Try Something New

By nature, I'm a squeamish person when it comes to trying new foods.  In my 20's I first sampled Mexican food (now my absolute favorite). It was an 25 before I tried shrimp.  I was well into my 30's when I first tried sushi, crab legs, and an assortment of other foods that are ranked high on my go-to list.

And then there's Red Velvet Cake.  I finally broke down and tried it because everyone raved over it.  I avoided it because it looked like the cake had been soaked in pig's blood before being cooked.  It tastes just like normal cake, only it's red...what's the big deal?  Give me a yellow cake with chocolate icing any day!

Here's where things start getting strange for me.  I've taken a new client under my wing and we are exploring a new coaching topic.  My client is me...the topic is health.  However, this post isn't about that.  It's what I discovered along the path.

I love coffee.  As much as I try and avoid Starbucks, I just can't stay away because it's, to me, hands down, the best coffee out there.  I hit the locally owned shops on occasion, but no one brings it home like Starbucks.  I wish I didn't love it so much because I am unalligned with the CEO's open political views.  Sigh...  

So now I tie those two things together.  I'm (attempting to) eat primal based on Mark Sisson's book The Primal Blueprint.   He's got a killer blog called Marks Daily Apple as well as a great group on the forum.  I stumbled across something called Bulletproof Coffee, which I believe originated from The Bulletproof Executive (another great site).  The original version from Dave Asprey:

Bulletproof Coffee Recipe

• Start with 4-500 ml (2 mugs) of black coffee brewed with my mold-free Upgraded Coffeebeans.   (Why this is important)
• Add 2 Tbs (or more, up to 80 grams, about 2/3 of a standard stick of butter) of Kerry Gold or other UNSALTED grass-fed butter
• Add 2 Tbs (30 ml) of Upgraded MCT oil for max energy, weight loss and brain function (this is 6 times stronger than coconut oil, your next best choice)
• Blend with a pre-heated hand blender, shake really hard in a flask, or (best) counter top blender until there is a creamy head of foam. (It doesn’t work well if you mix it with a spoon)

However, Mark has hacked the recipe and come up with a new version...

 

Primal Egg Yolk Coffee

• 1 1/2 cup (350 ml) coffee
• 3 pastured egg yolks
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1/4 tsp of salt

I have to be honest.  I was a little taken aback by the thought of raw egg yolks in my coffee.  Remember, I'm the guy that was afraid of a bean burrito!!!

 

The first time I tried it I lost more than one yolk trying to separate them.  Then I remember watching my grandmother do it by hand.  Crack the egg, open it into your cupped hand, and spread your fingers slightly and let the albumin (egg white) slide out, while keeping a close watch on the yellow.  There's this white rope like tissue that connects to the yolk and I can only think of as the "umbilical cord" (I know, I know), and it can be left on, but I just can do it.  It usually requires some picking at to get off and for me, I just can't take leave it.

 

My dog loves the albumin or you can toss it in a pan for an egg white omelet, but if you're the kind of person that eats an egg white omelet, you're probably NOT the kind of person that drinks egg yolks in your coffee.

 

I put the yolks in my favorite Mickey Mouse coffee cup, dropped a K-Cup (Mocha Nut Fudge) into my Keurig and let it work it's magic.  It's not quite Starbucks, but it certainly beats the generic sludge that's at my office.  I added a spoonful of sugar (helps the medicine go down) and stirred.  To my surprise, upon busting, the yolks made my coffee look like I'd just put creamer in it, so reluctantly, I decided to give it a taste. 

 

WOW!

 

It was good.  REALLY good.  I almost went back for seconds, and if it weren't so messy, I would have.  I can handle the process once a day, but twice...not so much.

 

Mark Sisson noted on his site that " I don’t know if it was just an excessive amount of coffee or if the caffeine was potentiated by the phospholipids in the yolks, but I felt like I was under the influence of… something. Although it was a good feeling, a productive feeling, to be sure, I could see it getting out of hand if taken too far. This is potent stuff. A cup or two is probably ideal, at least for me."

 

He is absolutely right.  I get a huge boost on the days I add the yolks to my coffee and as someone that's focusing on health, that boost is just what I need to fuel a 2 mile run (stagger, stumble, or trot).

 

I highly recommend trying something new and giving this a shot.  Getting away from your comfort zone is extremely liberating.  (But I'm still not going to try beets!)

 

Be awesome!

 

Chris

Think About Your Thinking

I'm back.

Where did I go?  That would take entirely too long to write here, just assume I was abducted by aliens and they thought I was too weird and dropped me back off with a box of "new" Twinkies.

Where were we?

Oh yes...

I've spent the last few months immersing myself in strategic improvement...books, audio, webinars, websites, web groups, and most importantly, THINKING...and that, ladies and gentlemen, is the word of the day.

It's amazing when you actually isolate yourself away from everything and everyone, the quality of your thoughts goes up exponentially.  I found myself just today listening to an audio book (free plug for Audible.com) and my mind kept drifting.   When I caught myself, I paused the audio and listened to what I had to say.  That may sound silly at first, but sometimes part 1 of your brain is trying to communicate with part 2 and you have to pay attention or you're NOT going to be able to enjoy what you're doing (I'm sure there's some ego, id, and superego connections there, but I slept through psychology that day).

If there's one thing I've learned over the last few months, it's that you have to think about your thinking.  Make time specifically for you and your thoughts to spend quality time together with some method of capturing those thoughts.  Note:  Unless you're an artist, if you catch yourself doodling, you're doodling...not thinking.

If you're thinking of a solution to a problem, write everything that comes to your mind.  I'm a big fan of dry erase boards for this.  After I finish, I take a picture of the board with my phone and email it to myself.  BOOM.  I have a permanent copy of my notes (good camera on my phone).  You can also save a copy to Google Drive or other personal cloud storage site.

Thinking has become so important, that I have it scheduled on my calendar 3 times during the work week and early in the mornings on Sunday when it's just me and the dogs padding through the house.

It's amazing what a difference it's made in my life.  I no longer worry about anything.  That's what my thinking session is for.  I can always schedule an "Emergency Thinking Session" with myself and get isolated for 15-20 minutes when necessary.  My phone has a spot for notes and the only thing I keep is my Thinking List.  Sometimes when I don't have anything on the list for the day, I can contemplate the meaning of life, what I'm getting my wife for Christmas, or how to make a difference for someone else.

These sessions are 15 minutes long and I hold myself to that time frame so my mind doesn't wander to lunch or last night's episode of The Walking Dead.

Try it.  Let me know how it works for you.

Be awesome!
Chris

Mentors

It doesn’t matter where you are in your life, CEO or Sunday School teacher, everyone needs a coach or mentor.  When choosing a mentor, it needs to be someone outside of your workplace, family, or circle of close friends.  That’s not to say your mentor won’t be your friend, but you have to be able to bounce ideas, thoughts, and occasionally, frustrations, off this person, without fear of being judged.

A mentor typically has more practical life experience that you, however, that doesn’t mean they have to be older.  Wisdom comes from experience, not necessarily age.

When looking for someone to coach you, you need to first make sure they also have someone mentoring them.  There’s no one with all the answers.

If you are in need of personal or leadership coaching, I’d love to work with you (and yes, I have 3 coaches for 3 areas of my life).  Just email me at cholmes777@gmail.com and we'll connect.

Be Awesome!

Chris

New Month's Resolutions

I wrote in an earlier post that I'm not a fan of New Year's Resolutions.  It gives you the sense that it's only appropriate to set major goals once a year.  You can resolve to make change on the 3rd Wednesday of September, if that's when inspiration strikes.

I'm not a proponent of living in the past, but I do think taking a little time on the first of the month to review your accomplishments from the prior month is an excellent tactic to make sure you long term strategies/goals are on track and make any adjustments to your daily actions.

Lets say for instance you decided on July 1, 2012 that you wanted to lose 60 pounds by the same date in 2013, and in January, your healthy lifestyle took a little setback and you gained 5 pounds, instead of losing 5 pounds.  It's NOT the end of the world.  It's time to ground yourself in your "WHY DO I WANT TO LOSE WEIGHT" and get maniacally focused.  So instead of losing 10 pounds in February, or worse, just giving up, you recalculate and commit to losing that extra 2 pounds each month.   Now you know you have to burn, or reduce your intake by an additional 7,000 per month, or 250 per day.

Or if you're in sales and the month wasn't so stellar, you can calculate how much more per month you require to hit your numbers for the year, calculate in your calls to appointments to presentations to closings to your avg $ per sale, and you can see that you might have to make an additional 3 calls per day to hit your yearly number.

In any event, it's a good time to take a quick look back and make sure your life is on track, and make the necessary adjustments if it's not.  Don't spend too much time on this regular exercise because it's easy to get caught in the "what if" trap and ruin a perfectly good start to a new month.

Be awesome!

Chris


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Recipe for Lemonade

Life can really suck sometimes.  Even the most positive person can feel self pity and play the "victim" when something doesn't go our way.  Sometimes we have our dreams in our grasp only to watch them vanish like smoke in the wind.  How does a rational, mature, positive person, handle this adversity?  

First, and foremost is to have gratitude for what you do have;  family, friends, coffee, the shoes on your feet...you can find something to be thankful for.

Next, you have to ask yourself "Was my dream interfering with my purpose?"

Remember the movie Field of Dreams?  I was listening to an old Tony Robbins recording earlier and he pointed out the scene in the movie where Ray Kinsella is talking to Dr. Graham about his lost dream of playing baseball.  He had made it to the big leagues and had made it onto the field in the last game of the season, however he never got the chance to bat, and the next season, he was sent to the minors, so he left baseball to become a doctor...

Ray Kinsella: Fifty years ago, for five minutes you came within... you came this close. It would KILL some men to get so close to their dream and not touch it. God, they'd consider it a tragedy.
Dr. Archibald "Moonlight" Graham: Son, if I'd only gotten to be a doctor for five minutes... now that would have been a tragedy.

The character played by the late Burt Lancaster absolutely NAILED it.  That's one of the best statements that defines the difference between a dream and a purpose.  Sometimes they are the same, but more often that not, one is simply a desire of the heart, while the other is the overwhelming drive that subtly guides your thinking, actions, and ultimately, your life.

If you haven't discovered your purpose, know that everything in the universe is driving you toward it, and your lost dream may have been one of the obstacles.  That dream might be the source of short term happiness, but accomplishing your purpose will give you an overpowering sense of fulfillment.

And finally, when nothing else works, the dreaded, "put on your big person Underoos, and suck it up!"  If you're still whining and groaning about how "it's not fair..." and "I deserved...", you have to absolutely shut down the primal thinking with your more refined mature brain.  When those thoughts surface, beat them down like a rented mule!   If you hang on to them, you're feeding them, making them stronger.

Over time, you'll usually see the dream for what it was...a distraction from fulfilling your purpose.

Enjoy the lemonade!

Chris

The War Against Mediocrity

Right this moment, whether you realize it or not,  you are in a war.  The enemy uses guerrilla tactics to distract you from personal greatness.  That enemy is constantly pulling you toward the TV, to your email.  It prompts you to check Facebook, ESPN, your favorite new site.  You can't help being sucked into wanting the latest and greatest smartphone, tablet, laptop.

When is the last time you sat down and read a book for an afternoon?  What are you listening to during your 30 minute commute every day?  Can you name 5 things you did out of pure kindness (not as part of your job) for others yesterday?  This week?  This month?

Our society is overwhelmed with stimuli from every direction.  We focus more on what's going on with our weekly crime-drama than we do in our own lives.  We spend an inordinate amount of time living is a virtual world while missing the real world all around us.

We are being "dumbed-down" as a society.  If you don't believe it, watch MTV for 15 minutes.  There is a force that is trying to keep you distracted so you can't think, plan, and strategize for a prosperous future.  I even find it harder now to concentrate on just reading a book for an hour without the phantom vibration of my smartphone causing me to reach for it, even though it's been purposely left in the other room.

The world is working against us and wanting us to accept mediocrity.  We, the free thinkers and philosophers of the world, must fight back.   You must have a strategy to fight the system that's keeping you down!

Here's my personal list of tactics to keep myself from falling into mediocrity:

• Listen to books that promote personal growth during my commute.
• Record the 3 shows I like and have a catch up session every few weeks with my wife (with popcorn!).
• View my social media sites twice a day for 5 minutes.
• Look for every opportunity to make someone's life just a little better.
• Write down my goals daily.
• Write daily, whether in my journal, on this blog, somewhere.
• Avoid the news whenever possible
• Believe that I can always get better in every aspect of my life.
• Get up immediately after falling
• Don't feed any negative thought or emotion.

The tactics change, but not the strategy.  Write them down and form habits around them.  Reward yourself for victories.  I'll write more about that in Habits Part 2, coming soon.

I'd love to hear your tactics as well.

Be awesome (and FIGHT)!

Chris

Habits Rule The World (part 1)

In the last year, I've made the study of habits...well.... a habit.    I have been amazed at how they completely take control of someone's life, whether it's driving on autopilot, drinking alcohol, or walking around staring at a smart phone 24/7.  

I'm the "victim" of a few destructive habits, my worst being my stress eating.  I've gotten better about it since I've started my study of how habits work, but I haven't been able to completely eliminate my cheetah-like sprint for something sweet when I feel the heat coming on.  The human body avoids mental and emotional stress as much as possible, and when the body feels the stress, the hypothalamus tells the adrenal glands (located next to your kidneys) to release the stress hormones, adrenaline, cortisol and norepinephrine.  Those hormones work great if your stress is being caused by a bear growling at you because they stimulate your body's entire physiology to immediately prep it for "fight or flight" (neither of which are recommended when confronting a bear www.wikihow.com/Escape-from-a-Bear).  

The problem with that stress is you typically aren't going to do anything with that instant burst of energy and it sits on your chest making you feel awful...until you find an outlet.  I've speculated that sobbing at my desk isn't the best outlet, so for years, my release from that stress prison has been snack cakes.  High levels of cortisol cause the body to crave salt and sugar, which in the case of someone running for their lives, carbs would be the fuel and salt would be a replacement for the electrolytes lost in the sweat.  Cortisol also cuts out several unnecessary functions in the body, one of which I personally believe is the ability to think rationally (but that's just my theory).


If I were to jump up from my desk and RUN instead of heading to the snack machine, it wouldn't be a problem.  The endorphins released from running override the stress hormones in the body and bring it back to a somewhat normal status.  That's why runners are always the most relaxed, "chilled out" people I know.

But I'm in an environment that doesn't allow me to just burst out of the office "Garp style" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_According_to_Garp) and start running down the parking lot.  I am however, desperately wanting to eliminate the stress eating habit. The problem is, habits are so hard coded into the brain, that it's really rare to simply eliminate a habit.  You have to replace the habit with another.  In addition, you have to be very aware of what triggers your habit and recognize that trigger before you slip into your destructive routine, and immediately start the new, hopefully, healthy routine.

Next, the routine has to be reinforced with some kind of reward, or emotional satisfaction at it's completion.  It can be something as simple as a look in the mirror, giving yourself a silent nod of acknowledgement of a job well done (although right this moment a Little Debbie sounds like a much better reward).  The key is execution of the positive routine when the trigger occurs.

I'll continue with my thoughts on my next post and avoid all things sweet, except my wife.

Comments welcome!

Chris