Category: Emotional

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Acceptance Emotional Feeling

Building Emotional Fitness For Peak Performance 

I am sure that I don’t need to convince anyone that physical fitness, increases your ability to perform at your peak. 

And by physical fitness I am focusing – for this example – on the cardiovascular system. 

The ability to get the maximum amount of oxygen into our cells. 

One measure of physical fitness is how quickly an athlete can go from an elevated heart-rate to their resting heart rate.

For example, from 200 beats per minute, to 60 beats per minute (or lower). 

Sort of like returning to a state of (physical) homeostasis. 

Well, just like with the physical body, we want to do the same thing with our EMOTIONS. 

My definition of emotional fitness is the ability to go from an elevated emotional state (principally in a survival emotional state), back to a state of equanimity (calmness) or even better, into an elevated emotional state like joy. 

How quick can you get from anger, rage, frustration, or despair, back into a state of mental calmness, and emotional stability? 

That is what we are here to talk about today. 

Continue reading “Building Emotional Fitness For Peak Performance “
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Choice Decision Making Emotional Feeling

How To Feel Good

This “strategy” is pretty simple. 

And sort of easy to do. 

I say “sort of” as there may be times when is harder to do, and I want to be honest with you. 

And as old-matey Jim Rohn used to say: “What is easy to do, is also easy not to do“. 

So, although this is not so hard, most of time, it actually needs to be undertaken, in order to have the feel-good experience. 

This strategy is also free. 

It doesn’t require props.

And it creates a ripple effect. 

As in, in can make other people feel good too.

That’s pretty cool.  

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Choice Emotional Feeling Growth

Turn Up Your “Sense Of Humour” And You’ll Turn Down Your Stress

I have been pondering something of late. 

As you may have noticed – unless you are working on your enlightenment in the nearest mountain cave – the world is a little bit bonkers at the moment. 

And to be a little more specific, sad as it is, all of us have probably personally be touched by, or clearly noticed a rise in the number of people with (to generalise) “mental health” issues or challenges. 

I just did a quick search online and the estimated number of people with a mental ‘disorder’ globally, in 2019 was about 1 in 9. 

Which, to tell the truth, was higher than I thought it would be. 

And there are several reports of that number going up significantly from 2020-2023, due to a world event (and periphery events) we are all familiar with. 

So, without getting into too much more doom and gloom, we can all acknowledge that there are a lot of people having significant challenges with life in this modern age. 

The second part, to set the context of the brief conversation I want to have with you, is over the last 20-years of so, there has been so much pressure on what we can and can’t say about one another, or to one another. 

This has even had an impact on what is deemed appropriate for comedians to make “jokes” about. 

Anyway, my point is this… 

Continue reading “Turn Up Your “Sense Of Humour” And You’ll Turn Down Your Stress”
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Choice Decision Making Emotional Goal Setting Tips Overwhelm Success

The 1, 2, 3 to Getting More Clarity

The title may be a little misleading.

I was actually not thinking of step 1, step 2, and step 3.

But rather, Level 1, Level 2 and Level 3, when it comes to getting more CLARITY.

And in this case, the levels also refer to the size of the ‘problem’ or issues, or the size of the consequences of the decisions you have to make.

Let’s think of it like this:

Level 1 – A problem or decision to solve or figure out, but that is not too big or high in consequences.

Level 2 – The problem or decisions is a bigger, or more complex, and has more consequences if you “F” it up.

Level 3 – This is where the decisions you are making are complex, there numerous overlapping parts, and possibly a shortage of resources, so you need to be extra creative, plus the consequences of “F’ing it up” are pretty high (and potentially a huge pain in the butt and maybe even a potential financial loss).

So I see that these three levels of “challenge” require three different ENVIRONMENTS to enhance the probability of me solving it to the best of my ability.

I also like to use the metaphor of ‘stepping back’.

Level 1 = small step back.

Level 2 = medium size step backwards.

Level 3 = a big step backwards to allow the greatest level of perspective.

Continue reading “The 1, 2, 3 to Getting More Clarity”
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Acceptance Doubt Emotional Growth Life Lessons Meditation Perspective Stress

How is Your Patience Going? Want More?

So…

How is your patience?

If you are anything like me, then at times it is crap.

I was just talking to my partner – Ferry – about ‘having patience’ the other night, as we transit between our farm and our ‘main’ house, waiting for the sale of our ‘main’ house, before we finish building our other ‘main’ house on our farm.

I don’t like mortgages, so I need to exercise the ‘patience’ to wait for the sale of our house, which is dragging on, and on and on…

So I have spent intimate time face-to-face with the thing called patience of late and I – as always – want to figure out how I can do it better.

At first I thought you can’t ‘force’ patience.

As in, you can’t DO stuff to make ‘more’ patience.

Because it is more about surrendering, letting go, and stepping back.

BUT…

Then I sat with and went deeper to understand patience from all angles and this is what I came up with.

Continue reading “How is Your Patience Going? Want More?”
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Choice Decision Making Emotional Overwhelm Problem

An Awesome Problem-Solving Tool

Firstly, the ESP is not (exactly) extra sensory perception, though perhaps there is some of that still going on.

Secondly, it is thanks to a client conversation the other day for the creation of this tool.

Or more, the synthesizing of a few different tools into one.

The idea came after seeing the usual pattern when we have a PROBLEM show up in our lives.

The usual flow looks like this:

Problem > Trigger > REACTION > Emotional Explosion (big or small) > Trying to solve problem > OUTCOME

One of the major downsides of this is the OUTCOME.

Which is actually the most important bit.

Usually the outcome – using this pathway – is that it “might” be okay in the short-term, but is very unlikely to be useful or appropriate over the long-term.

The reason is that when we are in a survival emotional state (which this sets up), we have limited access to the frontal cortex of our brain, which is where we ENVISION (realistic) future consequences of our choices.

We are in short-term survival mode.

Not ‘making-choices-to-shape-your-greatest-destiny’ mode.

So we need to INTERRUPT the pattern.

This is where our ESP Tool comes in.

Continue reading “An Awesome Problem-Solving Tool”
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Belief Choice Emotional Negative Emotions Perspective Problem

16 Years Coaching and This is Still The #1 Root Cause

For over 16 years I have been Coaching.

Essentially helping people get from where they are to where they want to be.

And figuring out what is in their way.

That is, what might be their greatest obstacles.

Real and PERCEIVED.

Is the obstacle a poor understanding of what they want?

Are they unclear of where they are starting from (i.e. don’t ‘know thyself’ so well)?

Is there a skill gap?

Etc.

Of all the things that disrupt people from navigating life in a meaningful, fulfilling and joyful way, something keeps showing up as numero uno Root Cause of Trouble (with a capital ‘T’) in our lives.

Continue reading “16 Years Coaching and This is Still The #1 Root Cause”
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consciousness Emotional Feeling Optimum Health Perspective Rest Spirituality

How I Build Grit, Resilience and Determination

Do you want to good news, or the bad news first?

I think most people generally go the bad news first, so here goes.

To my knowledge, there isn’t a PILL on the market that does this job effectively.

Bugger!

The good news is you can do this yourself.

And often, without costing you anything (financially).

However, there might be some cost in sweat and tears.

Double bugger!!

One of my favourite ways to do this is to undertake consciously contrived “challenges”.

And I find the most impactful challenges (i.e. long-term benefits), are the ones which are mostly mental.

Like the 3-day water-only fast that myself, and about 20 other adventurers did last week.

Total (mental) challenge.

By building our grit, resilience, determination and discipline muscles, it makes other challenges in our life – professional and personal – seem not that hard after all.

That is the payback.

And it keeps on giving.

Continue reading “How I Build Grit, Resilience and Determination”
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Acceptance consciousness Emotional Growth Perspective

Struggling to Find Acceptance? Here’s a Solution.

WHEN YOU ARE STRUGGLING TO FIND “ACCEPTANCE”, HERE’S WHAT TO DO

I think we all realise that it is more spiritual, saintly or virtuous, to be able to ACCEPT that which is.

There is also a difference between knowing this ‘principle’ and actually trying to apply it to real life.

Especially when life can be pretty horrendous at times.

Or people can be so ‘bad’ at times.

We are forever hearing of terrible things (personally or collectively), and the idea of Acceptance (of these horrible things) is a pretty bitter pill to swallow.

Again, we might know that Acceptance is a higher path, but boy oh boy can it be friggin hard to get to at times!

And again there is a difference between telling ourselves we have accepted something in our lives, and ACTUALLY accepting it all the way down into our bones.

When we intellectually accept things (“Yes, I accept X”), often our emotions and behaviours just don’t get the ‘Memo’.

So…

What to do?

Continue reading “Struggling to Find Acceptance? Here’s a Solution.”
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Choice Decision Making Emotional Growth Optimum Health Perspective

A 19th Way We Make Life WAY Harder

Today we are going to talk about fuel.

Fuel for you, so you get stuff done; the stuff which is best for you in the short and long term, and that contributes to the quality and enjoyment of your life.

We are going to talk about the fuel source called WILLPOWER.

We make life a lot harder when we don’t understand the limitations of willpower.

And what might be a better (less HARD inducing) choice.

Here is the thing.

And where it gets a bit paradoxical.

We may need to use willpower in order to get to the place where we can use another more effective and efficient fuel source.

That fuel source is HABIT.

Well habit isn’t actually a source of fuel, it is more a system which is more efficient in its energy consumption.

Willpower burns fuel (energy) quickly.

Habit burns fuel (energy) more efficiently.

So if you utilize HABIT more, and WILLPOWER less, you will have MORE ENERGY available to direct into your life desires, or have more redundancy for life’s inevitable curve balls.

Essentially life is WAY harder if we don’t have any energy left over for the unplanned, unforeseen and unexpected

Bugger!

Continue reading “A 19th Way We Make Life WAY Harder”

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