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In working with the community that has developed around our Dreambook, Briana and I have encountered people looking for many different forms of life-optimization. While there’s plenty of guidance we can offer someone to help them figure out and actualize what makes them happy, we meet quite a lot of people who essentially already have it. They really are living the dream. The main issue is that they just don’t see it.
They often suffer from what my friend Andy Dooley calls “lousy and lazy thinking.” Today I want to talk about the antidote. Whether you’ve already got a great thing going or there’s clearly a gap between where you are now and where you want to be, either way, you’ll benefit from being deliberate with how you use your attention.
Attention is like fertilizer. When you put your attention on something it grows.
This is why panicky thoughts tend to balloon and pain tends to increase when we focus on it. Unfortunately, bad experiences also tend to cut deeper grooves in our inner terrain, causing stronger memories and a tendency to be retriggered. We can easily get into a negative feedback loop as the thought “something’s wrong” demands our attention and then gets fed by it.
Our nervous system is just trying to be helpful; we’re wired this way to ensure our survival. Thus, it’s by design that things that signal danger are able to usurp our attention. But even while the risk of physical danger is lower than ever for most modern humans, we’ve trained ourselves to react similarly to a very broad range of other conditions, like money scarcity and situations that could lead to disapproval by our peers (because we subconsciously associate both money and our tribe’s approval with our survival).
But as humans with highly evolved brains capable of reasoning, we don’t need to be run by our animalistic side. We can change our default programs. One of the best antidotes is get a hold of that mind and put your attention on something else. Your two best options are (1) whatever you are currently engaged with (A.K.A. mindfulness) (2) anything that is good, fascinating, funny, joyous, celebratory, beautiful, loving, trustworthy, kind, generous, or peaceful.
By putting your attention on what is good and what is here and now, you fertilize those parts of life and override your overactive survival mechanisms. Not only does this help heal you of the tendency to focus on the bad (or possibly-maybe-could-be-bad), if you do it enough it actually starts to change your life.
If you’re using the Dreambook, an easy thing to put your attention on is all the goals you achieve. Too often we complete something, barely register it, and move on to the next thing. Just pausing, acknowledging, and celebrating this achievement amplifies the feelings of satisfaction, self-trust, and gratitude.
Revel in those feelings. The satisfaction of completion – like finishing a puzzle or making it to the finish line – is a combination of relief and delight. The feeling of self-trust is like an inner stability and fortitude. You said you were going to do this and you do it. You can rely on yourself. You will always be there for you. Finally, gratitude makes you feel expansive and connected. Consider all the internal powers (your body, your ingenuity, your creativity, your persistence, etc.), external powers (the people and resources that helped you get it done), and spiritual powers (the vision, strength, and gifts of your Highest Self) that made this possible. It’s like saying to your system, “I’m pressing the save button. I’m configuring myself for trust, fulfillment, serendipities, and optimism.”
While it’s especially important to do this with your big quarterly and one-year or longer-term goals, it’s perfectly wonderful to do it with your monthly, weekly, and daily goals too. In fact, the more you celebrate the more you start to notice reasons to celebrate.
Be so well,
Peter
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When we read about historical figures or people in the news, it’s easy to get the message that it’s big things that make a life exceptional, that the individuals who climb Mount Everest, develop a vaccine, or save a species from the brink of extinction are defining greatness for us all. If that’s what you feel called to do, I don’t want to lower the bar for you. I love massive achievements that benefit the common welfare!
But I also want to put in a good word for the consistent accomplishment of small things. Over a lifetime, this, too, can amount to something exceptional.
I’ve treated a number of patients with huge accomplishments under their belts – founders and CEOs of giant companies, inventors, professional athletes, artists, musicians, and authors. Clearly, they derived satisfaction from those big successes, but the day-to-day ingredients of happiness are the same for them as for anyone else. And, in general, I wouldn’t say they were happier or more satisfied with their lives than most people.
These ingredients are things like: connection with people, animals, nature, and Spirit; savoring food, music, and beauty; serving others and contributing to one’s community; completing meaningful tasks; learning and bettering oneself; and being present with the here and now so that we feel the magic of it. These “small things” aren’t highly visible, but they amount to so much.
This is one of the main reasons Briana and I started to create our own planner about a decade ago. We had always relied on planners, but found that traditional planners caused us to focus mainly on appointments and tasks. That’s what they’re for, right?
Appointments and tasks are useful, of course, but if this is what we fill our planner with, our life map can easily become defined by the things we need to get done. We wanted to create something that would (1) encourage us to define and adhere to an overarching vision and plan for our life (so that we’d consciously relate to our appointments and tasks as contributing to that plan), and (2) help us to prioritize the vital ingredients mentioned above.
Thus, the Dreambook was born. Through tools like Habit Tracking, Rituals for Thriving, defining your gifts, values, and purpose, and getting crystal clear on the aspects of life that truly nourish you, you can start to move these elements to the forefront – rather than the “extra credit” status they may currently occupy.
We can’t all devote our lives to world-famous-level accomplishments, but it’s important to recognize that the big stuff is dependent on the little stuff. If everyone wanted to be Elon Musk, who would be left to teach our children or nurse the sick? But if we all align our tasks with a broader vision of mutual evolution and wellness while consistently dedicating ourselves to the “small” but virtuous ingredients mentioned above, this will change the world a whole lot faster.
Use the Dreambook to help contextualize your work and interests within the bigger picture of who you want to be and what kind of world you want to live in, and then use the book and the Dragontree online community to help you stay on track. We’re here for you!
Be well,
Peter
[post_title] => The Main Ingredients in a High Level Quality of Life
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One of the earliest inspirations that prompted me to go into medicine was a book called The Science of Homeopathy by George Vithoulkas. Of all the many modalities of mainstream and alternative medicine, few are as widely used – or criticized – as homeopathy.
Most other medical systems are heteropathic or allopathic in their approach. Hetero means other or different, allo means opposite, and pathy means suffering or disease. So, both terms mean producing a condition that is incompatible with or antagonistic to the disease process. Today many people use the term “allopathic” in a negative sense to describe mainstream medicine, but if you take an anti-inflammatory herb such as turmeric for inflammation, or an antibacterial such as garlic for an infection, this is allopathic medicine.
Homeopathy is based on the idea that if a particular substance produces a certain reaction (e.g., ipecacuanha causes nausea and vomiting), minuscule quantities of that substance can treat that condition (e.g., homeopathic ipecacuanha alleviates nausea and vomiting). Homeo means like, so homeopathy means “like the disease” and it’s based on the principle that “like treats like.” Some other examples are the use of homeopathic coffee (Coffea cruda) to treat insomnia and agitation, homeopathic onion (Allium cepa) for red and watery eyes and nose, and homeopathic bee venom (Apis) for stings, swellings, and inflammation.
For what it’s worth, not all remedies work this way. In many cases, homeopathic preparations do the same thing the original substance does. The remedy Chamomilla, for instance, is homeopathic chamomile, and like the herb, it is used for digestive and emotional upset. Sometimes homeopathic versions are safer, gentler, more potent, or have a broader range of application. In the case of Chamomilla, it’s also used for teething, ear pain, and menstrual discomfort.
Homeopathic remedies are created through numerous successive dilutions of herbs, minerals, animal parts and occasionally other substances. When the original substance is diluted in ten parts of a solvent (water or alcohol), this is called an X dilution (X being the Roman numeral for ten). When the substance is diluted in one hundred parts of a solvent, this is a C dilution (C being the Roman numeral for hundred). Each time a dilution is made it is shaken in a specific way to transfer the substance to the solvent, and each successive dilution, though chemically weaker, is considered energetically more potent. I made this chart to explain the process:
Many homeopathic remedies are made from highly toxic substances, like arsenic or deadly nightshade. In these cases, the original substance is so highly diluted that the amount of toxin in a resulting pill or tincture is infinitesimal. Often, it’s unlikely that there is even a single molecule of the original substance in the resulting medicine. This is precisely why opponents of homeopathy argue that it’s worthless and call it pseudoscience.
As a scientist, I completely understand this stance, but in my opinion, what occurs in the preparation of a homeopathic remedy is something we don’t yet have the science to explain. I believe the substance leaves some kind of energetic imprint on the solvent it is diluted in. We know from Masaru Emoto’s research on water that various substances and even human intention are capable of leaving a lasting mark on water molecules that’s evidenced in the different forms of ice crystals it forms when frozen. I believe a similar process occurs through diluting and shaking a substance in water, even when the substance is eventually removed.
I must admit, my own experience with homeopathy has been hit-or-miss. I’ve taken numerous remedies that did nothing perceptible. As to whether I chose the wrong remedy or it wasn’t medicinally effective, I’ll never know. But I have also had cases in which homeopathics were remarkably effective.
This has been especially true with babies and animals, and these are cases we could assume are relatively free from the influence of the placebo effect since the recipients are presumably unaware that they’re getting medicine. In particular, I have repeatedly had the experience of giving homeopathic teething tablets to babies that were inconsolable, and within minutes they were peaceful and sleepy. As a parent, I don’t care what the mechanism is as long as it’s safe and it works.
The safety factor is significant, particularly for children, pregnant women, and elderly or frail people. Not only are homeopathics virtually free of side effects, they also tend to have zero “load” on the system. That is, they don’t make you feel like you’re on a drug. Sometimes this may come at the expense of strength (e.g., homeopathic Chamomilla doesn’t approach the potency of Xanax), but there are cases when the top priority is a clean experience. I find this to be especially true in anxiety, when making someone feel drugged can occasionally intensify the anxiety.
Have you tried homeopathy? What did you think? Share with us in the comments section. I would love to hear about your experience.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
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In working with the community that has developed around our Dreambook, Briana and I have encountered people looking for many different forms of life-optimization. While there’s plenty of guidance we can offer someone to help them figure out and actualize what makes them happy, we meet quite a lot of people who essentially already have it. They really are living the dream. The main issue is that they just don’t see it.
They often suffer from what my friend Andy Dooley calls “lousy and lazy thinking.” Today I want to talk about the antidote. Whether you’ve already got a great thing going or there’s clearly a gap between where you are now and where you want to be, either way, you’ll benefit from being deliberate with how you use your attention.
Attention is like fertilizer. When you put your attention on something it grows.
This is why panicky thoughts tend to balloon and pain tends to increase when we focus on it. Unfortunately, bad experiences also tend to cut deeper grooves in our inner terrain, causing stronger memories and a tendency to be retriggered. We can easily get into a negative feedback loop as the thought “something’s wrong” demands our attention and then gets fed by it.
Our nervous system is just trying to be helpful; we’re wired this way to ensure our survival. Thus, it’s by design that things that signal danger are able to usurp our attention. But even while the risk of physical danger is lower than ever for most modern humans, we’ve trained ourselves to react similarly to a very broad range of other conditions, like money scarcity and situations that could lead to disapproval by our peers (because we subconsciously associate both money and our tribe’s approval with our survival).
But as humans with highly evolved brains capable of reasoning, we don’t need to be run by our animalistic side. We can change our default programs. One of the best antidotes is get a hold of that mind and put your attention on something else. Your two best options are (1) whatever you are currently engaged with (A.K.A. mindfulness) (2) anything that is good, fascinating, funny, joyous, celebratory, beautiful, loving, trustworthy, kind, generous, or peaceful.
By putting your attention on what is good and what is here and now, you fertilize those parts of life and override your overactive survival mechanisms. Not only does this help heal you of the tendency to focus on the bad (or possibly-maybe-could-be-bad), if you do it enough it actually starts to change your life.
If you’re using the Dreambook, an easy thing to put your attention on is all the goals you achieve. Too often we complete something, barely register it, and move on to the next thing. Just pausing, acknowledging, and celebrating this achievement amplifies the feelings of satisfaction, self-trust, and gratitude.
Revel in those feelings. The satisfaction of completion – like finishing a puzzle or making it to the finish line – is a combination of relief and delight. The feeling of self-trust is like an inner stability and fortitude. You said you were going to do this and you do it. You can rely on yourself. You will always be there for you. Finally, gratitude makes you feel expansive and connected. Consider all the internal powers (your body, your ingenuity, your creativity, your persistence, etc.), external powers (the people and resources that helped you get it done), and spiritual powers (the vision, strength, and gifts of your Highest Self) that made this possible. It’s like saying to your system, “I’m pressing the save button. I’m configuring myself for trust, fulfillment, serendipities, and optimism.”
While it’s especially important to do this with your big quarterly and one-year or longer-term goals, it’s perfectly wonderful to do it with your monthly, weekly, and daily goals too. In fact, the more you celebrate the more you start to notice reasons to celebrate.
Be so well,
Peter
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