Category: consciousness

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consciousness Decision Making Growth Life Lessons Overwhelm Perspective Stress Success

Mental Pushing And Pulling – Thanks To Our Biology

Where to start?

How about with the name of the book I just finished reading, which shared pretty interesting insights. The book was called: ‘Why You’re Unhappy’ by Loretta Graziano Breuning, PhD.

I didn’t agree with everything she presented, but because she has a background in anthropology as well as psychology, it brought a nice perspective to her discussion on biology.

And the influence on our feelings and behaviours.

She spoke a lot about the individual roles of dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, endorphins and cortisol; and how they are primarily used for survival (and reproduction of genes), as with all mammals.

I have talked before about the ‘mid’ brain, also called the limbic brain or mammalian brain.

It has a number of functions including regulation and generation of our emotions, which obviously affects us moment-to-moment and day-to-day.

I found a few things in this book especially fascinating.

Particularly the author’s overarching message.

We are not – biologically – designed to be ‘happy’ all the time.

It is not only okay, but “normal” to feel our emotions go up and go down throughout our day and life in general.

I think that is a great point.

If we EXPECT to be happy, all the time, or think there is something “wrong” with us if we aren’t, then we may be fighting reality.

What I also found fascinating was…

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Choice consciousness Decision Making Growth Optimum Health Success

Decision Making Mastery, Destiny, Convenience & Optimization

I have a sneaking suspicion you know where this is going.

And before we go there.

I want you to know this.

I care about you.

I want the very best for you.

I write because I love learning, teaching and sharing, but I also LOVE to help people have more joy, fun and happiness in their lives.

That’s pretty much my job.

Whether I am writing, presenting to an audience or coaching.

I want people to express their full potential in a way that is unique to them.

So, with that said, let’s see if we can get to where I want to take us.

When I was growing up in a country town in Australia, I would watch a show called ‘Playschool’.

And one of the tunes I can still hear in my head, 40+ years later is something like this…

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consciousness Emotional Feeling Optimum Health Perspective Rest Spirituality

How I Build Grit, Resilience and Determination

Do you want to good news, or the bad news first?

I think most people generally go the bad news first, so here goes.

To my knowledge, there isn’t a PILL on the market that does this job effectively.

Bugger!

The good news is you can do this yourself.

And often, without costing you anything (financially).

However, there might be some cost in sweat and tears.

Double bugger!!

One of my favourite ways to do this is to undertake consciously contrived “challenges”.

And I find the most impactful challenges (i.e. long-term benefits), are the ones which are mostly mental.

Like the 3-day water-only fast that myself, and about 20 other adventurers did last week.

Total (mental) challenge.

By building our grit, resilience, determination and discipline muscles, it makes other challenges in our life – professional and personal – seem not that hard after all.

That is the payback.

And it keeps on giving.

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consciousness Decision Making Life Lessons Overwhelm Perspective

How to Stay Up-to-date Globally Without Losing Your Mind

The other day I was in conversation with friends, and we were talking about ‘world affairs’.

But the most interesting part of that conversation – for me – is how do we stay informed, without being consumed by a whole bunch of ‘bad news’?

And what do we mean being informed?

Is it informed for interest sake?

Is it informed, so we can make informed decisions in our own lives?

Is it informed so we can sound like we know what’s going on in the world to impress our friends?

And how informed do we need to be?

Lots of questions, and playing around in them can make your head spin.

So in this article I want to give you my thoughts and perspective on how to stay informed, to what level, and in a way that is beneficial for you and your lifestyle generation, plus in a way that you don’t lose your sanity, or sense of life being something precious.

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Choice consciousness Goal Setting Tips Growth Joy Relationship Spirituality

My 5 Top Tips for Thriving in 2024

Firstly, Happy New Year!!

And welcome to whatever day you are at of the 366 we are gifted with this year.

After looking to the PAST for the top things I learned in 2023 (my last post of 2023), I am now switching to looking into the FUTURE and setting my intention and attention on what I think will be serve me (and you) in the year ahead.

So let’s jump straight in and see what we can do to help us THRIVE even more this year!

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Acceptance consciousness Emotional Growth Perspective

Struggling to Find Acceptance? Here’s a Solution.

WHEN YOU ARE STRUGGLING TO FIND “ACCEPTANCE”, HERE’S WHAT TO DO

I think we all realise that it is more spiritual, saintly or virtuous, to be able to ACCEPT that which is.

There is also a difference between knowing this ‘principle’ and actually trying to apply it to real life.

Especially when life can be pretty horrendous at times.

Or people can be so ‘bad’ at times.

We are forever hearing of terrible things (personally or collectively), and the idea of Acceptance (of these horrible things) is a pretty bitter pill to swallow.

Again, we might know that Acceptance is a higher path, but boy oh boy can it be friggin hard to get to at times!

And again there is a difference between telling ourselves we have accepted something in our lives, and ACTUALLY accepting it all the way down into our bones.

When we intellectually accept things (“Yes, I accept X”), often our emotions and behaviours just don’t get the ‘Memo’.

So…

What to do?

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consciousness Fear Feeling Growth Negative Emotions Perspective

When Pride is Not A Good Thing

Extract from 18 Ways We Make Life Way Harder Than It Needs To Be by Carl Massy (WAY 16)

“Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst, and cold.”

Thomas Jefferson (US President and primary Author of US Declaration of Independence)

I think most of us were taught that ‘pride’ is a good thing. To feel proud for who and what we are. To take pride in what we do. To take pride in what we have achieved – be it over the course of our lives or over the last few weeks working on a new project at work, which we totally nailed!

So yes, pride can be a good thing. But like many things, there can be another side to it, when taken to extreme. It is like all great virtues. They are great when they are applied in a conscious self-aware way. Too much bravery and someone can become reckless. Too much loyalty and someone can be taken advantage of or stuck in something for longer than is healthy. Too much single-mindedness and someone can meander down the wrong path. Too much flexibility and someone can be all over the place.

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Choice consciousness Decision Making Feeling Life Lessons Perspective

Tough Decisions, Complexity, Better Questions and Cute Dogs

Yes; we will be discussing all of those topics.

As they weave together.

Regardless of whether you are a ‘dog person’ or not, I am sure you will get where I am coming from, and take something of value from this conversation.

Over the last bunch of weeks I have had some really tough decisions to make in relationship to dogs, which have not been easy.

Time to really practice what I teach.

All of which I have written about over this year and are in my latest book (18 Ways We Make Life Way Harder Than It Needs To Be) and YES, that is a ridiculously blatant plug for my new book, but I am okay with that as I know it will serve you well.

Now let’s jump straight into the life of Carl Massy story time…

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Belief consciousness Growth Spirituality

A Practical Conversation on ‘Spirituality

You know I like to keep things practical.

I am about doing more of the stuff that uplifts us, makes us more powerful, capable, expansive and competent; and doing less of the stuff that holds us back, diminishes us, constricts us, and triggers our survival emotional states.

So I consider the topic of ‘spirituality’ and a ‘spiritual practice’ through that lens.

And here is how the conversation / riff went.

This conversation became a part of my resilience program on how to become a natural Superhuman (a combination of Leader, Warrior and Sage).

I am interested to hear what it brings up for you, and do send me any questions you might have.

You can watch the video – just click on the image below to watch it on YouTube below – or if prefer to listen to the audio version, click HERE.

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Belief consciousness Emotional Feeling Negative Emotions

A Revealing Look at Genes

A CASE STUDY: GENES VERSUS ENVIRONMENT

Knowledge is powerful stuff.

I know you know.

The greater knowledge we have, the BETTER choices and decisions we can make.

So I am here, for your benefit, sharing some knowledge I discovered along the way.

My full time job is reading, researching and working with people to better understand what makes us do what we do.

And experience the outcomes we do.

A few years ago I had a fascinating experience with a client of mine.

Which supports my observation that the medical ‘healthcare’ system, really doesn’t understand the importance of the environment on our behaviour (and therefore results) and therefore treats ‘symptoms’ with the wrong stuff, which barely touches the root cause.

Let me share this case study of mine, and you can decide if it was primarily a ‘Gene’ thing or an ‘Environmental’ thing.

I will let you be the judge.

I will also leave this section with a quote from Paramahansa Yogananda – who was highly influential in bringing traditional yoga to the west.

He said: “The environment is stronger than the will.“

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