Category: Doing Something New

This category covers things that relate to trying something different. It is a sort of catch-all category that contains things are more verb-like than noun-like. These things like be new movements, new ways to think, or a specific suggestion that you try something that you may never have tried before. It’s a big category because humans are action oriented beings that are kinesthetic learner who benefit the most from interacting with their immediate environment.

Due Diligence And Making Decisive Decisions

A few weeks ago I was talking with a couple of friends and the topic of making decisive decisions came up. Jeff, being one of the most decisive people I know, stirred things up.

I asked him how he deals with the voice of doubt he gets after making a decision. He looked at me like I has just spoken a different language. I looked at Sean and asked him if he knew what I was talking about, he did. Looking back at Jeff “how do you make the voices stop?” Same look. I look back at Sean, nothing unusual with him, he knows what I’m asking.

Pause.

The three of us consider, in our own heads, what is happening. Jeff doesn’t know what I’m talking about. Jeff is really pragmatic and is a very decisive thinker and doer. What if he doesn’t hear the voices? What if they aren’t even there? He can’t possibly know what I’m talking about and if the voices aren’t there, his decisions can only be decisive.

The conversation starts again.

You don’t hear voices do you?

No, you guys do?

Yeah, almost constantly and about the stupidest to most important of decisions.

Oh. Hmmm. {I’m paraphrasing} I guess I don’t hear the voices because before I make a decision I review all the information I can and do a benefit cost analysis. Any costs I engage logically and if eliminating them will make the decision the right one, I factor that action into the decision making process. Once I’ve addressed all of the issues I’ll move forward and make the decision KNOWING that I don’t need to think about it again.

Kind of like a to-do list of things to address before you make a decision, if they can’t be cleared, you don’t action?

Yeah, that’s a fair way to look at it.

Jeff performs due diligence with his decision making so he only needs to review his choices when there is a compelling reason to – new information, change in environment – which rarely happens when you make decisive decisions because you don’t create experiences that requires you review your choices; you look towards the future vs. stirring on the past.

It was a great practical lesson for structuring decision making to allow you to make better decisions that you won’t review in the future with a doubting consciousness.

Thanks Jeff!

Think And Be Unhappy – The Reason Why It Happens

My good friend Kate gave me a copy of Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill {open .pdf file in new window} in the middle of July. She raved about the book, relating some of the stories and generally talking about it with a greater sense of excitement and optimism than normal. When Kate is this enthusiastic about something you just listen to what she says and do what she’s suggesting you do. I brought the book up with me to the cottage at the end of the month so I would the time to focus on it. Honestly, I wanted some of what Kate was having and taking it at the cottage seemed like the best way to gain that insight.

First off, read the book. Start doing the exercises immediately – when he says “now take some time to complete the following” do it. Fight the urge to believe you know what is the best way for you to learn. If you are reading it because you have a poverty or scarcity of money consciousness, you do NOT know the best way to learn and apply the information needed to gain a money consciousness. This is fact. Maybe 2 percent of the population have or will in their life time engender the consciousness needed to move away from scarcity forever. These are the people who naturally apply these lessons, were taught how to apply them or accepted that they don’t know or can’t apply them and made the decision to learn how. Simply put, if you start doing the exercises immediately your life will begin to improve immediately.

What have I been doing wrong? Well, strangely, not much. I’ve been taking the right actions, just directing their influence onto something else. I’m like most people in this regard, intuitively doing the right things with the wrong thing.

This book quickly filled in a lot of the gaps that my time at and since university didn’t fill in. It was a theory gap and not an experience gap which meant I was ready to move quickly once I knew what it was I needed to do. Basically, I have a voice in my head that says things, some call it thinking – most of the time it chatters away, some of the time I actively control or influence what it says, the rest of the time I am unaware of it (sleeping, exercising intensely). For a lot of my life it has been a monkey on my back slagging me about stuff, reminding me to be anxious or to think about things that I don’t need to think about which creates emotional reactions to things that aren’t happening. To silence it, I would exercise or do things that were distracting. Mediation was an effective way to gain some control over it. With effort, I’ve been able to decrease the negative impact of the voice and I’ve had some success at shaping it or silencing it. Which is where I have been going wrong.

For me anyway, that voice is a powerful influence, so powerful that I’ve dumped a lot of energy to get away from it. So powerful that everything it has said has come to reality. Amazingly (but not really when it actually starts to work) the human brain has the ability to make transmutate thoughts into reality through action. Don’t believe me, look at your life and one of the goals you have achieved. That is an example, you already have the ability to do this. Look at any of the goals that you tried to achieve but gave-up on. Your decision to quit started as a thought and your brain made it a reality. This is another example of this transmutation of thought into reality.

Since everything that voice says seems to come true my mistake has been not using it to help me get what I want. Regardless of where my goals come from – me consciously creating and directing energy towards achieving them or them being unconsciously created and thrust into my awareness by the voice – I achieve them consistently through immersion and hard work. Good or bad, positive or negative, this is what I do, and this is very likely what you do as well.

We tap into the power of that voice through auto-suggestion, which is basically a way of priming you unconscious brain with the things we want to think about or achieve. What is critical for this to be effective is to pair what you are suggesting with an emotional release. This is important because emotions seem to impact how these thoughts are stored and retrieved since they are processed differently in the brain. We need to consciously shift what goes into the brain under emotional situations from away things we don’t want onto things we do want. This is very simple to do, the book outlines it. You just need to do exactly what the book says.

Some have dismissed this book outright when I talk about it, unknowingly proving the books accuracy. “It’s new agey” or “that’s that Secret thing”. Yeah, it is exactly those things if you tell yourself it’s those things. But if you tell yourself it’s an instruction book on how to move your underlying conscious narrative onto the things you like and will eventually become, it’s that. Not wanting to believe that you have the power to make your life whatever it physically can become does not change the fact that you have been using this power for most of your life to make your life exactly how you narrate it to be.

Now if you know you have the power and can see that you have been wielding it, pick up the book, read it and follow the instructions like your life depends on it. Come back to this post a year and let me know how your life has improved.

Looking Back On The Summer Of 2011

No summer has seen me move through so many emotions, thoughts, and states of mind as quickly as this one. The last 12 months have been a blur, but the mental outcome of all of these experiences has come to light over the last couple of months and particularly since the middle of June. The pace of change has been dramatic, particularly when paired with the relative stability of the preceding 4 years and I’ve come to accept this as the natural evolution of my of thought – intense immersion and then time to assimilate the information and create a new world view or state of mind that includes the new information. All of this done to ensure that my internal understanding of my universe match the external one as closely as possible.

Why was this summer so different from any of the previous ones?

Mid way through, around the beginning of July, it became evident that many of my thoughts, actions and dreams were unworkable because they hadn’t come from me. Yes, they were my thoughts, actions and dreams, but only because I decided to make them my thoughts, actions and dreams – they did not represent what I NEEDED in order to be happy. They represent what I thought would make me happy. When it came to relationships, I would see the “happily ever after” couples in fairy tails and movies and normalize them; unconsciously normalizing the relationships of every couple I’d see, creating an “ideal relationship” goal that I would eventually set out finding or creating. I created my future relationships BEFORE I ever had a relationship and had moved forward doing this for more than 20 years. In July it became obvious that the model I had created was not workable for me or the girls that I attract or was attracted to. That had to stop immediately.

The other thing that happened was that I saw myself as the author of my life and then mentally filtered out the contribution others played for me finding my place in life. In late March to early July I still felt that I like I had been subjected to some stuff that I hadn’t been responsible for. I was stuck in the victim mindset and did believe that others had power to do stuff to me. Sharon didn’t see it this way and was very good at directing my mind to the fact that each of us drive our own body and allow in whatever information we choose. If we do something, we’re deciding to do it. She was never uncaring about it, but she let me know it didn’t work for her and that, while it was my own journey, maybe it shouldn’t work for me either. Regardless, she knew I needed to figure some stuff out and was good enough to free-up my future. It hurt like crazy because I knew I was walking into a dark room of the unknown, alone. The alone was the thing that burned more than anything else, and that started to make me think, a lot. Why was I so afraid to be alone and how could that fear manifest itself within my life?

These kinds of unknowns mess my mind up so I ran into the room full speed and ended up hitting the wall on the other side. That was good. My face hurt and my head was ringing, but the answer was there right in front of me and hadn’t been too far away. It was actually related to the antiquated relationship goals that I had been pursuing. I feared being alone because that would mean I wasn’t in a relationship and therefore I was not complete. It created a nice co-dependence for me in that my self-esteem would come from the relationship and therefore from another person. Given my victim mindset that I was choosing to indulge, it was easy to view others has having done something to me. It they wanted space, as is completely normal and healthy for fully functioning adults, I would interpret this as a withdrawal, which would trigger the fear of being alone, which would fuel actions geared at bringing those things back on-line. If it didn’t restore things, I became the victim.

It’s chilling to read and think that. It’s nasty to realize that this was how I was. But I get it very clearly now. I was trying to live someone elses dreams (the antiquated stuff I got from childhood) and my threshold for feeling victimized was very low. These things do not work for me, they never did and now I’m putting them to rest.

The last 6 weeks have been 6 of the more interesting of my life because I’ve given-up on having the wife, the children, the house, the whatever it was I was seeking before. These things may be part of my future but only if my OWN life is in order. A career will be of a lot more long term value to me than anything else. With a good career, I’ll have the time (money) to do what I like to do, whatever that ends up being.

These weeks have been amazing because I haven’t been victimized since I realized that I had been playing the role of victim. People have done stuff, and I’ve learned lessons from these things, but I’ve stopped being victim simply because I never was a victim. I can change my thoughts, environment and actions at will. That has been the shift over the last little while. None of my previous girl friends ever did anything to me that would make me a victim. If ever I was victimized by them it was simply because I made the choice to be victim. None of these girls ever hit me. We said stuff to each other that wasn’t very nice but we didn’t set out to destroy each other. We wanted what we wanted and I realize that them wanting something different than what I wanted didn’t mean we were trying to hurt each other. It means they were trying, like I was, to get the best life possible.

What that means now is the decision to create a wonderful and beautiful life for myself. I’ve seen how the need to be in a relationship and my victim mindset were holding me back, effectively remaining in the past. Since I don’t want that as my future, I need to bring the past into the present. This means that I need to redefine my history with me NOT being victim and instead acting as the self-interested author of my life. That is how most other people act, with their best interests in mind and rarely with malice. Others subversive intentions are not important once you make the decision to see YOU as the only real villain in your life.

We become powerful and gain control through the realization that the most damaging person in our lives is us when we are not willing to see the truth. I saw the truth this summer and took the time to recreate a purpose that will make me feel fantastic and live a joyful and passionate life free from self-victimization and blaming others for my place in life.

Running, Eccentric, Exploring

I went for a 20 minute run yesterday, it was the first run of the year. Although my heart rate never went about 70% my breathing was fast and my legs got tired. It’s hard work!

With cycling having been my primary training activity for the last number of years my body isn’t used to the impact of running. With cycling, there isn’t much of an eccentric muscle contraction involved. If done correctly your leg muscles will perform nothing but concentric movements. The goal is to shorten under load and that is possible while riding a bike. With running you add in lengthening under load as each step sees you catch, slow down and propel the weight of the body. I must have done 3000 single leg eccentric movements, which is why my quads felt a lot like coal when I finished and for most of the day. Today they feel like I did a bunch of squats.

The person I was running with commented about the lack of efficiency in the way I run and also commented about the path I take. I bounce. I bounce normally when I walk and even when I’m standing in one spot. My center of gravity is always moving up and down or side to side. When I was running it was obvious that this is happening. Not sure how much energy this burns, but it’s at least 25% more effort than it needs to be.

The path I run is ADD. I couldn’t focus on running because I wanted to run everywhere. Off the rocks, over fences, up the retaining wall, over benches, whatever wasn’t in the way I was putting in the way. When I hike I try to do the same thing. Find things to jump off or onto making a game out of whatever there is to play with. It feels good to move creatively and athletically about the earth and it makes as much sense to do this as it does to run for 20 minutes. Running everywhere at once did blunt some of the physical nagging that I find with running – I find it tough to forget that I’m running and it has never been a zen or flow inducing activity. Maybe that might change.

After 20 minutes I was done, they continued to run. As I watched them leave it was clear that there is purpose in their running style. It’s flat and shuffling. From the back, the head and hips don’t bounce much, from the side you see legs moving beneath a stable torso and mildly swinging arms. It’s efficient and very clear why people don’t bounce marathons.

Because We Need To Know You Don’t Know

“I don’t know” is not an apology. There’s no shame. It’s a simple statement of fact, is the key line in Penn Jillette’s special comment to cnn.com as a follow-up to his interview on Piers Morgan. He then compares his answers during the interview to Piers’ answers to the same questions. They are saying exactly the same thing it’s just that Penn admits it. Neither one of them knows how to look after all of the people in the US but Piers’ answer “the government” does shifts the responsibility of answering onto something that isn’t part of the discussion. It’s distracting and it can be a very effective tool when trying to convince someone of non-existent expertise. Piers HAS answers to the questions he just doesn’t know the actual answers.

That’s the thing with bullshit. No matter how you shine it, gloss it up, and air the room, it’s still bullshit. The only way someone is not going to see it as bullshit is if they don’t want to see it as such, they CANNOT see it for what it is or they do see it as bullshit and they don’t tell you that they know you are full of shit.

Penn’s comment comes at a time when I have grown particularly open to the fact that I don’t know a lot of that things that I thought I did. I’m starting to know what I don’t know and that makes me wiser, if only slightly. Long term it means that I may end up actually knowing these things because I’ve emptied the knowledge hole of the bullshit so it’s ready and waiting for the facts to fill it.

I’ve always sort of admired people who say “I don’t know” because I find their honesty refreshing. It’s time saving because you don’t have to think about the quality of their answer. The process of internalizing a lesson someone gives you is resource heavy because you have to vet the quality of the information they are giving you, ask qualifying questions, collect more information about the topic to allow you to store it in a way that is easy to retrieve, then unconsciously the brain does whatever it does to assimilate the information into a world view that is consistent with the real world.

Now imagine someone makes something up instead of saying “I don’t know.” You move forward on the belief that it is true – you fill the knowledge hole with bullshit – and fully believe that you are right about the topic. Confident and passionate because you got it from a good source. When you spread the lie later to someone who respects your opinion, you burn a little piece of your credibility.

Overtime two things happen that take a major toll on the quality of your life. First, people stop trusting you because a lot of what you say is incorrect yet you fail to see it or even consider that it could be wrong. Second, your “knowledge” starts to become a liability to you because it cannot be counted on to represent the way the world actually is but you have full confidence that it does represent the world – worse than not knowing or not knowing that you don’t know, you believe you know yet don’t. It may not be your fault that some of the people you considered to be mentors or sources of wisdom misrepresented themselves, but it sure is your problem.

Over the last 6 months and more and more recently I say “I don’t know”, “I’m not sure”, “what do you mean by that”, “what impact does that have on you”, “what impact should it have on me” and “what do you need/want me to do”. I say these things because I’m growing more and more confident that I don’t speak the same language as everyone else, and that maybe most of the people speak a different language from each other.

I’ve known my dad for almost 40 years and we’re now asking each other more questions to get an understanding about what the other is talking about. For a very long time I believed that I understood him, but as we chat now, it’s evident that we have a very different understanding of many words, concepts and things. My mom, dad and brother are the people who I have spend the most time with in my life and after almost 4 decades of interaction the only thing that they can say to me that I know I fully understand is “I don’t know”.

This is liberating. It shifts me from participant in life to scientist-participant in life. I need to seek high quality information from reliable sources. The new challenge becomes the vetting of the sources, and here I’m really lucky. The people who know me the best and who I respect the most answer questions with “I don’t know” often enough from me to realize that facts are the critical currency when it comes to talking / mentoring / educating me. Ones ability to say “I don’t know,” to be comfortable without knowing and to be curious to find out the answer is the first thing I’m using to vet the quality of my sources. So:

  • If you always know the answer, you don’t.
  • If having an answer is more important than having the correct answer, your answer isn’t important.
  • If you KNOW you know and don’t need to check current research, you may not know anymore.
  • If you are emotional when you are learning something, you don’t know it yet. Be cautious when dealing with facts with overly emotional reactive people as emotional states tend to impair the brains ability to store memories accurately.

What does my world look like after I’ve vetted my sources and realized where the wisdom lays? It’s very interesting. I’m learning more, that is true. But I’m also having some really great conversations with people. By cutting out the chaff you free up a lot of time to engage other people, or the ones you like more frequently. I realize that I know at least 50% less than I thought I did, but that knowledge build my confidence that most people know a lot less than they think they do so my expertise in certain areas are actually a lot higher relative to my peers. I know a heck of a lot about 10 things and bits and pieces about other stuff. If you can admit when you don’t know something, talk to me about the other stuff if you know and listen to me when I talk about the 10 things. Otherwise, we can just talk sh!t and have a good time.

Take A Moment – Cooling It Down Before It Heats Up

Very little good ever comes out of rushing a conversation, particularly when one or both of the parties are emotional worked-up. Yet this is what I see happening all the time and it’s common advice to “talk it out.”

It’s really silly to press on someone to talk things out when they don’t know how they feel or are emotionally aroused. You aren’t talking to them, you’re talking to their emotion, and that’s rarely good. The logical part of the brain is in stand-by so they’re likely going to say a bunch of stuff that feels to them to be terribly important, but doesn’t necessarily reflect what they would say in 10 minutes. But that’s what you get when you hammer on someone to talk about stuff they don’t, at that moment in time, fully understand or appreciate. You need to let things cool down enough to proceed logically, and you need to be able to push pause on the conversation if it approaches the critical level of arousal again.

Why do conversations heat-up in the first place?

Assuming there isn’t a eminent physical threat, there really is only one reason for a conversation to become heated, it reveals information that is incompatible with one party’s world views and is therefore interpreted as a possible survival threat. This is a survival response that is initiated unconsciously when presented with new information does not match an existing pattern. The body release a chemical mix that is experienced as fear, which if left to fester will quickly become anger. This mix also suspends the activity of the prefrontal cortex to ensure that higher level functions do not interrupt the emotional response. Once you are emotionally worked-up, the conversation degrades because of the lack of logic and because dominating the incompatible information out of existence will help to maintain an accurate world view; at least from a survival point of view.

Given the nature of most heated conversations it isn’t surprising that people argue as much as they do. Everyone has a world view that they would like to keep intact and compatible with reality. If you are going to talk to anyone ever, you need to accept that you are going to disagree and that you need to do this effectively and appropriately to move past disagreements and to allow for the rapid assimilation of world view changing information.

What Does Cooling Down Look Like?

Topic is breached in a conversation that triggers emotional response. Pause. Don’t say much. Just let the moment be and see what happens. It will seem like a long time, but take 5 seconds before replying with anything. After 5 seconds, take stock of how you feel. Do you feel confused in that you don’t know what you are feeling? Is there a tightness / excitement in your stomach indicating a fight or flight response? It doesn’t matter, just reply with “okay” and take another moment to observe how you are feeling.

The next thing you need to identify is if you are having an emotional response to the information. If you are, say “can we push pause on this conversation right now? I’m not 100% sure how I feel and I need to take a moment to collect my thoughts.” This should grant you some time to get yourself together. If they keep talking say “I’m having a visceral response to something I’m thinking and I need sometime to let the emotions clear.” If this doesn’t get you the time you need, you need to walk away. They either don’t care or are incapable of caring because the conversation has trigger an emotional response in them.

Once the conversation has stopped, take a few deep breaths and relax. If you aren’t dead yet or haven’t been attacked, there is very little danger to your physical health so what is happening is only a threat to your world view, ego, etc… and does therefore not require an emotional response. As you relax more, let logic take over to help you see things more clearly. Once you know how you feel about the topic, reengage the other person if they are able to be receptive to what you are saying; that is, they are not responding emotionally. Press pause if either party begins to get worked-up again, cool off and repeat as often as you need to in order to find closure or a solution that both people can and are willing to work with.

Life is long and no two people will have the same journey. You are going to have disagreements with the people you care about concerning the best way to live life, move things forward and about your life experiences. In almost every case, there are 1000’s of different ways to end up in the same place. You need to make sure to just let go of the emotions that new information or opinion creates and move forward, cool and relaxed.

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.

A Few Things Friends Have Said This Year

Below are 5 random things I have heard my friends say to me in the last year and the impact these words have had on me.

When I recently mentioned to Tony that I had started dating someone, he was happy for me because he knows that I have a lot of love and positive energy to give and that it was probably time for me to just get on with giving it. He initially said “just take it slow” but he paused for a couple of seconds and then said “actually, go as fast as you can.” I laughed and said that full speed was more my thing and he said “it needs to be, you’re almost 40. You have a great track record of knowing what doesn’t work so maybe you’ll be able to use that to find something great.” Rare advice from someone who is usually so calculated with their actions that their forward progress is rather uneventful. Fall in love recklessly, completely and quickly.

Historically I have been able to identify something in every girl friend that bothers me. The stuff isn’t much of anything yet I seem to hold onto it and keep it in the present. When I finally said it out loud to Sharyl she replied with “that’s not good” then “you need to stop doing that” and finally “that isn’t fair”. I knew when I was telling her how ridiculous it was but having not said it out loud, I hadn’t actually made the thought real enough to experience it as ridiculous. It’s not a comforting feeling to have that thought-stream flow out of my brain. Yuck! I felt shame as I accepted that this line of thinking has been in me for a very long time. However, when I got back to life a few minutes later I realized that the intrusive thoughts that I had been having were gone;which is great because they taxed my creative and positive energy. When someone like Sharyl becomes bossy, it’s time for me to just do what she says because she doesn’t tell people what to do.

Sean gave me some performance coaching in the summer and throughout the fall. Through talking to him I discovered that I tell stories to myself. The stories aren’t crazy, but they are problem or historically based vs. solution or future based – X happened because of this reason vs. I’m going to do X because that is what I need to do. They show a tendency towards shrugging responsibility and taking action that is costing me success. We can control only ourselves. Whenever something happens and we perceive ourselves as the victim, we are delaying or completely ignoring responsibility of taking control and making the situation better. Either way, we suffer needlessly for some period of time and we prevent progress towards important things. For example, “MY BOSS is MAKING ME do new consultations to get 2 new clients” is not the same thing as “my boss is holding me to the contract I signed stating that I would work a particular number of hours per week or be doing something to get to that number of hours”. I don’t have to like it, but if I want to keep working there, I need to do it. Sean gave me some homework for the weekend, to try to see the lies you tell yourself, and we would chat about it the following week. There were a lot of them and I need to rephrase each of them to put me into a position of influence or power. The lies continue, though they’ve lessened which seems like an improvement.

In January Rachel gave me a shoulder assessment because I’ve been having shoulder pain for a long time and she needed to practice. What was great about her assessment was that I got to see her doing what a clinical athletic therapist would do, which was the culmination of all of her hard work at school and clinic. And she was fantastic. She made no predictions about what the issue was and just worked through a checklist. Before the final test she said “there is a very good chance the following movement is going to hurt you” I said okay and she hurt me. She had identified the shoulder issue that I’ve been dealing with for a long time. Then she explained what it was, how it likely happened, what I needed to do to correct it and the consequences of not addressing it now. She gave me 2 or 3 rehab movements, instructions and a parting thought “it won’t effect me if you don’t do the rehab“. I still continue to do the movements and I continue to feel improvements in my shoulder pain and mobility. This was a great experience because Rachel worked her ass off to learn as much as she could and to become the best therapist she can be. Seeing it all come together was fantastic. Her success was coming after long and tremendous effort. For me, it was the best day we shared, very satisfying and very complete.

During our coaching sessions, Sean realized that he had to push kinda hard to get some information out of me and to get me to talk in terms of what was going on in my head. Regardless of my reason for not being more forthcoming, he got me to see that this was not working for me. “If you want to be indestructible you need to talk to people about the dissonance in your shared life and your expectations and understanding of things so you know you are both on the same page. They may leave, but that is a step in the right direction if the truth makes them go.” This was in early March 2011 and I have found that just saying the tough thing quickly saves a time and emotion. I spend a lot less of my mental energy thinking about a future conversation and can spend energy on things that move my life forward. The other people seem to appreciate it because they know where they stand with me. All in all, it makes life simpler.

How To Fall In Love Again

1) Give in and accept that your ex partners are always going to have some power / influence over you and your thinking. Take the necessary steps to stop that influence from derailing your forward progress. The best approach here is to just not talk to them for a while and then slowly phase them back into your life if you are able to keep their influence in-check. If you can’t do this, don’t worry, most people can’t. They are your ex for a reason, usually because their and / or your influence did not move you both towards mutual happiness.

2) Accept that your past demons are going to have an influence on your present thinking and actions. Question things that disrupt the flow of the relationship or your partners life. Talk to your partner about these things. They aren’t likely to go away so acknowledging and working through them is a lot more effective and intimate than trying to ignore them. There is nothing wrong with your past and your future can be different. Embrace it and love the life you have lived because it has taken you to your new love. Once you know the life you have lived, you’ll be better equipped to deal with your present life because you’ll accept that there are patterns in your behavior.

3) Take the time to watch the way your partner moves, talks to people and engages the world. Learn to notice the way they are. Look at their hands, their arms, their face. Try to notice all of their features and the way their mouth moves and eyes squint when they smile deeply. Feel the excitement build as your look at them. Learn to associate that excitement with the essence of them. Say to yourself and to them what it is that is beautiful about them. Create a linguistic understanding of who they are, not just a visual understanding. Take the time to touch them, particularly their face, neck and hands. Hold them close, feel their heat and energy against and within your body. Learn to identify the way they feel next to you. Massage them, rub their backs, find out where they are ticklish. Create a tactile understanding of who they are. Listen to their voice, the sound of their breathing, the sound of their foot steps when they are walking. Hear the way they move objects in the kitchen, the shower, the sound of the cutlery when they are eating a steak dinner. Create an auditory understanding of who they are. Smell them. Smell their clothes, their hair, their skin. Condition your nose to identify them by their smell or things that smell like they do. You are to immerse yourself in their essence and notice them, not just the things they do, but the way they are when no one is watching. If you love them, you will take the time to stop and notice all that there is to love about them.

4) Do things together that you would do on your own, but keep doing these things on your own some of the time. Sharing passions will helps to bring two people closer but you must maintain your independence with a part of them in order for you to hold onto your identify. Your partner is attracted to you because of who you are, this will go away when you combine everything and you stop being yourself.

5) Be recklessly open about who you are and what you want out of life. This stuff needs to be shared or else it won’t come true. A common goal empowers the relationship to become more purposeful and progressive. Even if they don’t directly participate, having them on your side will go a long way in helping you be more successful.

6) Challenge them and allow them to challenge you on your choices, motives and decisions. Therapy is a great tool, so a loving relationship will also contain a certain level of therapy-like behaviors. The objective here is allow your partner to empty of whatever is on their mind from the day, to have their feelings massaged out about the things that are troubling, and to basically be given a chance to talk things out and feel better. The hard part is not taking what you hear personally or injecting your opinion or solution into the conversation. You love them, but they need to suffer their own issues alone. Your role is to listen without hearing and ask questions that allow them to feel whatever it is they can’t get rid of.

7) Accept that you will never know how they truly feel about anything and, as such, you MUST remain open to the fact that their world is not the same as yours. Take the steps needed to NOT force your views upon them and to not allow them to force theirs on to you. Agree to disagree and accept compromise with both winning vs. you losing. If you can’t do this, and your new partner needs to maintain their identity, you MUST release them from whatever it is you’re a building because it isn’t a partnership.

So, these are 7 things that will help you create a climate that is conducive to the creation and expression of compassionate and intimate love. But when it comes right down to it, these are actions one would take when they are trying to figure out, as quickly as they can, IF they are with someone who is worth giving-up being alone for. Step 3 will also serve as the most powerful diagnostic tool you can get access to without going to school to learn how to identify motives based on the analysis of behavior – when you know how someone maintains eye contact during a conversation, you’ll know when they aren’t holding it the way they normally do and be able to ask quickly “what is going on?” These things change when a relationship shifts from being something good to something that is in trouble.

How I Have Excelled With My Clients

Looking back about 3 years on my training, I can now see a few ways that I have provided my clients with excellent service. This is the follow-up post to How I Have Not Served My Clients Adequately. Below is a list of 5 things I regard as having been the right things to do:

1) Established the importance of following and recording effective, sensible and sustainable eating behaviors. With body composition, food is key. Good quality whole food, eaten in small amounts every few hours will do more for your appearance than anything else you will do. That’s all there is to looking and feeling amazing. You stay on track by recording what you eat and reviewing this with someone else every few days who asks you to explain and justify your actions.

2) Trained the mid and low traps, along with the rotator cuff muscles to improve shoulder stability and posture. They may be stronger than they need to be, but their shoulders are drawn back and down, so now only my most athletic and strong clients make any reference to neck pain – which is muscle pain associated with lifting or performance. Also, all of my clients report no or a big reduction in shoulder pain; which is fantastic given that there are 3 clients who came to me with chronic shoulder pain being a key area to address.

3) Taught my clients to work almost as hard as they can. All of us have an upper limit when it comes to how hard we can work but very few of us know just how hard that is. Most clients underestimate their upper limit and pull back the intensity prematurely. After repeated efforts, we begin to drive harder and harder, because our fitness improves and because we realize that we can drive harder. Eventually the client finds this upper limit without external motivation and at this point they become trainee or an athlete, no longer a client.

4) Being present and engaging. We share the moment of working out. They know that while I may not be suffering with them, I’m well aware of what is happening with their bodies and we work together to get the most out of it. I firmly believe that you raise the performance of a client when you engage and keep them in the present moment. If that means I need to challenge them on what is going on in their mind when we are training, I go at them about that. I want and they need their bodies to do as many things correct as they can, so emptying the stress tank before training can go a long way in freeing-up mental energy to focus on form and breathing.

5) Providing good value for their money. People come back to train because they believe that their money is being spent wisely. You do this by delivering what you have agreed to deliver in a caring and fun way. You do this by being honest with people and getting them to question their motives and actions. And when we are not able to get the results the client is looking for, I tell them and we reevaluate the training relationship. Accepting when you don’t have the answers or when your solutions are not working helps to keep the trust alive and, while it may cost me clients, it helps to generate referrals.