Key Number Three: What Not to Do

Diets don't work. It is one of the most ineffective ways to lose weight. It involves you depriving yourself of food for weeks or months, denying yourself what you like, and then seeing your goals weight sabotaged the moment it is achieved. What’s curious is that some people put themselves through this all the time! Instead of achieving optimum health and vitality they drain themselves mentally, spiritually, emotionally and physically.

Why don’t diets work? Aren’t you usually thinking about what you want to eat and what you’re not allowed to eat? How can you succeed in achieving anything if you’re focus is on something else?

Depriving yourself is not the answer to achieving long-term health.

When we go on a diet we throw our system into turmoil. Our cells learn to hang onto the sustenance they get because they aren’t sure when they will get more. You teach your body to go into survival mode. Then when you hit your ideal weight, you come off the diet. Your cells don’t know that. All they know is they are getting the substance they weren’t getting. And you’ve taught them how to store up for lean times.

No wonder the weight goes on faster than ever. And no wonder it seems harder to get it off!

Make a commitment to yourself right now to dump harming your body with diets!

Key Number Two: Motion is Emotion

Regular and varied types of exercise creates a “rush” without the need for relying on the foods or drugs that can cause the chemical imbalance we spoke about in Key Number One. By exercising you increase your levels of serotonin, which improves your tolerance of stress and your ability to sleep. It also provides you with more energy and less prone to injury.

If you don’t exercise then you have simply developed the habit not doing it. It doesn’t mean you can’t, it only means you need to develop the habit. If you tell yourself you're not motivated then make it easy to become so… Put on your exercise gear in the morning, and don’t shower or change until you've exercised. Exercise whilst you watch TV, instead of eating. Take the stairs. Walk to work or to the shops. DO whatever it takes to encourage your body and your mind to get used to the new habit.

What are three things you can do to make exercise a priority in your life? How will doing these things benefit your life?

Key Number One: Getting the Balance

We get a natural high in one of two ways- either through adrenalin, which gives you that switched on feeling for short bursts - or from serotonin, which makes you feel calm and comfortable for longer periods. The real high comes from a balance of them both.

There are five main chemicals in your body to think about:

Adrenalin: gives you speed and confidence in busy times.

Serotonin: makes you comfortable, relaxed and happy

Cortisol: is the back up for when you run out of adrenalin, useful for times of enormous stress

Melatonin: is necessary for when you need to sleep deeply

Insulin: is the key to controlling your sugar levels.

How well you sleep is one of the determinants for allowing your body to restore the chemical balance.

A poor diet will create stress in your body, so it’s forced to use emergency system chemicals to suppress appetite and give you what you need to get you through the day. Some foods elevate serotonin levels and others elevate adrenalin.

Exercise also trigger effect. Good fitness means you can manage pressure with less adrenalin. Some exercises increase serotonin production.

How you think influences body chemistry. If you feel fear, adrenaline will activate. Serotonin levels decrease when you are sad. Managing your thoughts is essential for balance of chemistry in your body.

Each of the five chemicals we’ve talked about create a distinct effect on your physiology. If you learn to recognise their effects, you can intervene in the process and manage your emotions.

The adrenaline high can be addictive and gets you going but it isn’t good for serotonin levels. It also dumps sugar into your system so you may suffer from an insulin overreaction.

You’re also in danger of crashing. When you slow down you may notice you get sick. This is because a high on adrenalin falsely maintains your immune system. Slow down and you have a lowered immune system.

Are you an adrenaline junkie?

Do you have a strong desire to be doing something constantly, even on holiday or on weekends?

Are you constantly thinking about what needs to be done?

Does relaxing get you feeling guilty?

Do you feel like rushing in traffic, even when you don’t need to?

Do you fidget?

Do you feel vague sense of depression?

If you answer yes, then perhaps it’s time to reevaluate how you use the chemicals in your body to manage your life? The key is to know when to tap into the adrenalin, because of the hazards of prolonged use of it.

Caffeine, sugar, fatty foods, pressure, “pep” talks can all trigger adrenaline release. The key is to realise when you need it’s there without these “props”.

When you drive, take time out to play CD”s, and when you’re home allow yourself to time to read something other than the page of the newspaper. Learn to have the peak state when it is needed and the rest of your time go into cruise mode. You will ultimately have more energy and feel more capable.

What are three things you could do that would enable you to experience a new level of health and vitality, based on what you have just learnt?

Health and ...

Without health it is difficult to focus on the rest of our lives. Everything diminishes in importance if we are dealing with illness or disease. It takes our energy and our vitality and can even take our joy. Having our health is one of the most important things we can have. It is my number one value, it comes ahead of everything else, including love.

Great health - extraordinary health - about making a commitment to yourself that doesn’t get traded for other ‘priorities”. Consistent action is what gets results, not what we do occasionally.

Health can be defined as a state of complete mental, physical and social well-being. It is not simply the absence of illness or disease, because a person could be just getting by based on how they treat their body.

The Twelve Qualities of Happiness

1. Love. This is the heart of happiness. The best is loving someone else, and is the polar opposite of fear. It is the antidote the fear
2. Optimism. This provides power over painful events. It is more than just thinking positively. It is realising that even the most painful events hold opportunities for lessons. Even more, the more it hurts, the greater the lessons.
3. Courage. The only way to rise above fear is to tap into courage. Fear is hardwired into our neural pathways, and so is courage. It is nature’s way of providing balance and is the quality that allows us to thrive.
4. A Sense of Freedom. When we choose, we define who we are. Everyone has the freedom to choose, and unhappy people don’t know this or they don’t believe it. The truth is, freedom is available to anyone who has the courage to exercise it.
5. Proactivity. Happy people participate in their own destiny and their own happiness. They don’t wish, wait or hope that it comes along. They don’t accept the role of the passive victim, but choose to be the active hero in their own life.
6. Security.  Happy people know that nothing truly last forever. Not money, approval, or even life. Security isn’t measured in a bank account or a calendar, but through feeling secure about who they are and what they stand for. Security for them is an inside job.
7. Health. Health and happiness are interdependent. The most important part of your health is your mood chemistry. You could be happy and not know it if you have an imbalance in the levels of serotonin and dopamine.
8. Spirituality. happy people are willing to go beyond the limits or boundaries of their own lives. Their fear isn’t death, it’s not living a full life.
9. Altruism. Think about the unhappy people you know and notice how self involved they tend to be. Happy people focus on others, not just themselves. They know that this focus feels great, and gives them purpose.
10. Perspective. Unhappy people tend to have a black and white view of life. It either is or it isn’t, there’s not grey, so it’s easy for them to be disappointment. Happy people see the grey, aren’t scared of it, and they keep sight of life’s bigger picture when there are problems.
11. Humor. When we laugh or choose to take ourselves lightly we feel lighter, and our troubles seem further away and less serious. Humor and lightness connects us to our neocortex, and lifts suffering from the heart to a place of empowerment, the only place where there is the power to heal it.
12. Purpose. Happy people know why they are here and are doing what they know they are meant to do.
13. Appreciation. This one quality gets its own banner...We cannot experience fear and appreciation at the same time. Happy people spend time appreciating and being grateful for what is in their lives, who is in their lives and what they are experiencing.

List twenty things that you are happy about and why they make you happy

What’s at least ten things that would make you even more happy if you were to focus on them? i.e I will feel even more happiness when I choose to spend more time walking in the morning.

Remember:

Make sure you word it as it is above each time. I would choose to feel even more happy…

Be sure to choose things, feelings, activities that only you can do or feel. Don’t  leave your happiness up to someone else changing.

You can include what you are no longer going to tolerate, for example, I will feel even more happiness when I choose to clean out my cupboards

I will feel even more happiness when I choose to...

What have you allowed until now to prevent you feeling happiness? Use the twelve keys to happiness to help you with this, For example, have you believe that your health plays no part in your happiness, or ignored the power of appreciation?

Identify and list the areas that you have neglected until now. (i.e. Proactivity, health, appreciation)

What has neglecting these attributes cost you in the past?

If you were to continue to ignore these attributes, what would be the cost on you and your loved ones in the future? What will be the cost on your dreams? How will you feel? What would your life look like if you continued to neglect these attributes?

What do you have to gain by taking on these attributes? How will your life change? How will your attributes to life change if you choose to take on these attributes right now?

What would prevent you taking on all twelve of these attributes? Is it something that is outside of your control and influence? For example, I can’t feel appreciation as long as there are terrorists in the world.

If you externalise the reasons why you can’t, you’re giving up your personal power. What you’re saying is something that is beyond my influence will dictate my life. To change this, ask yourself, “What is within my control and influence now?” The answer is always how we manage our own emotional state. Everything else is always changing.

The only thing that would prevent me doing  this right now is…

The only way to remove an obstacle is to decide it isn't going to be one. What can you decide right now about this excuse, that will allow you to remove it as an obstacle?

Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.

If you were to commit to living a Level 1 life from this moment on, which of the key to happiness would you actively seek to experience in your life?

How will you know you are doing this? What will you notice? What will you do? What will be different?

Happiness and ...

We all have a neurological fear system embedded within our brains. This neural network once helped us survive, but it now can limit our lives… the biological circuitry that once saved us is the number enemy of happiness.

This “fear system” is our storehouse for past trauma, current anxiety, fear of the future and old instinctual terrors. We needed this part of the brain to keep us alive… the instant ability to spring into action at even a threat danger. It became faster with process of rational thought, faster again with the feeling of love. It became faster than any other human action.

We survived, and became hardwired for hard times.

And not in modern times what is good for our survival is bad for happiness and even for our long-term health. So the question is, where do we go from here?

For most of us in modern life, survival is not the cut and thrust of hunt or be hunted. It’s paying the bills, working, coming home. We don’t need that instinctive primal fear to propel us with a clast of adrenaline, yet we can’t get rid of it.

To balance this, we have evolved to possess the human neocortex, which is the primary area for intellect - this is the creative, the intuitive, the intellectual, the spiritual. More importantly, it is the home of happiness.

***Special Note: Most of this section has been learnt through the teaching of Dr. Dan Baker and Cameron Stauth, from the book “You’re Only Six Steps Away From Happiness”. We highly recommend this book as part of your journey.

Giving Up Perfectionism

Perfectionism is a myth. When someone says “I am perfectionist” what I am hearing is that they have no standards. Perfectionism cannot be achieved, so it’s the same as saying you want to achieve the impossible. Yet isn't interesting how much time people spend trying to attain it. Saying we want perfection is really another way of saying I don’t feel confident to say  the task is complete. And isn't that another way of saying I fear not being enough?

Hmmm…

How about instead of focusing on perfection you focus on the results you want to achieve? Giving up the illusion of perfection is one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, because it frees up your energy and time to focus on what really matters.

When people are first introduced to this is they feel a level of fear because they have convinced themselves that it’s necessary to achieve this. Abandoning perfection seems scary because they are unclear about what to replace it with.

The solution is simple. Replace perfection with what it is you really want.