Experience the Potential- Part 2 of 4- Reading, Doc, Goals, and Journaling

Hello everyone. I hope you all are have great days and weeks and if you are not CHANGE IT. Now I hear some of you saying “but I don’t know how!” Well Today is your lucky day because this post is my second installment of the Changing your Mindset and Experience the Potential 4 Post Event. If you have not read the intro read it here.

Last post I covered meditation and this post will cover the next 4 tasks or ideas that I have implemented in my life to create lasting change! So with out further ado here we go……..

Reading

If you have read any of my previous posts you know I am a crazy advocate of reading. When I reached the point in my life where I was fed up with the lack of growth and progress I started to look around at the successful people I knew and have heard about to try and see what reoccurring patterns there were. The first and most obvious of the patterns was reading. From Albert Einstein to Bruce Lee or Ray Kurzweil and etc. In my life my Dad who is one of the most successful and well rounded people I know reads extensively, he is also the one who taught me to read beyond my capabilities and to have a dictionary on hand for any stuff I didn’t understand.

Recognizing this pattern was enough for me to have a starting point to make some changes. I looked at how much information I was ingesting since I had gotten out of high school and it was practically nothing. I got a book about the leadership of Robert E. Lee from my dad it was one of his favorites so I knew I would enjoy it. I did, but an issue had kept coming up and much like my meditation issues I would fall asleep about 10-20 mins after starting, this would happen over and over and was extremely discouraging.

I kept trudging along though and read that book over the time of about 6-8 months but once I finished it I had the feeling of accomplishment and moved on to my next. One thing I started to notice was my ability to be able to read more in one setting without falling asleep and staying focused was working hand and hand with my meditation at the time. I believe my meditation was increasing my focus to read more while increasing comprehension as well. After I had read about 5 books over the next year after finishing the Robert E. Lee one I started to generated ideas about things and create interest in subjects that were unbeknownst to me just 6 months earlier this is where the passion I talk about in one of my previous post starts to generate and build.

Since this time I have read about 20 books which is something I never thought I would say. My goal is to build up to one book a week which I now understand is a very realistic goal. Fifty pages a day, that’s it, and you can read most books in a week as long as they are around 350 pages. I also find my self becoming more and more of a conversationalist. I have so many new and interesting ideas to discuss that most people are completely unaware of.

A key component of my growth was to change my perspective and what better way to change your perspective than to read the one of a genius or person who dedicated their whole life to a certain concept so that you do not have too. A great quote I read recently is, “Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.”-Andre Gide. So please pickup a book so things do not need to be said again!

Journaling

About the time that I started changing my habits and introducing things that would help me to grow I got an Iphone 3 this was back when smart phones were few and far between. It opened my eyes to so many applicable tools and gave me the ability for the first time ever to quickly and efficiently document my life.

Once I started reading I was getting to the point that I had so many thoughts, ideas, and concepts going through my head that I started to become overwhelmed. This lead me to start journaling my thoughts and after I started this I felt as though a weight was being lifted, this mental baggage was able to be unloaded and allow me to walk more freely.

Being able to completely get one concept out of my mind allowed for more thought to be dedicated to a new concept and much to my surprise all of these ideas started to blend together to the point that I could find the similarities in completely separate subjects.

Also when I go back and read journal entries from a year or two ago it’s like I am reading the thoughts of someone I don’t even know and allows me to see myself in that different perspective. I was also able to see the growth in my maturity based on what I was journaling at that point in my life.

Now the difference between this and blogging, goal setting, or just writing is that this is only for your eyes. It is supposed to allow you to get those thoughts and ideas that you never plan on sharing with anyone out. Try this and discover the person in you that your never knew was there. Very moving.

Documenting

Once I had been journaling my thoughts for a few months I noticed that in my journals I would document things like what I ate and how much I exercised which brings me to my next mind changing tool. DOCUMENTING. I realized it needed to be a separate notebook than my journaling because it was causing confusion.

So I started off just documenting food only in the notes on my phone. Then over time I started to get an idea that if I documented all my calories, water drank, sleep times duration and quality, mood, exercise, supplements, and weight twice a day I could chart them and see long term patterns that correlated say with my mood and the amount of water drank.

As you could imagine documenting that much stuff gets boring real fast although I did do it for about a year and a half on and off it has been very beneficial and allowed me to get a good idea on how healthy or unhealthy certain things and proportions are. Just like my journal entries it was an invaluable tool to look back and be like why didnt I accomplish very much this month, check notes, OH no wonder I ate out 3 times a week and didnt drink a lot of water.

So while I don’t recommend going as far as I did in the beginning I do suggest you take a week or two and document all food and water intake it will make you more conscious about each thing you eat and if you can develop this habit then when you are not documenting you are automatically more conscious about each decision you make. Now I don’t document a whole lot but the habits that were formed from when I did are long lasting and when ever I get to a point of living a stagnate lifestyle I start documenting again to motivate myself.

A lot of these ideas revolved around becoming more and more aware of you life and actions.

Goal setting

On January 31st of this year I took a consultation with Izzy from 30yearoldninja.com, he is a successful blogger and life coach who changed his life by quitting his job and moving to japan to become martial artist. He is one of the few people I know who is living his dreams.

He taught me very important fundamentals to goal setting and planning. If you would like to know his specific plan you can set up a meeting with him by just clicking the link here 30 Year Old Ninja . I will lay out simple format so I can leave you with something to practice now.

I like to have 3 levels of goals each one getting closer to present; they are yearly goals, monthly goals, and weekly actions that will allow you to accomplish the goals.

First write out what you want to have accomplished in one year. This is to identify where you want to go which will reflect in your monthly and weekly goals. For my example I will use my weight loss.

Year goal: I want to lose 70 lbs. in one year.

So now you know the direction. For me I will break down ok to lose 70 lbs. in 12 months that means 5.8 lbs. a month. So for my first monthly goal I’m going to say I need to lose 5 lbs. or more.

Monthly Goal: Lose five pounds or more.

Now this is where the actionable step comes in. Each week you are going to review what am I supposed to accomplish this month and subsequently will this allow me to achieve my year goals.

Weekly Actions :
Practice healthy eating habits
Walk a mile every day.
Do core workouts and stretch.
Drink a gallon of water each day.

So rather than changing your yearly goal or monthly goals all the time you simply adjust the actions you are going to take that week to accomplish those. But say you are crushing your goals you can always tweak the yearly and monthly goals to accommodate.

I also keep it simple and only plan a year or two ahead because I try to live more in the now than in the future. If we just focus on as much as we can today and this week then in one year you will be exactly where you want to be.

Conclusion

Changing my mind involved adding little things here and there and creating habits by doing them daily. My perspective started really opening when I read about other peoples perspectives that had thought the same things I did 100 years ago or as little as 1 year ago. Great ways to become more aware of your actions can begin with journaling and documenting your actions, good and bad. Goals are a great way to introduce meaning and establish the path that you are going to take to create lasting change. Alright guys and gals thats all for today. I hope these ideas and tools will help you as you try an discover your place in the world !!

Peace and Love

Read for the Future

Does anyone remember reading rainbow? I sure do, it was pretty influential in my life as a kid. It taught me the beauty of having an imagination and creating a place in your mind where anything was possible and you were king of the world. Man just thinking about that puts a reminiscent smile on my face, but ya know that didn’t last forever because then a little thing I like to call the education machine got a hold of me (and you and probably all your friends too). In this machine they teach you what to think not how to think and this is a very important tool for anyone of power. For if you do not know how to think then how can you defend yourself from being a prisoner in a system that is not designed for anything but emotional and material gain. It took me 18 years to break out of that prison and figure out how to learn, but more importantly why to learn.

First the How

In this day and age if you are not spending some of your leisure time learning, you are a very unfortunate person and one doomed for continual search of happiness. If you want to find happiness find it in the satisfaction that you get from growing every day, there was a time about a year ago that everyday my mind was like a roller coaster of learning and understanding. I was intellectually growing in months during the span of days. The ideas and reflections I was having were not only for the first time my thoughts but they were thought provoking and sometimes crashed into beliefs of my own. This lead to an involuntary re-evaluation which subsequently resulted in asking myself, what do I believe? I think it’s important to point out that naturally on my own thinking, without influence, it came back to…….. What Do I Believe?

The Why

People know stuff. That is true, but the majority of the people I come in contact with don’t understand any of it. Why? That’s what someone asked me once when they saw me reading a book during a 15 min. break at work. To understand my friend is a good reply but really for me it comes down to awe and fascination. We are living in a time where every single one of us has the ability to create and show the world something – ANYTHING!!! People should understand that is the epitome of what we can do in this world that no other living creature can do. Ever seen a viral video with a child that made your cry at its beauty? That is the ability to move people across the world.

The Second Why

If you have never heard of Ray Kurzweil or have never read the Singularity is Coming you should. For me, he has opened my eyes to the potential cusp of what we could be dealing with in a matter of decades (Ray, and through visual signs I agree, says it may be sooner). Technology is exponentially growing; much like our universe, probably relatively slower, but similarly at a more and more rapid pace. This could lead to a revolution across the board of how we do everything from health care to interior decoration and dating to the entire service industry. Unless clamped down by government or catastrophe the future looks very bright! When each and every house has a 3D printer that can print up whatever, then indeed life will be much different.

How to Understand

For me starting with the basics has really helped with moving up to the ability have original ideas and reflections. Understanding the nature of how things work allows you to say this or that will not help me in how to solve this problem, but more importantly you will be able to be a person with solutions. I feel like I am that person now. But let’s use an example before I became that type of person. I would look at nutrition and dieting and be so confused I would run out the door to McDonalds. After I became one who tries to understand, I started reading every book about nutrition, anatomy, food production, how to cook food, where to buy food … Etc. I now understand what my body needs, where to get it and how to cook it. This is the best part – THERE WILL ALWAYS BE MORE WAYS, MORE LEARNING, and MORE BOOKS. Forever. I’ll probably die trying to bring a library book back before it’s late. Just kidding, like we will still have books in the future. To end with: One of the biggest epiphanies I had was realizing that when I have utterly nothing, I will be left with my mind/intelligence and that is the most valuable or invaluable thing in the universe. So, in regards to learning as much as you can and feeling the way I do – you decide what’s important.

Final Thought on Information

What if you could just upload information to your brain like you can to your iPhone or laptop? Well this not out of the question in the future. But this idea reflects to me a pattern that is starting to emerge. The constant need of instant updates and corrections – are an ever flowing state of activity and growth. People constantly look for an update on their cell phone. How frequently do they happen now versus the past? How much more does each update include and process then the last. Why change hardware if all you need is a little more information and programming to completely change the game. This is the exact same concept for reading books your brain is processing the information and taking important code or functions to be used in the future for efficiency. So until we have a way to upload information directly into the brain we will have to settle for an “update” by simply reading a book.