Listen to Focus

Hey there, I know I’m a day late on this post but things have been fairly full on with work and the election campaign I am coordinating. But never the less here is this week’s post. I’m readin this book called “How to Listen” by Oscar Trimboli and so far it has been really good. What I want to share with you today is a great little technique.

Now this isn’t about mindfulness or meditation even though it may seem like it is based off the instructions of the activity. Instead it is more concentrated on focusing and uncovering the hidden subconscious thoughts that cycle through your head before you listen to someone. It’s your own mental white noise, these thoughts need to be acknowledged.

Step 1: For the next three minutes, focus your eyes on a blank space, a wall some paper – not a screen. If you can close your eyes during this exercise, even better.

Step 2: Notice your breathing: is it slow, fast, light, or heavy?

Step 3:Bring your attention to yourself and ask yourself this question: What am I not listening to in myself?

Step 4: Switch your phone to “do not disturb” or silent and set your alarm for three minutes and repeat the question until the subconscious thoughts start to present themselves

I tried this technique while on the train to work. It had a very positive impact on my day.

So my Hedites, have a go and tell me how it goes

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 Posted on February 11, 2023 by

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Dim Your Phone Not Your Brightness

Okay, so this week’s blog post I will be covering a tip to help improve your sleep. We all know that the blue LED light from screens tricks our brains into keeping us awake. Many phones nowadays have some sort of screen dimmer built in or apps can be bought that achieve the same purpose. Today, I will show you a free and easy way to get even better results than anything else out there.

I only know how to do this because I own an iphone, I’m sure there is a way to do it on Android. You might have to consult Google on that one.

Step 1. Go to your Settings

Step 2. Go to the ‘Accessibility Tab’

Step 3. Click on the “Display & Text Size” Tab

Step 4. Scroll down and click on the “Colour Filters” Tab

Step 5. Turn on “Colour Filters”

Step 6. Increase “Intensity” to the maximum (FYI your screen should turn a dark brown/red, mine doesn’t change, the reason why will become apparent in the next steps)

Hold up!!! We now know how to erase most of the blue LED light from our screen, but naviagting the Setting’s menus to turn that on and off is hard. I hear you, so let’s automate the process. The previous steps changed the colour of the screen, the following steps automate the accessibility features on your iphone. So that when you triple press the home screen very fast, it will toggle the dark brown/red screen filter

Step 7. Go back to the “Accessibility” Tab and scroll down and select “Accessibility Shortcut”

Step 9. Tick the “Colour Filters” Option

Finish… So now when you triple press your home button, your screen will go from normal to the dark brown/red. And if you triple press your home button again, it will revert back to your normal screen colour.

Hope this helps you sleep.

Thanks to my Hedites for bankrolling this endeavour

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 Posted on February 3, 2023 by

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End of Year Rejuv

Wassup, how is it going? I hope things are working out great for you.

I don’t want to call this post my end of year post since I feel I have a lot left in me before the end of this calendar year. However, I got to say that I am feeling more uplifted by the year’s end vibe. Normally I tell myself that it doesn’t really matter since time moves in a linear fashion.

But this year I am in such a good mood. I feel as if some switch has been flicked in my brain and that has resulted in an explosive passion for rejuvenation. This year has been very much about reorientating my life and routines to deal with the challenge of significant change. By no means am I saying I was drowning from it but peak performance seemed to elude me.

Although it was a tad bit frustrating, I knew like most things, that it was only temporary. Currently, I am not where I need to be in a few aspects of my life but I would say a lot of people feel like that. What’s amazing is this motivation or desire put the pieces of the puzzle into place; and to hit that point of UNLIMITED PERSONAL POWER!!!

Having said all of this, I think yes, it could be due to the end of year vibes. Or on the other hand, it could be the fact that I have only just recovered from my bout of COVID; as well as my hands have come good after me accidentally burning them (I’m up to the stage where the skin is peeling, but I’m moisturising appropriately so don’t worry about me). I mentioned in my COVID video a few weeks back, that you only truly appreciate your health once you lose it. So, maybe my new lease on life comes from my return to health instead of the time of year. Who knows.

I guess all I want to know is how are you feeling? Please share in the comments

(Side note: I have done this before, where I accidentally hurt myself and then turn that into an opportunity to improve. For instance, I broke my finger and had a cast on my right hand for six weeks, so I decided to commit myself to learning to write with my left hand, which I continue to use to this day.)

Shout out to the Hedites, graciously supporting this channel and blog, you da best dawg!!!!

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 Posted on December 10, 2022 by

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The Two Kinds of E

How’s it all going? I hope you are doing well this week, what we will cover today is a quote from my quote book.

Like always, let’s cut to the chase:

“You think effectiveness with people and efficiency with things” – Stephen Covey

This teaches us an important lesson not just in business but in every aspect of our lives. Throughout my own experience, and maybe it has been similar for you, I have seen how much of life is framed through the perspective of efficiency. Be it how fast we can run a mile or how quickly a food delivery can be made. Either through apps, our phones or just the clock in our heads, we are constantly up against the clock.

Now in some cases this is okay, when things don’t involve people, then sure it is okay. For instance, measuring the time it takes for a file to be downloaded onto a computer. However, when what we are talking about involves people, this efficiency stopwatch kind of perspective puts unnecessary stress and anxiety into the situation.

What Covey offers to us in this quote, is for us not look at people as processes to be managed, but as human beings with unique and sometimes unmeasurable qualities. This is why with people we need to take the view of effectiveness instead. Effectiveness is about building people up by acknowledging where their skillset and experience lies, and then developing them from there. This approach appears to me to be the best because it removes the tension so commonly created in our work environment. While also encouraging the other person to be motivated to exceed their own limits.

Managing becomes less about trying to raise or lower some metric and rather becomes about building an effective team whose members manage themselves. Your role from there is to provide support and coaching to help the team further. The end result I believe and have seen is that when effectiveness with people is valued and implemented, the efficiency in processes and things naturally just follows.

Thanks again for coming down and sharing your thoughts. You are all wonderful people.

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 Posted on November 18, 2022 by

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Stretch Your Mind

Welcome back to the place where I dump my ramblings about self-development onto the internet. This time we are going to cover a quote from my quote book.

I want to jump right into it and just give you the quote straight away:

Man’s mind stretched to a new idea, never goes back to its original dimensions

Oliver Wendell Holmes

Shit…now that I look at it, there almost doesn’t seem to be a need to break it down. It’s so straight forward but powerful. Well, I’ve got you held captive and it’s unlikely by this point that you can be bothered to switch to a different tab.

So, what does this mean to me. Even though he is talking about someone’s mind in the quote, I feel as if it can be related back to any form of growth. I very much believe when we grow as people, it changes the makeup of who we are as a person. Old beliefs and habits are discarded and newer ones take their place, in a never ending cycle of renewal but also rebirth.

That’s what I find so engaging about self-development as an interest, you essentially get to design yourself anyway you like, as long as you have the vision for it. Let’s bring it back to the mind now. Epiphanies, that’s what I think stretches the mind. Having one changes everything, it becomes a paradigm shift that morphs how we see the world and our place in it. That’s why we can’t go back to what we were before, the mold of your mind has been contorted.

Now, these epiphanies can occur naturally over time, but that would be leaving things up to chance. No, instead we want to encourage these things to happen as frequently as possible. However, I will state that you can only handle a certain amount of them over so many months. Since the mind has to incorporate drastic change, bit by bit. You might be wondering what that limit is, it’s hard to say as it varies from person to person. But from my experience, the mind won’t offer up these kind of epiphanies without you being ready for them, so it kind of balances itself.

How do we encourage them though? Easy, and it’s the thing you should already be doing on a daily basis. Reading, especially non-fiction. That act alone will jump start the process, and after a while you’ll become a fiend for those moments of enlightenment. A recent one for me happened after reading a book called “Manufacturing Consent” by Noam Chomsky. That one hollowed out any respect I had for the mainstream media. Dare to read it, only if you’ve got what it takes.

So yeah, that’s really it. Other moments and experiences can trigger them too, but reading is the quick fire way to get it off the ground.

Thank you to all the Hedites out there, enjoying and sharing their thoughts on my posts. Much love. Also, my Masters coursework is all done, so I think post scheduling will be back to normal.

Till next time…

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 Posted on November 11, 2022 by

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Voices

So what’s on the agenda for this week, well I thought it would be good to cover a topic that all of us can work on.

Everyone in life has that inner voice in their head, sometimes it can be encouraging and at other times it can be very judgemental. It can seem as if our minds are made up of two people’s thoughts. This self-talk is something that we must learn to use to our advantage.

The aim of this post is to get you to recognise the clear distinction between the two voices, know why they are there and what to do about them. When that voice feels to you to be highly judgemental and negative, being overly critical of our decisions and efforts. Then that is the voice of the parent. The parent’s voice is the one we want to minimise as its heavy handed appraisal of us isn’t healthy or constructive.

The other voice is that of the friend, this one is understanding and encouraging of what we are doing. Very often we encounter roadblocks or setback in our lives, but what the voice of the friend says is similar to what our actually friends would say. If we try and fail, they will acknowledge our efforts while also telling us not to give and to continue with our endeavours.

Recently, a close friend of mine started to write a daily reflection of his conscious thoughts. I had of read through them and it was quite clear at which voice was speaking at each point. Line by line, each one could be attributed to one of the voices. As I outlined above, those that were more forgiving were easily traced back to that of the friend. While the lines where his thoughts were too harsh on himself, the parent was at play.

When that voice in your starts talking, try to ascertain which voice is speaking. If it is the parent’s voice, then distract yourself or allow the voice of the friend to take over. That last suggestion is difficult at first, but the more you do it, the easier it becomes.

Hope this helps, it sure has been a revelation for myself recently.

Thanks again to all my Hedites.

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 Posted on October 21, 2022 by

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Commitment

Writing to you once again, it’s good to be back to what I do.

This week’s focus is going to be on something that is currently going on in my life. Well, it’s not entirely about me but I am still a part of it. So, today my brother got married at Whale beach in Sydney, where I performed the role of best man.

There isn’t much that the best man has to do which was lucky for me seeing as how this was the first time that I took on such a responsibility. However, one of the tasks that is required was for me to make a speech at the wedding reception.

I’d say that this was the hardest part for me, not because of the public speaking aspect but due to matter of what to say. The challenge was, I hadn’t been in a relationship before, so it was difficult for me to relate to what the experience of marriage would be like.

For me, much of the past few years have been very much focused on developing myself. And looking back, I have no regrets at all about that, so don’t think I’m lamenting my decisions. I needed to pull myself together before I could even remotely handle the complexities of navigating a relationship.

But I guess what the exercise of writing the speech for my brother’s wedding helped me to see. Was that I needed to come to terms with the fact that life isn’t a one-man show. I have felt in the past that I already understood that principle and in some ways I had. But what I hadn’t acknowledged was that, although friends and colleagues are people you should take along with you as you succeed in life.

It is important to realise that they have their own lives and in many respects won’t be available to always offer you the time and guidance that you would like. This to me is where the idea of being in a paired bond with a partner comes in. That person is the springboard from which your best ideas can launch off from, as well as being the safety mat when things don’t always go your way. This to me is what is so special about relationships, someone is your corner.

Now, this I am operating under the assumption that it is a healthy relationship and not a toxic one, because in the case of the latter, the relationship can hurt you. But going back to what I was saying. For many people, they think that no one is truly in their corner supporting them. Creating a life together with someone is a project that will outlast both of you, and that legacy that follows I think is one of life’s most sublime achievements.

I guess the point of all this is to say, that I strongly believe in marriage, I’d say I’ve always thought that way. But I now have a better understanding as to why I think that. I hope when the time comes, I’ll be ready to take on that challenge.

Hedites one and all, thanks for putting up with the weird upload schedule. It has been a strange time recently for me, but things are getting back to normal.

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 Posted on October 7, 2022 by

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I’m Back

Yeah Yeah I know… I know. It’s been a couple weeks since anything has been posted. In many respects I could try to allow myself the excuse of “I had a lot going on”. Even though that is true, it doesn’t change that I should have been more prepared for situations like that to happen. So I apologise for that.

However, don’t get too worried or sad about it. I am going to make it up to you; stay tuned over the weekend is all I’m going to say about that business.

I guess my first post back since my 3-week unplanned hiatus should be about my comeback. The smart cookies in the group may have thought to themselves that, “if I slid on my duties to the blog and website, then I must have fallen in other areas too”. And the answer to that is yes. I did trip up on other things as well. My meditation went out the window, so did my mindfulness exercises, among other things.

What I realised, was that those exercises and habits had become so integrated into my way of doing things. That not doing them had a physical impact on my body. My sleep pattern shifted in the wrong direction, my choice in meals creeped towards crappy foods that aren’t healthy, even my thoughts felt more scattered and my skin became worse.

It’s funny because people always talk or fantasise about having freedom to do whatever you want. In a way, even though I was still getting a lot done in regards to work and study, I had given myself the freedom to slack off. Since then I have given myself permission to rein in my foolishness and instead re-establish the binding chains and harness that are my wellness routines. That is true freedom in my opinion, living a life of daily bliss.

I know this post might not make much sense, it’s more just my ramblings about the experience that was these past couple weeks. This post is more a prompt for myself, that it is time to return to who I am. Also, it gives you another example of me messing up, but trying again. Hopefully, you can take that as a form of encouragement… up to you I guess.

But thank you to all my Hedites that still came around to the website during those dark days. You are the best people ever.

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 Posted on September 16, 2022 by

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Screen Sabotage

Last night I almost pulled off something that is sacred nowadays. I was so close to actually falling asleep the moment my head hit the pillow. But I distracted myself and that cost me that opportunity.

What robbed me of what would have been the perfect sleep, was a four minute video on youtube. It was political in nature and focused on how my country’s former Prime Minister, secretly went behind his own government and political party’s back to grant himself unprecedented powers.

Now, for the former Prime Minister Scott Morrison, that’s actually not that surprising. Seeing as he lied about being on holiday in Hawaii while our country was gripped by the worst bushfires on record during the December ‘Black Summer’ Bushfires of 2019. That is just one example from his 3 years in power.

So, I shouldn’t have clicked on the video, because of course something like that was gonna have me fuming. After watching it, I brushed my teeth and then hopped into bed. What followed was an hour… maybe two, of me going over in my head how it is a national disgrace that that man was our leader. And how the mainstream media, the people who pat themselves on the back in the most self congratulatory manner, positing that they “Hold power to account”. Gave someone Scott Morrison and his government, free pass after free pass, for three years.

Imma stop there, this isn’t a political channel and you’re probably not from Australia, so why would you what to know that. The point is, the thing that I said would happen… happened. My mind tormented me with thoughts for ages.

This is why I need to follow my own advice and turn off all devices at least an hour before bed, ideally even earlier. I guess it’s good to relearn a lesson than never learn it in the first place.

Use my last night debacle as a warning or inspiration to do the right thing. Because let me tell you, that 4 minute video was not worth the sleep I lost. Dang…

Thanks everyone for the huge amount of support you’ve all be dishing out to me, I notice it and greatly appreciate it my Hedites.

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 Posted on August 19, 2022 by

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My Personal Turmoil

Today’s post will be short and also a departure from the Seneca content I’ve recently been covering. Don’t worry, tomorrow’s video will continue on with the next Seneca discussion.

Now, I can’t exactly be fully up front with you about this matter, mainly because it is highly personal and doesn’t just involve myself. Yet, I still feel that I want to share at least what I’m experiencing and what I think that shows.

There is a cloud of turmoil that lurks above my personal life. It is uncertain whether or not it will pass in time or rain down upon me. It has caused much distress to people close to me. Yet, there’s nothing I can really do.

That’s my problem, normally with much of my life, I am responsible for the outcome in most instances. But in this one, I’m not involved in determining the outcome even though it will affect me.

I guess much of what I have been trying to do is mentally and emotionally prepare for the worst possible scenario. There is no doubt that it won’t have an impact regardless, but I don’t want to be so unprepared that it sends me into a spiral of negativity.

My hope is that if the worst is to happen, I’ll be as ready as I could possibly be (I’m not saying numb myself to the emotions, but able to process them in a healthy manner). With the end goal of developing my character and resolve by being able to handle complex and charged emotions with restraint and control.

I’m being vague on purpose, but if anyone has gone through something similar. What advice would you be able to give me?

Thanks again everyone

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 Posted on August 12, 2022 by

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Meaning and Material

What is up? Yes, we are still going to be covering stuff I found interesting in Seneca’s letters. It’s good fun, and if you don’t like it then too bad.

A concept in self-development is not to chase after material things as the sole reason for your existence. The downside to this kind of mentality and lifestyle is that everything is only temporary satisfaction or amusement. Usually these kind of activities lose their feeling of novelty after a while. Before long we end up suffering from a lack of meaningfulness in our lives, which people tend to think they can fix by chasing new worldly things.

In our current era, I think many people know this phenomenon to be true but that doesn’t mean they’re immune to it. I’d say that all of us experience either some stage in our lives where we fall into that toxic mindset where everything becomes a comparison between what others have and what you’ve got.

It’s wild to think that even with that much time separating the present from Seneca’s time, there are lessons and pieces of wisdom that have been cultivated and nourished over thousands of years. What I sometimes feel, is that all of us are part of the chain that links human experience through time. And with enough effort in our respective lifetimes, we can make a significant positive impact on the ideas and values of later generations.

Someone please think of the children.

Sorry just felt in the mood to quote that from the The Simpsons. I don’t think that line is copyrighted, well I’m too lazy to look it up so let’s go with it’s not.

Back to Seneca, this first point I like very much is:

“The life of folly is empty of gratitude, full of anxiety and is focused wholly on the future”

It really speaks for what we were talking about at the start. Anything brought into our life which we fail to be grateful for, is a shackle on our psyche. Since once it has been consumed and processed, its value isn’t acknowledged or if only for a moment. Then after follows the hunt for new source of momentary bliss. A life like this can only be focused in the future, and if our thoughts are solely concentrated on the future then anxiety is the natural feeling. The reason being the human fear of the unknown.

The other Seneca thought I wanted to cover is this:

“What is the purpose of my labours going to be? See, this day’s my last – or maybe it isn’t, but it’s not so far away from it”

Of course if you have been following this blog for a while, you would immediately know why I like this thought. For those not as familiar, let me walk you through it. Firstly, what is the purpose of all your life’s effort? That is a question once tackled, will provide all the meaningfulness and direction that those material treasures could never match. The other point being that, life is uncertain. We all must at some point leave this world. However, we don’t exactly get to choose. So, the reason why that second point is relevant, is that if your life’s work is going to be your source of fulfilment. Then you’d better get to it, you might not have much time.

The truth is, we never have as much time as we think we do.

Big Love to all the Hedites, liking and sharing the work I do. Every bit helps and I greatly appreciate it.

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 Posted on August 5, 2022 by

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