Author Archives: Mind Soul

Concentration Trainging from the Art of Manliness

I’m a very big fan of the Art of Manliness. Not only does this blog promote being manly, it also promotes very positive humanity things to benefit ourselves and our loved ones. I highly suggest reading some of their articles, or subscribing to their maillist and starting there.

This article I really appreciate because it touches on a few subjects I am very concerned with here at Exercise and Mind.

Exercising the body is a very important practice for us humans, it increases our abilities as humans to withstand much more stress, not to mention increases our well being. But the same practices are often overlooked with exercising the mind.

Hopefully you’ll gather some great tips from this article.

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Your Concentration Training Program: 11 Exercises That Will Strengthen Your Attention

You’ll never get big muscles from sitting on the couch all day, and you’ll never develop amazing powers of concentration from exclusively reading Buzzfeed and watching Tosh.O. Your mind muscles, just like your physical muscles, need resistance; they need challenges that stretch their limits and in so doing, grow their focus fibers. Below we outline exercises that will beef up your focus so that you can start lifting heavier and heavier cognitive loads.

1. Increase the strength of your focus gradually. If you decide you want to physically get in shape, but are starting at ground zero, the worst thing you can do is to throw yourself into an extreme training program – you’ll end up injured, discouraged, or both, and you’ll quit before you even really get started. Continue reading →

Fasting, not Cleansing

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You see, I’m a faster. I do fasts once or twice a year as I see fit.

I don’t cleanse, or that is to say I haven’t put myself onto a cleanse yet. They fascinate me, and I value the.. flushing they do, but my reasoning for not doing a cleanse rather than a fast is because I eat healthy and try to keep myself fairly free of toxicity in the first place, all year long, for life…

But fasting is a different bird, in a way.

Fasting for me isn’t about physically cleaning my system, though it does more or less force my system to tap into any resource my body has available to it.

Fasting is about mental strength for me. Fasting makes me release the desire of hunger from my mind. Fasting forces me to walk down the path or street (because it’s important to stay a bit active) and repeatedly tell myself that the strength I require to continue walking comes from my mind first and foremost. Fasting encourages me to be aware of every ounce of energy that my body uses, which also encourages me to be very aware of how I am spending the energy that my body does have. It’s kind of the same feeling one gets when they start a long hike; the feeling of pacing yourself.

Another thing that makes me appreciate fasting, is it encourages me to fully recognize every ounce of anything I’m consuming as a human in my day to day: from paper to garbage to heating the house. I like being aware of this. These are important things to me.

I feel, in the end, being aware of all of these things makes me a stronger human. This inner dialog that would otherwise sit dormant is entirely necessary for exercising the mind.

Have you ever fasted, or taken on a cleanse? Do you feel the same as I do? What is important for you to focus on while fasting? And also, are there any tricks, rituals or special practices you do for yourself while on the fast, like find meditation multiple times a day?

I’m very interested to hear.

Oh, and today is day two of a five day fast. 🙂

Humanity vs. Hyperlinks

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You see, as we lose our humanity we begin to increase our automation. Everything is a get rich quick scheme, that if we just follow this strategy a few lucky early catcher-on-ers had the fortune to mastermind, we will be just as successful!

But in reality, for the rest of us that aren’t staring in some website promo add, it’s not like that.

Automating a tweet about your latest promotion, 3 times a day, for even just 3 days in a row is too much for most people.

It’s almost like the domino effect. So BIG AWESOME COMPANY is doing it, we see that BIG AWESOME COMPANY appears to be successful, so let me do it. Let me follow their successful strategy. We’re not the only people seeing this, everybody loves BIG AWESOME COMPANY. Everybody want’s to follow their strategy to success.

Who’s doing it better? Who has the more effective method?

What is missing in the first place is that gap between startup and BIG AWESOME COMPANY. BIG AWESOME COMPANY started as a startup, built the following and loyal fans, and became BIG AWESOME COMPANY through strategic operations and planning.

Sure you can act the part, you can even spend the part, but the only way to really be the part is to put in the ground work, gain that following of loyalty through engagement and appreciation, and build your name organically.

If you have a bottomless wallet, I guess it’s another game all together.

Loyalty is big though. Apple certainly has a bigger loyalty base than Blackberry. Lulu Lemon certainly has a bigger customer loyalty than the Gap. Have you ever wondered why people buy brand name rather than Presidents Choice no-name brand?

What you’ve been sold is a success story. What you haven’t been sold is hard work, commitment, humanity, and meaning.

It’s your game in the end, but this is customer service & satisfaction.

Presenting With Your Best Foot

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As much as we want to throw in the face of any nay-sayers that it’s not what’s on the cover, it’s what’s inside, there is no denying the simple fact that this just doesn’t have 100% validity.

Well, it does and it doesn’t.

You see, Impressions are.. a lot, but not everything.

[first] Impressions catch eyes, invite conversation, spread the word, approve, and in some ways validate. On the other hand, impressions can also discredit, dissuade, disapprove, or scare.

The thing that befuddles me the most, is when the opportunity to present that best foot presents itself, and the presenter is either not prepared or choosing to live by a different set of social dynamics.

It really is a choice, a game, for you to play your own unique way.

My advice is to be wary of how you want to play it.

Commitment and Intention

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Committing is perhaps one of the scariest things we face as humans.

Do I want to commit to this vehicle for the next 6 years? Do I want to commit to this smart phone plan for 2 years?

Further, the I cannot’s. I cannot commit to my exercise schedule. I cannot commit to you’re needs full time. I cannot commit to this project. I cannot make plans that far in advance.

By no means am I saying that evaluating the tough decision ahead is a bad thing. In fact, I think an evaluation is very necessary almost always on a regular basis to keep yourself and your actions aligned with your intentions.

This is our life, these are our days, the present is now. There isn’t a moment in our life when we shouldn’t be moving with intention, with care, with awareness. The only thing we’re guaranteed is that right now this is happening. Let’s not squander this.

Getting into the shower in the morning, do it gracefully and magically. Making coffee, every scoop of coffee should be exactly measured to eye and placed into the press with a touch of flair. Shoveling the driveway, don’t just push the snow aside; design a fantasy world.

How present we are in our world is what makes us humans uniquely so. How conscious we are of every fine detail in life.

The choice is up to you, how do you want to draw your desires? Commit with intent.

I Am Your Market

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Or am I your target? Or am I your audience? Or do I put my money where my mouth is?

Or do I distract you? Or am I just another voice looking for validation? Should I be heard?

We all have processeses, steps to life for life that have become familiar, that have begun to feel like they’re fairly necessary (especially marketing strategies).

Are they?

I would say it’s the wise person who is conscious not only of what they are doing (if you are doing it, make sure you’re doing it with a valiant effort) but why we are doing it.

Desire map, goal set, target alignment, reality check, take a step back and identify the filler.

It might be a nice step to become familiar with – if you are doing it, make sure you’re doing it with a valiant effort.

Present is Presence

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It may be an old axiom beaten around the bush, but presence is a truly remarkable state.

If you cry, you are feeling. If you help you are building. If you wait you are respecting. If you hold you are encouraging. If you are aware you are present.

Present isn’t just now. It’s really not. Now is far too restricting.

My friend Brian Thompson, aka. Thorny Bleeder just reminded me of satori in his recent Medium post on the unfolding of happiness. Though he was talking about taking the steps to ensure happiness will have the ground to awaken within, I feel that presence can also lead to happiness.

What’s it called when you accept what happens, when you recognize beyond verbally expressed explanation the caveats of a situation? What’s it called when you bob and dip with the punches?

What’s it called when you do take precious moments to acknowledge little things in life that can easily be – and very often are – missed?

Whatever that’s called, that’s where it comes from. That’s where presence resides. I also believe that’s where happiness builds.

Left Brained, Right Brained, Center Brained, My Brained

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Perhaps you’re the kind of person that likes to identify with trends, use labels, associate activities with certain characteristics.

To be able to quickly and easily identify people with a label and then be startled when sometime in the future your prejudices are shattered doesn’t sound too open and willing to me, but perhaps I’m being prejudiced.

A friend of mine just called me ’emo’ because I said I wanted the slowest and most emotional music possible. She thinks I’m about to cry now. All I can think is how unfortunate it is that she has now lost all abilities to experience the very beautiful music I was listening to.

I just read this piece on The Guardian debunking the myth that there is no such thing as the left brain and right brain. There is no isolation. They work in unison. There is no separation, and has never been. And in fact, the separation has apparently never been proven by research, it’s just psychologist looking for catch-all phrases to characterize people.

The most important message from this article was the last paragraph.

What research has yet to refute is the fact that the brain is remarkably malleable, even into late adulthood. It has an amazing ability to reorganize itself by forming new connections between brain cells, allowing us to continually learn new things and modify our behavior. Let’s not underestimate our potential by allowing a simplistic myth to obscure the complexity of how our brains really work. ~Amy Novotney

Letting labels cloud the future is a dangerous proposition. Mind the gap.

Mentally Tough and Small Discomforts

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It’s easy to get lost. To start swimming with the overwhelming nature of more and more and more to do. More people want our attention. More articles to write. More service to provide. More hours at work…

Stress builds up inside us when we try to control our conquering path of each task with utmost attention. Is this necessary?

Perhaps accepting these small discomforts are out of our control (allowing our subordinates to do something without our hawk eyes constantly honed, for example) is a necessary step to conquer?

This initial discomfort slowly dwindles to a cautious reminder, a check point strategically placed to check in and ensure all is aligned as it should.

How do you remind yourself?

Of Course You Can[‘t] Copy

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The thing is, you can’t copy others. Well, of course you can copy others, but what is the point in wasting your time copying others?

Inspiration, on the other hand, comes directly from others, comes from what you see around you, comes from… well, how do you find inspiration?

Take what you see and massage and meld it into a beast so uniquely yours that every time somebody looks at it they inherently know you as a being from what you’ve created.

By no means does this happen instantaneously. Even the Dalai Lama went through years of schooling to learn how to be a Dalai Lama. After years of being the Dalai Lama he understands what it means for him to be aligned with his true message.

A trick I learned many years ago for getting over that feeling of lost for a place to start, then sure, use the first sentence of a book you adore to use as your first sentence of a book you’re making. Sure, use the same curved line in your masterpiece as you see in your favorite masterpiece. I can guarantee that the true artist looking to express itself will take over very rapidly once that flow has begun.

The choice is up to you how radical you want to be.