Mind/Body Awareness

Any discussion on feeding our mind the proper nutrition would be remiss without discussing the mind/body connection. Take a look in the mirror… REALLY take a look and be honest. Do you like what you see? If you do, that’s great! Well done! What follows will help you retain that feeling indefinitely. If you DON’T like what you see, why not? Flabby, fat, wrinkly, frown lines, age spots, most people are extremely self-critical. Many of us have health problems directly related to how we’ve taken care of ourselves up to this point. What are the chances an overweight, sick person taking medication to treat the symptoms of poor nutrition can maintain a positive mental attitude? Very slim. If you’re unhappy with your physical body, we need to examine the thought patterns that got you here.

Food can be one of those things in life that just slips into auto-pilot at some point. We find foods we like, things that can fit into our schedules (fast food) in many cases, and never think too much about what we’re doing to our bodies until it becomes blatantly obvious there’s a problem. Once we’re physically sluggish our minds tend to follow. It’s a great place for demons to creep into our thought patterns with demoralizing thoughts about how we look. Those thoughts lead to guilt and fear which can cause more overeating and a vicious cycle is formed that continues until at some point a bottom is hit. When you’re at a low point in life always remember that every defeat brings with it the seeds of an equal or greater accomplishment! Our biggest weaknesses can become our strengths in life by changing our thoughts. Thoughts can be changed in an instant!

For those of you unhappy with yourself physically – what got you here? Answering this question might take some time, but it usually boils down to thoughts in some form – thoughts about food, about yourself, about priorities… or possibly it can be looked at as LACK of thought in these areas. Auto-pilot… drifting… Maybe even knowing that you have poor nutritional habits but failing to allow yourself to look at them. The only way to change your life is to change your thoughts. Here are the steps to take if you feel negative emotions about your body and/or nutritional habits:

STEP 1: Become aware that there is a problem and develop a burning desire to change. Without a serious burning desire in your heart what you have is a “whim” to change. NOT GOOD ENOUGH! You will only be able to change when you have a serious desire to do so. Do you? It has to become an obsession. “I will get healthy” has to absolutely take over your thoughts. Ask for help from the Universe, connect with God and have some faith that once you start moving in the direction of your dreams NOTHING can stop you. Desire alone isn’t enough, though. You need a SERIOUS, BURNING DESIRE packed with emotions to make any positive long term changes here.

STEP 2: Advance confidently in the direction of your dreams. Watch your thought pattern closely here. Demons never give up control without a fight. When thoughts start creeping in like, “I’ve done pretty well this week, I can eat a large pizza by myself as a reward”, catch yourself right then and realize that’s the OLD you talking. Thank the subconscious mind for sharing and remind it that we are no longer thinking that way.

Moving forward here means making some changes. Your thoughts and attitudes regarding food need to change. Start looking at what you eat, when you eat, if and when you exercise, and do some research on what changes you can make to become healthier. There are many different ways to go about this, but in the end most revolve around “eat right and exercise”. Start doing things that make you feel GOOD about your health, such as:

• Take nutritional supplements/vitamins. Learn about what supplements would benefit you. The act of taking vitamins every day says to yourself and the Universe that you care enough to take precautionary measures.

• Learn portion control and what foods are good for you, which foods need to be cut down or wiped out completely. Start to watch portions and calories. Remember, this is a BURNING DESIRE, an OBSESSION to change. Read and watch everything you can about nutrition and follow your heart – it will find the best plan for you.

• Start an exercise program. This can be as simple as going for a walk every day at first. What matters is that you START. While you’re exercising FEEL the emotion of doing something good for your body. Give yourself all the credit you can as often as you can – replacing the thought patterns is as important as changing the physical activities. FEEDING YOUR ANGEL positive mental thoughts about what you’re doing is critical here! The balance of power needs to shift!

Demons and angels… Good vs. evil… We all struggle with decisions in life. Demons don’t usually take control because you wanted them too. They look for areas of weakness and take control because we have a tendency to drift through life without self analyzing what we’re doing very often. If demons have been controlling your thoughts and actions regarding nutrition take the steps TODAY to change. Develop an obsession to change, make it a burning desire, then do something every day to FEED YOUR ANGEL regarding physical health. Your future physical being will reflect your thoughts and actions starting TODAY. Stop drifting and start living! You absolutely can do this!

Mental Breakfast

Most of us realize that our body needs nutrition and we choose to feed ourselves physically at least three times a day – breakfast, lunch and dinner. WHAT we feed ourselves is just as important as how often we eat. A diet of bacon and potato chips three times a day would have some side effects, as would eating full meals SIX times a day instead of three. QUALITY and QUANTITY matter. Your body will reflect the type and amount of fuel you give it.

Equally important is what we feed our minds. What do you say when you talk to yourself? “Talking to yourself” implies two people, and if you’re the one listening, who are you listening to? It’s your subconscious mind, which can be trained to help and support you, but when left alone can be overrun by demons. Most of us have some areas of our lives that are controlled by demons. We need to become conscious about our own thoughts, beliefs and attitudes which are the fuels that feed our subconscious minds. What are we feeding it, and how often are we feeding it?

Just as breakfast is the most important meal of the day, “mental breakfast” is equally important, if not more so. How do you start your day? Are you happy? Angry? Sad? Really get in touch with your emotions from the second you wake up. Train yourself to wake up happy and thankful.

A simple way to do this is to say “thank you” to the Universe three times as SOON as you wake up. You can be laying in bed and just think the thought… “Thank you, thank you, thank you”, or sit up and take a second or two, it doesn’t matter. FEEL the emotion of truly being thankful for what you have and where you are in life. You have SO much to be thankful for. If this is difficult for you, then it is very important that you start to look for reasons to be thankful today and every day for the rest of your life. This one change alone can make a huge difference!

If we go back to our “bacon and potato chips” physical diet and replace the first meal of the day with a healthy breakfast you would start to see some physical improvement even though the rest of the day we’re filling ourselves with junk. It’s the same concept here – we need to start somewhere and first thing in the morning is the best place to make a change.

Take some time to READ, MEDITATE and/or JOURNAL every morning. It doesn’t have to take long, but remember – we’re FEEDING OUR ANGEL so make it something uplifting! Get a book of daily motivations, sign up for daily motivational e-mails, get calendars that have motivational sayings on every day – FEED YOUR ANGEL by reading something positive every morning! What you feed yourself today is what you’ll see in your life in the future!

Meditation takes a bit longer, but just waking up and thanking God or the Universe for what you have is an easy, simple form of meditation that can be done every day without taking up too much time. Fill your time thanking the Universe with genuine emotion. Teach yourself to be grateful if you aren’t already – the rewards are HUGE. Whenever possible spend a bit more time on meditation in the morning. Don’t think about it too much, don’t worry about “doing it right”, the Universe doesn’t care. Just get quiet and tap into whatever the God force is in your life as often as possible.

Journaling is another great way to start the day. You can learn a lot about yourself and what you’re REALLY feeling by journaling. Once again, no right or wrong way to journal, just DO IT! Get some paper and start writing about anything and everything going on inside you. Look for areas of weakness where demons love to creep in and be aware of situations and people that stir negative emotions. At some point you’ll have to determine whether you need to eradicate them from your life or learn to view them differently.

Here are a few ideas I use as starting points when I’m taking time in the morning to do some soul searching:

• Ask yourself, “What would I do on a daily basis if money wasn’t a concern?” Really think about this and try to picture what you’d do if money wasn’t anything you needed to worry about. Travel? Fix up old cars? Learn to play the piano? The answer is different for each of us, but usually this exercise will show you an area or two that will have great emotion for you. Sometimes it’s an old dream long forgotten. Maybe it’s a project you always wanted to do, but never started. The things that you would do if money wasn’t a concern are usually things you can start doing NOW in some form. Get in touch with your passions again, and start moving in the direction of your dreams!

• If you knew today would be your last day on earth, what would you do? Would you work a regular day, then go to bed normally and that’s that? Or would you take these last few hours to grab the people you love and tell them how you feel, make amends whenever possible, and squeeze every last drop of joy out of the day you could? Choose JOY! DO NOT WAIT! We are all on borrowed time, so make the most of every day. Use this exercise to show you the people and places you want to spend your time with. Surprise someone with a phone call just to say thanks, make amends or tell them how you feel. Live each day like there’s no tomorrow because tomorrow is guaranteed to no-one.

• Picture your perfect day. Write down what that day looks like, then read it to yourself every day. I do this by picturing what my day would look like if I was living my ideal lifestyle. It’s just a couple paragraphs, and I tweak it periodically as things change. I start by thinking “What would a successful person do if they moved into my body today?” Right away you might start thinking’ “Ah-ha! He doesn’t think he’s successful! Demons!”… which is not the case at all. By “successful person” I am just looking to create my ideal daily guidelines. You can do this however you want, but this is the format that works for me. To give you an idea what mine looks like and a possible template to use in constructing yours, here is a portion of my “perfect day”:

A successful person moved into my body today. He wakes up at 6AM with enthusiasm for the day. He works out for an hour every evening. He reads at least an hour every day. He always does the right thing. He lives on 80% of his income, saving 15% and giving away 5%. He pays cash for everything and avoids debt at all costs. His love for life and outgoing, positive attitude are infectious and everyone he meets wants to do business with him. He has always been there, today I step back and let him take control of my life. He is my true identity. He IS David Geschke.

THAT, my friends – is mental breakfast! START TODAY!!!

Battle between two wolves...

One of my favorite stories, a classic:

An old Cherokee told his grandson, "My son, there is a battle between two wolves inside us all. One is Evil. It is anger, jealousy, greed, resentment, inferiority, lies, & ego. The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, humility, kindness, empathy, & truth." The boy thought about it, and asked, "Grandfather, which wolf wins?" The old man quietly replied, "The one you feed".

Aging and Death

Written in 2009:

As I approach my 50th birthday later this year I can't help but think about my personal future and the American way of aging and dying. As many of you already know, my mom is 94 and has been in a nursing home for years. I've watched many of her fellow roommates and friends pass away during that time. I've seen hundreds of people in the three homes she's been in just living out what's left of their lives in solitude with very little contact from anyone other than the staff in most cases. Most of them need help walking if they can at all, help toileting, many need help eating... it's SO sad to look around the room and see that for seemingly MOST people this will be how we end our lives. Scares the HELL outta me, I don't see how or why anyone would want this to be the end of their lives. As I survey the nursing home mom is in I can't help but think ALL those people led vibrant lives at some point, loved, lost, worked, got married, had kids, dreams... and THIS is how it ends? Very sad. One thing I will say is the home she's in is very good. If you ever have to put a loved one in a setting like this check out several facilities and go w/the one w/the best STAFF. It's the people working there that make all the difference.

My father was very different, never went to a facility. Died of a heart attack at home at age 71. Which brings about a whole slew of other thoughts and emotions... 71? That's only 21 years away! Hell, SIXTY is only 10 years away! You wonder why people have mid life crises? All of a sudden it's easy to look back and think "what the hell did I ever do that amounted to anything"? I'm very self critical anyway, but as I age I start to realize a few things that I probably knew all along but didn't really internalize as much as I do now:

1) You become what you think about, so control your thoughts to create the life you want
2) Hold yourself to the highest standards of personal honesty and integrity
3) In decisions where it's head vs heart always follow your heart
4) Let LOVE be the controlling force in your life - find work that you love, hang out with the people you love, there isn't enough time to spend it w/people or in activities you don't like
5) Carpe diem - Seize the day - You only have this instant and now it's gone. A happy life is created by happy moments and the only moment you can control is now.

You get the idea. I'm a creature of routine and sometimes I sit back and think "is this the routine I want to be the bulk of my life? Couldn't I do better than THIS?"... I was looking through the great quotes I posted in the other forum and there was dates lived after each quote like Harry Truman 1898-1972, etc... this is what got me thinking about this today...

David Geschke 1959-??

Everyone dies, most of us will have tombstones... we all have the ability to make a difference in people's lives. My resolution this year is to make better decisions to allow me to get to that end date, whenever it is... and know I led an honorable life that made a positive difference in the lives of the people I touch on a daily basis.