is simply a matter of finding out and doing what they do so this greatness is within the realm of possibility for most of us. Below are 6 things that you can start doing today that will improve your experience this summer and beyond.

1) Create goals and look at them every morning when you wake-up and every night before you go to bed. You need to know where you are going in order to get there and your goals are the best predictor of your future, if you focus on achieving them. “Book ending” your day with a quick review of your goals primes your brain to work on them while you are awake and while you sleep. In fact, without priming your brain with problems to solve, you cannot expect to achieve anything that you haven’t already experienced. Take 10 minutes to read your goals at the beginning and end of your day to think and feel what it will be like to achieve them. Creating the emotional sense of accomplishment can alter how your process the world and this can present the pathway to everything that you want.

2) Do 4 hours of intense exercise per week. 4 hours is a critical amount, and having your heart rate elevated is key. This minimum amount of exercise will help improve body composition, improve blood circulation and get your body functioning more efficiently. It’s going to reduce stress, improve sleep and help you look and feel great. Good health is often considered one of the top 3 things needed to have a happy life, so dedicating 4 hours out of 168 that are available per week to move you towards a better life is a small time investment.

3) Eat food that you can identify as food and that will rot in a few days without refrigeration. Food is the only thing that actually becomes you. Every cell that you are is made-up of participles that were outside your body until you ate them. Higher quality food is going to supply more and higher quality nutrient so buy the best quality food that you can afford. The food you eat should be identifiable – that is, you should have some idea from where on the farm it came– and when left at room temperature, it should spoil fairly quickly. Things that have an indefinite shelf life or come from a factory tend to be much lower or void of nutrition. Eat as little of these food-like products as you can in favor of whole foods.

4) Be grateful. It is impossible to be unhappy when you are grateful. You may feel many emotions, but sadness will not be one of them. Being grateful creates a sense of connectedness to others that can eliminate feelings of isolation. It will also alter the way you view the entire world as gratitude tends to have a cascading effect on perception – if you process things from a place of gratitude, you will see more and more things in the world to be grateful for, which will make you happier.

5) Surround yourself with people who are living a great life and get their help in making your life better. This is a matter of doing what they do to achieve what they have achieved. Copy those who have blazed the trail and get the same outcome. Ask them for help and follow their advice. They’ll save you a lot of trial and error and boost the chances of you achieving your goal.

6) Remain open or childlike! Very often life is not going to go the way you want or plan. Embrace this fact and realize that the things that are unfamiliar actually create more joy in the long run than the things that are predictable. Accept that every lesson grew out of something you didn’t know before. Being wrong is the best way we have of eventually being right, but only when we accept and remain open to making mistakes. If you want to make an extraordinary life for yourself, you need to learn some extraordinary things thought the making of some extraordinary mistakes. Be childlike with your mistakes, be open to making them, learn from them and discard any sense of shame they created.

That’s it, 6 simple things you can start doing that will being to transform your experience of life into the realm of greatness. Begin to do one a week until all 6 of them are a habit and be curious and pleased to see the impact they have on your life!

Creating Mentors Vs. Averaging Down

It has been said that you are the average of your 5 closest friends – this is a big reason why big life transformations are often accompanied by a change in friends.

To a lessor degree, the same thing applies to work – the people you work with will tend to become more like you and you will tend to become more like them.

It also applies to the gym you go to, the church you belong to, the sports team you play for, the places you shop, the school you attend, etc… – the longer you spend with people, the more similar you become to those people.

So what?

At its simplest, if you are having a crappy life, you may want to consider the company you keep. But before you completely overhaul your friends and cut off people forever, take a few minutes to uncover your own identity (how your view yourself in terms of worth and the life experience you believe you are entitled to). If you identify yourself as a loser, a drug addict, someone who has a crappy job, etc… there’s a very good chance that you’ll know a few people that match one or more of these characteristics. If you connect with a group of people that match your identify, swapping them out for a new group of people will likely only introduce you to a new group of the same. Fix your identity issue, engage a professional if you have no idea how to do that.

Assuming your identify isn’t an issue, a small change in attitude in this area can take you a very long way, and save you the challenges of finding a new peers group. The thinking here is that if you view those around you in a particular way (even if they are NOT as you view them) you will slowly start to become as you view them. Consider this for another moment. You begin to become how you think your friends are. You begin to become the same type of worker, parent, student as you believe your coworkers, spouse, and student friends to be. Reality doesn’t interfere with your notion as you become your thoughts about them.

In this case, the easiest way to progress and develop is to improve your attitude about your friends / peers / coworkers and view them as potential mentors – realize that they have something unique and important to teach you and notice that your differences are simply just differences in upbringing and experience, not flaws in personality. Adjusting your view of them in this way will create a clearing in your mind that will shift them into a place of power and helpfulness, allowing you to grow.

Remember, your mind controls the average that your friends are so flipping the switch to view your peers as amazing, outstanding and stand-up people may be what is needed to trend the average up.

Cannot Make Poor Choices

Des was asking me about Heather a few days ago and I mentioned that there are moments when I feel a little scared about things. I used the word insecure and he took the opportunity to ask me about it and give his opinion about what insecurity is.

“People are insecure when they believe they can make a wrong decision.”

It was a great and timely comment.

I’m enjoying the progress of this relationship. I feel very connected to Heather and I feel very challenged by her. She is unlike anyone I have dated before and there is something she says each day that alters my understanding of the world. I have a strong desire to grow and cultivate our relationship.

What scares me about things is that I’ve had a lot of good relationships with great girls and we have learned a lot of amazing lessons together. But I am not with any of them anymore. The relationships ran their course and all parties have moved forward with life. The story or narrative that runs within my mind is about the end of every relationship. Compounding this were the “lessons” I gleamed from the premature death of Natalie – that life ends unexpectedly.

There is little wonder why I was worried about the future, I have allowed “the end” to be a part of the present. I’ve scaled down the timeline of the future and making the end to be the next thing that I think of. Given that it was so close, I believed that I was able to make poor choices. So I made poor choices.

Writing this out is great. Most of what I’m saying has an antiquated feel. I get how it was true, but it doesn’t apply to me so much now. The notion that things will end and that I will have a hand in them is silly. Sure, I can wreck things, but that is a conscious choice, it won’t be a wrong decision in an insecurity-creating way. My desire is for happiness, fun, fulfillment and passion and a lot of it for a very long time. With these motivations, I cannot make a poor choice. Things that are good don’t end and as I view the middle as the longest, funnest and greatest part of it, the future looks a lot brighter.

For the first time in my adult life I am more excited about the middle than I am about the beginning. This really is an unfamiliar way to approach a relationship and I’m grateful to have found this way of being with Heather.

My LandMark Forum Part 8 – Day Three, Part Two

I need to say the following though. Some people were destroyed by the weekend and not in the way I was destroyed. I died, I killed myself off because I am the possibility of a new being. That didn’t happen to some people. Some people were damaged by what they found out about themselves and this is part of why I am very reluctant to outright recommend EVERYONE take part in the Landmark Forum weekend.

I told my brother that he would gain from going there and he agree, but he also doesn’t need it. He’s emotionally intelligent, self-aware and everything that was covered in the weekend, he and I have talked about over pho during the last 15 years. His baseline is different than mine, he wasn’t lost and he had life understood early and had created the management skills well before the was 30. He would do what I did, engage other people and coach the heck out of them. He sees patterns faster than anything else and since he has no interest in doing what I do for a living, it would be a waste of a weekend.

I did attempt to directly enroll one person in the weekend and they didn’t want to talk to me. I understand why they don’t want to talk to me and I actually agree with them for this, but realize that the weekend would help them complete their past in a way that they haven’t been successful at up until we parted ways. There is nothing wrong with this person and, since we don’t connect very often and haven’t corrected our friendship, I wouldn’t directly suggest they attend. The stuff that comes out for some people requires a lot of therapy to manage and if there is a tendency towards avoidance or retreating, people shouldn’t attend. Once you see who you are, you cannot go back and MUST continue forward. Retreating back in to a past that you know is a lie causes serious damage.

A few of the people I recommend attend are in therapy so they are in a better place. I can say this with confidence, I am more value to the participants in the group than most of the people who volunteer their time; I have worked with people for more than a decade and am very effective. But I do part ways with some people and they are further along but damaged as a result of it. Months or years later we reconnect and the lessons are well received, but they needed to work stuff through. If you can afford therapy and have a good connection with your therapist this is a better option than a self help group.
Younger people would benefit from this because younger people have yet to be socialized ineffectively. The weekend is like a user guide for the mind and it is a solid foundation and those with a head start in this area will be much more successful simply because they’ll get to work much sooner.

Self-aware, emotionally intelligent and open minded people will benefit from the weekend because it will give you insight into your nature and offer up a lot of the skills needed to manage your mind, thoughts, complete the past and create the possibilities you need / want for your new being.

I will NEVER advocate strongly for someone to attend unless I am available to them in the evenings / mornings and during the day. I needed Des to coach me out of the thing I had on Saturday evening and while it isn’t his responsibility to help me with this, it saved me a lot of time and kept me on course. It was a tough hour before things fell into place again. I think Des knew what I would get out of the weekend before I went so he wasn’t surprised that I called. He is the most effective coach, teacher and mentor that I have and he did his thing with me so quickly on Saturday night that I’m still in awe of what he does.

My LandMark Forum Part 6 – Day Two, Part Three

For a long time I haven’t felt like I belong. For the most part I have felt only at ease around my immediate family and a few good friends. I’ve often felt that people either don’t like me or that I make them scared. I have often felt like I can read peoples minds and that I know what they are feeling and thinking. Des called me a reflector and commented that I likely have a lot of mirror neurons that allow me to experience more of what people are feeling than other people do. I don’t recall the entire conversation about this, but it did make sense. I do get into peoples heads very quickly and people open-up to me a lot more than they would with other people.

Some people make me sick though, almost physically sick and these tend to be manipulative toxic and emotionally void individuals. This is different from people who don’t like me or I don’t like, it’s people that darken my experience, offer no joy or effectively violate social norms in terms of matching transactional strokes. Someone calling me a dick or worse doesn’t impact me as someone who gives me nothing to reflect or causes me to feel black and empty. I hate being manipulated, it leaves me feeling gamed and when I feel it happening I am usually close to puking or voiding my bowels.

The last 45 minutes of day two were worth at least $1000, likely more, although I wouldn’t have believed it as they were happening.

I was riding a high. I was getting everything that was coming at me, I was rolling with the punches, learning the lessons, seeing myself in everything that people were saying. This was my Landmark Forum weekend and the universe had finally presented me on my path again. Then we started talking about strong traits – our go to ways of acting that help us cope with things that we don’t have the ability to cope with. I was pretty confident that passion was one of mine, it always seemed like I was passionate about things and I always liked the way it sounded – there’s a positive romantic feeling to it so saying it, and having people agree that I was passionate was nice.

Now for reason of copyright I’m not getting into the how, why and what of strong traits, but the leader asked us to think about them and then walked around the room getting us to say one of them. When I said “passionate” and he repeated “passionate” back to me, I got that sick feeling I get when someone is running a game on me. He continued around the room, but he could have jumped out the window for all I knew and cared, I was stuck in the moment of him repeating it back to me. I hated this guy; well, I hated the way I felt when he spoke to me. My body was telling me something that I needed to be aware of and deal with. I’ve had few moments as compelling at this one so I wasn’t going to waste it. I got up and walked to one of the staff and told them that I needed to talk to them. We left the big room and I then said “privately.” Once inside one of the smaller rooms the following conversation took place:

“What’s going on Patrick?”

“When ___ repeat passionate, I thought I was going to puke. That’s information to me, and I need to figure it out.”

“Okay, who does ___ remind you of?”

I take a moment before saying “to say my dad would be too simple, plus I liked my dad, he didn’t make me sick.”

“Okay.” Long pause.

“Some sort of authority figure, but to be honest, he reminds me of myself.” Pause before “but I’m a manipulative little prick.”

“___ is a manipulative person too” slight smile.

“Okay, what does that mean?”

“I can’t tell you.”

There is a moment or two and we return to the big room. The homework is assigned and I am the first person out the door and I’m likely already on the highway by the time anyone in the front row has made it to the back door. I’m upset, I’m not certain going to this thing was a good idea. I don’t know why I’m so spinning, but I don’t feel good at all. Psychologically wounded. I call Kate, she doesn’t answer, I call Des, he does. I tell him what has happened and he sort of laughs.

“Good, you’re laughing, I’m not going to die.” He says something to the effect of “yeah you will, but not tonight or because of this.” We chat about my manipulation, how it has been there as long as he has known me, how my folks have had to deal with it for most of my life, how there have been very few people in my life who haven’t had me do it to them and how he’s immune to it, but only because he feels it and calls me on it.

“Maybe this is why I was doing all of the compulsive stuff, why I was getting sick so much towards the end of my last few relationships, why I was always trying to alter the way I looked.” His reply of “maybe, but stay with it for a while, you’re on to something and to consider the possibilities” was what I needed.

“But I’m not a dick, I tend to act in the best interests of people, particularly if they enroll me in helping them. I’m caring and compassionate.”

“Yes, you aren’t a bad guy. You feel shittie when you hurt people or do things that aren’t win:win. Stay with these things Pat, there’s a lot that’s coming out.”

We get off the phone and I swim in the possibilities. I end up talking with Kate and, by this point, it has hit me. Yes, I am a manipulative person, I’m extremely analytical and I have a lot of compassion. I feel like dirt when I am mean to people and my spontaneous actions are towards fairness, compassion and helping. But I am ruthlessly controlling and extremely effective at getting what I want. I always get what I want. I am hard pressed to remember a time when I didn’t get what I want. Even the things that I consciously don’t think I wanted, I unconsciously wanted. Even the things that I say I want and don’t get end-up make my life move forward. Be it the start of something, the end of something, the possibility of something or the end of the possibility of something, ALL of it moves my life forward and, if someone is with me, it will move them towards the things they say they want.

Our Generations Wake-up Call

It may be time for many in our generation to read the writing on the wall. The recent winds of change have blown away a lot of the haze for so many of us revealing one fact that creates two possibilities.

Fact:

Each one of us will die.

The possibilities:

Accepted that your life is for living and navigating the world as an opened-minded Adult, with an child-like curiosity and joy. Realize that your past has taught you many skills but not necessarily the need to shamelessly and compassionately apply them.

Or continue to wait for something before you begin to engage your world. Be it a degree, children, for children to be older, the perfect body, the cosmetic surgery, an apology or forgiveness, the ideal job, the right person to come along, any partner to come along,… it could be any number of things that simply kick living down the road a little longer.

If you are continuing to wait remember there is always going to be a reason for your life to stay exactly as it is. It isn’t the reason you are giving though, it is the person who is making the excuse.

Now High Risk For Cancer

Des let me know that he and I are now a high risk of developing cancer given that our dad and our grandmother on our moms side got it. I haven’t really thought about cancer in those terms before.

From a purely statistical point of view, up until December, my actions had a much bigger impact onto my future with the disease than anything else. For all intents and purposes my body was the same as any other low risk body in terms of fighting off mutations that become disease – if diet, exercise, stress and sleep needs were balanced the potential for life was not handicapped by anything.

That isn’t the same anymore. It is now evident that written into my DNA is a lower finite potential to correct cell replication errors. The fact that my grand mother smoked has nothing to do with how you interpret the statistics because she ended up getting cancer. And on its own, my dad’s brain tumor is random and has an much consequence on my mom’s chances for cancer as it does on Des or me. But when both sides of the family are paired together there is a significant statistical relationship worth considering.

Dealing with an increased risk for something means creating an environment that is NOT conducive to it being there. With cancer there are two things to do, the first is avoid things that cause cancer – keep away from chemicals and stuff that is burning. The second is to do things that promote a healthy immune system, the most effective cancer defense you have.

Below is a list of some of the things I can do to help my body stay sharp and stop disease:

  • Eat more leafy green vegetables and more plants in general. They help with reducing the acidity of the body which can help reduce inflammation and lower physiological stress. They also provide antioxidants which help clear the waste associated with metabolic functioning.
  • Consider supplementing with some plant based vitamins. The bio-availability of the nutrients may be higher than for those made from raw earth. The is a link however between increased vitamin supplementation and some cancers, so be cautions and consider eating whole food as the preferred source of nutrients.
  • Lower sugar consumption to reduce insulin secretion. Insulin is a critical and nontoxic hormone when present in the body for short periods of time. Insulin secretion is a sign that something has gone wrong (we’ve eaten too much). The less it is around, the better for over all health.
  • Stop inhaling things that aren’t good for me, be it smoke, the fumes from cutting wood or plastic, the pieces of insulation that break off when I’m making panels, the disinfectant spray at the gym.
  • Eat more diverse types of protein and as much from wild sources as possible.
  • Reduce stress in all areas of life. Create a budget and save a fixed amount of money each week.
  • Restore a normal social life that gives me a variety of opinions and personalities. Close off any open loops in terms of grudges or crap that isn’t going the way I need it to.
  • Stop judging myself for my past actions and present thoughts. There was no malice in them, and I’m as susceptible to the fundamental attribution error as anyone else.
  • Update my goals to reflect the needed changes in my life in order to live to as close to my life expectancy as possible. Change my behavior to move me towards these goals.
  • Treat myself with as much respect as I treat other people and this means approaching everything with win:win or no deal. This may mean less short term gain, but it will come with less long term pain. The sadness of a relationship ending before it gets off the ground is a small price to pay for avoiding the enormous heart ache that seems to come from ending all of my relationships that last longer than a few months.
  • Balance my training to make sure all areas of wellness are being addressed – cardiovascular functioning, strength, flexibility, join mobility, and spiritual health.
  • Surround myself with people who are able to love compassionately and unconditionally; this also means learning these skills myself. This is a big one, stress is a major contributor to disease and illness and social interaction is a great way to relieve stress and feel connected to others and therefore the universe. Social interaction serves not to transfer the stress, but to allow for the healthy emptying of whatever is on the mind.
  • EVERYTHING I do is a choice so when I say that I can’t change something I am lying to myself. I will be sad about loss, but I do not have to feel that loss non-stop. It is fine to table dealing with parts of it until I’m in an environment were it has less impact on others.
  • Start to see yourself as someone of worth and value who SHOULD live a long time. More over, start to do the things that PROVE to me that I have worth and pay more attention to the Adults who are engaging me about my talents. After Natalie died I wanted to be dead but wasn’t going to actively end my life. It’s a paradox in this world, but legal enough are the things that you can consume that will kill slowly – smoking, drinking, low quality food, raves in condemned warehouses, and a “woes me” attitude. I don’t want to die sooner than I have to, so taking the action to eliminate these types of things from my life will go a long way at helping me achieve my life potential.
  • Cheer-up, let go of the nonsense and go with the flow. I can steer myself along the river, but I can’t paddle upstream back into my past. What’s done is done. Be grateful for having had the chance to do your best with it.

The future is coming, and I will pay for my past when it arrives. What damage was done, IS done and now get round to reducing it by restoring the loving relationship with myself. I have to care because I haven’t cared for a while, and that attitude shows in my actions, my thoughts and my essence.

There May Be A “Need” In What We Don’t Like Doing

Had lunch with Des a while ago and he blew my mind again. That’s what older brothers are for I suppose.

“You may need to do some of the things that you don’t like doing, which you don’t have a compelling reason NOT to do, because you’ll very likely find that doing them helps to meet a need that you don’t know even exists.”

There are countless examples of me getting an unknown need met or uncovering the existence of a need simply by doing something new. Teaching Group Cycling classes is a great example of this. Before I started teaching, I enjoyed taking the classes because they were a good workout, fun and a challenge. But teaching is very different. You do get a good workout and it is a challenge, but it’s very different from taking a class. It is an experience all of its own. When you are in front of people you are performing. There is anxiety and exhilaration, thoughts and rituals, and a rush that cannot be described or experiences simply as a participant. When the glass goes well, you feel like a rock star or someone who is very cool and the center of attention. When class goes poorly, you feel like an incompetent idiot and kind of want to run and hide. There’s a lot of mental gymnastics going on to keep the whole thing going, which is a skill that I wouldn’t have anticipated needing on order to be an instructor.

The point is, teaching a group fitness class is a lot of fun, but it isn’t like anything I have ever done before or do often, and it isn’t anything like what I thought it would be. While it was something I wanted to do, there were a lot of times at the beginning that I didn’t like it very much and thought about quitting. However, it was a goal that I set for myself so I followed through on it over time I came to realize that I enjoyed it, was getting better at it and that by continuing to do it, I was becoming more powerful than I would have been had I simply packed it in.

And that was Des’ lesson. It’s easy to do the stuff we like to do because you tend to like doing the things we are good at. While you will continue to benefit from doing these things, you’ll make bigger steps forward in your personal development, and in uncovering what you actually like and need to do, by doing more things we don’t like doing.

So when you are faced with a difficult or unwelcome task that doesn’t present any real risk to you, attack it with all of your passion. Superficially it may not represent anything that matters to you, but once you start to do it, you’ll likely find tackling the task is a lot more rewarding than passing on it or even completing a task that you are highly proficient at.

Emotions Are Not Thoughts

I spent a lot of my life miserable until my dad told me to stop mistaking my emotions for thinking. 10 years later I had no difficultly accepting Des’ claim that spontaneous emotions exist to let us know that something significant is happening, that we’ve picked up on something important or that our conscious attention is needed on something. Emotions are a window into our the unconscious mind and what they bring forth in our awareness is the immediate representation of the quality of dissonance between the world we are perceiving and the world we are predicting.

The human brain is very effective at processing and storing information. This processing capacity allows it to compare present sensory and perceptive input against years of stored experience. Any input that matches a stored memory can trigger an emotional release and what that release is depends on your emotional state when the initial memory was encoded and stored – matching on a negative experience will mostly likely trigger a negative emotional response. It is very effective at bringing forward distant memories and aiding in our survival; given we are still alive, doing what we did last time will likely result in the same thing.

This useful system that has one major draw back, it is also triggered by the perception of something not just the sensation of it – those with a fear of clowns can trigger an anxiety attack by just thinking about clowns. This characteristic of emotions makes it very easy to create a feedback loop and when paired with the belief that emotions are thinking, led to a lot of my misery. Imagine you think about a clown and start to get a little anxious. If you tend to mistake emotions as thoughts, you will believe that there is an actual physical reason to feel anxious. As you look for the reason why, you will undoubtedly think about clowns which will cause more anxiety. The cycle will continue until the anxiety dissipates.

The realization that feelings are not thoughts stops this cycle because it gives us a chance to engage or talk back to the emotion. Once we are able to figure out where the emotion came from we are then able to determine the true value of the information that it is giving us. In the case of the clown loop, we’d be able to say I feel anxious because I am thinking about a clown instead of believing that I feel anxious because there is a good reason to feel anxious.

Emotions are not thoughts, they are real and they contain valuable information but they are not the same thing as thinking.

I Didn’t Earn This Privilege

The world can be a hard and tough place, but not so much here. There’s a good chance that if you are reading this you are one of the lucky few on the planet who have it good, who have it really good. Look around you and consider all that you have. You’re sitting on a chair in a room in front of your computer. You have enough time to be on the Internet reading NON-ESSENTIAL information, you’re not stuck working in a factory, living in a slum eating barely enough food to keep your body going and drinking water that comes from a stream that doubles as a toilet.

You have it really good by virtue of where you were born. Even the poorest person in your region has it better than most of the worlds population because social services exist to ensure that those born in a privileged country do not go hungry, without clothes or without human rights. And if you are willing to work, you have the opportunity to do really well and make enough money to buy nice things and improve your standard of living. All because of where you were born.

I forget this often and my brother is very good at reminding me that most of the opportunities I have living in Canada are a result of living in Canada and have very little to do with me as a person. I am not innately deserving of privilege, I was born into it; or more accurately, I wasn’t born into poverty and a complete lack of opportunity. It didn’t have anything to do with me. I am no more deserving of anything than anyone else on the planet yet I get to eat good food and sleep soundly while billions of others go without because of where they were born.

I didn’t earn any of it.