Archive for June, 2011
Downloads Unwrapped June 2011
Read June's Inspired Minds newsletter here.
Downloads Unwrapped - June 2011
How to exercise restraint
Exercise addiction can lead to chronic ill health and can, ironically, lead to loss of fitness as well as loss of health. (1) As with any 'fix', the addict might feel irritable and restless when they miss a workout or haven't managed to get out for that run. The problem with addiction (any addiction) is that it comes to dominate one's life. Do we exercise to live? Or live to exercise? We all need to exercise to some extent. As we age we start, through a combination of inactivity and natural processes, to lose muscle mass, leaving us more open to injury and illness. And muscle mass burns fat extremely efficiently, so when we lose muscle we get saggy. But there are dangers to over exercising, particularly of 'chronic cardio' (as Mark Sissons of marksdailyapple.com describes it). Too much exercise with too little rest can overload the repair systems of the body, meaning loss of vital muscle, the onset of mood disorder and the impairment of the immune system. The 'some is good so more must be better' attitude can lead to an overdose of exercise which can be very damaging. (2)
Overcome exercise addiction instils a sense of proportion about exercise so that it becomes a part of life rather than the sole purpose of living.
Have we got news for you!
Talking of compulsive activities I, for one, have to consciously regulate my intake of news. Constantly feeling we have to know about every single update on national or international news starts to feel like addiction. What's more, when, for whatever reason, we are denied our news fix, it can come to feel as if we are having a withdrawal. Why is this? It's because the 'expectation and reward' neural pathways in the brain operate the same way regardless whether it's nicotine or news coming down the wire. But apart from not wanting to be enslaved by an activity - any activity - too much news can actually be bad for you.
An awful lot of news is negative, scary, horrific and downright depressing. But how much of it is really 'news'? How many stories you see or hear or read are just the same 'news' you saw or heard or read half an hour earlier? Seeing, reading, hearing about the same things over and over - especially if they are emotionally arousing - has a conditioning effect on the brain. Before we know it we can start to feel dispirited or even traumatised by the unremitting negative cast of news bulletins. News can be 'hypnotic' in the worst sense. Now I'm all for being well informed and knowing about stuff. But I'm also for balance and dosage. News once a day should be enough for anyone and if it's that important to you then you will hear about it. The Overcome news addiction addresses news addiction to free up time and widen perspective.
Excuses: A lie by any other name
"Excuses are the tools with which people with no purpose in view build for themselves great monuments of nothing." Steven Grayhm
Using excuses in an attempt to cover up personal laziness, fear or habit is like trying to hide an elephant with confetti. No one is really fooled. Not for long, anyway. But the worst use of excuse is when we try to deceive ourselves with it. At this point we've travelled some considerable distance from integrity. The new No excuses download is here to help people start to honestly see when 'reasons' are nothing more that 'excuses' and, of course, to help listeners start to ditch their own excuses so that they can actually get on and take action in life.
Once excuses are gone life becomes more honest, full and successful. We suddenly know where we are really 'at' - and the feeling is of profound relief. But we can also be too ready to make excuses for other people's bad behaviour and this tendency means we conspire to keep other people from fulfilling some of their potential for decency and personal progress. Down with excuses!
Notes
(1) For example see: D.R. Swanson "Arterial Fibrillation in Athletes" which suggests that over training and the inflammation it causes or at least contributes to a whole host of physical disorders (Medical Hypotheses 66, no 6 (2006): 1085-92
(2) See Doug McGuff MD and John Little's excellent and thoroughly researched book: Body By Science: A research based program for strength training, body building and complete fitness in 12 minutes a week
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Be a winner
Full hypnosis download Be a winner
Anyone might be unlucky enough to get mugged, but it’s also been found that people who feel like victims, who give out a ‘vibe’ of weakness and supplication, are more likely to be targeted. It’s not so much how big you look as how much of a fight you look as if you’d put up.
I love watching sports and you often see it. One person can be losing but they still look like a winner. Because they feel like one. If they have done the training and practice and worked on their game as much as their opponent, no matter what the sport, then the one remaining differential is attitude.
Feeling as if winning is a natural part of who you are and what you do will have an effect on outcome. We have just upgraded the Be a winner download and we’re sure that its going to be even more powerful in helping sports people (whether pro or weekend participants) sense that winning edge.
All the very best
Mark
All or nothing thinking
Full hypnosis download All or nothing thinking
‘All or nothing thinking’ or ‘black or white thinking’ is both a symptom of emotional distress and problems but also a cause of such problems. Take perfectionism. To the perfectionist, something or someone must be completely perfect or else it/they are completely worthless. This ‘strategy’ contributes to relationship problems and can lead to the onset of depression because it creates a constant stream of bad feelings and also stops people trying new things that might benefit them because perfection might not be reached.
Life is rarely ‘all this’ or ‘completely that’. There are shades of grey. Depressed, addicted, anxious and angry people are forced through strong emotion to see life in simplified black/white ways. Think who you’ve heard saying things like:
“My life is a disaster!”“Nothing ever works out for me!”
“These people are evil!”
“If I don’t get my fix my life will be ruined!”
All or nothing thinking is also all around us in the media, because it can make things seem exciting and it sells. “Mother in law ruined my life!” will sell more magazines than “Mother in law sometimes made family gatherings a bit difficult!” Politicians use all or nothing speech to make their appeals more emotional and simplistically gripping. Hitler was (sadly) renowned for making emotionally arousing all or nothing statements, with horrendous effect. But being too all or nothing on a personal level, too much of the time, can also cause us problems.
Much of a therapist’s job is to help people think more calmly - and therefore more subtly. Strong feelings generate this kind of thinking, so rather than just tackling the thinking itself head on (in the hope that changing the thinking will change the feeling), the new All or nothing thinking hypnosisdownloads.com session works to calm down feeling so that it feels more natural to begin to think in new less damaging ways.
All the best
Mark
