Archive for July, 2010
Sabotage
Posted by: | CommentsSabotage
A well known famous blogger, Seth Godin, had an article today about how we fail because we sabotage ourselves by failing to make an effort.
It is a corollary to the point of view I have been making about failure is a term we give to a time frame. That doesn’t make it an absolute. First look at Seth’s points:
“Or consider the way we resist opportunities to lead, to connect, to do work that matters. We don’t resist because we’re not capable of it… we resist because if our marketing fails, if we don’t get the job or earn the trust, then we’re off the hook. No promises made, which means no promises to keep.
We know more than enough about marketing now. We know how to craft a story that will spread, we know how to find and lead tribes. The thing we have trouble with is making the commitment to do it even when it’s frightening and difficult.”
Then look at some points on failure:
Doug Yeamen, a personal development guru, said you can tell if it was a commitment by the result.
Tony Robbins, well know personal development counselor, says success is having the hunger and the right strategy.
Both imply that there is a door in every wall. If at first you don’t succeed this is not failure. Select another strategy. Only a time frame makes it a failure and if you create long term objectives, there never has to be failure.
In the short term you are not meeting your objective. This means you did not have enough time or you did not have the right strategy. If you quit, it was not a real goal.
Did the U.S. think that getting to the moon was impossible or just a goal that needed an adequate amount of time and determination? Failing to get a rocket launched in the short term was not a failure.
If your goal is to lose 10 pounds, when is it a failure? It is only a failure in the short term.
I hit a weight I did not like years ago in spite of hours a week of exercise. I realized that more exercise was not the solution. It required a change in diet. Most people do not like to change their calorie consumption. It can rarely be done quickly and successfully. Now after four years I am down 30 pounds.
I needed a new strategy.
It’s how you look at your real goals that matter. I was in the real estate industry during the melt down working on high rise condos. That industry totally disappeared. Just like the jobs for many of the 6 million formerly employed. They are not failures at their jobs, they have had a short term set back on having a career that sustained them.
The long term goal is being self sustaining. So now that means being retrained. There is rarely failure of achieving the goal if you look at the real goal correctly. Someone may pine at their failure to find true love. Once again, if that is a goal and a commitment, you have to examine your strategy. You have until you die to find your true love.
Why Quitting is Not an Option
Posted by: | CommentsGenerally you can only work on a certain amount of goals.
Your biggest goals are first. For each of those you have a strategy.
Maximizing my health is one of my goals. It has several strategies. They include continuously eating healthier foods and eating fewer harmful foods. It includes consistent exercise trying to build capability and introducing diversity. It includes practices that improve my brain which is a very important goal of health.
I have another goal of increasing my website and internet capabilities. It includes daily work on blogging, developing better sites, increasing page ranking expertise, and determining what interests followers.
Goals do not have to be reached in a day, month, or even a year. My goals are life time goals. Along the way there are set backs, but never a reason to give up. In every wall there is a door.
I have had smaller goals like snow boarding and now surfing that test my mettle. Many of my friends gave up snow boarding after violent encounters with the ground, but I knew those could be over come. Re learning surfing is not easy, but there is a light at the end of every tunnel.
Nothing worth having in your life is worth the thought of quitting. I can cut through the largest boulder with a hammer and chisel if I have enough time. If you want to quit something, it should be that eliminating it allows you to find a better path to your main goal.
What if We Had Human Bar Codes?
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- Image by Ardon LXXXIII via Flickr
What if humans had a personal bar code that could be read by other humans? You could turn them off when in public but it was protocol to turn them on when you were one on one.
It would be scanned immediately when you met someone new. They could tell what kind of person you were. By indicating your habits, your health, your physical conditioning, your intelligence, your occupation, your interests, your political party, your financial condition as A,B, or C, your criminal record, your birth sign, your birth place and of course your blood type.
You wouldn’t need E Harmony. You could tell in a second whether you wanted to spend more time with this person. It wouldn’t be all bad unless you were all bad. But, then you would have to find someone just like you.
Once you had all the information that would normally take you months of courting to discover about someone you could get into the more important stuff. What do you believe, what are you passionate about, what are your goals, what are you doing to improve yourself?
It would eliminate the need for pretense. It would eliminate the need to lie. Everyone could be humble about them selves and spend their time exploring souls instead of creating illusions.
You would be stripped naked of sorts but it might be refreshing. Maybe from the start people would start working on the things that were important for their bar code like character.
What would be even more interesting is if it would tell your relationship with the truth. Do you tell the truth all the time, sometimes, rarely, or never? Under what circumstances do you not tell the truth?
What is your commitment level? Do you always see things through that you start or do you always quit, sometimes quit, rarely quit, or never quit?
How passionate are you about serving others in your work or career? Could care less, sort of care, very concerned about service, or passionate about excellent service?
How much do you care about other people? Not at all, somewhat concerned, very concerned, or highest level of caring?
And so on. How would this make interviewing for a job if both parties could read each other? How would this make voting for a politician if you had the truth? How well could you match to a mate? How well could parents and children understand each other?
Yes, it seems like you would be stripped naked, but you would also be liberated and given the opportunity to make deep meaningful connections.
How Do You Know if You Are Commited?
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- Image by Getty Images via @daylife
By the Result
It sounds too simple. A seminar guru I used to follow along with my compatriots in commercial real estate had some real life lessons.
There is no in between with commitment. If you fail, it means you tried but weren’t committed.
If you look back at anything you ever achieved vs things at which you failed, what were the differences.
I know that I set out to do things and quitting is not an option. I am 110% in. It doesn’t even matter if I have a specific goal. I started snow boarding when many of my middle aged friends had given up. After a few bounces, it was clear why they had given up. But I was committed.
I have started surfing again and it is tough to re learn but quitting is not an option. I started learning how the internet works and I was fascinated. It doesn’t matter where it exactly takes me, but quitting is not even a thought.
It could apply to relationships too. Even though I have promised, it is clear I was not committed.
I am clearly committed to staying in good physical shape. It is something I have never stopped pursuing.
Take inventory of your commitments. The next time you say you’re going to do something, will you be committed or are you going to try?
Omega’s, Cancer, Brain Health
Posted by: | CommentsAn article today in Natural Health tells about omega 3’s reducing the chances of colon cancer.
The story of the omegas is often not clarified.
They need to be consumed in the right proportion. The brain is 60% fat structure and omega 3 supports brain function. Too much Omega 6 is harmful. The ratio varies among experts but generally the ratio of 3 to 6 should be 3:1.
Fat is good for the body and the brain if it is the right kind of fat. Omega 6 is generally found in butters and oils used to cook food and especially fast food.
Omega 3’s can be found in the right proportion in fish and especially salmon. Chia Seed and Hemp are rich in the Omegas and in the right proportion. In fact, Chia Seeds give you the omegas in multiples of what you would find in Salmon and it is less expensive and easier to add to your diet.
Here is a link to the aforementioned article http://www.naturalnews.com/029207_omega_3s_colon_cancer.html
The banner at the top of the site can take you to a raw foods page which would explain the value of Chia and Hemp and the benefits contained by each. They are super foods which means they give you a greater concentration of the valuable elements than you would find in anyone food plus they include the valuable elements found in several good foods.
For example, Chia seeds have high protein, high omegas, high antioxidants, and high calcium. Plus they slow down the body’s absorption of carbohydrates which assists diabetics and dieters. No one food provides these types of benefits.
Be Inspired at Least 3 Times a Day
Posted by: | CommentsEveryone says TGIF because they can’t believe they made it through another week.
Life can be sweeter than just the alcohol relief on the week ends.
Find three things that help you look forward to each day. I know I have to work but I have a few things that I enjoy that move me forward everyday. I look forward to my efforts in making progress.
I write and each day look for new ideas and better processes. I don’t just write to work, I look for ways to improve my effectiveness. I love physical activity. Everyday I look forward to something that will be stimulating.
I happen to live at the beach. I love to start with running stairs or on the sand as I have steadily improved my conditioning. And of course I try to take one or two breaks a day for a half hour of surfing.
I try to improve my health, my vitality, my brain function, and stamina. I use everyday to hone my diet with better and better foods. I don’t suffer with a restrictive diet. I eat better foods. Over a period of time I have learned how to maintain and then slowly reduce my weight and body fat. The less I weigh, the better I feel and the better I perform athletically.
I also love to read and look forward each night before I go to sleep to reading an good book. I am an action junkie so I read my favorite type books.
I don’t need Friday nights to get my only relief for the week. I build it in daily so that I can always feel I am living in reward and not toil.
Food, Exercise, and the Brain
Posted by: | CommentsFood, Exercise, and the Brain A HealthSeries post 3
Nothing is more noticeable in an improvement routine than brain activity.
The brain influences the mind which of course creates our perspective. If the body or brain are not working at optimum, neither will our thinking. The mind and brain are terms often used interchangeably.
Out of 5 brain waves, the two you might control easiest are the Alpha and the Beta. The beta waves stimulate left brain activity which is logic, language, calculating. It is the “dominant brain-mind rhythm”- Patt Lind-Kyle, author of Heal Your Mind Rewire Your Brain. The chemical for optimizing Beta waves is Dopamine. “In balance, everything works perfectly with the right balance of dopamine.”
The best foods for dopamine are broccoli, carrots, egg whites, salmon, pomegranate juice, spinach, and unsalted almonds. Teas that boost dopamine are green tea, oolong tea, white tea, and rooibos tea. Spices herbs, and flavorful foods that will boost your metabolism, which dopamine monitors are flaxseed, garlic, green tea mustard seed, onion, stevia, and yarrow. Some supplements that boost beta brain energies are Ginko Biloba, B Complex, tyrosine, and phenylalanine.” Patt Lind-Kyle
If you want a quick shot supplement to activate Beta and Alpha waves, I take a supplement called Mind Power which I recommend for high and extended alertness.
Exercise helps bring Beta Waves in balance as well as hobbies. Having the mind concentrate on pleasing activities, like writing or assembling, balance out the spheres.
The Alpha stimulates the right brain activity which is Creativity and emotion. “The right brain processes and regulates the amount of sensory information coming at us”-Patt Lind-Kyle
The wonderful senses created by the alpha waves are stimulated by marijuana which may create the “oh wow” state of sensory perception.
“Acetylcholine is the apha brain wave partner. It helps keep the speed of your thoughts in motion as information is sent across the neurons. It juices the mind to be flexible, quick in movement, creative and innovative.” Pat Lind-Kyle
“Foods that replenish acetylcholine and help alpha brain waves stay in balance are: avocado, cucumber, zucchini, lettuce, nuts, eggs, luncheon meats, and olive oil salad dressings. Foods with fats deliver choline to boost our brain activity.” Patt Lind-Kyle.
We often stimulate right brain activity with coffee in the morning to speed up Beta waves and alcohol in the evening to slow them down. We try to manipulate our emotions lots of ways including nervous eating or binging.
The more we can provide healthy stimulus, the more the brain becomes our tool instead of vice versa.
Meditation is the greatest way to optimize brain waves, but few people are ready to plunge into this practice. People out of control are totally at the mercy of their brains like little puppets. If the brain is out of balance, strange, destructive, and even self destructive behavior will be result.
You can see that if you want an immediate impact on your life style from improving your food intake and exercise– your brain, your performance, and your quality of life will be major benefactors.
Some Super Foods I will introduce to you as we progress, multiply the impact of these basic important foods.
20 Super Foods to Stimulate Brain activity http://leftofzen.com/brain-food/2008/01/04/
Follow the whole series of posts at NaturalFoodWebsiteseo.com/health-series
What if Obesogens, not Calories were making you fat?
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- Image via Wikipedia
No one likes a saboteur.
Following health, diet, exercise, and super foods, I read a lot of articles and see a lot of postings on the internet.
The one I will give you a link to is worth considering. I have always been a gym rat or at least exercise junkie and once out of college paid attention to my diet. And after I finished my spurt of running 60 miles a week, I had to watch my weight.
Like everyone, I found those 10 pounds are elusive. What if you were told that 10 out of 12 pesticides contain obesogens which are endoctrine hijacking chemicals that take weight regulation into their own hands.
“Obesogens are thought to act by hijacking the regulatory systems that control body weight,” says Frederick vom Saal, Ph.D., curators’ professor of biological sciences at the University of Missouri. That’s why endocrine disruptors are so good at making us fat — and that’s why diet advice doesn’t always work — because even strictly following the smartest traditional advice won’t lower your obesogen exposure.
EDC’s are endocrine-disrupting chemicals.
The foods you eat that contain pesticides could be sabotaging your great efforts to drop a few pounds.
So, I’m no specialist but you have been warned and if you would like to see more visit http://yhoo.it/bZoRyJ . An article by http://wowOwow.com
As a possible tip, an oncologist from Cedar’s Sinai hospital told me pesticides are also responsible for cancers and he soaks his produce in a half a cup of salt in a sink of water for 20 minutes. This neutralizes the pesticides, he says. I have been doing it ever since. I also noticed that I would sometimes get dysentery from fresh produce I was purchasing and after the salt soaking, this stopped.
What Are Some Real Super Foods?
Posted by: | CommentsWhen the Best Super Foods Over Lap Pick One or Two
There are many opinions of which Super Foods rule.
I have followed them for years and Jonny Rumbeads book on the 150 Super Foods certainly ranks as a go to catalog for the widest variety.
But when experts are asked for the top 12 or 8 or 5, the competition gets tough.
Assuming you are not eating other super foods or taking other supplements the demand can vary. If you are a Vegan, it can change the criteria. If you are an athlete or trying to drastically lose weight, it can change the criteria. If you are trying for certain results like brain building capability, it could change the criteria.
So the first question to ask in analyzing Super Foods is what is your objective?
Super foods for Vegans are high in protein. Most super foods at the top of everyone’s list are high in anti-oxidants. Many feature fatty acids like the Omega’s.
When it gets down to vitamins supplied, the list could grow infinitely larger.
So in my list, I like to see immediate quality of life improvement with the brain function strongly supported, then energy, vitality, cleansing, and long term health not promoted by the ingesting of our normal daily diet.
Then if the Super Foods supply that which we don’t usually consume in our daily diets or supply them in an overwhelming amount that could hardly be equaled by other super foods, I give them extra points.
So let me pick a few super super foods and describe their qualities.
Chia Seeds
- High source of Omega’s, better than Fish Oil, Flax Seed and Salmon
- High in protein, 18 g per 100 grams of seed
- 5 times the calcium of milk
- Absorbs 14 times its weight in water so it is hydrating
- Rich in anti oxidant oils, more powerful than blueberries
- It slows conversion of carbohydrates so excellent for diabetics
- Muscle and tissue builder as well as hydrator
- Three to ten times as much oil as most grains
- Because it holds water weight and expands content of normal foods it is excellent for dieting.
Hemp Powder
- A rich source of bioavailable protein, Hemp Protein delivers a hefty 22g per 60g serving!
- Hemp contains all 10 essential amino acids, making it the only balanced, complete source of vegan protein.
- The essential fatty acids
- High in Vitamin E
Seeds from the hemp plant (cannabis sativa) are naturally loaded with nutritional value, boasting all of the essential amino acids and fatty acids the body needs.
It’s even a great source of Vitamin E, dietary fiber and important minerals like calcium, iron, magnesium and zinc. If you’re a flaxseed fan, you may want to buy hemp seeds as a mix-in–when it comes to the omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids that make flaxseed such a health food staple, the hemp seed is even more potent.
Chlorella
It is a true superfood, packed with nearly 10 times the healthy chlorophyll of similar greens like wheat grass, barley and alfalfa. Our chlorella powder is at least 60% crude protein and is also a complete protein, meaning it contains a full balance of essential amino acids. The nutritional benefits go on and on–taking a chlorella supplement will even boost your daily intake of:
- Iron
- Calcium
- Magnesium
- Potassium
- Vitamins A, B12, C and E
It is a natural detoxifier Chlorella algae is thought to bind with heavy metals, synthetic chemicals and other toxins, making them easy to expel from the body.
Cacao Beans
- Anti-oxidants – way more than any other food, and which are very powerful at healing the skin.
- Magnesium – more than any other food and which happens to be the number one mineral deficiency in the US.
- Chromium – again more than any other food and which also happens to be the number one trace mineral deficiency in the US
- Incredibly high levels of Vitamin C
Bee Pollen
Bee pollen is the pollen produced by flowers that honey bees gather and bring back to the hive. Pollen grains are microscopic in size and bees collect millions of these individual grains and connect them with nectar into small pellets.
Bee Pollen Superfood Nutrition:
Bee pollen is an alkaline food considered by nutritionists to be the most complete food found in nature. Bee pollen is a rich source of high-quality protein. Bee pollen contains all essential amino acids. Its high levels of protein and amino acids make it a great strength builder and brain food. Some of the amino acids present include: cystine, lysine, histidine, arginine, aspartic acid, threonine, glutamine, proline, glycine, alanine, valine, methionine, isoleucine, leucine, tyrosine, phenylalanine, and tryptophan.
Some of the minerals included in bee pollen include: barium, boron, calcium, copper, iodine, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, sodium, and zinc. Bee pollen contains vitamins A, B, C, and E. It is extraordinarily rich in most of the B vitamins, including folic acid (folate).
Bee pollen contains over 5,000 enzymes. The phytonutrients (such as co-enzymes, bioflavonoids, phytosterols, and carotenoids) found in bee pollen also number in the thousands. Bee pollen is 15% natural lecithin.
Some of the Benefits of Bee Pollen Consumption Include:
- Increases energy and stamina.
- Increase muscle growth and definition.
- Builds immune system.
- Has antioxidant activity.
- Enhances sexuality.
- Smoothes wrinkles.
Matcha Tea
The health benefits of matcha tea exceed those of green tea because when you drink matcha you ingest the whole leaf, not just the brewed water.
One glass of matcha is the equivalent of 10 glasses of green tea in terms of its nutritional value and antioxidant content.
For maximum nutritional benefit, matcha tea is unparalleled.
- Rich in Antioxidants and Chlorophyll
- Contains Catechins Only Found in Green Tea
- Naturally Mood Enhancing
- Zero on the Glycemic Index – will not raise insulin levels
- Sugar-free, High in Fiber
What else you need to know:
- According to research done by Tufts University, the ORAC capacity of matcha green tea is exponentially higher than other foods known for their high antioxidants levels such as blueberries and spinach.
- The ORAC rating of matcha is 1300 units/g, compared to 105 units/g for pomegranates and 91 units/g for wild blueberries.
- There are many types of antioxidants, however, the class known as catechins are only found in green tea, and these maybe the most potent of all. And of the catechins, EGCg (epicgallocatechin gallate) is the catechin with broadest and most potent cancer-fighting properties. Sixty percent of the catechin content of matcha tea is EGCg.
- Matcha contains L-theanine, an amino acid known to relax the mind. For this reason, matcha is also known as a mood enhancer. Buddhist monks drank matcha to assist in meditation, as matcha’s amino acids, combined with caffeine, offer a sustained calm alertness over time.
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I have chosen three: Chia Seed, Chlorella, and Matcha Tea.
For a natural Viagra and energy booster, Peruvian Maca gets high grades.
You can Google for these special foods but two great places to investigate are:
They each have search bars so you can enter the foods you want.
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