Body
Our bodies are our greatest gifts. They are not only our greatest source for joy and learning but also our most powerful respite from the torrent of our minds.
The upside to training our awareness of the valence of our thoughts and feelings in our bodies is the inevitable availability of relief or joy when we bring our desires and our bodies into line. An immutable truth about tension and bad mood is that a decrease in the density of either of these experiences will bring us a good feeling. This is not necessairly a motivation enough to create these states, for most people, but it is an available motivator to train our awareness and to respond to them with acceptance and understanding.
Although any affect can motivate attention, interest is the most profitable motivator for the organism (our bodies/minds). It helps create the requisite tension in our bodies and the most malleable and strong state for our thoughts, memories and actions.
The old idea that accomplishment must be driven a “nose to the grindstone,” is dead.
Neuroscience research continually reinforces the notion that in order to most efficiently accomplish a task, the task-do’er should let go of the outcome of the task. Our brains(especially the neo-cortex) are made up of a majority of inhibitory neurons. Our brains are designed to protect us from mistakes and it is this inhibition that keeps us from performing optimally when we feel pressure (should/have to/must) accomplish something.
When you hear this it seems counter-intuitive, right? Your brain says: “If I don’t keep the end in mind, if I don’t work hard towards the goal then I will never get there or will wander aimlessly…won’t I?” “How do I accomplish a task or get what I really want unless I keep it in mind? This makes no sense!”
If we listen to the authors of The Secret then we might be inclined to stick with the old understanding of the brain and motivation.
Recent research suggests 80% of heart attacks for men could be prevented with 5 simple changes.
1. Don’t smoke – IF asks you not to judge yourself or the behavior, but to deduce what the situations are that make you feel like having a cigarette.
- Anticipate the need and listen to the Smoker’s Meditation instead. Also, if you have trained the Stinkface Technique (yes it looks just as funny as it sounds), use it before you listen to the meditation.
- If you are a situational smoker, try to figure out what the overload is associated with your desire to smoke. Do you smoke when you drink? What is the “stress” that is reduced when you drink? It is possibly the same source of the pressure that influences you to smoke.
- Use the IF Affect Education System to learn what your overload is, what it feels like and how to reduce it in a more effective way. Although alcohol, TV and smoking all work to help reduce the overload of the moment, they always fail to reduce the pain behind the need. Together, we can do better. We are too smart to continue allowing a chemical or medium to drag us around and control what we do. We will fight through, together.
2. Drink in moderation – If you drink, do so in moderation.
- Savor the substance & allow it to mollify the affect of the moment.
- Too often we use something to help us mollify a need and we forget to enjoy the sensory experience.
- Enjoy it. If we do this, we will need less to feel the same effect…just don’t tell the alcohol producers about this website!
3. Move – An essential Key in the IF System is movement.
- Remove or reduce your impediments to movement, learn to love moving and do it often.
4. Eat a balanced diet – Eat a lot of plant based foods.
- Forget processed foods, they aren’t really food anymore, why torture your tongue?
- Eat a lot of nuts and seeds and legumes and lean protein (if you want).
- Take advantage of our System to learn the difference between using food to feel better right now and using food to feel stronger, sleep better, have better sex and to conquer with vigor and tenacity.
- Learn to LOVE the foods that make you feel like a God.
5. Don’t be too fat – Are you fat? It doesn’t matter. If you are, don’t judge yourself, it will only make you feel like eating.
- Surrender to the moment and the reality of your current state. Accept that you are fat and that you use food to cope with “stress.”
- Use the System to understand how to shift your desire for sweet/salty/savory and to start LOVING the foods that sustain you and push you uphill instead of being tied to your waist like a ball and chain.
- Understand that this process is difficult. It is not instantaneous and that anyone selling you something that will make changes now is selling you a magic bean. You may lose weight now but wouldn’t you rather have peace?
- Start at the beginning, work the system, collect the keys and follow your path. If you let go of the need to be “not fat,” and seek peace instead, your body will take care of the excess.
There you have it, 5 easy (well maybe not easy, but easy is boring) steps to reduce your heart attack risk by 80%. What’s even better than not dying is how damn great you will feel once you start on this journey, seek the keys and own your own path to Health Happiness and Performance.