Balanced Existence

How to Manipulate Other People

Stephen — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 11:35:58 +0000

How can you get other people to behave just how you wish they would? The answer is beautifully simple:

Be, yourself, whatever it is that you want others around you to be.

This is known in hypnosis as “going first”. As a simple example if you happen to smile at some person you effectively “go first” and most often your reward is a smile or at the very least a kind thought in return.

Elegantly a positive outcome is the only possible outcome of this type of “manipulation” of others. No one is purposely going to be an asshole so that they can suffer to live amongst assholes. Using this principle no one is going to self-inflict horrible soul sucking people on themselves by being such a horrendous soul sucking person.

This is all the reason one needs to be the very best human being one could possibly be. If you strive towards such a goal you will “go first” for others and take them along with you for the ride. And then you can enjoy living amongst real actualized human beings that anyone would feel blessed to have in their life.

Now you know this you also must understand the responsibility we each have by being in the world. We each possess and are responsible for a massive amount of power to affect the world. If you suddenly realize one day that your life is full of hateful negative people you may need to take a potentially painful but necessary reality check in regards to just what sort of person you are, just what sort of reality you are creating around yourself and consider just why you are attracting such people into your life.

Be the change you want to see in the world and do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Because they will.

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Non-Dualistic Thoughts on Suffering

Stephen — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 04:33:17 +0000

photo credit: elward-photography

It would be a mistake to attempt to block out suffering or create mental distance from suffering. In fact this is the opposite of what I have experienced and come to understand. Trying to do so will most likely simply cause more suffering. What I’ve come to understand quite simply amounts to an embracing of the totality of existence. Opening up to all things.

The Buddha said existence is suffering but he did not say existence causes suffering. The way to eliminate suffering is to eliminate its cause. And that cause is desire. Not because desire of itself is inherently bad or wrong or that the things one can desire are inherently wrong but simply because desire leads to all manner of great suffering. “Eliminate suffering” is probably a poor choice of phrase. To me the action feels more like letting go of suffering and relaxing into existence. Similar to forgiving another person as a gift to one’s self. Thus “transcend suffering” is probably a better way to put it.

The way I see it is the opposite of suffering is not pleasure. The opposite of suffering is a state of having no opposites, no opinions, no preferences. Simply experiencing life as it comes, as it is without some sort of judgment call about how we as an individual may feel about it. It simply is. Anything else is non-acceptance. If you don’t accept something you thus desire for it to be otherwise and thus you suffer.

This is not to say one can’t do anything about situations. Acceptance does not mean a person simply curls up and waits for death. It just means you accept fully what is without complaint and move forward from that point. Whatever happens from there – happens. It is a great letting go of all tension and fear.

A Supremely Valuable Skill – Letting Go
For most people the ability to let go takes a reasonable amount of time and practice on simple things that are easier to let go of. For example some cuts you off in traffic while you’re not in an absolute rush to be somewhere. At such a moment consciously seize the opportunity to practice the skill of letting go.

Letting go is difficult for us because over the course of this life we’ve come to hold onto a great many things. We have learned to be very fearful and hold a lot of tension both mentally and physically. If you wish to actively improve the quality of your life you need to consider a gradual program of letting go. Remember, the development of any skill is simply a matter of practice. Look for and seize opportunities to practice wherever you can.

The Trap of Dualistic Thinking
Above I described the opposite state of suffering as one in which an individual holds onto no opinions, no preferences, no judgments. This is because in the tangle of good and evil for good to exist implies a distinction between good and bad. I said no distinctions. Not good. Not bad. Just is. It requires a step outside of dualistic thinking. To illustrate - good and bad are sides of one coin. See the whole coin. Not just its sides. Now that is just an illustration. It’s imperfect but perhaps useful.

On Physical Pain & Suffering
The difference between physical pain and suffering is that pain is a physical sensation. Pain is thus inherently no different from other physical sensations. Suffering occurs when pain is rejected. When one desires the pain to go away but it doesn’t. Then one suffers.

Existence is suffering because of our conception/perception of the world, because of how we interpret reality, because of how we become conditioned. Existence meanwhile is inherently as it is. Not good. Not bad. Just is. How you choose to take it or how you become conditioned to taking it will dictate the quality of your life. We can do something about that or we can ruminate about it and keep getting what we’ve always gotten. If someone is happy with whatever constitutes the status quo in their life then they can always just keep on keeping on. The choice is all theirs. You alone are responsible for you. Even if you don’t take responsibility for yourself you are still responsible for not taking responsibility.

The eight fold path of Buddhism is the path the Buddha laid out for those who wanted to transcend suffering. If you would like to find out more about the Buddhist idea of suffering you might like to read some of my other articles on this subject:

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Cultivating an Awareness of Existence

Stephen — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 06:43:51 +0000

View from a bamboo raft during my travels in China.

As individual human beings in a sense we tend to be highly centralized on ourselves, fixated and almost entirely caught up by whatever is going on at the moment. By being caught up all the time we lose valuable perspective in regards to what is important, what we should expend our energy on and lose a sense of joy and wonder in regards to life. That said, self-centralization is understandable since whenever something happened in the experience of our lives there we were. Our sense of ‘I’ feels as if it has always been with each of us, for as long as we can remember.

The way in which this being caught up in events occurs is similar to a person who is watching a movie. That person gradually becomes caught up in the events occurring in the movie. They forget about the movie theater, the people around them, even the chair they are sitting in. They may become caught up in the emotions portrayed as being experienced by the actors, even deeply experiencing those emotions within themselves. And then, when the movie ends, they shake themselves as if awakening from a dream, suddenly awakened to themselves and see that it was just a movie. Not real. They realize that it all was no more than a play of light on a screen.

My Personal Experience
The word ‘realize’ is interesting. It’s from French, closely connected with the word ‘real’ meaning to understand clearly. A person who is caught up in a movie, at its ending suddenly awakens to what is real and what is not. They suddenly understand clearly the reality of the situation. From my personal experience I know how easy it can be to become caught up in the stresses of life, to become caught up in worry or fear. To be caught up in petty disagreements, arguments and positions. Such things in general are so very unimportant, mostly unnecessary and sour the joy of living. They take away from the vibrant experience of existence.

It is like one moment I’m relatively clear in my awareness of a consciously confirmed recognition of existence. Then next, suddenly I realize I’ve become caught up in a narrow subjective centralized experience of the world. In the process I’ve forgotten the wondrous fact of existence. Isn’t it amazing that everything has undertaken the formality of existing? Could you even describe what ‘existence’ is to another person? Could you say what it means to exist? We live with this wonder each and every moment. Yet how often do we allow it to inform our perspective on life or our current situation?

Mountains & Rivers
It is said that mountains and rivers should not be viewed in the mirror. Here ‘mountains and rivers’ represent the external world and ‘the mirror’ represents our subjectivity. We can directly experience existence by simple non-discursive non-judgmental awareness. You may sit in a garden and experience the plants and birds, the sky and the clouds, and feel the sun on your face. The moment cognitive thought or discursive awareness occurs existence begins to become filtered and narrowed down. The mountains and rivers become viewed through the mirror.

Judgments, subjective positions, distinctions and opinions narrow the experience of existence down even further. Suddenly for one person the sun is hot, for another is feels great, for another the grass is itchy, one person wants to leave because they are bored and want to go do something else, this flower is more beautiful than that, those people are noisy, the buzzing fly is annoying. Suddenly there is this being caught up in narrow self-centered concerns and the wonderful pure experience of existence, of what simply is, is lost.

Existence is a wonderful gift. The meaning of life is the celebration of existing. Don’t let meaningless unimportant quibbles cloud your mind and become the movie that you become caught up in all your life. Gain some valuable perspective by realizing that the mirror is not clear. It clouds the mountains and rivers as if seen through polluted smog. Therefore, cultivate an awareness of the very wonder of your own existence and let go of opinions. Mostly they are imperfect and limited generalizations that do not server you well at all.

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My Kim Chee Experiment

Stephen — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 07:26:45 +0000

photo credit: stevendepolo

Recently, here at home, we had a humongous Chinese cabbage in the fridge that needed to be used. If you’ve read Balanced Existence for any period of time you’d know I love to experiment and try new things. Experimentation is a wonderful way to open up our world and to learn. So I decided to put this huge cabbage to good use and make a spicy Korean pickled and fermented cabbage dish called Kim Chee.

If you don’t know much about Kim Chee it is so big in Korea they sent it into space with Korean astronauts. It amazes me how many traditional cultures make a big use of cabbage in their diet. Further, many cultures have traditionally allowed cabbage to ferment. This fermentation process produces healthy bacteria for your gut much like a modern day probiotic. We humans literally enjoy a symbiotic relationship with bacteria. They are very important for us to be able to absorb the nutrition in the food we eat, they help with the intestine movement that moves digestive matter and waste through the body and help keep our immune system functioning optimally.

Today, there is such a huge problem with fungus and yeast (yeast is a type of fungus and the one that cause my migraines and other health problems until I eliminated it) thanks in part to antibiotics, alcohol, over consumption of starchy carbohydrates such as grains and sugar. Fungus competes with bacteria in our bodies. Antibiotics are actually poisons produced by fungus to kill bacteria. As with anything balance is where health can be found. An imbalance between fungus and bacteria means they will no longer keep each other in check and many seemingly unrelated health problems is generally the result.

How to Make Kim Chee
For my Kim Chee I used one very large Chinese cabbage, good quality unprocessed sea salt, ginger, garlic, onion and ground cayenne pepper.

To begin I cut up the cabbage into pieces about 1.5 inches wide. Just think bite sized. These pieces of cabbage are then put into a big bowl with 4 cups of salt water. To make the salt water I used 1 tablespoon of salt to 1 cup of water. The cabbage is then allowed to sit in the salt water, turning occasionally for approximately 6 hours. Afterward pour the brine off but do not wash the cabbage. It should be salty but not unpleasantly so.

At this point I was surprised at just how good raw slightly pickled cabbage actually tastes. It was pretty good to eat right then and there. Once the water was drained off I added what amounted to roughly 5 tablespoons of finely shredded fresh ginger root. Together with a whole thinly sliced head of garlic, some thinly sliced onion and two tablespoons of cayenne pepper powder. If you’re not one for hot food I would suggest you go real easy on the cayenne or chili. You might like to start with just a tablespoon or even less for your first try.

I mixed this all up with my hands and then packed it all down into a big glass jar I had in the cupboard. You might like to soak your glass jar in boiling or very hot water before you put your fresh Kim Chee into it. If there is any liquid in the bottom of the bowl be sure to put this into the jar. Now sit your big jar of Kim Chee on a plate somewhere by the kitchen sink and let it stand for a day or so with the lid on. If you see some bubbles form you can release these by running a butter knife around the edge. Then you can put the jar into the fridge where it should keep for a couple of weeks. Honestly though I doubt it will last that long because if you’re anything like me you’ll eat it all way before it has a chance to go off! The Kim Chee is good to eat straight away. However as it begins to ferment the flavor will begin to change and evolve.

So there you have it. Honestly, it is dead simple. There are probably endless variations you could try including adding other vegetables such as Carrot. The Kim Chee you make can be used in soups, in stir fry or eaten as a side dish. I enjoyed eating mine as a snack simply with cheese or with some meat.

More on the Benefits of Kim Chee
Kim Chee is high in fiber and low in calories. One single serving can provide up to 80% of the daily recommended dosage of vitamin C and carotene. Thanks to the use of onions, garlic, ginger and chili or cayenne pepper Kim Chee is rich in vitamin A, B1, B2, Calcium, and Iron as well as containing lactic acid bacteria. Health magazine named Kim Chee in its list of the world’s top five healthiest foods for being rich in vitamins, aiding digestion, and possibly reducing cancer.

I used cayenne pepper because it’s great for the digestive system and the heart and it has been suggested that cayenne increases the effectiveness of other herbs when used with them. Cayenne has been known to rebuild stomach tissue, aid in elimination and assimilation and help create hydrochloric acid for good digestion and assimilation.

Garlic possesses potent anti-fungal and antibacterial properties and ginger is amazingly good for you. I’ll leave you to do your own searching into Ginger. You might also be interested to read about how a fellow managed to cure his stage 4 cancer in just a few weeks at very little expense using natural ingredients. Some of which you can put into and enjoy in your Kim Chee.

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Relaxation of Mind and Body

Stephen — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 01:58:57 +0000

photo credit: h.koppdelaney

Relaxation is the absence of unnecessary effort. Resistance to situations and the flow of existence is unnecessary effort. Resistance is non-freedom. This is so because resistance is reactionary. Anything reactionary is bound to events. If one is bound one cannot be said to be free.

When a person is free they are able to move through life with less mental tension, worries, uptightness and fear. These properties or states of the mind generate fatiguing physical tension which feeds back into the mental state. The potential for a downward spiral increases. Momentum can be a hard thing to arrest.

While Descartes may have differentiated mind and body into two distinct categories the experiential and observable truth is these things are not separate. So called tension of the mind associated with worrying thoughts occurs concurrently with tension in the abdomen or elsewhere in the body. This type of phenomena occurs to such an extent that in essence the two cannot be delimitated.

I once mentioned to someone that the way they were was a result of what they ate. Literally, you are what you eat. Another person replied that they believed a person is what they think. I do not see these statements as two mutually exclusive ideas. To me they are two sides of the same coin. Literally, you are what you think and your world is what you think of it. If you happen to not think anything of it, having no opinion for or against, then things just are as they are.

What you eat directly affects your physical chemistry and composition. This affects the apparatus of consciousness and thus affects how you think. Eat crap food and chances are your thinking will be crap to. Nothing is happening in a vacuum. It is my opinion that everything should be treated as a drug. The food you eat, the fluid you drink, the air you breath, the environment you live in, the company you keep and the media you consume. All these things alter your consciousness and your physicality. For better or for worse.

Similarly, as I’ve already described what a person thinks will affect their physicality. Think in a focused, deliberate and calm manner and you body will be calm. Think panicked thoughts and the body panics to. Physically breathe deep and slow and mind calms. It is, I feel, easier to alter physical behavior than it is to alter mental behavior. So I like to use the physical as a guide to lead the mental where I want it to go.

Mind and matter. They are not two and not one. Mind and matter are both one and two. This broader type of inclusive perspective brings great insight into the nature of life and the art of living. Yin and Yang are two forces and yet they are also one. Balance does not necessarily always mean equal and growth often occurs when things are out of balance.

Anything can be broken down, such as your being into mind and the body. The mind has been further broken down into conscious and unconscious and so forth. However, consider for a moment the conditioning impact the idea that consciousness and physicality are distinctly separate has had on your life and how you experience the world. Now look at your hand and make a fist. Consciousness is clearly deeply entwined with matter. Not two and not one. Distinctions with their power to separate are of limited usefulness particularly when they dominate perception without holistic perspective to balance the scale.

So my message is for you to learn, grow, wonder and celebrate life. Learn to perceive how things fit into a bigger picture. Practice considering the other side of the coin. And there almost always is an other side. However, most of all begin practicing the art of relaxation by letting go of unnecessary effort. In time your life will become less a fearful battle tinged with quiet desperation and more a relaxed flow.

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Foods That Fight Q&A

Stephen — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 10:55:31 +0000

In response to my two articles on food combining for health: Foods that Fight and The How and Why of Foods that Fight I received some good questions from a reader. Specifically the question was regarding some practical ideas for what to eat using breakfast as the example.

I can sympathize with the feeling of not knowing what on earth to eat given the principles of food combining or the discovery of food allergies. I’ve been through both and to begin with it seemed impossible. However, I’m here to tell you that once you get through it you’ll have no idea how you managed to live the way you did. That is, the way you are living right now. It really is a case of whatever you get used to.

As I mentioned in Foods that Fight that almost all if not all foods contain a mix of protein and carbohydrates. The key point is to not mix HIGH starch/sugar foods with HIGH protein foods.

So as a breakfast example using items I have here at home 60g of whole oats contains approx 6g of protein and 36g of carbs. A 250ml (1 cup) serve of milk contains 8g of protein and 12g carbs. Combined in say oatmeal you have 48g carbs and 14g protein. The amount of protein is less than 30% the amount of carbs. It is also a reasonably small amount of protein to begin with and it may come as a surprise that milk has more carbs than protein.

The same sort of thing goes with cheese on the bagel, one of the reader’s breakfast examples. It’s a small amount of cheese to begin with and not a huge ratio of protein in that small amount of cheese.

Fruit such as blueberries and raspberries or apple go well with yogurt, which in my fridge a 200g serve of yogurt contains 12.8g or protein and 11g of carbs. Roughly even in the one food source and not high given the total number of grams in either case. Berries or apple goes well with yogurt.

Personally, my breakfast is more often than not 2 lightly poached free range eggs and raw spinach or broccoli perhaps with raw walnuts or almonds. It takes less than 5 minutes to put together. About as long as it takes to cook and butter some toast and a whole lot better in my experience and opinion. Other days it’ll just be a green apple with some raw nuts (not peanuts).

My advice is to experiment and listen to your body. For you personally your own anecdotal evidence trumps whatever science or I have to say every time. I’ll warn you that to begin with this food combining may leave you feeling as if you haven’t eaten enough because you’re not feeling “full”. The full feeling that comes from eating something like steak and mashed potatoes is more bloat than nutritionally satisfied.

You may also begin to worry that you’re not eating enough food. This is because you’ll be able to absorb nutrients better than before and thus require less food bulk. We don’t become hungry because of a lack of matter in the stomach or digestive system. We become hungry because our bodies need nutrition.

This is why we can eat high calorie yet nutritionally empty modern processed foods and still feel hungry. The body is crying for nutrition so a person in this condition consumes more and as total calories in is greater than total calories out they gain weight in the form of fat. From there a whole host of problems may cascade.

Conclusion
I hope this article has helped answer some questions some of you may have had regarding food combining for health. If you would like to know more or have questions relating to any other article on Balanced Existence feel free to leave a comment under that specific article and I’ll do my best to answer.

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The How & Why of Foods That Fight

Stephen — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 07:49:13 +0000

photo credit: Ende

In my previous article - Foods that Fight - I introduced the principle of food combining for health. That is, one should not combine starchy or sugary food with food that in high in protein in the one meal. Today I would like to go a little deeper into the how and why of this principle for better health and quality of life.

Protein requires an acid medium in order to be digested. The production of hydrochloric acid is stimulated when protein is consumed and enters the stomach. This activates the enzyme pepsin which has the function of splitting and digesting protein. Incidentally, seasoning your steak with pepper aids digestion because pepper stimulates the production of hydrochloric acid in the stomach. Also if you are dehydrated your body may not have enough water available to produce adequate amounts of hydrochloric acid and you’ll experience problems such as heartburn and reflux.

Starches and sugars on the other hand require an alkaline medium for digestion. This begins in the mouth with chewing and saliva which contains the enzyme ptyalin which acts to split the starches into lower forms before entrance into the small intestine. Where the main digestion of starches takes place. All starches must be chewed very well otherwise the small intestine cannot complete proper digestion.

So here we have two primary types of food both of which many people eat at most meals in combination together. And yet protein requires one type of environment to be digested and starches a radically different environment. When high proteins and high starches such as steak and potatoes are mixed at one meal there is too much acid for the necessary alkaline digestion of the starch portion and too little acid for adequate digestion of the protein portion.

The Result of Consuming Foods that Fight
The most obvious result is very poor absorption of vital nutrients. We’re made up of and fuel the quality of our daily existence not of the the food and drink we put down our throat but the nutrition we are able to absorb from that food and drink along with the air we breathe. Intestinal discomfort and constipation is another result of consuming foods that fight in the same meal. Yet another is fermentation of the starches. A byproduct of fermentation is alcohol. Ever woken up feeling like you’ve got a hangover when you haven’t actually been drinking the night before?

The thing with modern degenerative diseases and cancer is that they creep up on people. These debilitating and deadly conditions do not just happen over night. They take time and have their roots firmly planted in lifestyle and diet. I remember watching a lecture given by Paul Chek in which he explained that inflammation was about four steps along the path to death. If I remember the next step was pain and the final one was death.

Some of the biggest causes of inflammation in the body include refined carbohydrates, sugar, alcohol, smoking and stress. Sound familiar? Today’s article is one reason why I strongly believe that a “cure” for cancer will never be discovered by medical science. The cure is a lifestyle that brings out our genetic strengths rather than encouraging our genetic weaknesses. And the necessary lifestyle is becoming harder and harder to manifest. Similarly modern diseases continue to kill more and more people. Many of us don’t live longer. We simply take longer to die.

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Foods that Fight

Stephen — Wed, 27 May 2009 14:17:20 +0000

photo credit: foodistablog

Today I would like to share with you a very fundamental and simple nutritional principle that can have a significant effect on the quality of your health and daily life. I came across this principle when I was very sick with chronic fatigue and had been seeing a number of different alternative health practitioners due to the utter failure of medical doctors. One of the very knowledgeable and experienced people I was seeing gave me a little book about the principle of food combining.

This principle is very simple and easy to implement. It is likely the very first health change I introduced to my partner a number of years ago. She started to follow it and once she did anytime she deviated from it she really felt the negative effects of combining foods that fight. To test the truth of this nutritional principle all you have to do is experiment on yourself by testing it for 14 days. Afterward return to how you normally have eaten and take note of how you feel.

The Principle
The principle is dead simple:

“Do not consume protein with starches and sugars in the same meal.”

Protein refers to meat, fish, cheese and poultry. Starches and sugar refers to grains, bread and cereals, potatoes and sugars. While meat might contain some carbohydrates it is in the form of glycogen and requires little digestion and does not therefore interfere with the conditions necessary for protein digestion. It is similar with grains and starchy vegetables such as potatoes. The protein in grains only amount to about 10 percent, they are incomplete and are not concentrated as it is in meat.

So if you’re anything like I once was you probably eat meat and potatoes or some form of concentrated protein with something like pasta on a regular basis. While you may have built up a tolerance to this type of eating it is, irregardless, making you sick. Stop combining protein with starches and sugars in the same meal for approximately 14 days to remove the tolerance. Then try eating some steak with baked or mashed potato and listen to what your body has to say about what you’re doing to it. And have been doing to it for a long time.

Please note: Starches does not refer to fibrous vegetables such as broccoli, spinach, celery and so forth. These vegetables are perfectly fine to eat with protein. The key culprits are grains in bread and pasta and starchy root vegetables such as potatoes.

In the second part of this article - The How & Why of Foods that Fight - I’ll explain the how and why of foods that fight and the results of doing so. If you haven’t already done so you might like to subscribe so that you can receive the latest Balanced Existence articles directly in your email.

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To Have Self-Discipline You Must Practice It

Stephen — Thu, 14 May 2009 03:26:25 +0000

photo credit: kaibara87

This article follows on from How to Successfully Complete a Complex Undertaking in which I discussed the importance of methodologies, the importance of predetermined structured approaches to successfully solving problems and completing large complex projects. In that article I mentioned self-discipline one of the most important keys to being successful at just about any complex long-term endeavor.

Exercise is a perfect setting for the practice of multilevel planning and self-discipline. First you need an overarching goal. If it is something like “get fit” or “lose some weight” you’re going to fail. You will not actually be able to determine when you’ve achieved such a poorly defined goal or measure progress. You will be unable to focus on exactly what is necessary to produce results and will end up wasting time doing all manner of things that don’t take you in any meaningful direction. Or you’ll end up not doing anything at all.

Your goal may be completely arbitrary. It doesn’t matter. Whatever it is it must be precise and you must have a plan that will carry you towards it and you must exercise self-disciple and stick with the plan - day to day, week to week, month to month. Finish the plan and compare where you’re at to where you would like to be. Learn from the experience so as to devise a new plan and keep going. Given time and self-discipline that gives rise to consistent effort anyone can become uncommonly strong and amazingly conditioned.

“Physical strength is the most important thing in life. This is true whether we want it to be or not. As humanity has developed throughout history, physical strength has become less critical to our daily existence, but no less important to our lives. Our strength, more than any other thing we possess, still determines the quality and the quantity of our time here in these bodies. Whereas previously our physical strength determined how much food we ate and how warm and dry we stayed, it now merely determines how well we function in these new surroundings we have crafted for ourselves as our culture has accumulated. But we are still animals - our physical existence is, in the final analysis, the only one that actually matters. A weak man is not as happy as that same man would be if he were strong. This reality is offensive to some people who would like the intellectual or spiritual to take precedence. It is instructive to see what happens to these very people as their squat strength goes up.”

- Mark Rippetoe, Starting Strength

Using myself as an example I have a goal to deadlift 400lbs at a body weight below 175lbs and to participate in an enticer triathlon both before the end of this year. For the deadlift goal I have a program where I deadlift 5 days a week for 2 sets of 5 reps. The first set is the work set and the second set which I complete about 5 minutes after the first is 90% of the weight of the first set.

During a deadlift cycle lasting 3 weeks I increase the weight every day I lift by 5lbs until I pass my previous 5 rep max by about 10 - 20lbs. Then I enjoy a back-off week and begin a new cycle by dropping the weight back down to 10 - 20lbs heavier than where I began the previous cycle and I work up again.

This program is really dead simple. Follow it as written and you’ll become strong. However there are days when it gets boring. There are days when I just don’t feel like it. I’m tired, busy or disinterested and want to do something else like power cleans or Zercher squats or just sit and meditate or read a book instead. Such days are perfect times to practice self-discipline and just get out there and get it done.

In three cycles of the above deadlift program I now need more weight because I finished off the third cycle using all 325lbs of the Olympic weight set I bought. Previously I had no real deadlifting experience and I haven’t lift weights other than kettlebells for at least 10 years.

I expect that as soon as I get my hands on more weight I’ll quickly hit a double bodyweight 5 rep max (350lbs). My original goal when I first started was to deadlift 300lbs for 5 reps and deadlift double my bodyweight for a single rep. When I realized that I would achieve that goal very quickly I upped the goal. I moved the target. If you find your expectation was too low change your expectations. Don’t settle for mediocrity.

So what we have here is a small example of just what is possible if you set a specifically clear and measurable goal, develop a plan that takes you day by day closer to your goal and then forget it all and just do what the plan calls for each day. One day at a time. With a solid methodology the seemingly impossible becomes possible. If you know you lack self-discipline than start with something simple and relatively easy and use it to practice self-discipline. When you’ve been busy, you’re tired or disinterested do it anyway. Suck it up and use the situation as an opportunity to practice self-discipline.

If you don’t then many meaningful things in life will largely fall outside your reach and you’ll move through life with a potential unfulfilled. Nothing of value is going to be handed to you in life. Don’t blame situations, other people or the world in general for being the way it is. If you don’t achieve what you want to achieve it is your fault. You are the one who is responsible.

Really, just like the deadlift program it is dead simple. However, if you don’t provide yourself with structure the mind will do what it does best and simply leap about like a mad stream of conscious monkey. Momentarily fascinated but never staying still long enough for anything of significance to occur. The monkey is not you. It’s just what happens when you think you are the monkey.

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How to Successfully Complete a Uniquely Complex Undertaking

Stephen — Sun, 10 May 2009 02:10:17 +0000

photo credit: kwerfeldein

A subject I’m currently studying as part of a Master of Technology (Business Systems Design & Management) degree is Business Systems Project Management. In doing so I’ve come to understand the importance of methodologies, the importance of predetermined structured approaches to successfully solving problems and completing large complex projects. That is, having a structured overarching approach that serves to guide how you go about complex and unique tasks that has through extensive past experience been found to lead to success.

Today I would like to share my methodology for success at University or College level study. It’s what I learned by doing and it works. The beauty of a methodology is it can be a model for excellence and is available to be applied by anyone and is not restricted to university study alone.

The approach I’m about to talk about can be applied to a vast array of endeavors that appear overwhelmingly huge and complex. Whether you’re unhealthy, overweight and physically weak and want to be a picture of health and strength or you are struggling financially and have dreams of building a business empire. It doesn’t matter.

Transforming your situation or some part of your self, physical or otherwise, from one state to another state generally speaking requires a structured and persistent approach. Specific transformation is unlikely to occur if you do not go about setting up the proper causes for the effect you wish to produce. Just doing whatever and hoping for the best is unlikely to disturb the inertia of the status quo.

Self-Discipline
This is one of the most important keys to being successful at just about any complex long-term endeavor. Be it a university degree, becoming a good dancer, becoming a good fighter, painting, composing music, writing, becoming physically strong, being athletic, climbing a remote and dangerous mountain or producing a deep inner transformation. Closely connected with self-discipline is perseverance and self-sufficiency.

Unfortunately at some point any enthusiasm you may have for a task or goal will wane and that’s when self-discipline comes in. Some days you just have to make yourself sit down, ignore all distractions and the other things you’d rather be doing and make a start on whatever currently needs doing to take you another step closer. I’ve found that once I get going it’s easier to keep going and I quickly get a lot done. The hard part is starting but knowing that it gets easier once you start makes it easier to overcome that barrier and just start.

How to Avoid Becoming Overwhelmed
If you think about a university subject as a whole or even a whole degree the task seems enormous and impossible. So you have to break down the current study period into weeks and each week what needs doing and develop a schedule of tasks for each day of each week on Sunday night or Monday morning. Then it’s a simple case of just doing one reading on one day and doing some homework questions on another day and working a little on an assignment on another day.

There will be days when you may find yourself repulsed at the very thought of doing university work (say it’s a reading). At these times simply think to yourself that you’ll just read one paragraph or one page. When you finish that paragraph or page then just read one more page. It’s only one page right? It will not take very long. And that’s how you get through a massive undertaking like a degree, one seemingly insignificant bite at a time.

So plan what you need to do overall, such as when you’re going to attempt certain subjects and within each subject plan what needs to be done each week such as when you’re assignments are due and so forth. Write it all down so you can dump all that information out of your head. Then you can focus on the simple small tasks (like reading a page) one at a time and it’ll feel a lot less stressful and overwhelming.

Conclusion
For me the most important thing I learnt from completing my degree is what I’ve just described. With consistent effort over time the seemingly impossible becomes possible and is achieved. This lesson is applicable to a great many things in life and I think can only be learnt by doing it. In the next article I’ll provide examples regarding how you can develop your self-discipline through simple mundane means. This is because to have self-discipline when it really counts you must have practiced it.

If you don’t practice self-discipline when it comes time to really knuckle down and get through difficulty there is a good chance you will fail. It’s like the average male who thinks for some reason just because they are male and of a certain size that they can fight. This is a fantasy.

Such people quickly discover when put in front of a person who has spent years training to fight that they really have no idea about fighting at all and no actual ability in this arena. If you have not trained to fight it will not go well for you when it comes time to fight a real opponent. Similarly, if you have not trained your self-discipline your poorly placed confidence will be exposed for what it is and you will fail.

You can now read my follow up to this article - To Have Self-Disciple You Must Practice It.

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