Tag: emotion

confidence

Cultivate a different relationship with your emotions

Cultivate a different relationship with your emotions.

Emotions are visitors, they come and go.

You could compare them to people that knock on your door.

You open the door and you meet a nice person and you have a pleasant chat.

Over time you cultivate a friendship with this person. And you invite them in.

That’s what we do with positive emotions.

Now imagine one day you open the door to an entity, something evil.

You slam the door shut because you’re afraid.

The next day is interesting.

You hope the nice person shows up, but you fear the entity might make an appearance.

(The entity being negative emotions).

And over time, we cultivate different relationships with the different emotions.

With the nice emotions we form a friendship.

And with the negative emotions we adopt a negative stance, an avoidance, to keep them out.

We embrace the positive and push away the negative.

Here’s the thing. Until you open the door to the negative (the entity) and invite them in, they’ll always be there.

Inviting them in doesn’t mean you’ll have a good time together, that’s not the aim.

It’s about the relationship.

You invite them in. You offer them a seat. And you listen to them.

And once you’ve listen to them they’ll probably walk out.

Cultivate a different relationship with your negative emotions! Rather than trying to reduce their intensity or occurrence.

Negativity will show up now and then, sooner, later, always.

It’s ok to feel it, and it’s important you do.

Take this first step, even a tiny opening of the door.

Otherwise the entity will keep standing there.

And you’ll fret about it knocking on the door. To a point where you start panicking. Turning off the lights, locking door and boarding it up.

You create a fear of fear. A cycle.

But when you take this first step. You’ll notice you’re no longer afraid of that feeling.

They’ll no longer hold you back from doing what you want to do. And what you need to do to improve your life.

sleep, stress

The invisible hand that guides you.

When it comes to a healthy way of living the Mediterranean’s always seem to get a mention.

They are renowned for their longevity and wellbeing. Many attribute their diet to the reason behind this.

Although over the years I’ve come up with a hypothesis. The premise is that it’s more to do with their geography and culture.

Yes the Mediterranean diet is pretty good, (if you delve into it they get a balance of fats in their diet; monounsaturated, saturated & polyunsaturated and it is high in nutritional value.

But if you look deeper into their lifestyle they also have geography and culture working for them.

The abundance of sunlight they receive provides them with sufficient vitamin D. Something that us Northerners (hemisphere that is) lack.

And, the most salient point, the emphasis they put on sleep.

Biphasic sleep is sown into their culture. Think about it. They down tools every afternoon for a nap.

Siesta.

Not to mention they have such stringent laws on light pollution.

They protect their sleep and it pays off in spades. Especially when it comes to their national health bill.

The same can’t be said for us in the UK. Incurring a £197.4 billion health bill in 2019. And that cost has increased every year since.

Our geography is not as favourable, and our culture not as health conscious or cognisant. And that my friend is a problem because;

when everyone is sick, we no longer consider it a disease!

– Ravikant.

We wear sleep deprivation as a badge of honour when it’s work related.

Which is ironic seeing as though sleep loss over an extended period of time can cause decreased cognitive performance.

Essentially with poor sleep you’re not in control of your emotions and your emotions can control your behaviour.

This leads to the inability to make sound judgments. Poorer choices and below par performance. Along with it health concerns.

Which is why to be at your best you have to optimise your lifestyle. Nutrition, Stress management, Exercise and Sleep.

All these things done well will see you operate at your best.

You’ll have emotional regulation which aids self control, which is a superpower. I would say better than invisibility or flying.

Ultimately you will be making better decisions.

And you are the sum total of all your decisions!

nutrition, stress, weight loss

Emotional Eating

When I first started working with C, his relationship with food was poor to say the least it. When addressing his diet. He told me he kept a stash of chocolate bars in a box in the cupboard.


We established that after a stressful day at work he would find himself going to the box of chocolate. He wasn’t hungry he just recalled that he would be stressed when he would do this. And the chocolate made him feel better, temporarily. Like dragging on a cigarette or getting inebriated does. His chocolate box was a kind of a ‘break in case of emergency’ box.


He wasn’t aware he was doing this until I asked the questions. And unbeknown to him every time he did this he was forming a habit. Get stressed > eat food to feel better (momentarily) and repeat!


Unfortunately after doing so he would experience guilt from eating so much. The stress would be replaced by guilt from lack of self control and he felt gluttonous.
Now, multiply that habit by a few years and it was no wonder his health and fitness was deteriorating.

Plus the other things he was experiencing as a result. Especially at work and presenting. He hated it as he felt uncomfortable talking in front of his peers and work colleagues.


He told me of how he got someone else from his team to present the project he had managed. And as a result he felt someone else was taking the credit for his work.


But he felt trapped from low self-confidence and uncomfortableness when standing in front of people, worried about people looking at him.


This issue had developed over time from the result of his emotional eating.
Emotional eating is a very big problem in society. What makes it particularly dangerous is not only does it work, as an effective acute stress reliever. (Because when you eat fun food, your brain releases dopamine. A neurotransmitter associated with pleasure). But it’s not obvious, compared to other stress coping mechanisms like alcohol or smoking.


Because it’s food! And food is good, we need food. The problem is the reason behind eating. You’re not eating because you’re hungry but because you’re stressed.
So when he and I began working together on the The Limitless Lifestyle Blueprint.

The first step was to create awareness. Listening and identifying the issue and making him aware of what he was doing. A lightbulb moment for him as he realised that he had been using this stress coping mechanism for so long. And it was the cause of his poor state of health.

Then I put in place a plan of action to get him fit and healthy. First was addressing the stress issue. So I put in place tools to alleviate/omit the stressors that were causing the problem. Then we introduced coping mechanisms that would be beneficial to his health. Rather than detrimental.


With other small changes to his lifestyle. This change has permeated through his personal and professional life. He now enjoys presenting his projects thanks to his new confidence and energy.