Archive for December, 2011
How Fitness Leads to Happiness
Posted by: | CommentsPeople that are happy feel good. There are lots of components to feeling good.
One feels good because they are alive, which is gratitude. One feels good because they are vital and have an active, responsive, and energetic mind. One feels good because their body is serving them well and allows them to participate in enjoyable recreational activities. One feels good because their spirit is connected to Nature’s beauty and power.
Vitality and enthusiasm are certainly signs of a happy person. They seem alive and positive. Their face reflects their aura of peace and contentment. Fitness is a good synopsis of a person who eats healthy, exercises, lives with discipline, and understands the needs for a strong body, mind, and spirit.
Fitness is not only the result of a positive life routine, it reflects an attitude of why the body is important for a happy life style. Respect for the vessel Nature has given us shows a certain gratitude. Our optimum performance and contribution is achieved when every one of our faculties is contributing. Fitness contributes to improving performance.
The routines of fitness bring happiness every day. Fitness is a passion. It is self expression. It is self love. Love connects us to everything. Happiness is being connected to ourselves and others.
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The Challenge of Turning Off the TV
Posted by: | CommentsIf we turned off the TV, we would be left with only us and our minds in the room. The mind likes to be entertained. If we don’t have something to do it might want to drink, smoke pot, eat, watch TV or play with our phones. Who is serving who? Is the mind our tool or are we its?
A young well educated recently discharged marine was at my place and we were talking. I discussed my morning routine of writing and posting to different sites. I also have several other interests. He had once said that in the military, you never have to produce. He now mentioned that in the morning he is just channel surfing. “I don’t have enough interests” he concluded.
Several months ago, I disconnected my TV because I was filling up too many hours watching football and CNN. It becomes that silence like between two friends when no one is talking. Can you be comfortable with it or are you a little fidgety?
I would never go back. Years ago, I started gaining control over my mind with healthy eating and exercise. I took out foods that were harmful and added foods that were healthy. I exercise most every day and do something even if I don’t feel like it.
I increase my exercise even when the mind says I’m tired. The seventh sense is where you observe and listen to the conversation your mind is having with you. You are a third party. One day when I knew I was rested, the mind said it didn’t want to run the forty stairs I like to do in my routine. I responded by setting a record for climbs.
Healthy eating and exercise can begin your mind training. Then the mind climbs on board and encourages you to do more. “You can do it,” its says. With discipline and results you start to have confidence you could start and finish other tasks. You become inspired and connected to your power.
I write, surf , read, and cook most every day. These are my interests. If I do something everyday, I become more adept. “Flow” or “being in the zone” is engaging in activities in which you have practiced competence and losing your self in the enjoyment. This activity produces dopamine in the brain which is the happiness chemical.
Eliminating distractions and engaging in more positive activities gives you reasons to look forward to each day.
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What Do We Expect from Happiness?
Posted by: | CommentsEven though in his book “Stumbling On Happiness”, Harvard psychology professor Daniel Gilbert says we all seek happiness, I think it is questionable whether we understand how to sustain it.
It is my experience that those thing we have always dreamed of getting to make us happy lose their allure once we have them. Gilbert says this occurs because our dreams are reflections of how we feel in the present. By the time we get to the future, we are feeling something different.
I like to be happy every day and it doesn’t have anything to do with what I achieve or what I buy. It has two components. I am happy that I am alive. I am happy that I have the opportunity to make my day meaningful.
Being happy that I am alive is gratitude. I have gained gratitude by eating healthy, getting fit and finding my connection to nature. The first two lead to the latter. From connection, I found inspiration and also a desire to express myself. Self expression of your passions can make you happier than any possession.
“Flow” or “being in the zone” are the engagement in activities in which you enjoy, are practiced, and can engage without interruption. This activity leads to the brain’s production of dopamine, which neurologists say is our “happiness” chemical. I try to get as many activities that are my passions and in which I have competence into each day. I want my life to flow.
I fill up my day with as many of these activities as possible which include writing, surfing, cooking and eating, reading, socializing, and sunning at the beach (where I live). We might all have activities we have to fulfill during the day that are drudgery, but we can add as many pleasurable, non destructive, activities as possible.
Then happiness is a daily thing and not subject to someone else, an achievement, or acquisition.
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Why Should Health Be Our First Priority?
Posted by: | CommentsIt is one of the nation’s most debated topics. It is responsible for too large a portion of the federal budget which means the budget of every citizen. We ask why is health so expensive and what can be done about it.
It has become as large an economic issue for families as a life style issue. Most families can’t afford to need a doctor or hospital. The consequences of serious illness can be bankruptcy. Injuries usually can’t be avoided, but mild sickness, disease, organ, and structural deterioration can often be avoided.
What we need is more focus on prevention. One of the major causes of deterioration other than inherited congenital defects is inflammation. Inflammation thrives in acidic based blood supplies. Inflammation is prevented by eating natural foods and meats and exercising to burn muscle.
Anti oxidants help destroy the free radicals in our bodies that cause the break down of important organs like our brains and our eyes and make us vulnerable to cancer. Anti oxidants are found in natural food that grows out of the ground.
We have become dependent on food from boxes, cans, and restaurants. These foods are made to taste good to our corrupted palettes. They are not created to build immunity and prevent disease. We need to get used to foods that are not heavily invested in salt, sugar, flour, and fats.
Obesity could be greatly contained if we just dropped sugar and bleached flour from out diets. Inflammation could be reduced if we burned muscle every day with exercise. Free radicals could be reduced by eating lot of green vegetables including garlic, onion, brocolli, kale, parsely, and dandelion.
Jonny Bowden’s book “The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth” would be a great place to start for creating a healthy diet. See it in Resources. Each week we should eliminate the most harmful food in our diet and add a healthy food until we are eating 85% healthy.
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Fitness is More Than Losing Weight
Posted by: | CommentsA lot of people think that exercise is only for losing weight.
I have found through a life time of exercising that most people cannot exercise enough to lose unwanted pounds. My routine has included running 60 miles a week. I started running 5 miles a day five days a week at a 7 minute per mile pace. When I joined a track club, I started running 40 miles a week at the same pace. I did not lose any weight. Only when I started running 60 miles did the pounds start dropping off.
If you want to lose weight, most people who start from couch potato cannot burn 3500 calories a day necessary to equal a pound of excess weight. The purpose of exercise is to burn muscle so that the body can replentish the cells and remove inflammation. Then the body restores the dead cells with new cycotenes which make the body healthy.
Early man was used to walking ten miles a day to forage and hunt. Our body still needs that exercise. Early man did not store fat because he only ate natural food. He ate from some 30 plant varieties and killed fresh meat. Today we eat out of boxes, cans, and restaurants. Our body thinks we are starving it because it doesn’t recognize the ingredients and then encapsulates them in fat.
If you burn muscle every day and eat natural foods, you will become healthy, fit and happy. You will also get lean and buy smaller clothes if that is important to you.
See Resources for books on getting happy and fit
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Finding Happiness That’s Already Here
Posted by: | CommentsIn his very scientific book, “Stumbling On Happiness”, Harvard Psychology professor Daniel Gilbert says happiness is our purpose. Almost everything we do, he claims, is in the pursuit of happiness.
Many philosophers in the past felt we were not entitled to happiness until we had achieved worthwhile milestones in our lives. I grew up with the belief that when I achieved or purchased or won a great prize, I would then be happy.
I have come to believe that happiness doesn’t have to be earned nor is it for the few. It is available and meant for everyone from the day we are born. In fact, we are born happy. What happens?
Too many judgments about who we should be and what we should achieve make us guilty about saying too early that “I am happy”. Shawn Achor in his book “The Happiness Advantage, The Seven Principals of Positive Psychology that Fuel Success and Performance at Work” (in Resource section) makes a great case that we should be happy first and we will then be more accomplished. In fact, he shows that people who are happy generally achieve more.
So, lets not wait for some event to make us happy. Let’s start appreciating the fact that we are here, the positives in our lives, and the enjoyment of our passions. In an E Book that I am finishing I discuss how we can start creating the positive experiences in our daily lives to give us a new perspective on the pleasure of being here.Or it could be as simple as “be happy now” as a slight revise on Baba Ramdas’s 1960′s book “Be Here Now”. He explored how our “monkey chatter brains” could not focus on making this moment or this day the most important in our lives. After all, tomorrow, today will be gone.
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Find lots of books on Happiness in Resources
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Why Surfers Become Very Cooperative
Posted by: | CommentsThere are three or four scenarios when surfers have to yield for the safety of others. When paddling for a wave, the person on the inside closest to the peak of the wave has the right of way. This is a safety system to keep people on the outside from getting run over by the inside surfer driving the pocket.
When a surfer has finished his ride and is in the water, the surfer coming down the wave towards him has the right of way but usually drops off the wave or makes an extreme effort to keep from getting too close. The surfer waiting in the water is vulnerable.
Surfers paddling out to catch another wave and surfers about to catch a wave are often in the same path. The surfer about to catch the wave will usually drop off if he doesn’t see a clear path to avoid the surfer paddling out.
This is a lot of sacrificing in a session of surfing and amounts to a lot of waves that could be ridden but are not. This is getting along in the line up. Surfing is a culture among many individuals who may not know each other but respect the others’ need for safety. Everyone wants to come out of the water stoked and not with fin marks across their back.
Why are not people more cooperative in their daily lives out of the water. There is frequently a lack of respect for others’ safety and others’ need to also enjoy their day; take our experiences driving for instance. Why aren’t people generally just more courteous, polite, and generous.
We all want to be stoked at the end of our day and we are all a culture of sorts sharing the same space.
Why Surf Every Day?
Posted by: | CommentsIf you have a passion, why not engage daily?
The advantages are you continue to gain competence.
The hold backs: Surfing is not easy and progress is slow. On the way to progress are tiring work outs, small injuries, rough water, cold conditions, and often frustration from less than great days.
The positives: Connection with nature, great work outs, very fun, eventual progress, feeling of accomplishment, great breakthroughs, and gained confidence that dedication creates results.
“Flow” as defined by the authority Daniel Goleman in “Emotional Intelligence” is the engaging in activities in which you have a practiced competence until the sessions allow you to immerse in the pleasure barring all distractions and thoughts of judgement or reward. This is also “being in the zone”.
Surfing allows this period of time everyday when the troubles of the world are a distant glimmer. I also can get this immersion in writing, cooking, reading, socializing, or sunning on the beach. It can get so your life almost flows. Why not put as many of these activities as you can in each day?
Surrendering and Fighting Hard
Posted by: | CommentsThere is a certain pleasure in surrendering to more powerful forces. It is acknowledgement that we are not always in control of our circumstances.
When I surf and get taken down by a big wave, there is no alternative but to relax until the tumult lets me go. There is a certain pleasure in recognizing how powerful mother nature is and yet we can exist side by side.
As long as I don’t try to surf 30 foot waves, she’ll let me live. At smaller size waves she’ll let me ride her energy and have a great time doing it. I can even have some self realization plying my talents with her power and grace.
Life can be like that. There are certain forces and circumstances we cannot control. We have to surrender to a certain extent to all those forces and events out of our control. Chaos Theory holds that small events can create unexpected and unpredictable results.
We have all experienced acts that lead to something we never expected; sometimes good, sometimes bad. Other people may trigger events we never expected that greatly impact our lives. When my older daughter fell off a balcony on her vacation many years ago and sustained head injuries, it set off a chain of events that still impact our lives.
Your career can get sidelined or catapulted by unexpected events and circumstances. One of the pleasures I have in walking up to strangers in friendly environments is the great unexpected results I so often experience.
I have a peace from knowing I cannot control everything and most of the people around me. What I try to do is keep my own house in order and always give to my surroundings.
I find that I don’t have many unexpected tragedies and my environment is usually friendly, trusting, and rewarding. I appreciate my environment, my opportunity to contribute, acknowledge that others are entitled to their lives, and try to make progress in my own.
I can surrender and work hard at the same time. Frustration often results when we are trying for impossible outcomes. Sometimes the impossible takes a little time.
I like to say that if you don’t quit, you never fail.
It is good to bend but not break. If we don’t hit our goal with our current strategy, we have to create a new strategy. The willingness to apply ourselves, hold faith that we will not give up, and understand that any boulder can be split with a hammer and chisel if you have enough time.
Flow with the river and don’t row against it. In the ocean we develop a feeling of how waves are moving and what types of surf board maneuvers they will allow. Experienced surfers are like porpoises. We can all learn to move with our circumstances in a positive manner.
