Archive for the ‘Stimulus Space Response’ Category

Personal Change Contracts are Signed with a #Journal

Posted: April 24, 2014 in Stimulus Space Response
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by @anarchyroll
4/24/2014

I recommend journaling to every human being I know. Old or young, male or female, whether they like writing or hate it, journaling is vital to personal growth. All the historical leaders we look up to kept a personal journal. Getting our thoughts out of our head, onto paper, through handwriting (not typing) is important. Why?

There is what is known as a neuro-muscular connection that takes place when you physically write out your thoughts onto paper. In essence, when you hand write your intentions, goals, wants, etc you are making a promise or signing a contract of intent to achieve.

If goal achievement isn’t your thing, then a daily thought journal is for you. Just write out what’s in your head, what’s on your mind, what you’re thinking about at the moment, and/or simply write out what you did that day. What purpose does this serve? It is like taking out the garbage or opening the window in a smoke filled room.

When garbage piles up and smoke fills a room, it makes it harder to see and move around, if not impossible. Writing out one’s thoughts, no matter how boring or mundane will help create space in your mind. So even if you aren’t writing about epiphanies, goals, desires, hopes, and dreams right out of the gate; eventually the space you create by writing out the basic stuff will foster the deep stuff to come up the surface.

Journaling is a way to cultivate the space between stimulus and response.

Remember, you are journaling for yourself, no one else. If you want to share your journal or if you want to have both private and public journals, that’s cool, but not necessary. When journaling you don’t have to worry about the quality of your handwriting, spelling, punctuation, grammar, or any of that. A private thought journal is as casual as it gets, the poetic license you give yourself won’t ever be any greater than it is there. Write what you want, how you want, when you want (though once a day is best).

Reviewing past journals is an important piece of the puzzle that many forget, including myself. I have gone long stretches without reviewing past journal entries. When I do, each time I see that by not reviewing I have been repeating mistakes, lapses in judgement, failures of character, and just flat out not progressing as much as I want to be or feel I should be. We must see where we have been in order to get a better idea of where we are and where we are going.

Journaling is beneficial for the heart, mind, and soul. It can also be beneficial for the body. You can use a journal to track what you eat, drink, and how often you exercise to hold yourself accountable to yourself during a diet and exercise program or better yet, a new healthier lifestyle.

I like to journal at the end of the day. It is like putting a period on and bringing closure to that date on the calendar of life. It lets me know that this day is now over;

  • What have I accomplished?
  • What have I failed to do?
  • What do I want to do tomorrow?
  • What do I need to do this week?
  • What can I do this month to be closer to where I want to be this time next year?
  • What must I improve upon?
  • What progress have I made up to this point?
  • What did I do today?
  • What am I grateful for?

It can be a few sentences, a few paragraphs, a few pages, or a few notebooks worth. Let it flow. Force yourself to start, but then just let your brain tell the pen what to write and when to stop. We can all be better. We can all improve. A journal is how we sign a contract of change with the most important entity in our life, our reflection.

 

 

Herbal #Tea : A Space Refresher

Posted: March 30, 2014 in Stimulus Space Response
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by @anarchyroll
3/30/2014

Tea, the original medicine.

I drink herbal tea at home for stress relief, improved breathing, and to help me get to sleep quicker. I could take prescription drugs for these things, but why use chemicals when something that grew out of the ground works just as good or better.

I also drink a ton of tea when I write at Starbucks, but that’s because it’s free refills with new bags after five purchases with a gift card. For someone looking to be social on a tight budget, two bucks and some change for all the tea you can drink in a social environment frequented by women in their 20s is a deal I’ll take any day. But I digress.

In a way, it still amazes me how much my physiology changes each time I drink my teas. Herbal tea is not just a drink. And it’s not meant to be sipped on. Black and green tea you can sip and drink at any temperature. Just remember when you are drinking herbal tea to drink it:

  • As hot as you can drink it
  • As fast as you can drink it

Don’t burn your lips, mouth, or throat. Be smart about it. But as soon as you can drink it safely, gulp it. Why? This method enables the medicinal aspects of the tea formula to kick in faster. I first heard this from Richard Bandler. The next time I had herbal tea I tried the as hot, as fast style and the difference was striking.

Yoga led me to meditation and meditation led to herbal tea. How? Yoga and meditation are simple. Essentially stretching and sitting still while breathing deeply and concentrating on the breath. Those simple acts can bring about drastic change, they have for me at least. The drastic change both brought about got me thinking what other simple things could help me in drastic ways.

National chain grocery stores have gigantic tea aisles, let alone organic and health food stores. My local supermarket had an organic section. That section had several aisles, one of the aisles was half organic herbal tea varieties. One of the brands was Yogi tea. Since I was doing yoga, the name stood out. What stood out more was the different kinds they have. When I thought about the three reasons I wanted herbal tea to help me with;

  1. Stress/anxiety relief
  2. Breathing help through my nose
  3. Sleep aide

I noticed they not only had formulas for those needs, but had multiple varieties. I was sold and haven’t looked back. My paradigm of drinking tea shifted from a beverage, to akin to taking vitamins. I don’t just notice the difference when I go a prolonged stretch without herbal tea, I literally feel the difference.

I encourage everyone to explore what herbal tea can do for them. It’s no magic pill, but the I do truly believe it can help. And unlike chemically concocted prescription pills, there are no side effects. It will either help or it won’t, but won’t help and also cause anal bleeding, depression, or erectile dysfunction.

Sometimes when I loose sight of the space between stimulus and response, drinking the tea helps me to both remember that it is there and see it clearer than I did before.

Herbal tea contributes to me being my best self. It enables me to breath better, feel better, and sleep better. It takes the lump out of my chest when I’m feeling stressed/anxious, it allows me to get more oxygen to my brain and muscles, and allows me to get more restful sleep. I hope you will try a formula or two or three and I hope that herbal tea will help you as much or more than it has helped me.

 

Namaste

 

#Meditation the Mental Space Generator

Posted: March 28, 2014 in Stimulus Space Response
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by @anarchyroll
3/27/2014

Yoga was a slippery slope to meditation. The breathing, the focus on breathing, the slowed down mind, the relaxation, the stress relief, the clarity, the endorphins rush, the visualizations, the calmness, the acceptance, the awareness, the present.

I am forever happy and grateful for the practice of meditation coming into my life. I hadn’t heard much about meditation, and apparently that is common. Davos hosted a conference on meditation just this year. Meditation has been around for thousands of years.

When it comes to slowing down my thoughts, calming myself down, reducing anxiety, and positive visualizations; I can use all the help I can get. I have struggled with depression since I was 13. Yoga I started strictly for the physical health benefits. Meditation is exercise for the mind, heart, and spirit.

Like yoga there are many ways to meditate. If you are just beginning the main things to remember are;

  1. Sit or lay down
  2. Press your index finger and thumb together on each hand
  3. Close your eyes
  4. Breath from your stomach/diaphram/solar plexes
  5. Concentrate your thoughts/inner dialogue on tracking the movement of the breath from inhale through exhale

That is the 101, basically everything beyond that is intermediate to advanced level. Those five steps will take you longer to master than you think. Especially in the smartphone centered, rat race world we have been born into. If you are a senior citizen, it’ll be easier, just take yourself back to before the world got into a big hurry.

Stimulus Space Response in the name of this blog. That name comes from the teachings of George Herbert Mead and Stephen Covey. Both talk about the space between stimulus and response where humans execute free will to interpret an interaction. This space is unique to humans, not animals possess this ability. Here I try to write about concepts and things that can be plugged into that space in order to make our response to any stimulus one that is integrated with the best version of our self.

Meditation to me is the tool to cultivate the space between stimulus and response. Like the jack one uses to move a car up off the ground to replace a flat tire.

I have included links throughout this article for help in getting started with meditation. I would suggest doing at least a brief yoga routine before going into a meditation session. Be patient with yourself and with the progress of learning something new, as in the rest of life. I still have unproductive meditation sessions because my mind is habitualized to be preoccupied with thoughts of scarcity, victimism, and mental movies of worst case scenarios. Meditation is not a magic pill, but it does help. I am happy and grateful for what it has done and continues to do for me, and I will be sure to write about it more in the future.

Yoga not only led me to meditation but also led me to try herbal teas. In times of crisis I often need herbal tea more than meditation as the tea has the ability to physically alter my state upon consumption. More on that to come…

Year Zero #Yoga

Posted: March 7, 2014 in Stimulus Space Response
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by @anarchyroll
3/7/2014

Very few things have changed my life as much as yoga has.

I started practicing yoga in 2009. I was looking for something new to incorporate into my exercise regimen as well as something to get me out of bed in the morning. I had cable at the time which had an on demand section of channels. One of which was Exercise TV which has since become a Hulu exclusive channel. I started with a ten minute, AM Yoga routine, and have been hooked since.

There are no magic pills in this world. Yoga didn’t cure me of anything. Yoga didn’t overnight change my life. Yoga didn’t make me unrecognizable to my friends. I didn’t become a Buddhist.

What I have come to realize over the past several months is that yoga planted the seeds of paradigm change and shifts in my life. As humans, we can do nothing without breath. Breathing comes before entertainment, shelter, food, or water. Yoga is first and foremost about proper breathing. About getting more oxygen the brain and extremities, before the stretching aspect.

The increased oxygen to my brain slowly but surely started to change the way I thought. Slowly but surely changed the way I perceived myself and the world around me. Slowly but surely allowed me to bend more so that I would not break; physically, mentally, emotionally.

Yoga calms me down and de-stresses me physically and mentally. It literally removes physical tension from my hips and back. Metaphorically it calms me down and slows my constantly racing mind (probably from the increased oxygen going to my brain).

Yoga is the one exercise literally every human with all their limbs can do. There is pre-school yoga and senior citizen yoga. There is highly feminine yoga as well as yoga for bros and regular guys. There is yoga for abs, legs, back, and of course the butt as you’ve noticed from the yoga pants that are inescapable year round these days.

Yoga changed my life by changing the way I looked at everything. I thought yoga was for women and the excessively spiritual. I found that it is literally for everyone. It can be molded and shaped to fit any individuals specific needs and wants from a physical or mental exercise. I use it to calm my mind but also to stretch my muscles in between weight lifting sessions. This helps prevent injury as I am much less likely to tear an overly tight muscle since it gets stretched in a challenging way four to six days a week.

The more I learn about yoga and the more I do it, the more I love it. I am so happy and grateful the practice came into my life and I can’t recommend it highly enough to every man, woman, and/or child that may come across this article at any time in the present moment or future.

Why is yoga my year zero? Because of yoga I started meditating. Because of meditation I started listening to audio books. Because of audio books I began to love learning. Because I began to love learning I realized I could learn to love anything that I previously didn’t like. Once I started trying and liking different things, I started looking at what I had been doing previously and why I didn’t like so many things. Once I started doing that, I started doing the heavy lifting of taking action in the direction of being my best self. I was able to see through the darkness to get to the dawn. I was able to see that sometimes you have to take two steps back to take three steps forward. Everything changed after yoga, everything. And is still changing.

Yoga as the gateway to meditation is another story for another day. I have provided links to multiple yoga websites that will provide you with greater information and detail about the practice of yoga and I encourage you with all of my being to try the practice for yourself, it will be worth your time, energy, focus, and breath. I promise.

Namaste

#Calibration vs #Criticism

Posted: February 14, 2014 in anarchyroll media, Stimulus Space Response
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ssrlogo2by @anarchyroll
2/13/2014

I first heard the word calibration used repeatedly while actively studying social dynamics. It was often used as a way to find balance between x and y. Criticism, well, we’re all familiar with that aren’t we? From our inner dialogue, from our peers, from our family, from our romantic partners, from strangers in public venting masked personal frustration upon us. Calibration is heard less and used less. What is it?

The simple way to break it down is, calibration is the third part of the trial and error principle. Trial = take action, error = what went wrong, calibration = what you can do next time to prevent the same error from happening again. What’s great about calibration is, it can’t be done without action. So if you get in the game and take a swing, it’s cool, because now you have tangible, external examples on what to better next time. As opposed to, say, sitting on one’s ass judging others harshly to vent personal shame due to lack of courage to take action.

I have been so far behind the eight ball on being a responsible, independent, mature, adult at times that the fact that I was able to shift from criticism to calibration is an accomplishment for me. Because it involved taking action. So after I would finish being mad at myself for failing, or not executing my objective from a to z perfectly, I would be able to take a deep breath (deep breathing is key) and write out or discuss with a friend what went right and what went wrong.

One can’t make a pros and cons list if they take no action. No, sitting alone at home in heavy thought does not count. Being stuck in one’s head is something I empathize with. I have missed many opportunities because I was too stuck in my own head to exercise courage in the moment of choice and take action in the direction of my goals. That lead to criticism, lots of it.

If you find yourself being highly critical of yourself and others, as I have been in the past, it is time to look inside. A good first step I have seen pop up in multiple books and recorded seminars is making eye contact with one’s reflection in the mirror and holding it for no less than five to ten minutes in silence. A thought journal would follow, then a list of goals (immediate, short term) to start taking action. Reading books, listening to audio programs, watching videos of personal development instructors, success authors, life coaches, etc can come next as a guide so one doesn’t get lost, feel alone, or feel it is okay to give up when faced with no immediate gratification.

Life does not come with an instruction manual. We have to be taught to walk & talk, where to shit & piss, not to burn ourselves touching hot things, how to dress, tie shoes, bathe, etc. How does one know what they are not taught? Go easy on yourself, it’s not easy, it = life. Don’t feel shame asking for help, by checking out a book, talking to a friend, keeping a private journal, and doing new things that make your uncomfortable. Because after all; “Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.” Neal Donald Walsh

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