Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday – Meditation Benefits

Tags

Benefits, Focus, Less Anxiety, Less Chronic Pain, Lower Blood Pressure, Meditation, Relaxation, spirituality

Mayo Mindfulness: Meditation is good medicine

The above link will take you to a terrific article about the benefits of meditation. I highly recommend taking a quick look if you have any doubts about this practice. Just 10 minutes a day can have a tremendous impact on your memory, your sleep, and your concentration. It can reduce your blood pressure, improve your mood, and sometimes, reduce chronic pain (Sparks, 2019).

There are quite a few apps that can help you with meditation, like Calm and Headspace. You can take courses on Mindfulness and meditation on Coursera. You can also find many guided meditations on YouTube. So what’s holding you back?

Meditation is a good workout for your brain, just like a good workout in the gym. It’s something you can do first thing in the morning or late at night. You can do it during a lunch break.

Personally, I would recommend using an app. Yeah, it’ll cost you a few bucks, but there is a lot of competition and the apps offer a great deal of content for the price. Content includes various meditations, meditation programs for reducing stress, productivity, or even self-care. Most of them will also have meditations specific to improving sleep. Calm’s sleep stories are awesome!

Anyone can meditate. It is just closing your eyes and concentrating on your breath and only your breath (It’s harder than you think). One of the shocking things I discovered is how crazy the mind really is. It is so hard to focus on the breath initially, but it will get easier over time.

If you haven’t meditated before, try the apps or YouTube. It’ll be worth your while. Articles like I provided above and cited below, provided by the Mayo Clinic, are beyond credible. Give it a whirl, you won’t be disappointed.

That’s all I got today, folks. I wish you great success with your new meditation practice.

Until next time…

Dave

Reference

Sparks, D. (2019). Mayo Mindfulness: Meditation is good medicine. Retrieved from: https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/discussion/mayo-mindfulness-meditation-is-good-medicine/?cauid=100503&geo=national&linkId=71697218&mc_id=us&placementsite=enterprise

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Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday – You Don’t Need Motivation to do What You Love

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Commitment, Dedication, Exercising, Focus, Learning, Meditating, motivation, passion, Reading, Writing

Image by rawpixel from Pixabay

Happy Monday!

What do you have planned this week? I had a great conversation with my wife yesterday. She just placed 2nd and 5th in two different bodybuilding categories at a competition in Las Vegas. I asked her what she did to get into the shape she got into for the competition. Here’s a bit.

Two workout sessions each day in the final 8 weeks. She does 1 hour of cardio (treadmill) followed by 45 minutes in the Sauna. She eats only chicken, rice, oatmeal (dry), protein shake, and egg whites. In the last 4 days, prior to the competition, she ate only chicken with ¼ cup of rice in the evening. Her weight training sessions are an hour to an hour and a half after a long day of work (she’s a special education teacher). She eats about 1.5 lbs of chicken each day. The only thing she can drink is water. No coffee, no tea, no soda, no protein shakes, nothing.

Sounds tough right? Not if you are driven, dedicated, and motivated and love what you are doing. My wife loves exercise and lifting and competing. To her this is not that big of a deal. She inspires me.

The picture above is in Las Vegas this last Saturday. So proud of my wife!!!

So what do you want to do, but can’t seem to get yourself to do? Take a measure of your motivation. Do you really want to do this? Is there something else you would rather do? Find something that really motivates you. Maybe your drives lead you to writing a book, starting a business, learning a new language, traveling, or something else. Find that thing. Find the thing you can dedicate your time to without breaking yourself against your own willpower.

We all need to exercise and eat right. These are a given, but we don’t need to put ourselves into a situation like my wife does. She does it because she loves it. Find that thing that you need to put a little effort into, but is really effortless. We all have that one or two things that we are excited about.

Here are the things I enjoy every day. I love exercising, reading, writing, meditating, and learning. I also love video games, movies, and music. I exercise every day. I read every day. I write every day. I meditate every day (twice), and I love learning (I’m learning computer programming via Codecademy). Initially, I had to figure out how to get all these things into my day. Once I figured out how to get all of these things into my day, I moved to tracking them by putting them on a to-do list that repeats indefinitely. I used Google tasks for this process. Google tasks is available in your Gmail account, can be displayed to the right of Google calendar, and is an app you can download to your phone. Since most of my work is on my computer, I keep track of what I’ve done and what I haven’t done on my computer using the task list in Google Calendar.

Start small, especially if you are trying something new. When I built my reading habit, it was literally reading just a few pages each day. Now I’m up to a chapter a day. I read a few pages in my Bible and then I read a chapter.

What about scheduling you ask? Well, that depends on your life. I’m retired so my schedule is a little more dynamic. I tend to just tackle what I need to in no specific order. My exercise routine used to be first thing in the morning, but that’s tough when either my Mom or I have to be home to take care of my Dad. He has “episodes” where he literally passes out and someone must be here every day with him to make sure we are around to revive him if this happens. So, I have to work around my Mom’s errands and such so one of us can be with Dad. No problem. I can exercise with my exercise bands, I can use one of my exercise apps. The rest is all at my computer, so not a big deal.

You may be working, so you’ll have to look at what you want to do daily and physically schedule this stuff in on your calendar at specific times. Find out what you are truly passionate about and get to work.

Here’s my plan for the upcoming week:

• Read 1 chapter daily
• Write one section in my book daily
• Read my Bible daily
• Exercise – Cardio and Weights, Bands, or Calisthenics daily
• Meditate 2x daily
• Complete one lesson on Codecademy daily

I hope each of you has a great week!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Workout Routine – Cardio

Tags

Cardio, Exercise, Focus, habits, healthy living, motivation, workout

20 minutes cardio – broke a good sweat today.

See you at the finish line!!

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Wisdom Wednesday – Moving Mountains

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change, Consistency, Focus, habits, mini-habits, Moving Mountains, Resistance

Image by Frank Winkler from Pixabay 

“The man who moves a mountain begins carrying away small stones.” – Confucius

This is a great quote for anyone that is trying to do big things in their life and tries to do too much or is trying to do too many things at once. My wife and I had a quick chat yesterday, and she is focused on two things and nothing else. The first is a bodybuilding competition she’s headed to in 6 days; the second is a test she has to take for a teaching credential. The rest of her day is eating, maintenance, errands, and sleep. She knows that focus and consistency are important when accomplishing one’s goals. She also knows that you can’t do everything. You have to decide and execute.

Learning how to make a choice and sticking with something has always been a challenge for me. I like variety in my day. I like the spontaneity of the moment. Unfortunately, you can’t get anything meaningful done that way. So I began a search for information on how to get more focused, decisive, and consistent. During my search, I discovered a book called Mini Habits by Steven Guise. He suggests doing something very small each day will build a habit over time. The key is something small, but not too small. For example, Steven’s first Mini habit was doing 1 pushup every day.

I have used mini habits for a good 5 or 6 years now and it works. The trick is not to overwhelm yourself or expect yourself to do more than necessary. You really want to stick with small things until they become habitual. Each of us is unique. The time it takes for you to form a habit may be much shorter than it is for me or someone else. The key is to keep it small, so your mind doesn’t catch on that you are making a change. The mind gets overwhelmed very quickly, when taking on new things. If you try to start too many mini habits at once or your mini habit is too much (like I will write 1000 words today), the mini habit will not take hold.

I have had to learn this lesson more than once. Trust me. The mini habits work because they avoid overwhelming your brain, which will resist change if you hit it with too much. Start small. The key to the mini habit system is consistency. Reading for 10 minutes each day may not seem like a lot, but over a year that is 3650 minutes of reading. It may not seem like a lot, but if you are not reading at all right now, trust me, this is a lot of reading (60 hours).

You can apply mini habits for anything. You can use it for exercise like Steven did, you can use it for reading, writing, learning a language, learning to code, anything. You just have to use a little creativity, carve out a few minutes of your day to do the mini habit, and then track it. I use a repeating to-do list for mine using Google Tasks, but whatever you use, even a wall calendar and a marker will do. Try this out if you are having a hard time starting something you’d like to start working on. Resistance is psychological. It is your brain telling you this is too much. Some folks have very resistant brains, while others do not. It is very individual. Experiment until you find your own sweet spot.

I hope each of you is having a terrific Wednesday!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday – Making Time and Focusing on What Matters

Tags

Focus, Making Changes, Making Choices, Making time, motivation, New Rituals, Retirement

Photo Credit: Image by Jonas Svidras from Pixabay 

“Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort.” – Paul J. Meyer
Read more at: Brainyquote.com

What’s going on this week? I’m working on my book, going through a web development course, hitting the gym hard using Kris Gethin’s 4-week Muscle Building Trainer, and following the rest of my rituals.

Recently I changed my daily rituals. I always add and add and add to my daily routine, until it becomes untenable. This resulted in an audit of my daily to-dos and I came up with a neat idea–minimize my daily to-dos to a certain number and not add anything else. This has helped greatly.

My focus is important. I always want to read, write, contemplate, and exercise daily. These are my priorities. My core focus is on writing my books and spending some time learning something new each day. I finished a course on Aristotle’s Ethics yesterday offered by Hillsdale College. Now I am moving through an NLP course. It is long. It is about 179 online sessions, but really fascinating.

What is my motivation? It’s simple. I just want to be productive in retirement and take advantage of the time I have now to do the things I didn’t want to put time into when I was working full time. This is the key. You have to make time for things, even in retirement. Retirement doesn’t change what you are motivated to do. You still have to discipline yourself to go to the gym, set aside time to contemplate the spiritual things, read books, learn, and write. Trust me, there is no difference between what you do now and what you want to do. Everything you commit to doing, requires you to NOT do something else.

My Mom got her second cataract surgery today. Everything is ok. She has to go back to the doctor tomorrow to check the eye after it’s had some time to calm down, but there were no issues with the surgery. While I was there in the office, they had Women’s World Cup soccer on the television. Germany trounced the Rwandan team 4 – 0.

That’s it for today, folks! I hope you have a terrific Monday!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday – Zazen

Tags

Being Present, Contemplation, Focus, Meditation, Mindfulness, Prayer, Shunryu Suzuki, Sitting, Zazen

“When you bow, you should just bow; when you sit, you should just sit; when you eat, you should just eat.” – Shunryu Suzuki

This quote relates to being present. Being present means you think about what you do and focus on that and that only. Before I began to attempt this, I had no idea how many details I was missing. Our minds have a way of doing this to us all of the time. It automates, because that is the most efficient way for the brain to operate. This automaticity, however, is also the brain’s weakness.

Being present means we do one thing, focusing all of our attention on that one thing. It is hard to explain the beauty of living this way. Recently, I began tracking my activities for the day. I start a timer and focus on one task. This focus allows you to realize a ton of things you may have missed if you fail to focus like this.

Here I am working on a blog posting. I focus on the words. I focus on the pressure my fingers feel each time they depress a button on my laptop’s keyboard. I say the words to myself as I type. My mind will wander at times, but I bring it right back to the task at hand. Truly focusing on one thing at a time is not easy. The mind is so scattered. One thing I have discovered over time while I practice this new way of thinking, is how much more focused I have become by practicing every day.

This is the crux of Zen Buddhism. It is not a religion. It is a meditation practice. The Zen Buddhists call this zazen or sitting. When a Zen Buddhist meditates, he sits. He does nothing but sit and focus on the breath. Over time, the mind will settle down. You transcend the mind and its thoughts. The mind, when it is ignored long enough, will fade away, just like your body will fade. The focus that arises from sitting is so pinpointed, everything beyond what is focused on disappears.

Think about the beauty of this. If the mind and body fades away, what is left? You got it–the real you! That is what is left. This level of focus is far above what you and I would consider focus. This focus, derived from sitting (zazen), will transfer to other aspects of your life. It transfers to your work, your writing, your eating, and your bathing. The focus becomes easier to attain as well.

The focus is the primary benefit. This focus, particularly when you are concentrating on a singular task, allows one to enjoy this state throughout the day. Imagine a day like this. A day without worry about the future, dread about the past, stressing over a mistake, or worrying about how long you have been doing something. This is a state called flow. You become so focused and engrossed with a task, time falls away, everything falls away but you and the task you are working on.

Imagine how wonderful eating would be if you could enjoy the texture, the smell, the feel, the sight, and taste of what you are eating. Imagine being so focused on your meal that everything outside that meal faded away.

Meditation, contemplation, or prayer all require focus. Focus comes with practice. Here is a simple meditation you can try. Sit in a comfortable chair with your back straight. Close your eyes. Take a few deep breaths. Then let the breath return to its normal pace and depth. Concentrate on the breath coming in and going out. Initially, you’ll want to count the breath as it comes in and goes out. One–breathe in. Two–breathe out. Three–breathe in. Four–breathe out. Do this to 10 and start over. If you lose track of your counting when you daydream or get engaged with a rising thought, start over again. You’ll find that the mind will be restless and continue to give you things to think about. Don’t fret over this. Simply return to your breath and begin counting again.

This is Zazen or sitting. It has been practiced for thousands of years. Zazen can be practiced when sitting, working on a single task, eating, or even gardening. You remain focused on the moment, by experiencing everything as it occurs. Try this out. You’ll be amazed how pleasant mundane tasks become. You’ll also begin to appreciate the calm, wonder, and flow that arises when you improve your focus.

I hope you have a terrific Saturday! My sister is coming over today to celebrate her birthday and hang out with us. We are looking forward to it.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday – The HU Chant

Tags

Calm, Focus, Good Habits, HU Chant, Meditation, Relaxation, simplicity

Have you ever thought about meditation? There are many benefits to this practice, particularly the benefits of calm and focus. Another benefit is the simplicity of the act. You can close your eyes and meditate anywhere, provided you are comfortable and the place you choose is remote or away from noise.

Here are the basics:

• Sit down or lay down on a bed or couch
• Close your eyes
• Focus on your breath (breathe in and breath out)

If you would like to use another technique to keep your focus you can chant silently to yourself or out loud, depending on where you are. If you chant, use the word HU. HU is an ancient name for God and pronounced like the word “hue”. Chant this word for whatever period you have available. I recommend 10 minutes for starters.

Chanting HU can help you in times of stress or trouble. Chanting HU is not religious. You can use the HU chant if you are Jewish, Christian, Muslim, or any other religion.

Try it. Many people, the world over, use the HU chant daily. I do this in the early morning, before I head to the gym. Other people I know do the HU chant during their lunch break or right before they go to bed. Start small. 10-20 minutes is all you need.

If you try this out or have questions, comment below.

Have a great Saturday folks!

Until next time…

Dave

 

 

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday – Replacing the Negative with the Positive

Tags

Changing the Script, Focus, Gratitude, Gratitude Journal, Negative, Positive, spirituality

“If you fill your consciousness with the positive aspects of Divine Spirit, there is no vacuum where the negative may enter.”—Harold Klemp The Language of Soul

Do you have any bad habits you’d like to rid yourself of? I was thinking about this, this morning as I searched for a quote for today’s article and this one is right on spot. If you’ve ever looked into Neuro-linguistic programming, you are probably aware of some aspects of the brain that are interesting, to say the least. One of these interesting aspects is the brain’s inability to distinguish between don’t and do. If you say you don’t want to smoke anymore, your brain captures smoking. If you say you won’t get angry at stupid things anymore, your brain captures angry. It is interesting and true.

So how do you rewire your brain to break a bad habit? You fill it with a replacement. If you focus on health, exercise, or any other positive trait, you will slowly drain energy from the neural pathway that was created to automate the bad habit you are trying to get rid of. The key is to continuously fill your consciousness with positive aspects. By doing so, you will starve the automatic neural pathways that coincide with your bad habits and they will dissipate. I know. It’s harder than just filling your mind with positive things. It takes a concerted effort.

It is possible, however. If you begin to realize how your brain automates things—truly see your brain go through this process, it is easier to unravel. It is like witnessing your brain go through the steps that are necessary to do something, say something, or feel something. There is a natural progression of steps your brain goes through for everything you do in a given day. These steps are automated, so you really have to pay attention and watch what your brain does. Once you witness your brain traveling down the road of a bad habit, it will naturally fade away. This awareness is hard to capture but once you do, there is no way you will continue to do something that hurts you.

I have found that doing meditation helps me with this process. When you have developed the ability to watch your breath and ignore everything else physically, it is easy to rise above the thought stream. For those of you who have conquered the “monkey mind”, you know what this feels like. You imagine your thoughts as a steady stream. When you rise above that stream, you are no longer bothered by your thoughts—you are above them! This same process can be used to observe your unconscious mind. The unconscious part of you is where all your good and bad automated processes are located. Let me explain.

When you first learned to drive a car, you had to think about every single step of driving. It was painstaking, nerve-wracking, and exhausting. Over time, you became proficient with driving. Your brain “automated” driving. Once your driving became unconscious, driving was simple. You get in the care, put your foot on the brake, turn the key in the ignition, put your car into gear and off you go. It was seamless from beginning to the end.

You also have unconscious processes for being angry, being jealous, being frightened, being happy, and so on. The unconscious mind becomes visible once your active mind settles down. You can begin to witness different parts of your body. You can begin to witness your thoughts and how they come about. When you truly see the inner wiring of a habit and see how harmful it is, it is much easier to change the wiring, or what the late Stephen Covey calls “rewriting the script”.

To get back to the quote for today’s article, you just must observe your negative inner wiring with positive wiring. It is simply keeping your attention on the positive things in life and letting the negative things fade away. Don’t get me wrong. There will always be things that get under your skin. The key is to minimize the duration you stay in this negative state. Pout or have a tantrum, cry, scream, and then, LET IT GO.

One of the ways I remain in a positive state of mind is by keeping a gratitude journal. Each morning I write down all the things I am grateful for. I don’t hold myself to a time limit or a set number of statements. I just keep writing until I get that feeling. A feeling that everything is ok, everything is going well, and a deep satisfaction that all is well. I have enough; I have great things to look forward to, and everything is exactly as it should be.

Try this technique. Gratitude journaling is really enjoyable once you get the hang of it and spend the time to truly appreciate all you have in your life. If you need some help or some ideas about how to create a gratitude journal, simply do a Google search on gratitude journaling and you’ll find all kinds of articles on the topic.

I hope all of you have a great Saturday.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday – Finding Your Dream Job

Tags

Focus, Investigate, Love the work, motivation, passion, Paying the price, Productivity, Resistance

“Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have twenty-four-hour days.”― Zig Ziglar

One of the biggest challenges in life is to figure out what we will do with our lives. I remember contemplating this question when I was about to finish high school. Many of my friends already knew what they would do. Not me. I did not understand what I wanted to do.

Looking back, I would have told myself to choose an area of interest and try it out. As I have matured, I realized that every profession requires a certain price to pay. If you choose a particular area, investigate this area by reading about the people that exist in that field and excel. Learn about what they have to do to be on top of their fields. When you see the price, they are paying you can decide about your willingness to pay the same price. You can do this over several career paths to find the role or roles you will pay the price for.

Once I discovered my desire to be a writer and pursue my dream of learning computer programming life smoothed out. I felt a congruence in my life I had not felt before. When I wake up in the morning, I have a sense of purpose. I know what I will do and I look forward to it.

Once you realize that you’ve made a good choice, you have no resistance to learning, or the work involved in your profession. Writing and programming are a joy. Each day I write, or work on a programming project, it feels like fun rather than work. This was the final confirmation for me. When I realized that my work was really more like play, my efforts in both areas took off.

Like the above quote suggests, focus is the way to productivity and achievement. When you observe people that love what they do for a living, you sense a joy of purpose. The work they do seems effortless. They will work harder than their peers. You can see the joy they experience when they do this work.  You can also see people who are in the wrong position. You see them procrastinate, complain, and do the bare minimum to earn their paycheck. There is no love or purpose behind their work.

This is the key difference between people who are engaged in meaningful work they love and people in the wrong role. Their passion overcomes the price they pay to be in that profession. This passion provides the drive to be the best in their field because it is not work to them. They embrace the training and outside learning the job requires. They work longer and harder. Their work is of a higher quality.

If you are in a position you consider work, maybe it’s time to look at other roles. Research. Investigate these fields. Find out what the top people in these fields do and the price they pay to be the best. If you believe you can pay the same price, try it out. You will never know until you do. The average worker spends roughly 75% of their time at work. Why not do something you love?

This week, I’ll continue my regimen of working on my book, working through my current programming project, reading the five books I’ve selected, and hitting my daily exercise routine. I’ll continue to journal and meditate. I’m making good progress across all areas. I hope each of you has a terrific day!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday

Tags

Action Plans, Focus, moving forward, Opportunities, Overwhelm, Procrastination, Resistance

Divine Spirit opens new opportunities, but we must take them. We must make our own choices with the best information at hand.—Harold Klemp The Language of Soul

Opportunities present themselves to us constantly. What do we do with them? Do we grab the opportunity, investigate it, and make a choice to use or not use it or do we let it pass by because we are too busy to take the time and test its value? I think many people do the latter. Why? Perhaps we are exceptionally busy being banged and bumped around by life.

Unlike the person above, another person may grab every opportunity that comes their way and scatter their attention and efforts to the wind. They run down this rabbit hole and then another, accomplishing nothing. This too can be problematic and aid a person’s procrastination. Both routes can lead to missed opportunities and add to a person’s level of confusion.

Again, I ask why? Why would one person be oblivious to opportunity and another be hyper-actively pursuing all these new ideas? Fear. Person #1 is fearful and avoids everything. They are like the cartoon Ostrich that buries its head in the ground. Person #2 is fearful and pursues everything around them, enabling procrastination. They are like a puppy in a brand-new home, running this way and that, smelling and investigating everything that comes their way. If you watch people in these states, you soon see how ineffective it is to follow either path. What’s the solution?

The solution to these problems is focus. Focused people stay on track. They move forward with their goals. They concentrate their efforts on what they must do today to move them one step closer to their goals and avoid getting side-tracked by that next idea that pops up in their head. They track these ideas, however. They write their ideas down. They capture these ideas and process them later.

An idea comes, you capture it, and get back to your work. This way you are capturing all the ideas that come your way and avoiding the scatterbrain effects of moving on everything you receive right now. This is the most efficient way of maintaining a steady flow of ideas and remaining focused on the task at hand.

If you find yourself in either of these states (ignoring your ideas or chasing every idea that comes) take a moment and ask yourself some questions:

Am I working on my goals or am I doing busy work?

Am I missing opportunities or capturing them?

If you are doing too much busy work and avoiding the pursuit of your goals, take time to think about why you are resisting action. Is the next task too big? Are you lacking information? Are you lacking the skill to accomplish the next step in your plan? When we resist something, it is likely because of one of these reasons. Brainstorm. Think about all the things you could do right now to move yourself forward. If you are lacking information or skills, look for some online tutorials, classes, or YouTube videos that could give you some ideas. Once you find the solution, add that to your goal’s action plan, schedule it, and get to work. If the next task on your action plan is too big, break it down into more action steps and continue.

I hope this helps some of you. I find myself in this place from time-to-time. When I recognize that I’m stuck or resisting an action step in my plan, I look at the step and ask the above questions.

Until next time…

Dave