Author: newstasis_waavrk

The Opportunity Cost Of Not Trying To Be Healthy

Opportunity cost is defined as the cost of an alternative that must be forgone in order to pursue a certain action. For example, the opportunity cost of spending all of your money on a nice car having no money for food, a house, entertainment, gas for the car, etc…. It’s a fairly straight forward concept and can be used in many areas to describe the costs of making a particular decision.

Ill-health is usually measured in relation to disease such that the opportunity cost of getting sick is measured as lost years of life. We cannot disagree with this measurement as something like a terminal diagnosis of cancer does shorten ones life expectancy but it doesn’t capture the full opportunity cost of ill-health which is that of lost quality of life.

When considering the opportunity cost of obesity, we need to consider a multitude of factors. Obese people tend to spend more money on food, fuel, and clothing, so there is a financial cost. They also tend to have fewer options when it comes to clothing and fashion, so there is a style and creative expression cost. Many obese people report a sense of alienation, ostracization and general anxiety when in public, so there is a psychological cost.

The psychological cost can have a wide scope – some people report a loss of confidence that causes them to limit their risk exposure so they don’t take the chances that may lead them towards a more complete experience of life. They may limit their dating options, job opportunities, vacation experiences and their general sense of being in control of their own life. Compounding these are the obese behaviors that one may display such as emotional eating, eating disorders and escapist actions such as substance abuse, abusive relationships and compulsiveness in other areas.

One does not have to be obese to experience the negative opportunity cost. Many people experience a boost in confidence when they lower their body fat, increase their level of lean muscle mass or increase their strength. This confidence can be leveraged in many ways to expose the individual to a variety of new stimuli or situations that improve the quality of life – participation in sports, seeking out different companionship partners, visiting new places, etc…

When viewed in this light, the opportunity cost of not being as healthy and fit as possible is very expensive. At best it comes down to living a life that isn’t of as high a quality as it could be and at worst it comes down to living a life of isolation and fear. When positioned against the amount of nutrition and exercise effort needed to improve ones health to a confidence inspiring level it doesn’t make much sense to avoid the putting in the work.

When making the decision about enrolling yourself in a life transformation program, consider both the cost of NOT doing it and benefit OF doing it.

Learning To Play Your Brain

Just wanted to follow-up on my comment last night about not doing the home work.

Regard the LandMark skills as learning to play a musical instrument. It’s going to take 10000 hours of practice before you are an expert.

You’ll get good after a 1000.

You can become proficient after 200 or 300.

You can show some improvement after 75.

In the company of others, you will show some signs of progress after 20.

There is a reason why we’re always invited to the open house nights, the advanced nights, the such and such nights and that is because they offer us practice. They provide us hours that move us towards the 10000. The reason why we’re encouraged to enroll others is because they can help us work towards the 10000.

My stern comment about wasting your life if you aren’t doing the homework is just my compassionate way of saying speed things up people. I want the same boost in productivity in your life that I have had in mine so the world gets better. If you need me to tell you to do your home work and to say you’re wasting your potential by not doing it, it’s because no one else is being as forceful because they don’t care as much. They’ll let you be average because your being average makes their average seem better.

In a few months our ride together is going to end. You’ll read about me, some of you may even pay to see me talk, buy one or more of my books and tell people that one Monday night, a number of years ago, you heard me sounding off about wasting your life and it actually pissed you off enough to get you moving.

Or I could just be some as$hole from your past.

You have 10000 hours to work towards and you aren’t going to get there by doing one a week.

It’s your future, you can learn to play your brain like the perfectly developed instrument it is or you can let it play your body for a fool. It’s up to you.

What are you going to choose?

Context, Language and Re-framing Our Past

“Oh yeah?!?!? Well here I am batting a 1000 at failed relationships.” It was a throw-away comment which was supposed to be equal parts humorous and something else that I can’t remember anymore.

“Can I give you some coaching?” was her reply, to which I quickly said “sure”. Things had been going, blendery – as if the evening was being mixed on high and going all directions a once. The truth was, I knew that whatever was about to come-out of her mouth was going to change the course of my life. This was her first formal request to alter the path of history, the rest had been uninvited and simply just part of what two people do during a first date.

“Consider that you have had a series of successful relationships that taught you a lot and moved you towards now.”

My initial thought was to recoil and laugh, and point out the way me and various whats-her-names don’t see eye to eye anymore, but a few moments abated this into a dumb look on my face that got her to continue. “It’s about language Patrick, some of your language is powerful, it lifts and moves people, it’s exciting to hear because it shapes the future. Those words about failed relationships don’t belong with the rest of the things you say. Your words create feelings and those words are a dead stop in terms of possibilities.”

I wish I could have seen my face and body language at that moment because the entire evening had been a marvelous dialectic joust; to which I added nothing by replying “okay?”

“You can’t change your past, history has been written, but you can change the context very simply by selecting the words that empower and alter the narrative tone.”

Heather took the LandMark forum a month before I did, so we were already connected – this is one of the worlds new truths, there are those who took the forum and there is everyone else; there’s a third group containing those accepting enough of life to see it for the stories we tell but without a proper framework to place our history upon, it’s really difficult to bridge the gap between knowing your past is a story to believing it happened EXACTLY as we tell ourselves it did.

“Okay” was my next attempt to say something intelligible, then “so I’ll rephrase. I have had a series of amazing relationships with wonderful girls all of which taught me something that I needed to move me forward in my life.”

“Wow, that sounds enlightened, how does it make you feel?”

“Peaceful and calm, and strangely lighter.” This was true. It was a little over a month from completing the LandMark forum and while I was still riding the perspective bliss, reconnecting with my ex’s hadn’t re-framed the relationships completely. I wasn’t angry or anything, I had still been regarding them as experiences I should have ended sooner. But at this moment in time I was feeling settled. It didn’t matter which girl I looked back on, they had been amazing, our time had been well spend and I had learned a great deal from them and our time together.

What does this all mean?

Language is important, the stories we tell are impactful, what happened isn’t very important because it is subject to change. Yet for a very long time I had remained fixated on my memory of the events and believed that the stories I told about them were fairly accurate. Maybe they were I suppose, but the words I was using to tell the stories didn’t really do much to add a positive context to them. Sure, I became a compassionate person because I felt that being nice was the only way to make sure I fit in – my story of ridicule during my first day of class in Canada demonstrates this very well. But the context has changed. Becoming compassionate was a trait I developed to overcome the feeling that I didn’t belong, when I was 9 years old!

Now that I’m much older I get it. I’m able to use language to re-frame the past – to transport new resources back to that day – to give the younger me exactly what he needed to manage the situation more effectively. When Heather coached me to alter the story I was telling about sex, love and romance, she created a cascading tidal wave in my consciousness which flooded my unconscious mind.

EVERYTHING works out. Those things that occur that didn’t yield the result I was anticipating taught me something, those people who graced my life were my teachers / mentors for some lesson/s, life moves us forward and experiences shapes us, creating the opportunity for NOW. When we choose to use the language of empowerment, we are choosing to frame or re-frame these experiences in terms of us being the protagonist in our life. And that is a valuable lesson!

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

NLP As It Applies To Love Songs

What is NLP? I don’t really know yet, but I’m starting to get a much clearer feeling.For the past few weeks I have been listening to Matt Nathanson’s Come On Get Higher, a lot.

His choice of language is fantastic! It creates a good visual, verbal/auditory, gustatory and kinesthetic experience which combine inside ones perception to create a feeling of something very special. For me, the combination is the feeling of being in love, being overtaken by desire and lust, being consumed by the essence of another in a way that renders everything that isn’t them less that invisible, just simply out of existence.The synesthesia is outlandish and captivating – “violent” “perfect words” is a mixing of auditory and kinesthetic, “sparks on your tongue” is a mixing of gustatory and kinesthetic.

He’s violating conventional language use by getting the listener to feel something that normally requires logical interpretation to transform into feelings; thereby bypassing a level of consciousness that interferes with ones understanding / meaning of the words. He controls the listener by forcing them to set aside their experiences and feel what he wants you to see, here and taste.

The lyrics are below. This is a natural anchoring song. It’s a song to match with that special person in your life and allow your unconsciousness/subconscious brain to process and create the beautiful experiences that falling in love moves us to.

I miss the sound of your voice
And I miss the rush of your skin
And I miss the still of the silence
As you breathe out and I breathe in

If I could walk on water
If I could tell you what’s next
I’d make you believe
I’d make you forget

[Chorus]
So come on, get higher, loosen my lips
Faith and desire and the swing of your hips
Just pull me down hard
And drown me in love
So come on, get higher, loosen my lips
Faith and desire and the swing of your hips
Just pull me down hard
And drown me in love

I miss the sound of your voice
Loudest thing in my head
And I ache to remember
All the violent, sweet
Perfect words that you said

If I could walk on water
If I could tell you what’s next
I’d make you believe
I’d make you forget

[Chorus]

I miss the pull of your heart
I taste the sparks on your tongue
I see angels and devils
And God, when you come on
Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on

Sing sha la la la
Sing sha la la la la

Ooh Ooh Ooh

[Chorus]

It’s all wrong, it’s all wrong
It’s all wrong, it’s so right
So come on, get higher
So come on and get higher
‘Cause everything works, love
Everything works in your arms

Matt Nathanson

Are You Coachable?

Successful people behave in successful ways. The role of any great coach is to help their clients modify their behavior. When we build upon the assumption that people are born perfect, removing the patterns or behaviors that don’t work is the fastest way to restore a clients life to a state of full potential. For this reason, clients MUST be coachable. Below it a list of 5 characteristics that make someone coachable.

Willingness to accept that they need guidance. People need the help from other people and those who are humble are open to the idea that they can’t do everything on their on. They are clear to the fact that their limitations ARE the reason why they have sat down with a coach. This isn’t the thought “I’m going to hear what they can do for me” it’s the belief “I’m going to find out what isn’t working for me and change it.”

Being open and willing to doing something, and lots of it. Those looking for big changes KNOW that they need to do things. What needs to be done isn’t going to be the same for everyone, but doing new things, and doing them a lot, IS a criteria for change. Those who are committed to unfamiliar or unreasonable actions are coachable because coaches ask people to do things that their clients are not doing. They have to because their clients either don’t know what to do or don’t do what they need to.

Having clear goals in mind. Today is the starting point, call it point “A”. Your goals are the end point, point “B”. The area between A and B represent the work and behaviors that need to occur. Without knowing too much about someone, a coach has a clear understanding of point A. But point B is personal to the client and it is impossible to achieve unless they create it. It is the top of the mountain, the finish line, the destination, and it must be clearly defined by the client to the coach in-order for the coaching partnership to be effective and transformative.

A willingness to let someone else control their behavior. Giving-up control can be scary, but when you are looking to achieve that which is impossible for you to achieve on your own, you NEED to let someone else drive your body / mind. There is a leap of faith involved with this, but if you could have done it yourself you would have done it already. Engage and hire the best people you can afford and do what they tell you to do.

Confidence in yourself that you can start and maintain the behaviors needed to move you towards your goals. If knowledge or wisdom was all that was needed, everyone would have the life they wanted, but these things are just pieces of the puzzle. What is most important is an understanding that your life will only change if you know that it is possible to change. Any belief that things can only be as they are will render the coaching relationship ineffective as it helps keep someone stuck in their current way of being. Knowing that things can and will change when the effort is put in will empower the client and coach and create the transformation in behaviors that are needed to create success.

Good and great coaches are only as good as their clients; it all comes down to the client and their ability to be coachable.

Do You Behave In A Goal Achieving Way?

Goals are, simply put, future ways of being.

In almost every case the only thing you need to do in order to achieve a goal is to put in STRATEGIC, CONSISTENT, SUSTAINED and INTENSE work for a period of time. The truth is, it isn’t that challenging to achieve almost anything you want in life so long as you are willing to be dedicated to the cause.

Of these element of successful goal achieving behavior – strategic, consistent, sustained and intensity – the one that seems to cause most people the biggest challenge is the strategic work. Many people do not do the right things to achieve their goals as quickly as humanly possible. In essence, their behaviors do not match their goals so they are slow in moving towards being all that they can be. Well, lets rephrase that, their actions do not match their stated goals. In all likelihood their actions are making real some aspect of themselves that isn’t entirely known to them, but which plays a major role in determining who they are and what they become.

A previous article mentioned the dissonance between thoughts and goals, and how goals that are created based on a previous way of being tend not to yield results that reflect the possibilities of a new way of being. To build on that phenomenon, another layer of awareness needs to be added to the creation of an optimized you.

Goals that are based on existing behaviors are ineffective at creating life-altering transformations. Someone is less likely to feel a powerful drive when they create them or feel a massive sense of accomplishment when they achieve them. These goals are more likely to be achieved simply because the individual is already behaving in a way that will make them a reality. They reflect the reasonable and the possible; which is fine if you want more of the same, or a slightly improved version of the same.

But when you are looking to achieve the new, the unfamiliar or the seemingly impossible, you CANNOT reference your present behavior because your present behavior is NOT working for you – if it was, you would already be moving towards achieving.

Some of the new strategic work behaviors that are needed to achieve the new body transformation goals include your eating habits – do you eat breakfast everyday and does it contain multiple sources of protein, do you eat an abundance of green leafy vegetables, do you plan your meals and make them ahead of time, do you plan your shopping trips to the grocery store or market, do you schedule your celebration meals to tap into hormonal fluctuations based on caloric and macro-nutrient manipulation, do you participate in any compulsive eating behaviors, do you use targeted supplements? Also critical are new movement habits – do you workout at least 4 times per week, do you perform strength training to help improve lean body mass, do you use effective programs that are repeatable and based on scientific principles, do you get enough relaxation and sleep?

There are very few unknowns when it comes to health, fitness and wellness; it is safe to say that NOTHING is random. The results are predictable. It can be said with certainty that if you behave in a goal achieving way you will be achieving your goals. But first you must clearly define what your goals are so you know EXACTLY how to behave.

Silence Does Not Mean Compliance

A funny thing happens each week at the Break Throughs seminar at LandMark Education. The leader gives us the task of going out and recruiting people to participate in the LandMark Forum and then asks is anyone not going to do this?

I don’t do it because I’m not certain about the whole experience yet, the weekend was fine, the follow-up stuff has been a little less than satisfying, but that has more to do with the person I am vs. what is going on.

I also don’t say that I won’t do it because I had a feeling that you’ll get coached on who else to ask / invite. A girl last night did say she wasn’t going to do it and it panned out exactly as I had thought it would. 5 minutes of “coaching” on how to get more people enrolled. I laughed out loud and left the room.

Their approach of constantly asking us if we’ll bring people and the snubbed look they give when you voice your lack of appreciation for their marketing is why I won’t ask people to do. The information they provide is great, the lessons are useful and their coaching is decent, but there is too much network marketing for new people and not enough coaching for my liking.

I have talked to the leader but they are doing what they do so it continues to be what is, as it has been for a very long time.

There’s so much sales psychology involved in the whole thing that my head is spinning.

Some Things I’ll Be Saying Regarding Sex, Love and Romance

In the realm of sex, love and romance, men and women are very different. Below are a few of the realizations I have come to or been lucky enough to learn recently about what women and men want from intimate members of the opposite sex:

Women want attention – complete attention. Their words need to impact the people they talk to – particularly their male partners. It is about sharing; in some cases it is about sharing in one direction – the female emptying / downloading – vs. the mutual sharing of stories. This can even mean that the man ends up feeling the same emotions that she is feeling – in fact, it’s probably going to mean that the man shut his mouth and listen. There is nothing wrong here, this is just the way it needs to be sometimes.

With reference to SLR, men screw this up badly because they tend not to listen very well – they treat their female partners like their male friends / coworkers / sports buddies which is to say they listen slightly, wait to talk and try to solve problems so they can get back to whatever else there is going on in the world that isn’t a women being unhappy.

Men want to make the women they love happy. In fact, they’ll stop trying to make happy a women who they can’t make happy. They’ll leave the relationship or friendship very quickly once they realize that she won’t laugh at their jokes, smile at their efforts or respond positively to anything about him.

With reference to SLR, women screw this up badly because they tend to need to be heard and empty before they can feel good and will often want their male partners to emote the same emotions as them when they are not feeling happy, which men don’t seem to do naturally.

Men want a women to be open to them and to help them feel needed and desired. In essence, men want women who will share time in a way that says “there is no one else in the world right now” and to do things that reveal this openness.

With reference to SLR, this doesn’t go too well sometimes because men don’t do the things that women need in order to feel open and women don’t do the things that help a man feel desirable. Men may not listen enough and women may not be happy enough. Again, there is nothing wrong here, it’s just seems to be how it is some of the time.
Now the prognosis here is very good. A lot of it comes down to accepting these differences and approaching relationships in a way that allows both parties to feel valued in their own needed way. It is fine for someone to be unhappy because of work stress and it is fine for someone to try and make their significant other happy. What makes it unworkable is the expectation that both operate in the same way and to require that the other change. There is a middle ground. For the men, they may need to listen more and actually hear what is being said. Most of it won’t matter as viscerally in a few hours let along a few days, but if it isn’t heard, it will continue to exist. For women, they may need to pay more attention to the efforts of the man and see them as helpful efforts to make her happy and consider showing some change as a result of them.

It’s important to remember that nothing is wrong so nothing needs to be fixed. If there is a mutual willingness to accept each other and communicate openly, life shouldn’t be too bad.

Relative Of Terminally Ill Person – The First 3 Weeks

Note – I’m posting this now because I believe it is useful. It was the only article that I wrote in the series because my dad died 6 weeks after he was diagnosed. In talking with peers who have experiences GBM it is not uncommon for things to end extremely quick. I miss my dad, I miss his laugh a lot and I miss the relationship he and my mom shared. That, more than anything is what I feel the worst about. My mom is a great lady, my dad was great man, their relationship was still going strong so it’s sad that it ended so early.

This is the first in a series of articles about being the relative of someone who has been diagnosed with a terminal illness. It could be useful for those not directly impacted by the illness as it may give some insight into what we’re going through. For those who have been leveled with the news of the coming premature ending of a loved-ones life, invest in yourself and the experience you have begun. This is a process that hurts. The biggest legacy you can now leave for your relative is to get good at helping them enjoy dying and learn as much as you can from the experience so you can be useful to others when they join our ranks.

Day Of Terminal Diagnosis (DOTD) +3 weeks.

There are going to be two points in this process that are going to be highly significant. The second is when your relative dies, the first is their day of terminal diagnosis. You experience both of these as deaths although there is a relapse of sorts in the grief if there is an improvement in their condition. With GBM most people experience a reversal of cognitive symptoms so their return to life is welcomed because it blunts the sharpness of the news and the waves it caused.

There is no right way to feel although feeling some things is better than others. Happiness, laughter, joy, reflecting back on their memories, harvesting their wisdom and experience. If they have given of themselves to move your life forward pay them the respect and hear every word they are saying.

Your friends feel as useless as you do and they don’t realize how to help most effectively. The most important thing they can do is to be completely honest with you and forfeit their judgments of you. It should go without say, but sometimes people need a reminder. Watching someone you love die isn’t as easy as watching someone you love grow-up. Both are challenging, but with one you see the potential be actualized, with the other you see the potential float away.

They are dying, you are not. Make your peace / say those really important things early and when appropriate, let them process it and let it go. You did what you did for reasons that felt valid at the time. It doesn’t matter very much anyway, they’re dying and they’d rather live in the present than rehash the past. If you have unresolved issues consider the key thing that you need them to know and tell them that. If you don’t, consider telling them how grateful you are that they did what they did to help you become the person you are, someone you are happy to be. Then let it go, have some fun and be happy! They will be gone soon and you will have plenty of time to grieve, grow-up, adapt, and find your peace with your own place in life.

There are stages of grief that have been well documented and which are scientifically proven. Get to know these stages because with a terminal diagnosis there will be a blurring of many of them. Encourage those who offer support to get to know them too, because if they take the anger personally, it isn’t going to help you at all. In fact, it can shift focus off of your loved one and onto something that will remain well after they have gone. This isn’t a great way to spend the final weeks and days of someones life.

I’m hopeful that I’ll get to write a bunch more of these articles. Fingers crosses!