Thought Shaping

WE ARE WHAT WE BELIEVE

True - we have genetics to thank for much of our physical appearance. But we shape our facial features through mindset, affect our health through lifestyle choice and mould our lives by the thoughts and actions we take.

Our genetics can play a major role in determining what tools we have available, but many have shown us through sport etc. how perceived disadvantages caused by birth defects or disabilities, can be overcome through mindset. Arguably, our social standing - our 'place' in society - has significantly more power to hold us on a pre-determined path, which is harder to break free from. And for the most part, it's our minds holding us back from breaking free from these chains we place on ourselves. It's mostly how we 'see' and what value we place on ourselves, then leaving the rest to society, our peers and even what our friends/family tell us, to define who & what we are.

Change may seem difficult and a new, a brighter path to success, so far away. But we can steer our path through life with our intentions. Daily reminders of our affirmations for who we are, what we have and where we are going, will help cement our intentions. So a good point to start focusing on these affirmations is at the beginning of the day. Repeating a mantra to affirm what may already be overlooked or forgotten - to feel gratitude, and be thankful for health, happiness, family, friendship, love and our good energy, will all take us along a positive path throughout our day. Repeated every day over a longer timeframe, these affirmations set a new direction and release us from a stubborn mindset. Our intentions come from these positive thoughts. And once we recognise that change is possible, the freedom we get to steer our life in another direction will help us take the tentative steps forward to realise our greatest potential.

Mindset defines us in every way. If we are shaped through our thoughts, judged on our looks and measured by our deeds, then we need to master the techniques for being in an optimal mindset. Positive and negative mindsets are portrayed in our being through body language, displayed in our clothing & outward presentation plus can be subtlety registered on a more subconscious level by those receptive to others, in the muscles of the face and through the eyes. Mindsets become our intentions and if we can choose either positive or negative mindsets, we can also choose our best intentions or bad ones.

Our intentions can be a powerful energy that's felt throughout our whole being and picked up from other people via our senses. If positive intentions can create beautiful crystal formations in water, then what can they do to the human body – which is made up of over 70% water? It surely follows, that by focusing on having consistently more positive thoughts, we'll take action for being a better person, which will make us feel better about ourselves. This process could potentially give overall health benefits, plus this projected energy could attract other like-minded people and bring about more successful outcomes.

Put It Out There
We can be so many different versions of ourselves. Project what you want and the law of attraction will bring back what we desire. Masterful, cute, approachable, avoidable. How we feel inside and how we portray ourselves through our thoughts, will be picked up by others. I have witnessed this phenomenon in myself, from the different types of interactions coming back from other people - and they've all depended on how I've been feeling at the time. These were conscious mindsets that defined a projection of them, which were either attracted or repelled. If my intention at the time was to attract, and it worked, great - especially as it was a mindful decision to achieve this goal. Sometimes, however, we can be blindly unaware of our thoughts and unconscious mindset having a conflict with our desired outcome. This fact will be obvious if we can observe it in ourselves - we merely need to be aware at the time, to correct any conflicting thoughts. Try it for yourselves - put the thoughts out there and witness how, one minute we can be invisible and the next be informed that we're the most attractive individual, with people hanging off our every word.

The power is within us all to be better, more focused, more loving, kinder and more compassionate beings - to be leaders and not followers. We also have the ability to inspire others to help them achieve more in their lives, through the power of imagination and thought. Remember that the quality of our lives is hugely dependent on our thoughts, mindset, and intentions. Mastering these powerful components will shape us and help to bring more success in whatever we desire from life.

Growth Training

BUILDING BODIES

Having a better understanding on how the body adapts to strength training, will help to maximise on our efforts. But in order to get the desired results from our work-outs, we first need to learn how and why muscle grows so we can focus on the nutrition and types of training for optimum growth.

Muscle needs protein for growth and repair. We get this important nutrient plus many other muscle building vitamins & minerals from our fresh vegetables, fruit, fish & meat. One common misconception is that protein cannot be obtained through eating naturally occurring plant-based sources just as well as it can from eating meat. So a good balance of fresh unprocessed food with a rainbow spectrum of fresh fruit & vegetables is key. We need energy-rich carbohydrates to train but depending on the types of training we're doing, the diet macros for taking on the right amounts of protein will need to be adjusted accordingly for enhancing, defining and repairing muscle.

A top-up of protein powder and other dietary supplements can aid with muscle repair and growth if we're training effectively but otherwise, we may just be taking on unnecessary additional calories. Supplements for overall health can be an extra benefit, for example, L-glutamine helps with repairing a damaged digestive system. Without a well-functioning gut - the energy for training and nutrients for building muscle, will not be absorbed. Increased water intake, which the muscles need to perform, is another key addition to the training diet.

The Fundamentals Of Muscle Growth
It's no good just lifting weights. There not only needs to be some consistency to the program, but also some advanced planning. Without a balanced program, there could be some undesired or negative results. Too many people work the main areas like chest and arms without balancing the body with back and leg workouts. This creates some posture issues and muscle imbalances that can result in strains, tears and injury. Ensure to set up a full training plan for maximum growth and limiting injury.

The body will respond to the pressures put upon it. That's why our muscles shrink (atrophy) and become flabby if we sit at a desk all day rather than if we have movement, through sport/exercise and a manual job. We naturally revert back to a state that best suits our movements and environment (homoeostasis), so, in order to modify our bodies outside of a mostly sedentary environment/job, we need to place it under increased stress levels to develop. We actually need to shock the body to improve the heart and lung fitness and to get the muscles growing.

Muscles are developed over time from causing micro 'tears' which heal and grow as they are repaired. This is experienced as a 'burn' when we lift heavy weights and why diet and rest are key for rejuvenation after a hard work out at the gym.

Ideally, utilising the methods of HIIT, Tabata and through explosive movements of boxing training - coupled with a heavy-weight training routine, we will dramatically improve overall fitness and body conditioning. Because without the proper knowledge - which is readily out there for anyone to learn, we could well be just wasting time and money on a gym membership in exchange for injuries and imbalances and not getting the desired results we labour for!

Gut Instincts

BLOATED OUT OF PROPORTION

Training hard? Check! Drinking less alcohol? Check! Hydrating more? Check! Eating a well-balanced, highly nutritious diet? Check, check & check! Yet, feeling overly tired, low in energy and suffering with ailments stemming from an out-of-sorts digestive system? This is where a better understanding of food is required to heal the gut and get back on track.

Plug The Leak
Reading up on Zonulin and leaky gut syndrome, it's relatively easy to discover some helpful clues as to why our energy levels are so low and why eyes are dull or skin dry and flakey. Damage to the digestive system can be caused by a multitude of different factors and it can also manifest in all kinds of ways, ranging from the more obvious signs like a bloated stomach, to the not so obvious ones, like experiencing more mood swings, chronic fatigue, lacking in concentration or having sustained bouts of brain fog & headaches. Without taking the necessary steps to address the problem, these early warning signs could evolve into a much more serious condition. Alternatively, assessing and modifying the diet could see these ailments significantly improved in the short term and potentially completely eradicated all together.

All Illness Stems From The Gut. 
We underestimate the role of our digestive system to protect us from illness. Our gut, containing millions of bacteria cultures, actively controls our immune system as well as handling the assimilation of all food sources. The digestive system processes and digests foods with the help of enzymes and healthy gut flora in order to convert the energy sources from our ingested food into a usable type of energy for us to survive.

The wall of the gut acts as a barrier to stop any undigested foods from passing through into the blood stream. The lining has tiny holes in it, allowing only the digested energy-rich molecules to pass through. But damage to the lining, weakened by exposure to bouts of stress, caused by the build up of toxins from making too many poor food choices, or from drugs and elevated cultures of bad bacteria, can all play a role in depleting the defences in our gut lining. Larger holes, letting through undigested food and other undesirable particles, can play havoc with our immune system as our body responds to threats of having these particles present in our bloodstream.

The First Defence
Too many toxins in our diet will, over time, have a detrimental effect on our digestive system. As our immune system begins to identify these foods as a threat, it triggers a response to reject them from our body. Small measures of these foods could register as nothing more than mild discomfort and can quickly disappear if we remove them from our diet. Opting for these foods very infrequently, will cause some digestive irritation from time to time or bring about a temporary sensitivity if taken more consistently. Larger measures of foods, high in toxins, if taken over a consistently longer time frame, can not only develop into actual food intolerances, but potentially evolve into full-blown allergies and lead on to more life threatening reactions to our food.

The first steps are simply to not consume these toxins. Cutting out food sources like cereal grains, sugar, industrial seed oils (used in crisps and other snacks) and removing highly processed meals containing soy products and other recognised antagonists, may be enough to help the symptoms go away on their own. Completely removing known dietary toxins and replacing with more of the foods that have been shown to actively promote a healthier digestive system, will aid in the restoration of our gut wall to prevent chronic illness from occurring further down the line.

Know Your Anti-nutrients
Plant food sources - especially beans and legumes, can be poor food choices as they contain high levels of anti-nutrients which impair the absortion of protein. But, soaking and cooking them can remove a lot of the poorer attributes. Likewise, choosing better sources of protein from meat can be beneficial to our health. Non-organic and value range allocated livestock can be injected with steroids to increase the growth times in  rearing cows for consumption, likewise, diary can contain growth hormone used to produce more milk and chickens boosted with antibiotics to stop infections from occurring in cramped cages. All these drugs can have a very detrimental affect on the digestive system. Grains can be potentially the worse culprits. Over-farmed, GMO modified seeds are said to contain even more of the toxins that cause IBS and Crohnes disease. But also, cheaper value ranges of bread and pasta can contain higher levels of sodium and preservatives plus prepared with industrial oils or sweetened with known to be harmful sweeteners like fructose. Generally, knowing more about what is in every packaged, processed ready-meal, sauce and convenience food product, will help to identify potentially harmful toxins. This knowledge either encourages better spending on fresh products, or teaches us how to prepare foods from scratch ourselves, free from the many additives printed on the labels - or we remove these products from our shelves altogether.

Make The Change
It can be a difficult period adjusting to our new lifestyle and food choices. We can easily revert to our old ways and deceive ourselves about our efforts. So being more mindful about our intake and actually writing down the foods/drinks consumed every day, we can better highlight the problematic foods needed to be removed from the diet. A daily general health, mood, progress diary will also show up any harmful lifestyle choices we are making and help to show a mirror up to ourselves to better monitor our actions in general.

A weakened digestive system can struggle to digest food including those that are high in toxins, highly processed or from fast food meals rushed down our throats on the go. So, merely taking the time to properly chew food away from a desk or potentially stressful situations could improve our digestion. Our primal fight or flight centre is actually located around the lumber region behind the stomach. so, when the sympathetic nervous system is triggered, hormones are released that prepare us for a fight/flight situation. The blood flow is diverted away from the digestive system, blood vessels are restricted and we cease to secrete saliva. This is why we need to be in a relaxed state to eat and also why our digestion may be affected if we are constantly on the go. That's why it's even more important to mindfully focus on assimilating the food with our saliva and chewing a significant number of times, so it's not seen as something alien to our digestive system when entering the stomach.

So focusing on the intake of food, the tastes and textures, grinding down into smaller pieces, rather than mindlessly gulping down each mouthful without properly breaking it down first, can in itself, be a major part of the cure.

Top-Up Tonic

Look at taking a tonic of vitamins to help with replacing any deficiencies caused by a weakened gut. Vitamin C and B complex are a good start. Certain foods and alcoholic beverages, can inflame the gut, causing irritability in the bowel and the yeast in our gut can inhibit the absorption of B vitamins, so drinking less will definitely help. 

Arguably, the nutrients in our foods today, are greatly compromised through over-farming and other attempts to sustain the growing population (exposure to pesticides/herbicides etc.), so a good multivitamin coupled with a course of probiotics, could work wonders and further aid in the process of healing our gut. 

For a complete approach to healing the digestive system, follow the '4-R' programme or check out one of these other helpful blogs.

Celebrating A Life Cut Short

PATRICIA

If like me, you are fortunate enough to live in a country where the streets are safe, where stability seems assured and the chances of catastrophe statistically remote, then a death of someone in their prime, comes as an even greater shock.

Death is a very surreal concept. How are we to deal with such an absolute fact that life ends or live comfortably knowing there's a very real chance of an end coming around the next corner? It's little wonder that many of us neglect to think about it at all. Life seems so random and indeterminably fragile. One moment we are here and the next we are not. This means we come from nothing and return again to a non-existence - which is a strange concept in itself. 

But energy can neither be created nor destroyed - merely exchanged for alternative states. Consequently we – our essence – must surely originate from somewhere? And therefore, where does that person or the energy making up a once living being, actually go to? Unfortunately, we (still) don't have any answers to that question and it's this uncertainty that makes the whole end of life concept so difficult to believe. The only real comfort we have available, is the knowledge that we all go through this same weird thought process.

The Worst That Can Happen

As healthy, happy-go-lucky individuals, we rarely plan for the end of life - maybe because it seems something so far away (being a child), or somehow we convince (deceive) ourselves that it's something which only happens to careless others or when we're very old. We casually discuss it as if death was no more than a common cold, and flippantly pay no real attention to our imminent departure from this earth. That is, until the day comes when a close friend passes away so unexpectedly that we are forced to question our own mortality. It's at times like these that we should really think in greater depth about what death means.

Morbid Thoughts

Death comes to all - it's humorously quoted as being, like taxes, the only other certainty in life. So why do we give it no consideration in the time we have available to prepare for it?

Fortunately, for everyone at my most recent funeral experience, the family of my dear friend Patricia and all the friends present, were able to give Patricia a 'sending off' that I'm sure she'd have been very happy with, if there had been any prior arrangements made by herself for her own funeral. Far from dwelling on the sad event, we had many smiles and positive displays of love, openly shared in abundance - as were the overly generous drinks and hospitality provided by people we had never met before this sad day. 

Although the final respects being paid at the crematorium were obviously a somber moment - plus the venue was cold, uncomfortable and a place as far removed from being alive, as could be, this wake was still a far more honest solution than any religious ceremony could ever be. In this post-life situation - we've so obviously gone already that it seems strange to be paying homage to a wooden box. For that is really all that's left - a container with our lifeless biological physical representation laying in it. But that's what we all did for around four hours.

Far from taking solace in religious 'faith in God' speeches, delivered in a soft voice through the medium of a holy representative, presented in the reassuringly calm and comforting space of a holy venue - we were placed in a prolonged, uncomfortable state/place, to ponder the stark realities of death. I didn't understand this myself at the time, but retrospectively, the party we had afterwards was all the more enjoyable as a result. The alcohol drunk and games we played, all helped to anaesthetise the brain from thinking any more about death. But, maybe continuing to immerse oneself and to think more deeply about the end of our lives, is where we should invest more time - to improve upon our ability to cope with our own death.

Death Wish
A will is something many of us overlook and funeral plans are definitely something the majority of us avoid sorting, let alone save up to pay for. Legally, without a will, distributing our accumulated wealth to our family, can become a problem. Therefore we should all make up some kind of will. The costs of funerals and other arrangements are escalating every year - so, getting a funeral plan in place or at least having some savings ready, so our next of kin are not lumbered with the cost, is surely a good move.

We should also make our wishes for a party well known to those loved ones who can action them. Personally, I like the idea of making a playlist of music to have at the gathering, along with a selection of my favourite photos. Ideally, selecting a venue with a decent bar-spend available where my friends and family can be comfortable, would be a nice touch.

Planning For Life
Whatever we think about the end of life - whether we believe there's a heaven or hell or reincarnation etc. it's important that we make some effort for it now whilst still alive. Planning our own affairs in advance, will mean costs are covered, plus it'll help those making the difficult decisions on the day and should in some small way make up for our most inconvenient absence. Maybe it's vanity but certainly this idea offers me peace of mind - knowing I can play a part in how I'm remembered.

Patricia was an outgoing, fun loving and adventurous soul. She planned for life. And she's reminded me that we all need to make even more plans for living - because our time really is so, so short. We have no real say in how long we have left either, so there's little point planning so far ahead when so much can be made of the here and now.

When the end comes - and let us all hope that it is far away - let's make an exit plan for a memorable life and parting event for reminiscing our greatest living moments, in order to inspire others to live their life to the fullest too - as you did Patricia. We'll miss you.