Improving General Wellness – Page 2 – newstasis :: a blog about improving wellness

10 Things That Will Boost Your Progress

Intelligent people want to be living a life that is moving forward, growing towards something greater than that which already is. It could be a part of human nature, part of how we were raised or part of our specific genetic code, but intelligent people are on the move, forward and upward. Progress is the unit of measurement, the currency of driven people, and we like to fill our banks with lot of it!

Below are ten things that will speed-up your progress; not just your body transformation or your athletic pursuits, but in all areas of your life.

Realize that effort alone doesn’t work. Many business owners perform all the roles of their company and their business say small because of this. The 20 hour days don’t yield the same results as a well thought out 10 hour day at enrolls other people in doing some of the work. Effort is kind, up until a certain point, then it becomes a joker.
Know your motivation. Be moving towards something very important or leave something behind that needs to be left behind. Or both! There needs to be a compelling reason for WHY you are trying to progress. Progress for its own sake is good, progress for a higher purpose is GREAT. Focus on this purpose and enjoy the boost in efficiency. Most people do not know their motivation for doing things and this is a huge limiting factor with their progress. Have a compelling MUST have reason and notice what happens in your life to help you get it.
Learn from EVERYTHING and EVERYONE. We learn from experiences, not from sitting around. Be open and wise to the fact that you don’t know everything. Progressing forward is about acquiring new knowledge and converting it into wisdom, and this will only happen when stuff goes in. This applies to both the things to do and the things to NOT do – there is a reason why someone lost their job which is usually not the inverse reason why someone keeps their job. Learn from both and maximize your progress.
Choose proof over theory. Some things look great on paper but don’t pan out as predicted while other things seem doomed from the beginning but turnout to be not just the best way to accomplish a task but the ONLY way to accomplish it. When you are looking for progress, go with what works. When you are looking to innovate, go with theory.
Take a few small actions each day. Success is made-up of 1000’s of small things. Progress is about attrition against the odds. While it is unlikely that the small thing you do today will lead you to the victory you are looking for, not doing the small things is usually the reason for a lack of progress. If it takes a few minutes and you have a few minutes, just do it. It will get it out of the way and make action your method of operating.
Set many small and achievable tasks. 10’s or 100’s of these tasks will make-up a goal. Setting-up goals as being the combination of many small things makes achieving them more likely as they won’t overwhelm or discourage you. This way you will always be making progress, everyday and with almost every action.
Find someone to be accountable to who you WILL be accountable to. Sadly, many people get into the habit of not being accountable to themselves as there is a temporal processing issue with it – how do you be accountable to the you of the past? The finest way to overcome this is to enroll someone else to help you stay on track. Engage someone who will be dogmatic about your objectives and who will press you hard when you present excuse as reason.
Track your results to make sure you are staying on track. Consider enrolling someone else as the tracker of your progress – ideally your accountability person. When you do not achieve your results, you need to uncover the cause of your breakdown and eliminate the offending behavior. The objective opinion of an outsider can be the difference between a slow or light speed progress. They only have a vested interest in your results, not your emotional reasons for not acting in a goal achieving way.
Focus on behaviors, not outcomes. Being progressive is about acting in a progressive way, not about achieving a progressive thing. If you do the right things for long enough, the outcome is an inevitability.
Become part of a success orientated group. Successful people need to be surrounded by other successful people and there can be a magnificent synergy between group members. It is usually true that many minds are better than one when it comes to seeing solutions so engage others and enroll them in your journey. This will boost your accountability and it can dramatically increase the intellectual resources that work on an issue, problem or task. You never know what or who other people know, so connect with others and share unconditionally; both your quest and your wisdom.

Why Are You Sitting In Front Of Us – Your Purpose

Nothing, and I mean NOTHING will get you to the life you want faster than knowing your purpose. Goals are important, but not nearly as important as having a clear understanding of who you are and what your core values are. Once you know these things, and create a purpose that is aligned with them, it will open-up a way of being that allows you to live them in a meaningful way.

For example, effective trainers and performance coaches tend to be empathy driven – that is, they would sooner help people achieve potential than make a bunch of money. They value money as a means to an end – to buy food, shelter, clothing, and save for retirement – but what gives them the biggest boost in life satisfaction is making a positive impact in someones life or helping to facilitate meaningful change in the life of someone else. Money driven trainers tend not to last in the industry because to get to a level where the money is meaningful can take a very long time. It is possible, but there are not that many of them. For them to bridge the gap between the “not enough pay” period and the “enough pay” period there will need to be something tangible and very often being a partner in someones life transformation is not sufficient to make this happen.

What does this mean to you? It’s very simple, if you align your actions with your purpose, you will be more inclined to put in the hard work needed to achieve them. You may be open enough to free your mind of the thoughts that hold you back, that slow your progress and may instead embrace the unfamiliar way, the road traveled only by the successful and the road that lead you to everything you have ever wanted.

At a moment to think about it. Goals are not easy to achieve. They require you to do unfamiliar actions, step outside of the box and become something you are not already doing. This is both unnatural and counter to our genetic code which runs a program that is aimed at having us continue to do the same things we done before because they require the least amount of energy and have proven to be effective at keeping us alive. The life we know is less risky than the life we haven’t lived so there is a lot of inertia holding us in place. Having and knowing your purpose will go a long way in getting life moving forward. And it will keep the fire going when you are presented with challenges, breakdowns or when your progress seems to be blocked by circumstances.

Of most importance from a success point of view is that purpose-aligned goals will make you righteous and unstoppable. Take dieting for example. If there isn’t aspect of your purpose that has you living a life of modeling integrity and sustainable behaviors, a diet is something that you will only be on for a short period of time. At best, it’ll be a means to an end and it will be an inconvenient endeavor. You will only NOT be eating certain foods because you want to lose weight. The changes of anything getting in your way is fairly high – the pizza at work, the company birthday cake, the drinks with friends, etc…. But if your purpose does include being integrity and an element of role-modeling, a diet isn’t something you will ever be on because you will just eat right and look the way a human being should. You’ll have cake occasionally, celebrate with the occasional treat meal and maybe have a drink every now and then, but these behaviors will not be the norm because they are not the norm for those whose purpose is established being a fully functioning and model human being.

If you do not know your purpose on the planet, consider taking some time to uncover it. It could be the missing link in creating a sustainable lifestyle of effective behaviors that move your towards ALL of your goals. The fact remains though, if you are sitting across from a performance or strength coach, something isn’t playing out spontaneously. Something is misaligned and it is preventing your from achieving your goals and success

Interview With Patrick William McKinney sometime in the spring of 2022

I sat down with Patrick McKinney for a 30-minute chat that he suggested I make at least an hour for. He also asked that I wear comfortable shoes because he can’t sit down for very long when he’s asked to talk about himself. “Not that I don’t find it to be a compelling subject, it just isn’t very interesting.”

Patrick is the younger of two sons, born in Northern Ireland to a protestant mother and catholic father. “My dad had seen enough of the world by the time he was 20 to realize you find an amazing wife and move quickly. The family moved to the south or away from the north when I was 2 or 3, I don’t remember which or when and forgot to remember when I asked. My first memory is hazy and about a wall and bees. The next is of me and my brother happily running to meet my aunt and cousins. The bees were in the north, the running was in the south. I bring this up because these made me who I am.”

“Lets be fair here, I don’t belong anywhere, and that’s why I’ve done so many different things. I love everyone and everything, and have very few close friends because of who I am. I’ve been a very manipulative person for all of my life and others find this to be kind of alienating, but only those who let it happen, right?” Before I could answer he said “that feeling you’re getting in your stomach right now, the way your foot twitched and your shifting, it means I’m in there” pointing to his head. “I’m good at this not because I just went in there, but because I was already in there. Been there all along. Do you feel like walking?”

The family moved to Canada when Patrick was 9 and his brother Desmond was 11. “Desmond has played the bigger role my socialization than anyone else. My folks provided most of what was needed to survive, Des provided the rest.”

“Do you see that man standing there?” asked while pointing at a group of 4 businessmen. “Which one?” “There’s only one of them standing, the rest are leaning on him” was the grinning reply. “Breath 3 times, you’re starting to become a little unhinged again.”

“I didn’t really fit in when we moved to Canada. I selected the very people who would help me feel like I didn’t belong. It’s wonderful looking back on because if they had been any different, I would have been average.”

“When you feel like you don’t belong, when all you have to lean on is your brother and parents, you don’t really get settled with anything. I love with all of my heart, with all of my being, but I would engineer the end of every relationship and friendship that wasn’t with someone who was able to feel and put up with what I was doing. I didn’t have children with any of the wonderful women I was in relationships with, and that left me with a huge amount of unconditional love to share.”

Patrick attended 3 universities to get a pass degree, making and leaving behind many wonderful friends. He cites the death of a girl friend during this time as being a changing point in his life. After graduating, he worked as a manager for a company his brother had created. This gave him a chance to excel at something, and enough money to afford to get out of his head on drink and other compulsive behaviors. About this he said “you can write all this self abuse stuff down if you like, it’s my past and I love it, but it’s more important that you capture the need for the journey than the way the journey took place.” Context is important, and you can feel it when you talk to Patrick. Time with him is a roller coaster and it’s easier if you try not to hold on because he’s not going to let you fall off.

He found himself working for GoodLife Fitness as a sales person, then a manager and then a personal trainer. “But I was still running. I quit the PT job and took a month vacation to the east coast with Deb, one of my oldest and dearest friends. I rode my bike and rotted, and didn’t find what I was looking for.”

I coasted for a few months until I got sick and a doctor told me that there was protein in my urine. I thought my kidneys were shot and my life flashed before my eyes. I was going to die much sooner than I had thought and it was going to be a life on dialysis and maybe a transplant, and I realized that I hadn’t done much living. The test wasn’t accurate and I was spared the future that I had bought into as a dreadful thing. That was another moment in my life.

I told myself a story and ran to the edge of the earth with it. When the story died, I felt alive again, and reborn. It’s all a load of meaningless crap that I was able to manufacture, believe, feel and run with. “I’d like to clarify something here because it can be confusing to some to hear that without the proper context. Things do happen, they are real things, and there is a real organic emotional response to them. Real pain. But we also get emotional responses to things that don’t happen. The reality was that I didn’t have protein in my urine but I told myself that I did and that created an emotional response. Human beings do this a lot – create suffering out of nothing. This is why cognitive behavioral therapy is so effective.”

“Things changed slightly after this, I began to do more of the things that I wanted to do. My jobs, relationships and actions helped me to express my strong traits – a love for all things, an analytical mind and an ability to manipulate. I became a strength coach / personal trainer, a life coach, and I began writing. Things continued along this path until two very critical things happen, I feel in love and my father died. The girl was amazing and it didn’t work out. During our short relationship I began to see that my compulsive behaviors were not working for me anymore; our relationship was one of those behaviors. When my dad got sick and died, I made the decision to just stop them.”

“On February 29, 2012 I killed the person who had been living act one of my life and I started act two with a clean mind, body and a recreated spirit.”

The conversation changed at this point, an already enthusiastic chat became an almost frenzied assault on the English language in terms to pace, and loaded meaning.

“Patrick William McKinney is what I call myself now, not because it’s my name, but because it’s what I was labeled. What were you labeled and how did that shape you?” There was a pause and before I could answer “I’ve never been good with names because I think they are silly. Sure they have purpose, but how often do we use a name when we are speaking directly to someone we love? Only when we’re trying to control the other person.”

“Some people didn’t like my parenting book, they called me smug and ballsey to write it given that I don’t have any children. I liked those names more because it tells me about their state of mind.” PWM’s view was that parents are too busy being parents – either exactly like their folks or the complete opposite – to fully appreciate what is going on. “Too involved in the creation and building of adults to have the time to see that the goal is to cultivate the child into an adult child.” Some of the things adult parents said to me about the book had me crying inside because their children were not getting the best upbringing possible.”

“My “Atheists Guide To Spirituality” was blast to write. A former client clued me into it during lent of 2012 when my spirit was catching-up to my physical body. A lot of faithful and non-faithful people dismiss outright the views of the other simply because they think it matters. We’re all part of the same things, we’re all the same thing so the view that we’re separate is both a nonstarter and inaccurate.”

Describing himself as a General in the battle for human potential, there’s a glow that flows out of him. He does seem older than time in a way, his eyes are engaging, but you get the very real sense that you are not special when you talk to PWM. It isn’t that you are ordinary, it’s that he has known you a lot longer than you have known yourself. It’s almost creepy, but when you give into the possibility that it is true, it is freeing.

“Do you have a personality disorder, are you ADD or something?” “Goodness yes. Most people do. How long have you realize you have one?” “About a second or two, how long have you known?”
“I just assume it to be the case because our up-bring paints us with them. Our purity is clouded with a notion that we are the center of the universe because it’s our point of reference. Parents tend not to feel comfortable telling their children the truth in matters like this because they feel ill equipped to articulate the possibilities it creates. They are scared of the damage it will do so they continue to damage their children by validating the notion that they are unique. Complete nonsense. The greatest people who have ever lived killed the notion of this identity in order to serve some higher purpose. It’s only in death that we are free.”

PWM admits that he would have made a lot more money had he pushed forward with serving himself directly, but seems completely content in the moment knowing that his coaching, training and speaking business, coupled with his writing impact a smaller group of people who end-up impact more people than he could on his own. He thinks his charity work is fairly effective too although he doesn’t really speak about it much. “Charity is a funny thing, there’s a fine line between charity and self indulgence. I’ll battle for them, but if someone wants to know anything about the numbers they can talk to the critics. I’ve never been arrested, charged or investigated. I’ve done very well out of them not because I take money, but because they’ve have helped me remain humble and the people we work for teach me more than most other human beings can. They’ve learned more about life than those who come from privilege.”

We chat a little longer while walking and picking-up litter, garbage and saying hello to various people who walk by.

We straighten things that are out of alignment and effectively float down the street doing whatever needs to be done but wouldn’t have been done in that moment had we not been there. It was pleasant and I had forgotten to notice that it has started to rain a little.

I’m not sure I will ever interview PWM again, and I’m fine with that. I’m not sure I interviewed him in the first place. It was slightly careless of me to believe that it would be easy and I’d sooner have him interview me. I have a feeling it would be a lot more interesting because there’s so much about myself that I don’t know and it’s clear that he would bring it out. But maybe he already has….

I Love You Lungs

I love my lungs, not just because they bring in oxygen and send out CO2, but because they are working hard to keep me alive and to repair themselves from the abuse I was subjecting them to.

It was never personal, I wasn’t setting out to hurt them, I just was.

They are serving me well and over the last few weeks I’ve been clearing out a lot of stuff that I don’t recall breathing in. There’s no way I would sit down and inhale this black stuff that I’ve been coughing out if it presented itself to me as the black stuff in the first place. But it presented itself as a feeling of decreased tension, anxiety, stress, and the cessation of withdrawal symptoms; which are easy to consider positives. Now, a few weeks out, it’s very clear that there was NOTHING positive about them. Withdrawal from poison is a good thing because it means you are healing.

It is kind of shocking though. Some report that you can be clearing the nastiness for months, others claim that nothing ever came-out. I’m somewhere in the middle. Most of my coughing has stopped, but when the shower is really hot or I’m cooking a bunch of food and the humidity in the kitchen is high, I get my cough on and lumps or strains of black come out. I look at them and imagine what my lungs will look like in a few months and years.

For someone who presented themselves as giving a crap about how they looked, I sure didn’t pay much attention to keeping the lungs a nice beautiful pink.

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.

Antiquated Coping Strategies – Smoking

NOTE – I don’t know the person in the image above but her story is available here. I use this image because it is reminiscent of my dad’s last few days and because those last few days were like NOTHING I have ever experienced. Take a look at the Poo bear on the table and the pictures of her loved ones. Read her story and the final words from her husband. I could be her in a few years and the post below outlines what I need to do to stop that from being my future.

I started smoking again. I had the choice to not start but I convinced myself that I DIDN’T have a choice and set-out believing that it was a fine coping strategy.

It was embarrassing to lie to my father about it. “I’m going out to work on something in the workshop” was what I’d say, and I’d do something, but it was really a trip out there to smoke. The lie made him feel better, like I was finally taking ownership of my life and working hard to build the panel business and it allowed me to avoid disappointing him in his last weeks here. He was proud that I had turned my life around after Natalie’s death – stopped smoking, started eating correctly, got back to exercising, became a personal trainer, started teaching cycling classes and effectively stopped doing most of the things that were destructive. I was glad that my dad was happy and once I slipped, and it was evident that he was getting sick, the smoking habit took hold because I didn’t want to stop out of fear of what it might be like. I also didn’t want to rock the boat given his terminal diagnosis.

Now I have quit. I left everything as it was until I was able to deal only with the death of my dad and the impact it has had on my self-awareness. This was a request of my family to just try and keep things normal until you know what you are feeling and are ready to make the changes. Strangely, the thing that actually clued me into the fact that it would be fantastic idea to stop was a realization about my girl friend at the time. She’s an amazing women and I think we both knew that the relationship would be a 2 part thing if it was to last at all. There was not going to be continuity in it, a separation / break-up was going to be absolutely necessary because of WHO I am and where I am in my life. BUT, my time with her was good and I realized that I actually wanted to live for as long as I can. There was something about the relationship with her that helped me realize that you can feel connected to someone and this connection can help you see things about your behavior that aren’t working. I needed to stop for myself, not for her, my dad, for anyone. I tabled the stopping until after my dad died.

I don’t want to die. I want to live forever, floating through the universe with a smile and love in my heart. But I will not live forever, and if I don’t fix my bad habits, I won’t live for much longer.

Below is a list of the positive changes that occur when someone stops smoking. I like this list because there are benchmark to achieve and it tells a story about recovery. The body will heal itself from a lot of damage if you do the things to promote recover, but only if you stop the damage as well.

Last smoke plus …
20 minutes	Your blood pressure, pulse rate, and the temperature of your hands and feet will all return to normal.
8 hours	Remaining nicotine in your bloodstream will have fallen to 6.25% of normal peak daily levels, a 93.25% reduction.
12 hours	Your blood oxygen level will have increased to normal and carbon monoxide levels will have dropped to normal.
24 hours	Anxieties peak in intensity and within two weeks should return to near pre-cessation levels.
48 hours	Damaged nerve endings have started to regrow and your sense of smell and taste are beginning to return to normal. Cessation anger and irritability peaks.
72 hours	Your entire body will test 100% nicotine-free and over 90% of all nicotine metabolites (the chemicals it breaks down into) will now have passed from your body via your urine. Symptoms of chemical withdrawal have peaked in intensity, including restlessness. The number of cue induced crave episodes experienced during any quitting day will peak for the “average” ex-user. Lung bronchial tubes leading to air sacs (alveoli) are beginning to relax in recovering smokers. Breathing is becoming easier and the lungs functional abilities are starting to increase.
5 – 8 days	The “average” ex-smoker will encounter an “average” of three cue induced crave episodes per day. Although we may not be “average” and although serious cessation time distortion can make minutes feel like hours, it is unlikely that any single episode will last longer than 3 minutes. Keep a clock handy and time them.
10 days	10 days – The “average ex-user is down to encountering less than two crave episodes per day, each less than 3 minutes.
10 days to 2 weeks	Recovery has likely progressed to the point where your addiction is no longer doing the talking. Blood circulation in our gums and teeth are now similar to that of a non-user.
2 to 4 weeks	Cessation related anger, anxiety, difficulty concentrating, impatience, insomnia, restlessness and depression have ended. If still experiencing any of these symptoms get seen and evaluated by your physician.
21 days	Brain acetylcholine receptor counts up-regulated in response to nicotine’s presence have now down-regulated and receptor binding has returned to levels seen in the brains of non-smokers.
2 weeks to 3 months	Your heart attack risk has started to drop. Your lung function is beginning to improve.
3 weeks to 3 months	Your circulation has substantially improved. Walking has become easier. Your chronic cough, if any, has likely disappeared.
1 to 9 months	Any smoking related sinus congestion, fatigue or shortness of breath have decreased. Cilia have regrown in your lungs thereby increasing their ability to handle mucus, keep your lungs clean, and reduce infections. Your body’s overall energy has increased.
1 year	Your excess risk of coronary heart disease, heart attack and stroke has dropped to less than half that of a smoker.
5 to 15 years	Your risk of stroke has declined to that of a non-smoker.
10 years	Your risk of being diagnosed with lung cancer is between 30% and 50% of that for a continuing smoker (2005 study). Risk of death from lung cancer has declined by almost half if you were an average smoker (one pack per day). Your risk of pancreatic cancer has declined to that of a never-smoker (2011 study), while risk of cancer of the mouth, throat and esophagus has also declined.
13 years	Your risk of smoking induced tooth loss has declined to that of a never-smoker (2006 study).
15 years	Your risk of coronary heart disease is now that of a person who has never smoked.
20 years	Female excess risk of death from all smoking related causes, including lung disease and cancer, has now reduced to that of a never-smoker (2008 study). Risk of pancreatic cancer reduced to that of a never-smoker (2011 study).

Narcissism – A Social Need For The Unenlightened

I wondered for a long time why so many seemingly normal and highly functional people constantly find themselves at the source of all of the bad things that happen in their world yet take responsibility for few of their own actions. It was disturbing until Des told me that believing you’re are a piece of unlovable crap is a sure fire way to ensure that you seek out the social situations to validate your lack of value. Initially it struck me as odd until I saw Donald Trump talking on TV and it hit me that there is a man who doesn’t really care what anyone thinks of him. He’s not narcissistic, he’s confidence because he knows he has a lot of value and this prevents him from needing other people’s approval. He’ll settle for their money and he’s just right for that.

If you are able to consider the inverse – that you are unlovable – you’ll see how seeking out this type of validation is a much bigger a social motivator than KNOWING you are the best. People who know what they bring to the table do not seek out proof of this from others because knowing it is all that is needed. I had an old girlfriend who would talk about things she knew nothing about but when it came time to debate about the things she knew, there was no debate. No need, I didn’t know what I was talking about. She’d correct me and then move on if I continued to disagree. What’s funny is that she would debate endlessly when she was full of crap.

This is one of my favorite topics as I age because I am uncovering more and more people who don’t understand that their motivation to see themselves as the center of the world and the cause of everything is a symptom of a sense of unlove-ability and that it is paying service to something that happened when they were growing-up. More often that not, their narcissism is a result of an incomplete developmental stage and an inaccurate pairing of cause and effect – for example, very attractive people tend to become narcissistic as they age because they were never recognized for their efforts (the things they can control) and tend to receive favor simply for being good looking. Their pathological behavioral patterns will tend to pop out any time they begin to feel overwhelmed by someone they view as better than them (a meaningless distinction) or anytime they feel the withdrawal of approval. They will often say the oddest things that you cannot reconcile in your head because they are not based on fact. To them though, they are based on fact; they are based on the interpretation of the evidence which just happens to see them as unlovable.

We tolerate this from children, movie stars and anyone we want something from because we can’t actually care that much about people who view themselves as unlovable because they tend to act in unlovable ways and alienate those who bring them kindness – they are dishonest, they create drama where it didn’t need to be, they involve others in their and other peoples business, they denigrate others in an attempt to make themselves feel or look better, they tell you who you can and cannot be friends with and they will throw you under the bus as soon as they realize that you are not treating them as unlovable as they act. Narcissism is obvious once you’ve seen it and the people it afflicts are toxic to those unfortunate to have to continue to engage them.

The prognosis is poor for these types of people because they are incapable of seeing their actions has shaping their world – I’ve yet to meet one who later said “I was creating all of my bad luck because I was acting unlovable.” Sadly for them and the people they impact, you tend to hear “look what you made me do” or “that isn’t fair” when you treat them the same way they treat you.

Chances are they are too heavily invested in keeping their delusion going to actually look at the root cause of their actions.

Do The Best You Can, That You Can Live With

Many people have taught me important life lessons – there’s a lot of them to learn and I’ve been open enough at times to let others impact me.

A few winters years ago my parents (mom) started feeding this big ginger cat that would hang out by the back of the house near the dryer vent. It had been hanging around the neighborhood for a few years and each year it seemed to be finding it tougher to get by. Being a male, there was no chance that they’d be letting it sleep inside unless it was fixed. And being an unfixed male, it was assisting in the making of kittens, adding to the cat problem. They talked to the humane society so the option of having them pick it up and deal with it was on the table. My parents dilemma was that a cat this old and independent wasn’t high on a adoptable list – the cat would have been up down. This may have struck them as unfair because the cat was effective at living and had earned the right to NOT be killed.

My folks made the decision to bring him to the vet and get him fixed. It cost around $125 and after a day of recovery, he ran away when my parents let him out of the cage after returning from the vet. “That seems like a total waste of money” I said when I chatted with my dad a couple of days later. He just shrugged and said “you do the best you can.”

About a week after its surgery there was a particularly cold spell and the cat returned to sleep inside and get fed. It left in the spring and you’d see it occasionally until the winter returned. It didn’t have anymore kittens and had a better quality of life when the winter became too much of a challenge.

A few weeks ago I was talking with Tony about raising children. He has two kids, I have none. There are challenges to parenting that I don’t realize so my understanding of the process is almost completely theoretical. I had a few curiosities about some of his approaches and when I asked him about them it was clear that there’s a lot of room to wiggle when it comes to following the path of best parenting approaches. Realistically, you have to do the best you can, that you can live with.

There are consequences to buying a child’s compliance through rewards but there are times when you simply need them to be quiet, focused, excited, etc…. but if you can manage those consequences and deal with whatever is thrown at you, you are going to be able to live with your decision.

Life has many twists and turns, challenge enough without the baggage of regret. Doing the best you can is an effective way to eliminate regret from your future. But when life gets in the way and you need to balance some of your wants with some of your needs, you do the best you can, that you can live with.

Do YOU Like Stupid Things?

Some people like to do things that don’t appeal to me. They say they like doing them when I ask, so I’m usually happy enough if they don’t ask me to do it with them. I try to keep it simple so that if something doesn’t impact me, my enjoyment of the world or put anyone at risk, I’ll do my best to let it go. People don’t like being openly judged and being told that they are wrong is something that causes emotional responses in most humans; it’s best to avoid thinking too much about the things that have little impact on life because that isn’t going to fix the stuff that can be controlled.

I suppose that I have told people that their dreams are stupid, that their actions are stupid, that they are kinda dumb. I do it less now that I’m older and understand what people hear when you ask them things. While it has been a long time since I actually told someone that they liked stupid things, I know that many of the people I have talked to have heard me say that they like stupid things. And to this point, it’s both sad and shittie.

It’s shittie because using the word “you” is useful and can add a lot of efficiency to conversations. “You were speeding and got a ticket” is concise. Using fewer words tends to decrease the chance of a miscommunication. But what if using fewer words actually lead to hearing stuff that wasn’t being said? This will complicate communication dramatically and it is exactly what happens when some people hear the word “you” in a sentence that is directed towards them; they hear a criticism which usually gets their back up. In this case, we’re contending with someones interpretation of what was said vs. what was said. To avoid this potential derailment in a conversation I’ll try to not use the word “you” and I try to avoid accusing them of something or pointing out their actions as having a negative consequence on the world.

It’s sad because there is a reason a person immediately interprets “you” as a criticism. Why would someone normalize the assumption that almost every comment made about them is a criticism of them? How this comes to manifest itself (or for whatever reason something comes to manifest itself) as an almost narcissistic obsession to see others blaming them for random life is a scary and sad notion. This tendency has been normalized because they have been in an environment where it was normal or where it was never shown to be anything other than what is possible.

While this may not necessarily indicate abuse, it does indicate a tormented life leading up to the moment they are standing in front of you waiting to hear you rip them to pieces.

Happy end to the forth fiscal quarter!

What Do You Do When You Stop Running?

I haven’t been writing much recently because I have found my life to be almost too boring to talk about let alone put in the physical effort to write it out. When my friends ask “how are you doing?” I’ve been trying to put on a smile and say “awesome” or “amazing” and gargle out a few sentence about why it life is awesome/amazing when asked. My friends aren’t bull shit so they call me on the lack of passion. I say stuff, they hear it, think what they think and the conversations move on.

My thoughts on the matter are as follows:

I have a tendency to be narcissistic. All of the blogs I’ve written about toxic people and those kinds of things come from a place of experience, experiences that I don’t need to repeat anymore. I’ve been a real dick to a lot of people. I haven’t been the pacifist observer I’m capable of being because I make myself the center of everything and trying to control the crap out of the things I don’t like. I am sure there are reasons why I do this but they don’t matter much to someone I’ve just made feel guilty for something they didn’t even do.

The controlling tendencies remain, but I feel them now. I know the buttons to push and I know when I’m about to push one of them MOST of the time. The awareness that I’m about to push a button is very important to me because I don’t like being a dick. Creating an emotion within someone can have a positive impact, fear of dying can motivate someone to correct some diet issues, but given that I don’t have any control over the exact emotional response I trigger, there are too many unknowns for me to continue to do it to people without telling them I’m doing it. Manipulating other people is a problem I have had for a long time and I’m happy to be able to identify when I’m doing it. I’ll get my way a lot less often but maybe I’ll get some different life experiences….

Goals and dreams are fine, a man needs a purpose, but you need to be certain that you are trying to make real a dream that is actually yours. If you’re working towards something you don’t actually want, achieving it isn’t going to be very satisfying. This wasn’t a problem when it came to me riding too much to make sure I was this image of optimal health – worst case I run myself into the ground – it’s a huge issue when dealing with relationships because they involve someone else. The problem is that you end up saying and doing things that don’t match-up with your intentions. This creates a lot of anxiety and dissonance within the both people; it causes suffering without a positive end goal. So I’ve let go of the relationship dream / goals I had and have shifted my focus onto money and career objectives because I KNOW I need them in my future and I know I can control my efforts in achieving them.

For most of my adult life I have been experienced a constant low level of anxiety. It is so much a part of me that I search for things to think about to justify feeling it; it’s only recently that Des pointed out to me that I tend to feel something and then look for a cause. This is something about all humans. In most instances, the feeling comes before the reason. The truth may be that I am anxious and have unconsciously found chronically stressful life situations to displace the thought that my fight or flight response is on a hair trigger.

The only relationships that fail are those with or between narcissists. They don’t work because a narcissist thinks in terms of me, myself and me. The other person is a thing that serves a purpose. When the needs are being met everything is fine NOT because the two people are getting along but because the narcissist is getting their way. Once that stops happening, the controlling and abusive nonsense begins. Being a partner to a narcissist is a lot like being a robot. Your role is to do whatever they need done, usually preemptively and without prior coaching, and to take their ridicule for not doing the right thing for as long as they need to spew it out, and listen to it again anytime they feel like reliving their disappointment in you. I’ve served up enough of this sh!t to know that it doesn’t help anyone in the long run and it only gets the other person to modify their behavior and rarely impacts their nature.

Close the loops that hold you in the past. This summer was the culmination of my adult life so far. I was able to see who I was, who I wanted to be, what I had been doing, why I had been doing it, and what I needed change in order to move my life towards what I know I want. These realizations answered a lot of questions I had about myself and framed a lot of my actions in a way that makes complete sense, allowing me to stop thinking about them. With each loop I closed, I gained a little more mental energy which I put towards the panel business, something that represents my future. As the past gets put away the future gets brighter because you’re putting more energy towards it. However, open loops still remain that sap energy. If you really want to move into the future, create a big goal and start closing the loops of your past. It’s insane how they bleed you out.

I only have so much nervous energy to devote to stuff. It doesn’t matter what it is you want to do, think or move, it requires mental effort, and there is a finite amount of it available. Once it is used up, you slow down dramatically and need to rest and recover. It stands to reason that a long bike ride will have an impact on my ability to think later in the day. It was less obvious that a long stressful thinking session will have an impact on my bike ride later in the day. It does, and it tends not to be as positive an impact as physical exercise has on thinking. It’s also true and even less obvious that unconscious thinking will drain your nervous energy reserves. It makes sense why I’m a little flatter now, the work on the panels is new so it’s a little stressful. To learn it most effectively I’ve been immerse in it, which tends to prime my unconscious brain to work on solutions and advance my understanding, which takes energy.

Maybe it was my face. With my teeth moving and the spacers prevent me from closing my mouth completely there is nothing to force my jaw out of alignment. When the jaw sits naturally there is very little tooth contact on the left. That means a life-time of my mouth closing in a way that isn’t lined up. No matter how small the deviation, it’s going to have an impact on muscles, bones, fascia, and nerves in that area. Being both an eater and a talker, my jaw has opened and closed millions of times. Millions of reps, each one tracking just a little bit to the left. I’ll accept that we can normalize dis-function, I can’t accept that normalized dis-function to be equal to proper bio-mechanical function. I’m open to the possibility that much of my recent flatness has something to do with the improved soft tissue environment in my face, head and neck.