Though I discuss topics that mainly are about our mental and emotional health, the common denominator in our search for "betterment" whether it be emotional or physical is our brain.  

One of the biggest missing parts in our quest for better muscular definition and strength is the connection to our nervous system. We often focus all of our efforts on "toning muscle" when we really should be training the brain which controls the shape and tone of our muscles (and everything else)

I enjoyed talking to the GymWits crew about this topic on their Podcast.

Listen here https://open.spotify.com/episode/53LHcm2cvjNrEpFM482UBa

An interesting idea came to me this morning as I read the book “The Big Leap”. The author spoke of anxiety showing up on the heels of a good or positive event or thought and he wanted to explore why that was. What he had realized that he had an “upper limit” to what his unconscious psychology would allow him to believe.

 So when things were going good there was an emotional thermostat that was triggered and sent him messages that he was in an area of belief that conflicted the hidden messages in his unconscious mind.  

 Part of the trick was to quickly realize what was happening and to look underneath the surface of that negative emotion and to see what positive emotion was trying to come through.

 Next, check in to see where the emerging positive emotion is showing up in your body, and settle into that new feeling for a few minutes.

 As that good feeling emerges pay attention to the story that comes with it, and allow yourself...

 I have had a nagging question that I have had running through my mind these past weeks around culture and how do we define it? My first impulse is to think of places where there has been a long history of “being” that is consistent with that region, as in “Indian Culture, Jamaican Culture, Portuguese Culture”. This could include traditional ways of preparing food, the type of food consistent with that region, the religious practices, and daily cultural or traditional rituals.

Many of these practices evolved over thousands of years and were again, consistent with a geographical region and the people that inhabited that space. We understand that from a scientific point of view that this process of consistent environmental influence over time is a powerful driver on how our biology evolves, our immunity, our tolerance for certain types of environments, right down to the type of spiritual practices we adopted as we strove to make sense of our place in...

It was so interesting this morning as I woke up in a panic, the worry about money, about success and failure raced through my mind. I tried to go back to sleep but my mind was too committed to this negative track.

Frustrated and feeling a bit anxious I got out of bed to make a coffee, brushed the cat aside and stormed around for a few moments. After sitting down and reading for 10 minutes, a chapter on goal setting and taking action, I got up and decided to get to work.

The fear of failure is a big one for me as I had struggled to make the break into a new financial arena with my business ventures but just could not seem to ever make the leap to the next level of business success.

Isn’t it ironic that we have more solutions for depression, more books on financial planning, more leaders in the positive thinking movement, and more health solutions than ever before and yet, despite all that, our problems not only persist, they are expanding! I have spent half a lifetime trying to figure out the secret to happiness, looked to uncover the hidden solution that would transform my life into all I ever could have imagined it to be, but still seemed to come up short. I had health in many respects, but my quest for what I thought was healthy (image) only served to burn me out. I read endless books on personal development, psychology, and philosophy and had answers for the world, but none that seemed to unlock the key that would enrich my life the way I had hoped. I sought my happiness in the eyes of others and had not taken the time to ask of myself what happiness meant to me. So now standing at the precipice of my life I realize that I have been given a gift, and...

I have the opportunity to work within our local prison system and was spending a bit of time thinking about some of the opening conversations I would have with these men. The reason for my involvement is to help create a powerful new paradigm for them so that long before the gates on the prison opened and they walked out, these men were already free.

What struck me powerfully is that as an inmate of a prison, your loss of freedom is tangible, but for us that have "freedom," our prison is not so obvious. As an inmate, you can see the guards, the gates and the barbed wire. You see the other inmates dressed like you, showing no vulnerability like you, using the same language as you, all following the rules of the prison society with little or no choice in things being any different. Every day you are reminded of your crimes, every day is filled with guilt, loss of freedom, loss of choice, and in order to function we push those feelings down so all we are left with is anger, resentment...

I’ve been listening to a series of lectures over the past few months around culture, ideology and fairness or equality. As you can well imagine, there is no end to the opinions to the debate on what this all means, but what is more interesting is the foundational reason why we take our various views on the world.

One of the challenges that we have in social media, which has become a massive problem, is that social media only feeds what you are interested in, which is fine when we are talking about shoes and travel, but not so good when it comes to matters of politics and religion, and everything that may come underneath those headings.

What allows us to formulate an objective point of view is when we clearly understand our stance and the viewpoint of another, but we also understand the reason why they and we feel that way (assuming we and they have worked that part out before we and they professed our opinions). But social media doesn’t present both sides of the...