My Diary

[abrahammer117]

Day 3: 4 meditations 15min sound meditations a day. First thing, end of morning period. After getting home from work. Immediately before sleep.

gradual shifts are continuing. Having these sound meditations as my base is working really well.

[abrahammer117]

Day 6: 3 or 4 15min sound meditations a day. First thing, end of morning period. After getting home from work. Immediately before sleep.
Day 2 / 31: WONDERFUL ONE MONTH CHALLENGE:
No computer games, no news, no football, not YouTube at all, no eating between breakfast and evening meal, no work email out of work.
40g+ protein first thing. Walk 10,000+ steps a day
Only 2 deliberate work email checks a day (and be aware if this actually causes any issues at all)

I'm excited that I'm feeling inspired to make some very important changes that all revolve around avoiding cheap dopamine hits. From an Ab Hicks point of view, the impulses I get to go after these hits do not actually feel good, so my emotional guidance is telling me to stop.

I've added something to my month commitment which would be a real game changer - and I am sticking to this ... Only checking my email deliberately at work twice a day. Tim Ferris talks about this, that when he tried it he was scared at first that it would cause all sorts of problems, but it simply never did and there were great benefits elsewhere.

Ooh also I can't overstate the importance of my sitting for 15mins 3 or 4 times a day to listen to sounds. I can tell that I'm always on one side of the fence or the other with this 1. I enjoy the little bit of emotional relief that comes with it and I look forward to the next one 2.My mind has become more dominant and I feel tempted to avoid them. By doing it lightly and regularly I stay on the good side of this fence most of the time

...

shit, I've realised I've overwritten yesterdays post rather than write a new one

[abrahammer117]

Day 7: 3 or 4 15min sound meditations a day. First thing, end of morning period. After getting home from work. Immediately before sleep.
Day 3 / 31: WONDERFUL ONE MONTH CHALLENGE:

• No computer games, no news, no football, not YouTube at all, no eating between breakfast and evening meal, no work email out of work.
  40g+ protein first thing. Walk 10,000+ steps a day
  Only 2 deliberate work email checks a day (and be aware if this actually causes any issues at all)

Following these rules has meant I've had much better days at work the last 2 days. Particularly yesterday when I only checked my email twice in the whole day (no problems caused by this!). I enjoyed my work alot more, had more energy and got more good stuff done. I enjoyed all those times during the day where I could feel I'd normally have a cheeky email check or look at some random news or something. I'm also really enjoying not eating outside of meal times - it feels great when I get a snack craving, knowing I'm not gonna go for it. There's like a little rush of energy when the craving goes away.

[abrahammer117]

Day 8: 3 or 4 15min sound meditations a day. First thing, end of morning period. After getting home from work. Immediately before sleep.
Day 4 / 31: WONDERFUL ONE MONTH CHALLENGE:

• No computer games, no news, no football, not YouTube at all, no eating between breakfast and evening meal, no work email out of work.
  40g+ protein first thing. Walk 10,000+ steps a day
  Only 2 deliberate work email checks a day (and be aware if this actually causes any issues at all)

I've started measuring my waist line each day and this since starting the walk 10,000 steps a day and stopping eating outside of the two meal times, I've been losing an average of 0.5cm of my waist each day. Pleased with that!

This one month challenge is only on day 4 and I feel very different

[abrahammer117]

Day 9: 3 or 4 15min sound meditations a day. First thing, end of morning period. After getting home from work. Immediately before sleep.
Day 5 / 31: WONDERFUL ONE MONTH CHALLENGE:

• No computer games, no news, no football, not YouTube at all, no eating between breakfast and evening meal, no work email out of work.
  40g+ protein first thing. Walk 10,000+ steps a day
  Only 2 deliberate work email checks a day (and be aware if this actually causes any issues at all)

Up and down as always. And as always the ups feel better than the previous ups. Yesterday I took the afternoon off for lunch and suddenly got a wave of how wonderful my life is, possibly the best I've felt in over a year and a half. Didn't last long haha, but I'm very comfortable with the cycles now.

I did go back into work for the last couple of hours - and I got it in my head that this was a circumstance where I did need to check my email again and when I checked it there was something fairly urgent waiting. But if I'm honest, knowing how it played out, would anything bad at all have happened if I had not have checked it? Still no!! And afterwards I felt a massive increase in irritability. From an Ab Hicks point of view, to the impulses to check my email feel like tension or relief. Oh definitely tension

[spiritualcookie]

Hi Andy!

I don't know if this is something that will resonate with you but just thought I'd mention something I've been playing with along the email-checking subject:

I've been occasionally playing with the idea of asking my Higher Self / Source to tell me when I need to check my emails. I tune in and ask "Is there an important email waiting for me?" And then I close my eyes, tune in, and try to sense the answer. I try to only check my emails if I sense that "Yes, there is an important email there." For me, a "yes" expresses itself as an excited sort of feeling and a "no" expresses itself as a neutral nothingness kind of feeling. It turns email checking into a bit of a game, as well as a practice of tuning into my Higher Self / intuition.

[abrahammer117]

Hi Andy!

I don't know if this is something that will resonate with you but just thought I'd mention something I've been playing with along the email-checking subject:

I've been occasionally playing with the idea of asking my Higher Self / Source to tell me when I need to check my emails. I tune in and ask "Is there an important email waiting for me?" And then I close my eyes, tune in, and try to sense the answer. I try to only check my emails if I sense that "Yes, there is an important email there." For me, a "yes" expresses itself as an excited sort of feeling and a "no" expresses itself as a neutral nothingness kind of feeling. It turns email checking into a bit of a game, as well as a practice of tuning into my Higher Self / intuition.

Hiya,

thanks for that! That's a good question to ask. I shall play with that more. As I feel through it I can tell that I have an addictive tendency towards the upstream - so if I ask myself the email question, I would probably feel tension about checking the email - but feel very tempted by that tension. But! I'm creeping away from this all the time into preferring the downstream feeling.

[abrahammer117]

Day 12: 3 or 4 15min sound meditations a day. First thing, end of morning period. After getting home from work. Immediately before sleep.
Day 8 / 31: WONDERFUL ONE MONTH CHALLENGE:

• No computer games, no news, no football, no YouTube at all, no eating between breakfast and evening meal, no work email out of work.
  40g+ protein first thing. Walk 10,000+ steps a day
  Only 2 deliberate work email checks a day (and be aware if this actually causes any issues at all)
  Take Sunday+Monday off work.

I'm on day 8 of this challenge and it's proving very transformative. Rather than it being a challenge to avoid the things on that list, they now actually seem repellant to me which is a great sign. I'm realising more that I had an upstream addiction and didn't realise just how much these cheap dopamine hits were contributing to it. Like any addiction I was also scared what life would be like if I didn't have these little 'pleasures'.

Something great which has evolved from this is I've switched my day off to Monday. So I get two days in a row off (Sunday Monday). As I'm not checking my email out of work at all, that's a significant chunk of vibrational recovery time I wasn't getting before. In fact when I took days off before in the week, somehow I always found a way of being needed at leat a little bit on that day. Looking back, it's being addicted to that feel of tension about work that was making me feel like I was staying on top of things, even though the tension was actually holding everything back from improving. I'm gonna do this every week now. Like all good things it seems crazy I didn't do it before!

[abrahammer117]

Day 13: 3 or 4 15min sound meditations a day. First thing, end of morning period. After getting home from work. Immediately before sleep.
Day 9 / 31: WONDERFUL ONE MONTH CHALLENGE:

• No computer games, no news, no football, no YouTube at all, no eating between breakfast and evening meal, no work email out of work.
  40g+ protein first thing. Walk 10,000+ steps a day
  Only 2 deliberate work email checks a day (and be aware if this actually causes any issues at all)
  Take Sunday+Monday off work.

Day1: Page 39 of Money and the Law of attraction: Do presleep and morning positive aspect exercise.

so once again I feel like I'm moving through another threshold. Which makes me think about what the experience of moving up the emotional scale is like; If you are at depression/fear then moving into guilt and unworthiness feels like a huge relief (I can testify to this!!) and you'll feel pretty good for a while - but then that will settle down, the relief goes away and you'll start to feel bad again as guilty is not a nice place to be. I suppose I'm saying well done to me for getting more comfortable with the ups and downs and it's completely natural, in fact a really good sign, that every now and again there feels like a new breakthrough. And since there is always new stuff in the vortex, it will always be like this.

Yesterday I did something I've not done in perhaps over a year! Took two days in a row off work and didn't check my email once. So from 6pm on Saturday to 11am today I've been free I went for a long walk (about 3 hrs) and had a great time. Normally when I walk I don't find it relaxing but I like getting the steps in, this time it was all fun and I'm looking forward to the next one.

As I keep making little breakthroughs I keep seeing more clearly how I had an addiction to upstream, I was in a place of really believing that I needed to paddle harder upstream to do better, when I tried to feel better I would do it in an upstream way, I stopped believing I actually could genuinely feel better, because of that I gave into cheap dopamine hits to get a little pleasure. When I listened to a Hicks meditation, I would upstream it and try and make something happen.

In much better place now! It feels much much much easier to nudge downstream and there's a feeling of common sense to it. I've gone back to doing the Ab Hicks recordings meditations and am enjoying them. It even says in the recording 'no need to concentrate' which is like saying, don't upstream this.

To focus a bit more on the positive side of things, I'm really getting the taste for feeling better and I'm looking forward to seeing this reflected back to me!
Ooooh having said that - there was some sort of error at the supermarket this morning and my favourite eggs scanned at half price so I bought 6 packs lol

...

I just flicked to a random page of Money and the Law of attraction and it was about a simple positive aspect exercise before sleep and in the morning.
I have felt like starting to do a little written exercise each day but knew I wanted to wait until it happened naturally. Written exercised are something else I have upstreamed at in the past so was good to take a real break from them. I feel excited to these exercises now

[abrahammer117]

Day 12 / 90: WONDERFUL ONE MONTH CHALLENGE:

• No computer games, no news, no football, no YouTube at all, no eating between breakfast and evening meal, no work email out of work.
  40g+ protein first thing. Walk 10,000+ steps a day
  Only 2 deliberate work email checks a day (and be aware if this actually causes any issues at all)
  Take Sunday+Monday off work.

Reminder: Look for excuses to laugh, excuses to have fun

I've trimmed down my counters here because the longer I'm on this one month challenge, the more I see how key it is.
I heard recently a description of addiction as 'the progressive narrowing of things that give you pleasure'. I can really see how my cheap pleasure hits had been bedding that in where I've not been finding pleasure in normal life. In terms of my business I have been getting what I've been asking for - because I've actually been afraid of it getting busy because more work to do means more making myself do things and less pleasures. Gradually I'm finding enjoyment in normal life more and more and the thought of lots of work to do in our business is nice!