FeelGooder: Tips for Life

FeelGooder Asks: How Do You Define “Success”?

January 21, 2011 by georgina

Typically, it’s around now that many of our New Year’s resolutions start to fall flat. So I thought this week, I’d ask a tough question:

How do you define success?

I think I define success largely by how good I feel. An example? This week I was offered a little project that will probably be one of the weirdest I’ve worked on—weirder than the time I posed as a hand model for a Facebook ad, and on par with the time I wrote a board game for a financial company.

The weirder my work is, the more fun it is. And the more fun it is, the more successful I feel. There are other contributing measures of work success—is the client happy, does the content perform, and so on—but my key metric is how I wind up feeling about the project. If I feel good about it, then I probably see it as a success.

I made this (pretty tasty) fresh cheese! Woo!

This definition applies beyond my work. On the weekend, I made cheese for the first time.

The semi-hard cheese I made is still curing, but already I see my efforts as having been pretty successful. Why? Because I enjoyed the experience—I had fun learning, trying something out, and experimenting. This was a successful experience, even if the cheese itself winds up being a failure. Perhaps that sounds crazy, but making cheese was fun, and it made me feel good.

We all see success differently. How do you define success?

Why I Love … Journaling

January 19, 2011 by Guest Contributor

This guest post is by Maria Walters of Rejournaling Me.

It was August or September, 1999, when I finally realized that then next year was going to be The Year Two Thousand. Being twelve, I loved being involved in anything that I felt like was “making history,” and my anticipation for the New Year rose with the media hype.

At that time I was also avidly collecting novels in the Dear America series, which told the stories of girls growing up at different points in American history. If you couldn’t tell by the name, the novels were in diary form—but they were fiction, a fact that seemed unfortunate in my eyes.

So, on the precipice of what I knew was going to be a new, amazing time in history, I decided that the journal of a real, live, almost-teenage girl would be absolutely fascinating to historians and readers everywhere. And thus, my new year’s resolution was born: to journal every night, to create something that would last for millennia to come.

Yes, a little melodramatic, perhaps, but isn’t that how all dreams seem when you’re twelve? Maybe that’s been a secret of my success: more than eleven years later, I still roll over in bed right before I turn off my light and hand-write a page or two about my day.

Why I journal

Though I started journaling through a naive desire to be famous and make history, I’ve grown to appreciate it much more than that. My journals are my reference books for my life—I can remind myself how much I’ve grown, how far I’ve come, or just how my handwriting has changed by simply flipping through the pages.

My journal is somewhere where I can think out loud and say things without worrying who is reading or how ridiculous my dreams are. I can rant, be frustrated, and think through issues without picking a fight with anyone. And, most of all, I can review my day, even in its dullness, and reflect on what has been good or bad.

Looking back, my journal won’t be the most interesting read for most people—I include plenty of monotonous details about the schedule of my day without being able to encapsulate the funny moments, the tears shed, or the characters of people around me who make life worth living. But I treasure the ability to look back on “normal” days in my life that are completely different than today’s “normal” day.

Start your own journal

The combination of foreignness and familiarity is probably the reason people are often fascinated by the fact that I journal. Often, they mention wishing they had the same habit, or asking how I’ve kept going. Well, there are certainly things (like my spelling!) that I could have improved back in 1999, but here are a couple of things I think helped me keep writing.

Take a head start

I actually started journaling on December 21, 1999, ten days before Y2K. I could be a pretty cautious girl who didn’t like failure, so I decided to test out my new year’s resolution before deciding to make it. That way, if I decided it wasn’t working or wasn’t worth it, I could just not make the resolution, instead of failing right out of the gate. Playing with logic in that way still works for me—I will often start a practice before deciding to commit to it long-term.

Use something beautiful

I remember the process of elimination at the bookstore when I was looking for my new journal—weighing one book in my hand, then another, scrutinizing each carefully. And then I felt it—a slim book, with a satiny smooth, lightly padded cover, covered with an image of a Monet or other impressionistic painting. Since then, I’ve picked out at least three or four journals each year—and I still look for one that looks beautiful and feels right.

Do it every day

I took my journal on two or three sleepovers within the first month of starting it. I’ve written in the light of a flashlight, a closet, in the hallway or bathroom, surrounded by people or alone. I even remember staying up later than I was supposed to, lying on my bedroom floor and writing by the hall light coming in under the door. It was only five or ten minutes, but I found a time for it, every day.

And, yes, I have missed a day or two at a time, but I don’t think about my habit as being “writing almost every day,” because suddenly every day becomes the “almost” part instead of the “every day” part. Writing every day makes me look for ways past the excuses instead of looking for the excuses not to write.

Expect to be boring

As I mentioned before, the way I journal helps me to think back through the day, writing down what I did, who I was with, and sometimes it reads more like a calendar than a novel. Some days I have plenty of emotions to spill or thoughts to think, and I can go on for pages. But when I write, I don’t worry about what I’m going to say, having the perfect phrasing, or any other performance anxiety—I just write something down and know that whether it’s fascinating or boring, I’ll write again tomorrow.

I may not be as famous as 12-year-old me might have hoped, but I have lived through a new, amazing time in history. Now I have a chance to look back and acknowledge it, and I have plenty more new, amazing times to look forward to documenting—which is my hope for you, too, that you have a chance to reflect on what was good and hard, and look forward to it.

What about you? Do you keep a journal? Or do you have some other way to process what happens each day?

Maria shares her old journal entries, 11 years later, at her blog, Rejournaling Me.

How Investing Increases Your Self-Esteem

January 17, 2011 by Guest Contributor

This guest post is by Andrea Travillian of Take a Smart Step.

Feel like you need a boost in self esteem? Well you could follow the traditional advice and go get counseling or use positive affirmations. How about, instead of that, you try using investing to increase your self esteem?

How investing increases self esteem

You get the opportunity to see something grow, that you helped produce. Investing is similar to planting a garden and getting the benefit of seeing your food grow and then enjoying the great taste. Anytime you create something from the ground up, you’ll have increased self esteem.
You feel empowered that you are doing something to take control of your future and change your life. If you have ever started an exercise program, you’ll understand that as you made progress and changed your life you felt better, emotionally and physically. Anytime you take action to make your life better, your self esteem increases.
Investing decreases stress, which makes you feel like there is one less thing that you’re struggling with. How? Money creates a sound financial base, which decreases stress. Decreased stress allows you to be more creative and have more energy for the rest of your life, thus helping you increase self esteem.
Investing gives you a sense of accomplishment. Kids develop self esteem by doing things on their own, like tying their shoes. You too can develop self esteem by investing on your own.

Alright, so you are with me on investing creates self esteem? But you still have excuses popping up that won’t allow you to get started? You don’t have enough money, enough time, or enough knowledge? Well I have some answers to hopefully give you the boost you need to get going!

Not enough money?

If you’re interested in increasing your self esteem, then most likely you are willing to pay for things like counseling and books to help you. Why not take that money and save it instead? Consider it another form of therapy.

Another option would be to begin to budget. Budgeting has a tendency to make us feel like we have more money since we quit wasting it. When we see that we spend four hundred dollars at the spa we might quickly decide that fifty dollars would be better put to our investment.

Not enough time?

Do you have time to watch an hour of TV? Then you have time to set up an investment. It really does not take much time! Don’t have an hour to watch TV? I am sure that you can find one hour somewhere else in the day—I know that I’d waste at least one hour a day.

You could try waking up one hour early to get your investment set up. If you set it up on an automatic program, you will be done with just one day of waking early. Just one hour less sleep for one day and you are on your way to higher self esteem!

Don’t know how to invest?

This is one of the best parts of using investing to increase self esteem, because by learning something new you increase your self esteem. So not only do you get the benefit of increased self esteem from investing, but you get more self esteem from learning something new. Let’s look at how you can get started.

Getting Started

So are you ready to start investing to build your self esteem? Following is a short list of how to get going.

Learn how to invest

If you don’t know how to invest, start learning. Do this by starting to read about investing. There are many ways to do this, read a magazine like Smart Money, read a book (I recommend Investing for Dummies), or start studying blogs and websites like Morning Star. Even small doses of five or ten minutes each day will help you start to learn.

Start saving

Start putting aside a small amount each month to start building your investment experience. You would not start your first garden by planting an entire acre; you would most likely start out with a few plants and expand your garden each year. This allows you to learn about what works and what doesn’t while building your knowledge and confidence. Your investment can even be as small as $25 a month—every little bit helps.

Create a way to track your investment growth

Your tracking tool might be very simple—it could even involve taking out a piece of paper and writing down how much you have at the end of each month. By posting this you will get to visually see your investments growing. Watching something grow, like a garden, gives you a sense of achievement. Now you can begin to bask in the glow of your increased self esteem, and your growing wealth.

Do you have an investment? How have saving and investing helped your self-esteem? Share your experiences in the comments.

Andrea Travillian teaches personal finance with the goal of building your financial confidence. Get your free copy ebook and mp3 on money and contentment at Take a Smart Step.

3 Ways Not to Look Like an Idiot at the Gym

January 16, 2011 by Guest Contributor

Growing up, I was always the “Fat Kid.” When I graduated from High School, I weighed over 400lbs. Then, a couple years ago I decided to take control of my health. Through a combination of low-fat vegetarianism and regular exercise, I lost 175lbs. No surgery, just lifestyle changes.

I’m a professional magician and I wanted to look good on stage. The effect on my appearance was dramatic. Check out these before and after pictures.

Before...

After!

Naturally, I get a lot of questions about this. One thing I hear regularly is, “I don’t like going to the gym! I feel like an idiot!”

If you’re not used to working out, your local gym can be an intimidating place. If you’re really that afraid of looking like an idiot, here’s a handy guide to help you out.

Don’t obsess over how you look

The regulars are there for precisely one purpose: to get a workout in. Most of us have lives outside of the gym and would like to get on with them. Don’t let the movies fool you—there’s nobody on the planet that looks sexy while getting a workout.

I’m not saying you should look like a bum, but every January you’d be forgiven for thinking your gym was a fashion runway instead of a gym. People walk around with matching shoes, shorts, tops, hair ties, and ear buds. Even their iPods match their outfits! It’s not just the ladies that do this. Guys do it too.

Oh, and do you wear makeup? Keep in mind that you’re showing up to sweat! I don’t care if you look like the grim reaper without it. It’s just not practical.

See the buff guy over in the corner with the clean-but-well-used shirt and worn sneakers? I can almost guarantee you he’s a regular.

Be considerate to others

You’re in a room with dozens of other people. This isn’t your living room, so be considerate.

Gym etiquette isn’t rocket science. Nobody wants to work out on a machine that’s covered in your sweat. Wipe it down when you’re done.

I know you’ll take a shower after your workout, but if you stink, please wash up before hitting the gym floor. Your stench will waft through the building until some poor soul (probably me) passes out from it and flies off the treadmill.

If you see a friend and want to have a chat, please talk off to the side—don’t do it while you’re on the equipment. If the gym is busy, chances are there’s a line of people behind you who are getting wicked irritated.

Guys, just because we all change together in the locker room doesn’t mean I want to see your junk. Have some modesty and wear a towel. (I assume the ladies have similar modesty issues, but since I haven’t had the privilege of hanging out in the women’s locker room I don’t know for sure…)

Get some training on the equipment you’re about to use

Most gyms will give you a one-time tutorial without making you pay for personal training. Even if they don’t, do whatever it takes to make sure you know what you’re doing. If you don’t bother, the best case scenario is you’ll look like an idiot. The worst case scenario is that you’ll injure yourself.

I’ll never forget the time I saw a guy just start whomping on a punching bag Jackie-Chan style. He threw out his shoulder and got hauled out in an ambulance. Good times!

If you’re serious about getting fit, you’re going to spend a lot of time working at it. At least take the time to learn how to do it right.

The one thing you shouldn’t worry about…

…is your actual fitness level. Most people have this pre-conceived notion that the gym is filled with beautiful people with perfect bodies. This just isn’t true. The matching-earbud brigade comes the closest, but for the most part there are people of all shapes and sizes there. Every gym has a jerk or two, but everyone else is just trying to live a healthy lifestyle.

Even if you’re really out of shape like I was, don’t worry about it. Many folks are actually silently supportive. I didn’t realize this until a few months had passed and I had shed some of the weight. I started getting a lot of comments along the lines of:

“Hey! I see you here every day… I’m seeing the results! I’m really happy for you, keep up the good work!”

Bottom line? You don’t need to obsess over your appearance or have the perfect body. Just be yourself and be courteous to others. You’ll discover the gym isn’t scary at all, and who knows? You might even find you like it!

Matthew Jones is one of the professional Ohio magicians at Shizzle Dizzle Magic. They provide clean comedy magic for corporate events, festivals, and anti-bullying school assemblies! Check out their blog for more details!

How to Keep that New-Year Feeling All Year Long

January 15, 2011 by Guest Contributor

This post is by Dr. Peter J. Meyers of 30GO30.

If you’re a plan junkie like me, New Year’s Day is your High Holy Holiday. There’s nothing quite as liberating as thinking ahead to an entire year of possibilities. Unfortunately, most of us hit January 1st running strong, only to be tripped up by the first obstacle in our path. I’d like to offer a few tips for keeping that New-Year feeling year-round.

Copyright 2009 by Kutay Tanir.

Plan on the obstacles

I know it’s not sexy to plan for setbacks, but it’s essential. It’s easy to hit the gym during your time off, but if that exercise plan falls apart the day you have to go back to work, then what’s the point? You know you’re going back to work. You know that the holiday won’t last forever. Make sure your plans fit your real life.

Work out the details

If your goal is to “get in shape,” don’t just write it on a piece of paper and then watch all the Rocky movies back-to-back. Equip yourself with what you’ll need when January 1st comes. Do you need a gym membership? Do you need some equipment for home or a workout DVD? Are your running shorts in a condition that might get you arrested for indecency?

Figure it out in advance. If your planning is nothing but heady dreams of world domination, and you save the hard stuff for the new year, your plan will fall apart before it even begins. Don’t just make a resolution – resolve yourself to a specific, actionable plan.

Think day by day

It’s easy to make big plans and bask in the glory of what might be, but how do your big plans translate into day-by-day activities? What will you do, specifically, on February 17th or June 3rd? If your New Year’s resolution is to write a novel, you’re probably not going to just think really hard for 364 days and then spew out 400 pages on December 31st. How does that novel translate into pages and words on a daily basis? Are you going to write every day, or just five or six days each week?

If you ask these questions ahead of time and really know how your aspirations translate into action, you’ve got a great shot at succeeding. If you don’t, you may be writing a fairy tale.

Make planning a habit

Sometimes, we get carried away with New Year’s resolutions. The problem is, we’ve essentially picked only one day per year to plan the most important aspects of our lives. We plan every day for the minutiae of our lives, but somehow the really big, important goals get relegated to a December 31st motivational binge.

Set aside time every week to plan. Make it the same time, and really build a planning habit. Your big goals deserve that much. Of course, this means asking the tough questions every week, too. Is this the right direction? Do you have what you need to make it happen? If you set aside the time to evaluate and plan, you may change direction, but you’re much more likely to reach at least one of your destinations.

Dr. Peter J. Meyers (“Dr. Pete”) is a cognitive psychologist, accidental entrepreneur, and aspiring non-procrastinator. He recently founded 30GO30, a site dedicated to finding out exactly how much you can accomplish in 30 days.

FeelGooder Asks: Who’s Your Hero?

January 14, 2011 by georgina

Yeah! Everyone loves a hero! Whether it’s Superman or your sister, a hero is a pretty inspiring force, and one that you can rely on to make you feel good about things.

Who’s Your Hero?

Alfred Russell Wallace, my hero

I have a few heroes, but the one that stands out the most is Alfred Russell Wallace. As Wikipedia says of him,

His observations of the marked zoological differences across a narrow strait in the [Indonesian] archipelago led to his proposing the zoogeographical boundary now known as the Wallace line.

This brief statement barely hints at the passion, the enormous amount of work, and the depth of logical and imaginative thinking that lead Wallace to identify the fact that the strait between the islands of Bali and Lombok marked a place where two tectonic plates meet, in the 1850s and ’60s, some fifty years before the theory of plate tectonics would be developed.

But that’s not all. Wallace “is best known for independently proposing a theory of evolution due to natural selection that prompted Charles Darwin to publish his own theory”, so to me, he’s a bit of an underdog, too.

Apart from the romance of his story, the thing that makes Wallace my hero is that he used his unique powers of observation and consideration to deduce from his environment something which had previously been unimaginable. His work amazes and inspires me.

…but who are your heroes? Tell us about them!

Feel Good Online? Feel Great Offline!

January 13, 2011 by Guest Contributor

This guest post is by Jane Sheeba of Find All Answers.

I had to go offline for a week. I packed up my stuff. I scheduled blog posts for those days I’d be away. I packed a couple of books I’d purchased, knowing that it would be really hard for me to stay offline. I couldn’t check mails, there’d be no tweets or buzzing… Life is tough that way, I thought.

When I came back, I realized a great difference in myself: I felt a lot better and recharged. I’m not claiming that being offline is the ideal state for well being. But I certainly recommend offline periods for everyone at some frequency. Let me tell you the goodness I experienced.

My eyes

My eyes thanked me for the break. My everyday routine includes a lot of sitting in front of the laptop. I sit in front of a Linux computer at work (I work full time as a Research Scientist in the field of Medical Physics), and at home is my Windows 7 laptop. I almost always look into a computer monitor, since I work on my blog at home.

When I was offline I no longer had eye balls that hurt. I went to bed before my vision got blurry. My eyes did not scream out to me, asking me to blink. I felt that I have done good justice to my eyes, and I could do more in less time in front of the computer when I was offline, since I had a better vision.

The time I spent with my family and people

Being offline was like being without any perturbations from outside. While at home, I have all email notifiers turned on. I’ll be away from my laptop to clean my house or to put clothes in the washer, when I hear a ‘bing’ (the alert sound when a chat message or a email comes in). I briefly come to the laptop to see if it’s something important. I have wireless enabled and my android phone is on the Web. Even if I go to bedroom, I can’t avoid the ‘bing’. Or I go to the kitchen and boom—an idea pops into my head. I either rush to my laptop or pick up my phone to type it out online (I want my drafts to be in sync wherever I go).

I spend about 15% of my time with my family when I have Internet access at home. But when I was away I spent about 80% of my time with my family, relatives, and friends. I spent a lot of that talking to people face to face and I felt it a lot more realistic and refreshing compared to online socializing.

My back

Sitting in front of a computer for hours at a time is a curse. It takes a lot of practice to learn and implement the correct ergonomic postures. Even if most of us know the correct postures, we don’t take care to stick to them after some time, once we are working with full concentration. We cannot stop our body from changing postures. As we become more and more involved in our work, we take rather bad postures, doing harm to our back and neck.

Well, I am all saying ‘we’; even though I don’t know about all of you, I know this happens with most people.

I felt a lot firm and straight during the week when I was offline. I did not sit in my chair and lean forward. Actually I did not sit in a chair for the most part. I did a lot of walking and moving around, and my back felt so fresh. I never felt the ache that usually occurs at about bed time.

My productivity

I actually thought that since I was going offline I would kill a lot of my productive time. I worried if I could ever catch up at all with all the pending work that would have piled up on my return. To my surprise, the offline time was actually a productive break. I got super-productive and wrote an ebook in 4 days.

Surprisingly, I wrote this ebook in less than 20% of the time (I spent about 80% of the time on socializing, as I said earlier!). 20% of the time is far very little compared to the time I’d usually take, while online, to get this work done. I achieved something that would take about 15 to 20 days if I chose to do it on those days when I’m always online. The problem is the routine online stuff that distracts me from writing the ebook.

The other online things are not literally distractions—they’re other things that are either equally or more important than writing the ebook, but still they divert me from my writing (or what I am into, generally).

I am not saying that I am totally disorganized when I am online. Not at all! I do all my research and blogging work while being online. I have had no problems with my personal organization and productivity. But being online at least sets two expectations within me:

1. Sync with all servers (emails, drafts, and so on) or get updated.

2. Be alert not to get into online distractions. The very awareness to not get distracted while being online creates restlessness. I’m sure you’ve experienced this yourself.

My humble suggestion: take yourself offline once in a while and you’ll feel a great difference. Your body and mind will receive a great treat if you do so, and so will your productivity.

Jane writes on Blogging Tips, Relationships and Self Improvement at Find All Answers. She has a free ebook for you to grab.

Why I Love … Running

January 12, 2011 by Guest Contributor

This post is by Kate Freeman of Kate Freeman Nutrition.

Exercise, to me, is like a drug … well, from what I know about drugs, because I’ve never actually used them. But from what I’ve heard, engaging in vigorous physical activity gives me a similar rush.

Now, I hate putting on my runners and walking out the door but I love the feeling I get at the end of the training session—this amazingly worn out feeling, though I’m energized and alive all at the same time. Exercise makes me view my body more positively, gives me a better perspective on challenging areas of my life, and is the best stress relief technique I’ve ever come across.

It hasn’t always been this way. I use to be a fad exerciser. I’d do something for a couple of weeks until the novelty wore off, and then I’d go back to being lazy again. I took for granted that I was a healthy weight, had healthy bones, muscles and joints, and had a body that seemed to function perfectly.

Then I got pregnant.

By the end of my second pregnancy it had been over two years since I’d engaged in regular physical activity. I had been a bit sporadic—maybe a walk here and a Wii Fit session there—but nothing consistent. Nine months of morning sickness for both pregnancies had left me tired, depleted, and terribly unfit, not to mention hemorrhaging with my first labor, which left me borderline anemic.

The first time I actually did anything more than a walk left me breathless and feeling like passing out after about ten seconds.

Where was my fitness, my stamina, my motivation? It was all gone. My body was way below par and my fitness destination seemed too far from where I was to even begin the path of restoration. My once healthy weight felt like it could balloon at any second. I had to do something.

One thing, only a little thing, was enough to kick start me into action. Here’s the story.

I was eight months pregnant with my second child, and I remember groaning as I pulled myself off the lounge. Every part of me ached. My feet felt like they were burning, I half choked on the acid reflux that came up my throat as my uterus crushed my poor little stomach that felt like it was already in my armpit. My hips were shooting with pain when I made any kind of quick movement, and my poor neck said, “If you vomit one more time, I’m going to pack it in.” Well it didn’t really say that, but I’m sure if it could talk, it would have.

I used to watch this Coca-Cola ad on TV with these perfect, skinny girls running and jumping around, all happy and energetic. I’d go green with envy as my whale of a body, could barely get itself out of bed in the morning.

How I wished I could be like those girls: energetic and carefree. How I wished to have my pre-pregnant body back. If I did, I wouldn’t take it for granted this time. I would look after it, be a regular exerciser, put good food into its tummy and keep it healthy.

That day I made a vow to myself—a promise that I would forever keep. When this baby was out, the exercise was on! It seemed I hadn’t realized what I had until I’d lost it. An unwell pregnancy had made me very grateful for the healthy, functioning body I had before my babies—especially when I realized there were people out there in far more difficulty than I was in.

Three weeks later I held my little baby boy in my arms and revelled in immediate relief from my horrifying pregnancy hormones. No more vomiting, no more reflux, no more hip, neck, back, foot, or body pain. I was back.

After waiting the customary six weeks, and catching up on much-needed sleep, I got the all-clear from the doctor and I was back in business. My vow was still very much in the forefront of my mind. So thankful was I to not be pregnant that I didn’t want to waste a minute. On went the joggers, a new fitness outfit (purple and black, to match my shoes), and my favorite music tracks.

Two minutes into jogging, I felt like I was going to die.

I could have given up then. It all seemed too much, and I was never going to get my fitness back. But my vow came back to me. All I could hear was my own words in the back of my mind, “You promised yourself, Kate. You remember what it was like to not be able to exercise. Now you can, so don’t miss your chance”.

The next day I gave it another shot, and I got a little bit further. Every time I wanted to give up I remembered my vow, and I remember the feeling of having the opportunity to move my body taken away. The next day I tried again.

My son is now ten months old. I have been exercising consistently for about eight months now. I can interval walk/run 10kms with my jogger pram and have lost 7kg. And I feel great. I’m so happy with my body, I feel confident in the bedroom with my husband, and I have so much energy. I sleep like a log and a month ago I bought a $200 pair of jeans. They go right on—no fuss, no muffin top, just nice.

Don’t get me wrong: there were a couple of highly stressful events during that time when the exercise stopped for a week or two, but the promise, still echoing in my head, made me get right back into it again. I’m not a fad exerciser any more. I’m a consistent exerciser—and that’s the key.

I became a runner because it doesn’t cost me anything, I can take my kids (I have an amazing twin jogger stroller), I can work as hard or as easy as I like, I can go when I like, and it gave me my fitness back. I could start out slow—just a couple of minutes at first—and then build up more and more endurance. I didn’t have to spend heaps of money on equipment or gear, either.

I’m a runner because it taught me patience, endurance and perseverance.

If you have lost your fitness, or maybe you never had it and think it’s all too hard—don’t give up. If I can do it, so can you.

Editor’s Note: Want to tell us what you love—and why—in a post for FeelGooder? Submit your ideas to us!

Kate Freeman is extremely passionate about providing honest, simple nutrition advice and doing it in such a way that inspires and motivates people to make positive lifestyle changes to achieve their health and nutritional goals. She is married with 2 children and lives in New South Wales, Australia.

9 Ways in Which Yoga Changed My Life … And Could Change Yours

January 11, 2011 by Guest Contributor

This post is by Claudia Azula Altucher of Claudiayoga.com.

I started practicing yoga because I wanted to look good and feel good. I also wanted to meet men. Through my early practice days I saw that advanced students seemed peaceful, elegant, centered, and almost otherworldly. Little did I know at the time that those were merely projections. Yogis are people, and just like with other people, you can find all kinds.

The promise of what I thought I saw in these practitioners was enough to get me started anyway, and I am glad I did. Yoga brought into my life not just all of the things I initially believed I wanted, but much more. It made me more flexible in body, yes, but it also pointed out other areas of life in which I could bend or stretch more.

Here are some examples of where the practice had a life-changing effect for me.

1. Lifting me from depression

Yoga entered my life and lifted depression away, literally. I’d been on medication from 2003 until 2006, and through the daily practice and everything that happened as a consequence (having a teacher care for me, going to workshops, meeting people, going to brunches with other yogis, learning about yogic principles, and so on), I was able to stop taking drugs.

It didn’t happen overnight—not at all. It took a few years and a lot of trust, but it happened. These days the daily practice of yoga and meditation is so ingrained in my daily activities that I can clearly see how not having it could produce a void that, especially in winter months, could send me singing the blues.

For example, when I took my very first yoga retreat at the end of 2003 in northern British Columbia, I was for the first time aware that one can live life dedicating every action to a higher power, however way we understand that. During that retreat they had us wash lettuce as a dedication, make the bed with total awareness, and stop and pray on the hour, every hour.

Integrating an attitude of devotion, remembering how blessed I was to have food to eat, the possibility of a retreat, and a healthy body, helped me to slowly put things in perspective, and to come into health.

2. Changing the body

The very first way in which yoga showed herself in my life was through my body. I started practicing Ashtanga yoga, which is a set routine practiced every day in the morning, six times a week. What I liked about this particular style is that the student practices on his or her own and poses are added one at the time.

In the beginning the practice was short as I concentrated on learning the poses in the sequence, and the sweating was profuse. I practiced half in a studio and half at home (with a DVD), and within a short period of time of no more than six months I started to notice new muscles in my body, feel more energy, have better posture, and release weight.

Not all styles of yoga are intense like the one I practice, but most classes these days include a comprehensive workout for the whole body. They include backbends, which help with spine flexibility; twists, which help with toxic release and weight loss; inversions, which help us see things differently; and standing routines that build stamina.

Throughout the daily practice of yoga poses, my body began to learn new and change old habits. For example, eating after 7 PM was not an option when I knew I would be attempting a deep twist the following morning.

3. Learning to stop reacting

Practicing yoga asana (poses) every day is perhaps one of the strongest mirrors we can put in front of ourselves. For example, facing a deep twist like Marichasana C is a colossal event.

Marichasana C (author's image)

As we learn it, every single cell in the body seems to scream “no” in resistance. Having a teacher direct us to go deeper into the pose and keep breathing is a major exercise, one with profound consequences in real life. What happens when we are able to stay in a pose like this while still breathing and remaining equanimous is akin to a triumph of epic proportions.

We can see the positive effect of that equanimity later on, as we step off the mat. For me it became very clear at work, where I would attend a meeting and go through the usual tensions that spark in such settings. Yet I’d have a moment before reacting—a small silence, a breathing pause—where I would stay with the feeling before saying anything. Most of the time, if not all the time, situations had a way of resolving themselves before I even uttered a word, and all of this was just a consequence of a small silence, of a moment of staying present, quiet, and aware.

4. Finding true relationships

It never takes very long when one starts on the path to yoga to realize that the asana or poses are just the tip of the iceberg. In my own case this started to manifest in very practical ways, and before I even knew that there were ancient codes of behavior, breathing exercises or other limbs, or branches to yoga (there are eight).

Through learning about the new branches I realized that I had some ingrained habits that were no longer serving me. For instance, I was attracting men into my life that were not good for me, and were usually unavailable. Te truth is that this is not something that stopped at men, it was a trend within my life—there were other people around me who I thought of as my friends, but who clearly were not. Through reflection I became more aware of what I was doing not just to my body but also to my emotional being.

Changing a lifetime of habits is not something that happens overnight, and breaking that pattern was not something I did at the snap of my fingers—it was a process that started mostly with point three above. Having enough time before reacting or saying “yes” or “no” to something gave me a better opportunity to search for clarity, and to connect with my own inner wisdom. I continued to make wrong choices (I have to admit) but at least I knew that I was choosing the wrong thing. Whoever says that change is easy is probably not being entirely honest.

After I repeated the pattern of choosing the wrong path while completely aware that I was doing that a few times, it suddenly became clear that I could try something new. For example, I could give myself the chance of believing that I was worth loving. I learned to love and respect myself in this way, slowly but surely, and to re-think my circle of friends and intimate relationships. It paid off.

5. Becoming more efficient

Through a practice we learn to pay attention to the breath. This sounds like an unimportant part of our daily life, but as soon as yoga starts kicking in it becomes clearly the most important thing.

How much energy is used to lift up of a chair, to make a cup of tea, how many words we use in every sentence, how focused we are on the task at hand, it is all deeply connected to how we are breathing. Shallow and fast breathing leads to over talking, and to wasting “prana” or vital energy.

Becoming more and more aware of my breath was the doorway into efficiency within my own body. I started noticing all energies coming in and out, and also how often I was going to the bathroom, what I was eating, what I was talking about, and what I was reading.

By making better choices in all of this areas life became less burdened, I started giving away old clothes to charity and eventually, when I lost my job in 2009, I gave away pretty much everything I had. I became lighter, and determined to carry around only those things I really treasure and need. I became efficient.

6. Changing the spirit

The spiritual side for me manifested in trusting my own insight and intuition, and in listening—truly listening—to what I wanted to do, to the song my heart was singing. Through it I became more and more interested in writing, in reading about yoga, in teaching. Many other doors opened up by way of what I call Divine grace: I learned the powerful effect of mantras, I started paying attention to coincidences and chance encounters, and to follow the clues offered in the most trivial situations.

A challenge of stepping into this path is remaining grounded. When someone starts talking about mantras it is easy to dismiss and think that a person might have gone coo-coo. I would not blame anyone for thinking so; it’s always good to keep things in perspective. Good yoga encourages this, to find the connection with the wondrous spiritual world, yet keep the feet solidly grounded in reality, in feeding the children, and in doing the laundry.

7. Changing the mind

Patanjali is a sage who created a masterpiece called the “Yoga Sutras”—a little book of 196 sentences in which he explains the whole science of yoga, and which needs to be de-coded through a lifetime of study. In the book, only two of the 196 sutras are dedicated to asana or poses. All the rest deal with different issues, mostly related to controlling the mind.

The very first sutra “yoga chitta vritti nirodhah” means that yoga is the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind, meaning that yoga is becoming still, one-pointed, so centered that whatever we put our attention on we burn with the fire of intention and we can pretty much manifest anything we want. Funnily enough, apparently once one gains that power, one does not want anything. The paradoxes of spiritual advancement!

Learning to work with the mind transformed me by introducing daily meditation into my life—ten minutes, 20 minutes, or sometimes even 30. It took a while (in the beginning I never found the time or motivation), but these days I need it. Life seems meaningless and depraved of magic if I do not sit on the cushion and meditate.

When I was working in the corporate world in busy New York City, I used to take a walk every day at lunch time to a nearby meditation center and sit for the first half an hour of my time off. This conspired in my life to make me a lot more aware of my priorities, of where energy was being wasted, and gave me insight into how to proceed when in difficult situations.

Meditation is the branch of yoga that has brought the most amount of miracles in my life, perhaps the biggest one being that I now live and do work I love, for which I am very grateful.

8. Traveling

Maybe it’s our curiosity to discover traditions that have practiced yoga for a long time, or perhaps it is the fantastic nature of the stories we hear from people coming back from India that eventually makes us curious to travel to see Yoga in its place of origin.

There are many top yoga institutes in major Indian cities like New Dehli, Rishikesh, Chennai, and Mysore. I visited the latter in early 2008 and will be returning soon. For someone living in north America like me, the possibility of visiting Thailand with all its retreat centers and fasting and cleansing facilities became more than a treat. It was a dream, and eventually it happened. Through the grace of yoga I became a curious traveler.

Traveling has a strong effect in the life of the voyager: it opens our eyes, forces us to see things differently (people eat fried insects in some parts of the world), makes us adapt (no brushing your teeth with tap water in India), surprises us, and alchemizes us.

9. Going down the rabbit hole

Somehow this happens when we step on the yoga path: we say goodbye to our old preconceptions and begin to give ourselves the opportunity to look at everything that happens in a new way. We start thinking with new types of images, we dream new possibilities, we become kinder, we notice things, and we see things.

The yogic path is a rewarding way of living, a grounded way to connect with spirit, and a doorway into the magic that lives within us—even as we toss the spinach salad!

Claudia Azula Altucher has studied yoga for over a decade and all over the world including the Ashtanga Yoga Research Institute in Mysore, India, and at Centered Yoga in Thailand. She writes daily at Claudiayoga.com.

The Positive Power of Negative Thinking

January 10, 2011 by Guest Contributor

This guest post is by Vergil Den, author of The Stoic’s Burden.

A triathlete comments that training and preparation for a competition is harder than the competition itself.
A general creates a contingency plan against the event of an unexpected attack by the enemy.
An engineer tests the rudder of a plane at twice the expected normal load.

What do all of these individuals have in common? They’re harnessing the positive power of negative thinking.

In this age of positive thinking, negative thinking has gotten a bad rap. And why not? Most people would rather not think about the bad things that can happen in life. But just as positive thinking has a place in goal-setting, practical negative thinking has a place in goal achievement.

Fortune at the door

Are we prepared for what fortune has to offer us in life? Life is not like a box of chocolates—unless some of the chocolates are spoiled. We must face the harsh fact that bad things happen.

The ancients knew something about fortune. The myths of antiquity often have fortune as a central theme. The Stoics, in particular, were aware of fortune and its random, uncertain nature. They would visualize all the negative things that could befall them so they were prepared for the event, both physically and emotionally, if it were to occur.

Fortune may appear to be totally random, but a lot of seemingly random events are in our control. Why does it seem then, like they are not in our control?

Studies have shown that people often overestimate what they know and underestimate what they don’t know. Consider the following example. In 2000, Time Warner merged with AOL. At the time, the deal was the largest in history and was expected to create a company that would revolutionize the digital industry. This likelihood was heralded by both experts and non-experts a like.

In fact, this turned out to be one of the worst deals in history. If you invested in these companies at the time the deal was announced, your investment would have been nearly wiped out. What happened here? All the experts were wrong. It was a case where they overestimated what they knew and underestimated what they didn’t know. For an investor, with proper planning, this seemingly random bad event could have been avoided.

Goal achievement

So how can we apply the Stoic principle of negative thinking, and the negative thinking that we know less than we do know, and even less about what we don’t know, to help us achieve our goals? Follow these five steps:

Establish your goal, and identify what you think it will take to reach that goal. This is the positive form of thinking that we all do.
Then think about the worst things that could happen on your way to reaching that goal.
Put a plan in place to either mitigate the risk of those events occurring or mitigate the risk associated with the impacts of those events.
Modify the actions needed to reach you goals from step 1 with the newfound risk insights from step 3.
Periodically repeat steps 2 to 4. This is an important step because things in life are always changing and risks evolve. What may have been adequate now may not be in six months’ time.

Negative thinking and the stock market

When we think about investing, we often visualize making lots of money. This often leads to excessive risk taking. Try this instead: visualize losing all of your money in your investments and imagine how that would make you feel. How would that impact your life and your family? If there’s a significant impact, then put into your investment strategy the proper controls to avoid this failure. For example, if you purchase an individual stock, you might consider also putting in a stop loss.

Negative thinking in business

With all the self-help business management books out there, you would be certain that to be successful all you have to do is work hard in addition to six other successful habits. This is nonsense. These books are written by those who succeeded—and produces something that’s called survivorship bias. These books are not typically written by those who actually failed.

The attributes of the successful are often the same as those who failed. For every Jack Welch, there are thousands of others with the same attributes that failed. To be successful in business, one must avoid failure. Once your business goals are set, visualize the events that could cause your business to fail. How does that feel? Now think about what you can do to avoid those failures. For example, consider the concept of tinkering and how that can help your business avoid total failure.

Negative thinking in life

None of us like to think about death. But death is an important part of life. Think about it for a moment. How does it feel? How would those you love be impacted by your death? Many people don’t anticipate death, so when it occurs (I can guarantee that it will), their loved ones are left to struggle with the loss both emotional and financially. If your death will impact your loved ones, you might consider at least a low-cost life insurance policy.

We can also apply this thinking to job-loss preparation. Most people don’t prepare for job loss, but by visualizing losing your job and the impact it would have, you can prepare. For example, it is recommended that people have at least six months in operating costs available as cash in a savings account.

The positive power of negative thinking is a check to the natural, irrational exuberance we feel when we try to attain success. Also, by thinking about the negative events, if and when they occur, the bitter taste of their impact will be lessened thanks to your planning. And if and when you finally succeed, the taste of success will be that much sweeter.

Vergil Den is a free thinker and a recovering wannabe Empty Suit (i.e., a heartless corporate executive). He now doesn’t take himself quite as seriously and periodically muses about life at www.vergilden.com.