Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Monday, 26 March 2018
Tuesday, 20 March 2018
Mindful Meditation Guide chapters 2 and 3
Mindful Meditation guide chapter 2
Mindful Meditation guide chapter 3
Friday, 16 March 2018
Meditation intro and chapter 1
Over the next few weeks I will be posting a series of videos taking you through the process of meditation. I hope you find them useful. Please send me feedback on how you're getting on.
Friday, 2 March 2018
How to Use ‘Fear Setting’ to Become Fearless
You have far more control over your fear and your stress than you probably realize. A lot of us think that we are at the mercy of our brains and don’t realize that in fact we control the emotional response we want to give.
When you’re stressed, it’s because you’re focussing on all the things that could go wrong. This is essentially you telling your body ‘I need to be stressed’. And when you do that, you trigger a sudden and powerful hormonal response. And if you don’t believe this is how it works then just consider the power of the placebo – this lets us fool ourselves into the most efficient hormonal response simply through belief.
You can do the same thing by removing the stress surrounding something and by telling yourself ‘I don’t need to be stressed’. So how do you do that? One option is by using Tim Ferriss’ ‘Fear Setting’ technique. Read on to find out how that works:
What is Fear Setting?
Fear setting is so named because it is based on goal setting. The idea in goal setting is to write down all your goals and how you’re going to achieve them. By writing them down, you make them concrete and you actually work out how to accomplish them.
Fear setting is similar and as counter-intuitive as it might sound, making your fears concrete can be very useful.
Because very often, we think about something we’re afraid of and we don’t really realize why it scares us. But if you use fear setting you can find the exact cause for the fear or the stress and you can look at it in a more realistic and scientific manner. In fear setting, you do this by writing down a) how likely each eventuality is to actually happen and b) what you would do if it were to happen. In doing that, you can rob it of its power over you.
And once you do this, very often you find that there really is nothing to be afraid of. Without wanting to be a cliché… there really is nothing to fear except fear itself.
How to Remove Your Fear of a New Job
Let’s take starting a new job as an example. This is something you maybe want to do but you might be frozen by fear or by anxiety.
So ask yourself: what are you really afraid of?
Perhaps:
- Losing your old job and not having any work to come back to
- Upsetting your partner and being divorced
- Ending up on the streets with no money and no prospects
But now be honest about how likely these are to happen – most of them are pretty extreme. What’s more is that you can remove the likelihood of each one happening in a number of ways. For example, if you don’t leave your current job until you’ve been accepted somewhere else, then there’s no chance of being jobless. Likewise, if you did lose your job you could always take up unskilled work in the meantime. Or stay with your parents.
As you can see, there’s very little to be afraid of!
When you’re stressed, it’s because you’re focussing on all the things that could go wrong. This is essentially you telling your body ‘I need to be stressed’. And when you do that, you trigger a sudden and powerful hormonal response. And if you don’t believe this is how it works then just consider the power of the placebo – this lets us fool ourselves into the most efficient hormonal response simply through belief.
You can do the same thing by removing the stress surrounding something and by telling yourself ‘I don’t need to be stressed’. So how do you do that? One option is by using Tim Ferriss’ ‘Fear Setting’ technique. Read on to find out how that works:
What is Fear Setting?
Fear setting is so named because it is based on goal setting. The idea in goal setting is to write down all your goals and how you’re going to achieve them. By writing them down, you make them concrete and you actually work out how to accomplish them.
Fear setting is similar and as counter-intuitive as it might sound, making your fears concrete can be very useful.
Because very often, we think about something we’re afraid of and we don’t really realize why it scares us. But if you use fear setting you can find the exact cause for the fear or the stress and you can look at it in a more realistic and scientific manner. In fear setting, you do this by writing down a) how likely each eventuality is to actually happen and b) what you would do if it were to happen. In doing that, you can rob it of its power over you.
And once you do this, very often you find that there really is nothing to be afraid of. Without wanting to be a cliché… there really is nothing to fear except fear itself.
How to Remove Your Fear of a New Job
Let’s take starting a new job as an example. This is something you maybe want to do but you might be frozen by fear or by anxiety.
So ask yourself: what are you really afraid of?
Perhaps:
- Losing your old job and not having any work to come back to
- Upsetting your partner and being divorced
- Ending up on the streets with no money and no prospects
But now be honest about how likely these are to happen – most of them are pretty extreme. What’s more is that you can remove the likelihood of each one happening in a number of ways. For example, if you don’t leave your current job until you’ve been accepted somewhere else, then there’s no chance of being jobless. Likewise, if you did lose your job you could always take up unskilled work in the meantime. Or stay with your parents.
As you can see, there’s very little to be afraid of!
Wednesday, 28 February 2018
Why Stress is Really Bad for You
You’ve probably been told before that stress is really bad for you. It’s something that is constantly rammed down our throats and we’re constantly being reminded how stress can cause heart problems, cause weight gain and generally cause all manner of problems.
This is not news then. But what we don’t get told so often is precisely why stress is so bad for us or what it actually does to negatively impact on our health. Read on then and we’ll look at the reasons why stress is actually such a problem and what you can do to prevent it – or at least to limit the negative consequences.
Stress and Your Physiology
The first thing to note is that stress has a profound and direct effect on your physiology. That is to say that it increases your heart rate, it increases muscle tension and it causes your blood to actually thicken. All of this is intended to make us more efficient at combat and better able to run away in order to escape danger. This is all controlled by the body releasing specific hormones – and those include dopamine, adrenaline, cortisol and glutamate among others. These are our ‘stress hormones’ (though some of them are more accurately described as neurotransmitters).
As the heart rate increases and the blood vessels dilate, more blood is sent specifically to the muscles and to the brain with the intention of enhancing focus and physical performance.
This is great news again for fighting and for getting away from danger. But what it also means is that blood is being directed away from your other systems – away from your immune system for example and away from your digestion. When you’re being chased by a lion, or falling off a mountain, those things just don’t really matter quite so much!
The Long Term Problem
The problem then comes when this is allowed to continue over a longer period of time. In the wild, chronic stress didn’t really exist: we wouldn’t have to worry about things like debt or having a mean boss!
And when stress doesn’t go away, that means that your immune system and your digestion never get the attention they need. This is why you can end up getting heartburn or becoming ill when you’re constantly stressed.
Meanwhile, your body is consistently releasing adrenaline and your heart rate is consistently beating hard. Eventually this can become a problem as well as you become more and more likely to suffer a heart attack. And remember, your blood pressure has also gone up – making you significantly more likely to experience very high blood pressure.
Likewise, this prolonged state of arousal can lead to a number of other issues. For instance, the heart working this hard for this long can potentially put a lot of strain on you and maybe even lead to a heart attack. Likewise, the constant secretion of adrenaline can eventually lead to ‘adrenal fatigue’. At this point, the body has exhausted its supply of adrenaline, leaving you exhausted and potentially even depressed.
This is not news then. But what we don’t get told so often is precisely why stress is so bad for us or what it actually does to negatively impact on our health. Read on then and we’ll look at the reasons why stress is actually such a problem and what you can do to prevent it – or at least to limit the negative consequences.
Stress and Your Physiology
The first thing to note is that stress has a profound and direct effect on your physiology. That is to say that it increases your heart rate, it increases muscle tension and it causes your blood to actually thicken. All of this is intended to make us more efficient at combat and better able to run away in order to escape danger. This is all controlled by the body releasing specific hormones – and those include dopamine, adrenaline, cortisol and glutamate among others. These are our ‘stress hormones’ (though some of them are more accurately described as neurotransmitters).
As the heart rate increases and the blood vessels dilate, more blood is sent specifically to the muscles and to the brain with the intention of enhancing focus and physical performance.
This is great news again for fighting and for getting away from danger. But what it also means is that blood is being directed away from your other systems – away from your immune system for example and away from your digestion. When you’re being chased by a lion, or falling off a mountain, those things just don’t really matter quite so much!
The Long Term Problem
The problem then comes when this is allowed to continue over a longer period of time. In the wild, chronic stress didn’t really exist: we wouldn’t have to worry about things like debt or having a mean boss!
And when stress doesn’t go away, that means that your immune system and your digestion never get the attention they need. This is why you can end up getting heartburn or becoming ill when you’re constantly stressed.
Meanwhile, your body is consistently releasing adrenaline and your heart rate is consistently beating hard. Eventually this can become a problem as well as you become more and more likely to suffer a heart attack. And remember, your blood pressure has also gone up – making you significantly more likely to experience very high blood pressure.
Likewise, this prolonged state of arousal can lead to a number of other issues. For instance, the heart working this hard for this long can potentially put a lot of strain on you and maybe even lead to a heart attack. Likewise, the constant secretion of adrenaline can eventually lead to ‘adrenal fatigue’. At this point, the body has exhausted its supply of adrenaline, leaving you exhausted and potentially even depressed.
Thursday, 22 February 2018
How to Get Started With Meditation
Meditation has a huge number of incredible benefits – it decreases stress, it improves the memory, it aids mental calmness and much more.
The only problem is that meditation is also very difficult to get started with – or at least that’s the perception. Meditation often seems almost ‘mystical’ and can come with religious connotations. It involves a big commitment of time and a lot of discipline. And many people will work hard at it and still not see any results.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. If you’re keen to give meditation a go and to see the results for yourself, here are some ways to get started…
The Right Approach
The first tip is simply to approach meditation in the right way and to have the right expectations. If you’re expecting to become enlightened overnight, then you’ll be disappointed. Likewise, you shouldn’t expect that something is going to ‘happen’.
Instead, try to view meditation – to begin with at least – as a tool for helping you relax and just feel a little more at ease. The idea here is to let your thoughts pass by without engaging with them and to thereby get a ‘break’ from stress and anxiety and busy thoughts. Eventually, this can become a very relaxing place to ‘escape’ to whenever you need to take five.
And if you practice it regularly, the benefits will start to come.
With this in mind, try not to be too harsh on yourself. You’re allowed to scratch your face and you’re allowed to occasionally have distracting thoughts – just keep recentering and keep bringing yourself back.
The Right Strategy
To do this then, try just sitting down somewhere quiet and for ten minutes let your mind relax. Don’t engage with thoughts and instead just be aware of your body in space – and of any sounds you might notice in the background. Don’t ‘do’ anything, just ‘be’.
If you find this hard, then you can use something external to focus the mind. That might mean counting your breaths, or it might mean watching a candle flame. Another method is to use ‘worry beads’ which you can roll between a finger and thumb absent mindedly.
Tools
Another great tool to help you get the hang of meditation faster is the Headspace app. This app provides simple meditation sessions that you can digest in small chunks and will talk you through mindfulness. Another option is to use something like Mindwave. Mindwave is an EEG machine that can read your brain waves and thereby assess the level of activity in your mind. This is a very useful tool for gamifying the process of meditation – but it’s not cheap so keep that in mind.
In fact, you can even try using virtual reality in order to combat stress and that would allow you to visit a ‘happy place’ in a much more tangible way!
The only problem is that meditation is also very difficult to get started with – or at least that’s the perception. Meditation often seems almost ‘mystical’ and can come with religious connotations. It involves a big commitment of time and a lot of discipline. And many people will work hard at it and still not see any results.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. If you’re keen to give meditation a go and to see the results for yourself, here are some ways to get started…
The Right Approach
The first tip is simply to approach meditation in the right way and to have the right expectations. If you’re expecting to become enlightened overnight, then you’ll be disappointed. Likewise, you shouldn’t expect that something is going to ‘happen’.
Instead, try to view meditation – to begin with at least – as a tool for helping you relax and just feel a little more at ease. The idea here is to let your thoughts pass by without engaging with them and to thereby get a ‘break’ from stress and anxiety and busy thoughts. Eventually, this can become a very relaxing place to ‘escape’ to whenever you need to take five.
And if you practice it regularly, the benefits will start to come.
With this in mind, try not to be too harsh on yourself. You’re allowed to scratch your face and you’re allowed to occasionally have distracting thoughts – just keep recentering and keep bringing yourself back.
 |
| Find somewhere quiet for 10 minutes |
The Right Strategy
To do this then, try just sitting down somewhere quiet and for ten minutes let your mind relax. Don’t engage with thoughts and instead just be aware of your body in space – and of any sounds you might notice in the background. Don’t ‘do’ anything, just ‘be’.
If you find this hard, then you can use something external to focus the mind. That might mean counting your breaths, or it might mean watching a candle flame. Another method is to use ‘worry beads’ which you can roll between a finger and thumb absent mindedly.
Tools
Another great tool to help you get the hang of meditation faster is the Headspace app. This app provides simple meditation sessions that you can digest in small chunks and will talk you through mindfulness. Another option is to use something like Mindwave. Mindwave is an EEG machine that can read your brain waves and thereby assess the level of activity in your mind. This is a very useful tool for gamifying the process of meditation – but it’s not cheap so keep that in mind.
In fact, you can even try using virtual reality in order to combat stress and that would allow you to visit a ‘happy place’ in a much more tangible way!
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