DISCOVER YOUR ZEN
Tapping into Your Innate, Ultimate Performance
This week, we’ve been learning how to use meditation and how to start introducing it gently into our lives. Now you know about having the ability to focus at will, to stop feeling stressed, and to actually control how you feel and what you want to think about. This is an incredibly power because it means that you can choose to actually live in the moment and you can choose what’s important to you and how you want to feel.
But what if I told you that this isn’t just about ‘happiness’? What if I told you that this is also about getting the very most out of yourself? What if I told you that the things you’ve just learned could help you to tap into your full potential and to become almost superhuman?
Do I have your attention?
How to Stop Being a Zombie
Remember what I just said about the importance of focusing on what’s going on around you? And on being awake, alive and in the moment? This is how we’re supposed to function all the time. This is how animals and babies are all the time. Somewhere along the line, we lose that connection with our environment.
The question you might now be asking is: Why is it so hard, then, to do the thing that we were designed to do? Why is it so hard to obtain the same focus and connection with the world that comes naturally to infants? There are lots of answers to that question but one of the most pertinent is that we are too set into our routines and we aren’t stimulated by the right sensations.
Try that exercise again where you listen to your surroundings. What can you hear? Can you hear a ticking clock somewhere? There’s a good chance that the answer is, yes, if you’re indoors but you might not have noticed it until I asked you to listen to it. And why not? Because you’ve become desensitized to it.
What’s happened is that your brain has heard that ticking before. It’s the exact same every second and it’s something you’re completely used to. As such, your brain says ‘this isn’t important’ and it pushes it into the background. Meanwhile, the worries that are flooding through your mind constantly seem very important. The same thing happens if you cut ping pong balls in half and place them on your eyes. When you do this, you’ll at first see the insides of those ping pong balls, as you would expect. But after a few minutes, things will go fuzzy.
Why? Because nothing is changing. The nerve endings in your eyes have become tired of the exact same stimulation and so they’re turning off. Nothing is moving, nothing is changing – it’s inefficient for them to keep firing. This is called the “Ganzfield” experiment and it’s quite interesting if you ever want to induce hallucinations naturally.
Now think about what you do in your daily life:
- You walk the same route to work
- You take the same ride on the same bus
- You have the same breakfast
- You have the same conversation with the same people
- You perform the same tasks throughout work
- You get home and sit in the same place
Guys… this is killing us. Our brain has a complete lack of stimulation and excitement from this kind of activity. We evolved to be constantly moving, constantly in danger, tracking our prey through the wild… and when that happened everything around us seemed important, dangerous and salient. But now, we’re sleepwalking through life. Everything is safe and everything is the same…
If you want to be more present and more in-the-moment, then you need to submit yourself to environments and situations that are exciting, novel, different, and interesting. If you do this, then you’ll automatically forget all those things that are making you stressed. You’ll automatically become more engaged with the world and less worried about your own petty concerns.
So take different routes home from work.
Learn new skills and hobbies.
Have conversations with people you don’t know.
Try new foods.
When you do, your brain will light up and come alive and you’ll get a reprieve from your money and relationship problems. Better yet, you’ll form new neural connections which will once again help you to become sharper, smarter, faster, more creative, and more alive.
TODAY’S ACTION STEPS:
1) You should be exercising according to your planned routine. (You can use the workout plan I provided, if it works for you.) If you’re not ready to go FULL OUT with the workout plan yet…that’s OK. If you’ve been trying out my suggestion of creating a habit, then you may want to add on another step if you haven’t done so yet. Read through the Week 4 – Day 2 module if you’re not sure how to create this “habit chain.”
So…every time you wake up, or finish washing your dishes after dinner, or whatever that regular activity is that you choose as the one to trigger your workouts…put on your workout shoes. (That’s the first link in the chain.)
Then do the next step you’ve been practicing. If your chosen workout is taking a walk after dinner each night, maybe you are heading to the front door and grabbing a jacket. If you want to do a home workout from the exercise plan I’m giving you, then maybe you’re putting on some workout clothes – a top and a bottom. (That’s the second link in the chain.)
NOW, do the next step. (That’s the third link in the chain.) If you plan to go for a walk, just step outside your front door and stand on your porch…and celebrate! If you’ll be doing a home workout, then grab your mobile phone (to access the Fitness App) and stand in your home exercise area…then celebrate! Whatever that next step is just do that. Every day. Every time you put on your workout shoes…AFTER every time you do that trigger activity (washing dishes, waking up in the morning, etc). Remember to celebrate every time you get to the end of this “habit chain.”
If you need a little more time to reinforce those first 2 links in the “habit chain” (e.g. putting on your workout shoes, then putting on some workout clothes), that’s fine. Just keep doing that and don’t worry about adding on right now.
2) If you already completed the Week 1 Workout Plan, then you are doing the Week 2 plan this week. Log in to the Fitness App on your COMPUTER – https://doctorvenus.com/app-login/ – to access the Week 2 Workout Plan. (The Week 3 Workout Plan will be uploaded to your Fitness App later tonight so that you can start it tomorrow.)
3) If you already received the Week 1 (and 2) meal plan, then the Week 3 (and 4) meal plan has been uploaded to your Fitness App. You should be making preparations (taking stock of your pantry/refrigerator, grocery shopping, and meal prepping) for Week 4 meal plan [same as Week 3] which starts on Monday.
4) Do a sitting meditation for 5 minutes. Spend the 5 minutes sitting in a quiet space. Just relax with your eyes closed. No goal. No stress. The plan is to do this every day.
5) Do something exciting, novel, different, or interesting. Perhaps you’ll want to try something I suggested in today’s lesson – try a new healthy food, plan for a different route home from work, start to learn a new skill/hobby, or have a conversations with someone you don’t know.
6) Mark your calendar for our next coaching call on Wednesday, November 29, at 8:15pm ET (5:15pm PT). The call-in number and Zoom link will be posted here and in your daily email the day before the call. A replay will be made available for those who can’t make the call.
7) If you have any questions about anything…let me know in the Facebook group – https://www.facebook.com/groups/discoveryourzen/
Previous ACTION STEPS:
(Not a complete list, but some important highlights.)
1) Log in to the Fitness App on your COMPUTER – https://doctorvenus.com/app-login/ – and go to the FORMS tab. If you haven’t completed the Client Agreement form and the PAR-Q form from Day 1’s ACTION STEPS, do that today and sign them. Be sure to click SAVE when you’re done. (You can not receive the meal plan and workout plan when they are released until we have those completed forms on file.)
2) If you haven’t done so yet, send an email to team@DoctorVenus.com and state whether you want a vegetarian or non-vegetarian meal plan. It will be sent to your Fitness App by the next day.
3) If you haven’t done so yet, send an email to team@DoctorVenus.com and let me know whether you want an exercise plan for weight loss (focused on burning calories) or for building/maintaining your mass. So you just need to indicate whether you want a BURN or BUILD program. It will be sent to your Fitness App by the next day.
4) Download the Set Your Goals Checklist and complete it. CLICK HERE to download.
5) Download the Program Planner that you can start using, if you wish. CLICK HERE to download.
6) Download the Kitchen Clean Out handout and use it to guide the clean out of your kitchen BEFORE you start your meal plan. CLICK HERE to download.