No more “Bad days”

The article below was originally posted on my other blog site www.mackaonline.com 

 

 

Pondering the “What if I’m wrong?” question of personal development, whilst it is generally seen as a bad thing to do this as it can often lead to indecision and lack of action, it is good if you can question your decisions without creating this effect.

And as I find myself surrounded by a lot of people who regard personal development as a “touchy feely” waste of time, I thought I’d ponder this question anyway (especially after a couple of years of applying personal development philosophies to my life), and one of the main conclusions I have come to from this is even if I am following the wrong path (which by the way I don’t think anyone following a path of self development is wrong) is I no longer have the cliche “Bad days”.

Coffee

 Well I’m now on about the 3^rd week without any coffee, an experiment I decided to try to see what effect it had on my health and concentration.

The result, well to start with, I did not suffer the reported withdrawal symptoms that I’ve heard of from many people, and I used to drink reasonable amount of coffee, usually 2 for breakfast (instant, 2 spoons of coffee) and at work I have a 4 cup coffee plunger, that was usually gone within the 1^st hour, then top ups for the rest of the day. Just before starting on my no coffee experiment I was tending not to drink it from mid afternoon, so that may have contributed to no withdrawal symptoms, as I was already sending my body into shock by drinking large amounts for ½ the waking day and then stopping.

Probably the most noticeable effects noticed were

no more dehydration effects:

where I might get tension around the head that may lead to a headache if I did not drink more coffee or start drinking some water, and this has had a positive effect on my exercising routines as I no longer need to worry about making sure I hydrate myself before starting an exercise routine, by drinking a large amount of water, which of course created issues of carrying that water in the body while trying to exercise and then needing to get rid of that excess water ½ way through the routine.

and

no more over stimulation:

When I had drank way too much coffee in a short period, often causing a slight unwell feeling and difficulty focussing on more complex tasks, although it was good for just getting mindless things done like paperwork, etc…

I’ve had no trouble with waking up and getting going, in fact I’m waking up earlier and getting out and doing things before I need to start getting ready for work, but this was also a conscious choice unrelated to the removal of coffee.

One thing I have noticed about drinking coffee as a ‘pick-me-up”, I now look back at when I was run down and tired and would have a coffee to ‘perk me up’ and I now realise that this was not helping, the stimulating effects of coffee for me seems to work best when I was already moderately active and alert, and seemed to enhance that state of being, whereas drinking a strong coffee when run down, just gave a short term boost which went nowhere and left me feeling worse than before, this maybe due to that fact my body had adapted to drinking coffee that it no longer had a strong enough effect on me any more to lift me up when feeling tired and run down, it will be interesting to see what happens when I start drinking coffee again, although at this stage I’m not sure when that will be as I’ve become quite attached to drinking green tea at the moment, and trying different varieties of green tea and other herbal teas (I must admit I really have never liked the traditional herbal teas - camomile, etc but the with a better selection available at my local supermarkets I’m starting to enjoy the variety of teas I can try.

An interesting article on coffee by Yvonne Volante can be found here http://www.articlecity.com/articles/food_and_drink/article_1467.shtml

Putting your life on hold for a goal

 

Is it a good thing to put parts of your life on hold to achieve a goal?

 

Especially your health (physical, spiritual and mental)

 

Well having done it for the last 7 years while growing a family, studying for my Bachelor of Engineering (4 years full time) while working full time, suffering some serious losses in my life, changing jobs, etc.. the answer is…….

 

YES and NO

 

I think I have actually managed to get some balance to the way I managed these things, but I think I may have left some parts of my life go for too long.

• I had to stop training in Kyokushin Karate as I needed the time to study

• I left my other goals and dreams behind and now I’m trying to play catch-up.

• I now have conflicts where all the work I put into my engineering degree says I should do something with it i.e. “Be an Engineer”, but a lot of the things I now want to do (brew master, writing, increased family time, other income generation) doesn’t fall into line with that stream of thinking – possibly the brew master dream does where I now have the skills to engineer my own brewery, the others go against the normal direction of becoming an Engineer where the usual outcome is to work for an employer (or yourself which is still ‘working ‘ for an employer) and to work hard and long hours, where the other things I want to do go against this.

• I stopped deliberate meditation, whileI may have been meditating when studying or focused intently on some things or when trying to relax when stress was building up, I was not regularly ‘centring’ myself with meditation

In hindsight I should not have dropped the meditation as it may have helped get through some particularly tough times that my wife and I had to go through and the physical exercise would not have hurt either, although I did try to do some exersise when I could, it was no-where at the level it should have been.

 

So was it a good idea or not to put aspects of my life on hold for an extended period?

 

 

I don’t think there is an acceptable answer to that question

on the surface – No, 

but in doing it I achieved something that I never dreamed I would ever do, I became a university graduate, and now I believe I can do what ever I want.

I think at the time I really had no idea what I wanted, to be honest I don’t think I had even considered thinking about what I wanted to do or be I just drifted along with the flow, which is interesting as one gentleman I have a huge amount of respect for always said to me that he thought that I had a fantastic driving ambition and had the ability to go with it, but in reality I was just drifting along in my life, things tended to happen when they needed to, a job would come up when I needed a change, when I needed to learn a lesson from my current job there would be no new jobs there, my peers would change, forcing me to change and develop, but all of this was with-out conscious goals – I just drifted, so putting things on hold and studying hard really put me under pressure and has now made me look at my life and what I’d really like to do with it I’m still not really 100% sure but at least now I’m looking at it

So for me while I was in that drifting along mode (I think it’s sometimes referred to ‘living your life by default’)  I had some dreams but had set no goals, I needed to put them all aside, set my goal and push myself, and struggle a bit to get to where I am today.

 

So where did it get me? 

 

I have a good job that provides well for my family, it does not pull me away from my family as many of my other jobs used too, I am now consciously looking at what I really want to do, I recognise the need for physical activity and meditation, and it’s all helping myself and my family, even though my wife does not see why I am so interested in personal development and how it could help anything (too “new agey”) I can see marked improvements in our relationship on both sides, I feel more positive than I have for around 10 years, I feel more confident in the advice I can give others in various areas and I want to write my experiences so others might read it one day and say ‘hey maybe I should give that a try’.

So should you do it? Only if it suits…. I know that’s not an answer but to be honest there is no answer this is how it happened for me, maybe it would work for you and maybe not.

 

The most important thing is to act, to do something and not just drift along in life or bury yourself in “looking but not doing”