Tag: health

  • Don’t just stay home – introspect

    Don’t just stay home – introspect

    It’s a time to rediscover what we lost when we were taking ourselves for granted.

    This might sound weird, but consider for a second that it’s in taking ourselves for granted that we find reason to take others for granted.

    In doing so, we take things around us for granted and end up committing excesses that harm us, and the environment around us.

    And then we look everywhere else but within ourselves to understand what went wrong.

    Let your lock down period be time to reconnect with what you once appreciated about yourself, and then use that as a reminder to appreciate what you once loved about others around you.

    The world is struggling because of the harshness that exists between us, long before it is impacted by how that harshness plays out in what we take without giving back.

    Start here. Treat yourself kindly, but with good reason. You’ll only discover that good reason when you seek to understand before you judge. Yourself, and others.

    #stayhome #healtheworld

  • What is it about toilet paper?

    Hype aside, I thought of a few sobering thoughts that may be worth sharing. If for no other reason but comic relief…perhaps. A tragic comedy, that is…

    1. Why hasn’t anyone taken the gap to produce a disinfectant to disinfect the bottles of the disinfectant that we use to disinfect our hands? I mean, we’re touching the bottles with potentially infected hands, not so? Or are disinfectant bottles self-disinfecting?
    2. I still don’t get the toilet paper thing. But more importantly, all the reports about mad shopping sprees, at least here in South Africa, seem to be from areas of affluence. Are the rich more paranoid than the poor? Or do the poor see this as yet another onslaught that they simply have to grin and bear because they have no option?
    3. The faith-based responses are the most curious for me. Every disaster is an opportunity to proclaim the superiority of our faith. But every opportunity to serve those less fortunate than us is an excuse to encourage them to have more faith. Actually practicing our faith is somehow never as important as preaching it. Like hoarding toilet paper instead of sharing disinfectant.
    4. Conspiracies abound. However, only to demonstrate how supposedly ‘woke’ we are about the underhandedness of our governments and the New World Order. But we happily indulge in the materialism spawned by those deviant masters. Remember that toilet paper binge?
    5. Blame it on the bat-eating Chinese. Because, you know, the way to combat that is to buy toilet paper. Although there is more and more evidence accumulating pointing to this being a manufactured virus, with a carefully orchestrated response. But, I’m not woke like you guys, so I’ll stay out of the conspiracy theory space. Where’s my toilet paper?
    6. Public gatherings. Hehehe. A sad joke. Those that have a safe space discourage it, and those that don’t, look on with curiosity wondering what the fuss is all about. Curiously though, the demographic of the victims of this virus are largely those from affluent backgrounds or so-called non-shithole countries. Perhaps a decrepid lifestyle in a crowded informal settlement is healthier than the self-indulgent lifestyles of the oblivious and wealthy? Perhaps that is why they need all that toilet paper. After all this time, they’ve lost sight of the difference between their rectum and their mouths. (I kept it decent, so don’t raise your eyebrow at me).
    7. The idealists are possibly the most refreshing of the lot. Believing somehow that this mass hysteria is suddenly going to imbue us with a collective conscience so that our excessive ways that are apparently killing the planet will suddenly be transformed into Kumbaya. Ummm, remember that toilet paper run on the markets? (all puns intended)
    8. Oh, the economy. How can we forget the focus on the billionaires that are sadly no longer billionaires and have fallen from grace because their stocks crashed? Perhaps they need more toilet paper because they’re crapping themselves?
    9. But government cares, right? Just like how they care about the poverty and long-drop toilets the rest of the year. Oh, wait, poverty and long-drop toilets are fodder for campaigning among the masses that keep them in power. But this horrid virus that threatens to affect their own kind is suddenly a national disaster. Is it a national disaster? Absolutely. But not any more of a disaster than the disastrous leadership that created the overcrowded settlements and decrepit public health system that is now grossly inadequate to deal with this disaster. But the fools with hoards of toilet paper are suddenly celebrating the show of leadership in dealing so decisively with this pandemic. The only pandemic we have is gross ignorance coupled with arrogance. But I’m probably just talking crap because I have toilet paper envy, or something like that.

    We lost our humanity long before Corona. And if our response and attitude towards each other during this crisis is anything to go by, we won’t re-find our humanity anytime soon either. But social media makes us feel better about our empty lives and our need to gather in meaningless social traditions that serve none other than our own need for validation about the success we have achieved within the systems created by the ones that we choose to hate, while wearing religion on our sleeves, and reminding people of the end times.

    We’ve lost our way. And Corona is not about to help us find it.

  • Coming Soon: Launch of Life Coaching Practice

    Coming Soon: Launch of Life Coaching Practice

    My life’s calling has always prompted me towards this project. Throughout the years, despite my focus in my professional career having been in the information technology and management consulting arenas, I was always drawn to the human story behind good or poor performance. Unlocking potential in people who had a very limited view of what they were capable of has always proven more fulfilling than the highest paying roles that I’ve filled.

    I walked away from a seven figure salary to pursue this dream of mine. The people around me thought I was crazy, and many still do, but I know what I’m passionate about. That is, empowering people to rise above the constraints of their upbringing! In a nutshell, that is my calling in life. To inspire and guide others towards embracing the enormous potential that they have within them.

    My approach differs considerably from the norm, but having been doing this for no fee for many years now on a part time basis, I have proven that breaking the mold of traditional psychotherapy and life coaching, and finding a balance between the two is the most effective way to reinvent yourself. Some brief examples of unconventional successes that I have had over the years include:

    1. Career Coaching – Transforming individuals from entry-level jobs to highly sought after technical specialists without them having a tertiary qualification
    2. Life Coaching – Guiding individuals out of a chronically depressed state to being motivated and inspired to pursue their dreams
    3. Marriage Counseling – Restoring balance and respect in homes that were disrupted by external influences
    4. Health and Wellness Coaching – Helping individuals identify the causal relationship between their emotional state and their health, and guiding them towards overcoming it. (Especially effective for chronic conditions also known as lifestyle diseases.)
    5. Anger Management – Guiding individuals towards realising the source of their anger and effectively resolving it so that it does not hinder their growth or happiness in future
    6. Personal Trauma – Anything from divorce, to abusive relationships, childhood trauma that still deeply affects adults, and other forms of emotional abuse has been successfully unpacked and processed to release the hold that it had on the victims of such circumstances

    My coaching approach is best described as a holistic approach. My first book titled The Egosystem dealt with the core of the human condition and how it shapes our lives. My second book will focus on practically applying those insights into your life so that you can find your balance and point of grounding to be successful, both in your personal and professional endeavours.

    In the weeks to come, I will share more information about the service offering, rates, payment options, and the format that the coaching sessions will follow. My website will also be updated to allow for online booking of sessions, including real-time payment, and resources to make it more accessible for everyone. I will also be offering virtual coaching sessions so that it is accessible from anywhere in the world.

  • The Psychosomatic Life 

    The Psychosomatic Life 

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    This piece of wood from the fireplace in my lounge reminds me of how we allow ourselves to disintegrate while feeling appreciated for the beauty that we share with the world in our falling.

    There is a consistent thread that runs through the seemingly downtrodden of society. It’s a thread that rallies the masses and enables political agendas. It creates causes that people subscribe to with aggressive conviction and sets wisdom and reason aside in favour of the ridiculousness of the herd mentality.

    The thread is a belief that the state of our lives and our health is imposed on us by an unjust society. It’s a belief that dis-ease is a result of human beings that rob us of comfort and peace, while turmoil and suffering is independent of the choices we make. In short, it is a thread that believes that the self-imposed oppression that we visit upon ourselves is in fact not our doing. It must be because we are the weak ones being taken advantage of by the stronger ones. Or the unlucky draw of genetic inheritance visited upon us at birth.

    It is a toxic mindset that sets us down the path of pain and disappointment, until we do it so often that we eventually become convinced that being anything better is just not meant for us. And then we go off and convince others that we find in a similar circumstance that perhaps it just was not meant to be.

    For those of us raised with the belief that our mistakes are not our accountability because we’re just human after all, such a reality becomes the story of our lives. We live symptomatically and assume that our whispers to the universe will yield the results that hard work and conviction was meant to deliver. Those that have access to resources in abundance whisper to the universe anyway, and then while expending such resources that reduce the amount of physical contribution needed, proclaim that the universe has answered.

    Those that lack access to such resources smother their souls at the lack of response from the universe, and then convince themselves that their diseased minds are a manifestation of the ill health that they experience, which is a genetic inheritance they have no control over, while believing that they were destined to suffer such trials because they were born to be martyrs.

    Psychosomatic is an easy way to live miserably. To feel oppressed because of conditions apparently out of your control is the best way to console yourself at your lack of action, or pathetic attempts at conviction. If only we held as much conviction in being accountable as we do for believing in our oppression, we’ll amaze ourselves at how much we can achieve with so little.

    Silver spoons and trust funds are not needed to have a holistic experience of this world. Those that believe that we were created simply to suffer in order to be rewarded later on has taken a distortion of reality and turned it into religious dogma that holds no weight. When we absolve ourselves of the outcomes of the choices that we make, we indulge the futility of a fickle mind. We convince ourselves that we need a helping hand to achieve anything meaningful in life, and that such a hand will only arrive when we are divinely deserving of it.

    The delusions are endless, but in spite of the delusions, as much as we convince ourselves that we have no choice in the matter, the irony is that we are choosing to be the victims of a circumstance that we create. Lifestyle diseases are not lifestyle diseases. They’re diseases of the mind, which is reflected in the lifestyle. The distracted ones, and the vast majority of us are distracted for 99% of our lives, observe the lifestyle choices and assume that it is a result of societal pressures that we need to contend with in order to cope with life in the circumstances in which we find ourselves. We just as soon extract ourselves from the society in which we live, as much as we distance ourselves from the choices that we make.

    It’s easier to feel burdened and receive the accompanying sympathy from similarly burdened souls, and in the process believe that such sympathy is in fact a source of strength, than it is to feel the burden and have the conviction to rise above it through whatever means we have at our disposal. But we hate failing, so sticking our flimsy necks out to take that leap of courage to own our lives is asking for too much. It’s easier to fail collectively, than to fail alone. Setting out on a path of your own demands a level of courage and conviction that is erased from your life when you live according to the whims and weaknesses of the masses.

    Those that show you sympathy only ever make you feel better about where you are in life. They never prompt you towards being better than who you are. When we suspend life until our struggles and burdens are recognised, we internalise one simple fact that our bodies respond to with alarming accuracy. We tell ourselves that we are not ready to do more, to achieve more, or to live more. For this reason, our bodies that are mere vessels of expression of the will of our souls, slowly shuts down in an ungraceful manner, resulting in lifestyle diseases that are in fact lifestyle choices, because we lacked the courage to persevere without the sympathy of those around us.

    [This is an incomplete thought process]

  • Finding Balance

    When I was a kid, I remember my only concern when I got sick was how soon could I go out to play again. Recently though, each time I feel a severe illness setting in, my mind wanders towards considerations of this being my final moments. To date, the panic has not yet set in. Inevitability, although I may resist it initially at times, I find myself more inclined to embrace it and consider the options for my response instead.

    Often, I try to trace my steps back to where I lost the balance in my life that led up to this moment of disruption. Illness, for me, has always been a sign that something is out of proportion in my life rather than being the victim of some external force in the universe. Yes, there are times when something deliberate external to my being afflicts me, but at those times I find that if I maintain my focus on balance, the impact with which it affects me is significantly less than most others that are exposed to similar circumstances.

    More than anything else, I’ve found that acceptance of my contribution, or lack thereof, towards a given situation dissipates the unhealthy internal stressors that threaten my health or emotional wellbeing. The unnatural but common response is to defend ourselves against possible guilt in a negative outcome. So when we find ourselves faced with trying circumstances in our lives, we are most often inclined towards asking that repugnant question of ‘Why me?’. I could never figure out the logic that warrants such a question.

    When we ask ‘Why me?’ we automatically imply that we’re underserving of what we’re experiencing, which suggests that we have an assumption of innocence. Worse than this, we also imply that it is perfectly acceptable for it to happen to someone else, because again the assumption is that they must be more deserving of it than we are. It assumes that we’re angelic in our ways, eternally sincere in our commitment to every relationship we participate in, and fully informed of the choices we’ve made, all of which have been made with utmost benevolence and wisdom. Yeah right.

    We’re self-indulgent and selfish by nature. We look to the world and demand that it creates for us what we need, without first considering what we need to contribute to the world so that it has the capacity to offer what we all need. Wow, that’s up in the clouds even by my standard, so let me try to make it more practical than that. Choice is that horrible thing we have when it doesn’t work out in our favour, but it’s something we jealously defend when it does. Right there is the crux of balance.

    Acceptance of the outcomes of the choices that we make, regardless of how good or bad those outcomes are, determines how healthy our response will be to the impact it has on our lives. Balance doesn’t just come from being a good person while not considering where you’re investing all that goodness. Nor does it come from living passively and waiting for others to uplift you. It comes from appreciating what we have, and then consciously utilising those resources and opportunities towards achieving a better state than the one we’re in. Towards achieving a better state than the one we’re in. That is what is important.

    Far too often we focus on utilising what we have to simply protect or defend what we have. Then we bemoan the fact that others keep getting the good breaks in life while we continue to struggle just to keep our heads above water. We embrace fear before we embrace our strength because the repercussions of negativity are always more tangible and memorable than success. When we succeed at something, unless it is of a particularly notable achievement, we assume that it was merely deserved or expected.

    It’s as if we have a desired circle of influence that we define for ourselves. The healthier our self-esteem, the larger that desired circle until our self-esteem outgrows our abilities and that circle then reflects our arrogance instead of our influence. This is similar to what we see with misguided political leaders that destroy countries in their insistence to wield the power that they have been flirting with for so long, while refusing to acknowledge that they lack the competence to do so effectively. The same principles apply in our own lives.

    Theory aside, balance escapes us when we try to escape reality. The fear of accountability drives our behaviour more than we realise. That fear is not always an aversion to accountability. In fact, I’ve often witnessed it being an inclination to assume accountability for the choices of others. This is a double-edged dagger for many reasons the most important of which is that it results from either a self-loathing, or an inflated ego. The self-loathing drives us to assume accountability for the negative outcomes that result from the poor choices of those around us, leaving us to question our significance in their lives because we couldn’t influence them differently. The inflated ego tells us that we are accountable for the success that others enjoy simply because we played some miniscule role in setting them on the path that they eventually pursued.

    Finding balance starts with being self-aware. That self-awareness must be accompanied by a sense of accountability for the current state we find ourselves in relative to the choices we made that caused us to arrive at this point. Once we get that right, our choices become more informed, and more effective because suddenly we’ll be focused on choosing to act in ways that we have good reason to believe will be effective towards achieving a consciously chosen outcome, rather than simply choosing to respond to avoid a negative outcome.

    Our bodies are vessels of expression before anything else. Whether you consider the soul to be independent of the body, or you consider your seat of intelligence to be in the brain, either way, that source of intelligence and intelligent choice directs the body to express in due proportion. When we turn that intelligence into a harsh self-criticism, we effectively instruct our bodies to act against ourselves, which results in ailments that are a result of our own thought processes rather than external interference.

    What we often miss is the fact that when we live under duress of our own minds, we weaken our ability to resist the harmful effects of the environments in which we exist. This completely undermines all our efforts to want to improve the state of our lives, while we sabotage ourselves before even setting out, eventually believing that fate dealt us a bad hand. Fate is what we make of it. If we didn’t have the power to choose, or for rational thought, we could justifiably blame fate for every woe in our lives. However, I believe that coincidence is not a chance occurrence. It is the fortuitous alignment of events that result from the collective choices of us, which presents opportunities that we would otherwise not have access to. How we perceive those opportunities, relative to our belief in our ability to influence its outcomes, determines whether they are wasted experiences, or moments that add value to our lives.

  • A Brain Dump

    Brain dumps are therapeutic, if you do it right. It allows a release, an unstructured release of the clouds that trail you through the day. Life demands structure, and structure demands discipline. Both have their place, but did you notice how beautifully random the structure of nature appears? It has probably the most complex system of checks and balances we’ll ever encounter, yet it thrives if appreciated, especially where such appreciation simply demands that it be left to find its own way.

    People can’t function like that. If left to find our own way, most are inclined to believe that no one cares. Hardly anyone recognises the freedom in that. I find myself caught in a health cycle that is unfamiliar to me. Having had an acute focus for many years now on the physiological impact that our emotions and thought patterns have on us, I lost sight of what keeps us above ground when it comes to navigating through that space. It’s so easy to get pulled into the quicksand that we’re always warning others about.

    Recurrent failures at building relationships that are not optional can create gaps in your soul that you don’t notice until the possibility of filling those gaps erodes almost completely. The decision on which relationships are optional and which are not is a simple one that is tied to our value systems. My need for authenticity will not allow me to be selective as to when I accept and embrace my responsibilities towards others, or when I set it aside for convenience’s sake. I am perfectly capable of abandoning or morphing my value system into one that is more convenient, but I know that the moment I do that, I will lose any legitimate claim to cry foul when others do the same.

    Optional relationships are the ones that hold no yoke over us if we neglect it. If there is no tie of kinship or contract, we are not under any obligation to care for or contribute to such relationships. Communal obligation, that is. Strange though that it seems like optional relationships tend to get the most investment these days. It seems as if these they provide us with needed distractions from the relationships grounded in responsibility and compulsion. There seems to be a demand for attention or reciprocation at every turn, mostly out of obligation rather than passion or purpose.

    It seems I’ve even forgotten how to do a brain dump. My health has been less than satisfactory recently, and almost all of it has been associated with a collage of duress that has coloured my life for a long time now. Each tile in the collage stems from an investment I made in others, some in a personal setting while others in a professional setting. Watching trust replaced by loyalty to the prevailing authority is commonplace these days. I’ve had to remind myself often in recent months that more should not be expected from the ones that worship titles and pursue labels and acronyms. But it’s the contagion of human nature. The moment we see beyond the superficial gusto that people present as their armour of confidence, it’s difficult not to sympathise with the child within.

    Too many times have I witnessed people reaching an old age while still not yet having achieved the state of being a fully formed adult. The difficulty lies in the rarity of adults. Most are overgrown children waiting for some childhood need to come to pass, while grudgingly accepting the responsibility that accumulates with the years. All the while, the essence of our lives are spent in waiting for others to do right by us. It rarely happens.

    Those that have crumbling spines suffer from a deficiency of bone density because they lack the courage to build what only they can build. The more we tell our bodies that we’re not good enough, the less our bodies will respond favourably when we need it to. If it is true that the soul is the seat of intelligence and the body merely a vessel for expression, then it stands to reason that we have the power to enable our bodies for good, or to turn it on itself in order to express the weakness we harbour within.

    I’ve been waiting with warranted hope that some relationships would have finally blossomed into the beauty that it once promised, but I forgot along the way that I was not the defining influence in those relationships. What contaminated it from without, I assumed to be a deficiency within the relationship, when in fact the only deficiency was that I held others to a standard that they did not subscribe to for themselves.

    The contention built up within me, slowly sapping my clarity of thought, then my energy, then my creative expression, gnawing away at my memory, and finally imposing the weight of its imbalance on my body which eventually caved in under all the pressure. It sounds like a dramatic description of the flu, but the reality is that it takes a chorus of failed expectations to wear me down, never just a single one.

    Those that succumb to a single betrayal have invested too much in a single part of their life. Worse than just the investment, they divested from their own lives. They assumed that entrusting another with more than their affection, in fact with everything they needed to breathe seemed like the ultimate expression of commitment to an outcome desired by both, but invested in by only one.

    Ill health is a sign of imbalance in the way we live our lives. Disease stands a greater chance of invading our bodies when our immune systems are focused on fighting the disruption we’ve created within. When we live under duress, we become easy pickings for our enemies. Be they disease or spineless creatures, the net effect is the same. We succumb to circumstances that would otherwise be opportunities for growth. The answer is so simple, yet so elusive.

  • Why you can’t trust your doctor’s advice…

    http://ethicalnag.org/2009/11/09/nejm-editor/

    In case you thought it was safe to trust your doctor, or pharmacist, you can’t. Not because they’re dishonest, but because even they can’t trust the research information that they’re being fed about new treatment options. Read this article if you don’t believe me…

    “It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.” ~ Dr Marcia Angell

  • The Failure of Modern Medicine

    My biggest contention with modern medicine is that it provides, at best, a good intervention strategy but rarely encourages a wholesome approach to good health. I believe that the key deficiency in their approach is the fact that they start out with the assumption that there is no soul. This isn’t as ludicrous an observation as it may appear to be.

    For those of us that believe we have a soul which is interdependent with our physical form, we believe that the soul is the seat of intelligence, while the body is the seat of desire, or physical needs, so to speak. So what we think causes us to influence our physical form in ways that we’re still unravelling. The problem with modern medicine therefore is that they only study the effect of that thought independent of the thought itself, which leaves them believing that the symptom is in fact the root cause.

    Allow me to explain. When we consider chemical balances or imbalances, we automatically assume that the current state of the chemicals is what gives rise to certain behavioural tendencies. For example, when we have a high level of serotonin, we assume that the person is predisposed to being happy, while those with a low level of serotonin are assumed to be predisposed towards depression or stress. This is a very simplistic example that could probably be argued from various technical perspectives, but the point I’m trying to make is that we look at the current physical state and assume that to be a marker of the mental state, when in fact the reverse is true. The physical state is the symptom of the mental state, and not the other way around.

    I often feel anxious and frustrated when I think about how much more effective modern approaches to health would be if they just stopped being pigheaded about their insistence that nothing is true unless scientifically proven, instantly rendering the wisdom of the ages of holistic health remedies irrelevant simply because the remedies were not derived using present-day research methods.

    I have this recurring scenario that plays out in my mind each time I think of this where someone from a land that has never been contaminated with technology hears a human voice being projected out of a device that has no physical connection to anything or anyone and therefore assumes that some sort of magic is being used to do so, not realising that it’s simply a battery powered radio. Such is the nature of the most brilliant minds in the scientific research communities that because they have yet to find a way to harness, measure, or accurately observe what is commonly referred to as the paranormal, they view it with cynicism despite not having the answers.

    I guess the point I’m trying to make is that when we find someone in a state of emotional stress, or even physical duress, unless there is a physical defect present, it is most probable that the cause of it is an imbalance between what they desire and what they believe they are allowed to have. I’ve often seen that people with severe stress at the office usually end up in such a state because their jobs demand that they behave or produce work that conflicts with their value system. The same is true in life. When we try to control those things that fall outside our sphere of influence rather than accepting it for what it is, we end up feeling persecuted in ways that rarely occur to us in our conscious mind.

    The worst fallacy in modern medicine has to be its insistence that we are a victim of the chemical make-up of our physical forms, rather than appreciating that there is a seat of intelligence that exists alongside the physical form that they so painstakingly study. It’s like the ridiculous assumption that the Greeks made when they believed that our eyes emitted beams of light that allowed us to see, failing to understand that what our eyes observed was merely what existed external to ourselves. Similarly, the body is a vessel that harbours the soul, and therefore is used to express the desires and needs of that soul. When we fool ourselves into believing that that physical form is what dictates the health of our emotional state, that is when we become victims to our circumstances and effectively give up our ability to choose and think intelligently.