Episode Summary
In this longer than expected episode for a Sunday Summary, I review the key events of the week and the lessons I’ve learned from them. There’s a lot about cold showers and breathing and how that’s helping. I share my thoughts on a video about Tony Robbins “curing” a woman’s depression and am honest with you about my relapses during the week.
Episode Transcript (Edited)
Hi and welcome to a another Sunday Summary of the Hope, Help, Happiness podcast.
This is the third one I’ve done. So it’s only been three weeks since I started this podcast yet it seems an age ago.
What I want to do in this episode is just review what’s been happening in the last week and catch up to see what’s been working and what hasn’t. This is really an important process I’ve discovered for myself. It’s one where I can reflect on the things I’ve done, look at the things I have intended to do and see whether I’ve actually followed through on them.
I found it a really useful exercise because it’s very easy to lose sight of some of the things that you’ve committed to.
In fact, let me just stop there…
I keep saying some of the things “you’ve” committed to. It’s like I’m talking about you rather than me.
I’ve noticed when I’ve been the reading the transcripts of these podcasts, how I often refer to the problems I’m having by talking about “you having them rather than me having them.
It’s been really interesting for me to recognise that I’m almost denying any responsibility for those issues if I talk about them like somebody else’s having them. Perhaps subconsciously that will mean I’m absolved of any accountability or responsibility for fixing them.
It’s been fascinating to spot that. I’m pleased I’ve had the awareness to notice that and interrupt that pattern and then explain it to you. I think part of the growth I’m getting from doing this podcast is it’s given me feedback.
I’m capturing what I’m doing and how I’m feeling about it in the moment. Declaring my intentions, going public with them, and then reviewing them allows me to keep track of the things I said I was going to do and whether I’ve done them or not. Whilst it’s painful to admit I’ve said some things and not actually done them, it’s actually good for me to raise that level of awareness because I think that is key for me.
When I start to spot the patterns of behaviour, I can see them before they start to take hold and maybe interrupt them or choose something different. Now I’ve noticed over the last few days, I’m not making some positive choices that I need to. I’m allowing things to take hold and for me to go back into some patterns that aren’t serving or supporting me. But on the positive side, at least I’ve taken that first step of awareness.
And the reason I’m doing that is to give myself a degree of accountability – and it’s starting to work. I don’t like it sometimes because I’m thinking, “Oh, I’ve got to change and I know I’ve got to change. Otherwise I’ll just end up where I was make a few weeks ago again”.
So back to today’s episode and let’s have a look at what’s happened over the week.
In episode 016 which was Monday’s episode. I looked at the key elements of the Choose Yourself book by James Altucher. I think I’d mentioned a few weeks ago that I was gathering as much information as I could, looking at new and different ideas but never actually doing anything with them.
So Choose Yourself was the first book I chose to focus on. The key principle I’ve taken from it is the aim is to have a daily practice where you improve yourself 1% across the areas of your physical body, your emotional body, your mental body, and your spiritual body.
Now, on Monday, I combined the physical and mental improvements by taking an opportunity to come up with 10 ideas that would improve my physical body by at least 1%. I came up with a whole load of ideas for that and identified two things that I would do.
The first was to introduce the plank into my morning routine. I’m pleased to say I have done that on at least 3 days this week since making that commitment. There have been a couple of days where I’ve forgotten but it is starting to get into my routine.
The other thing I pledged to do was to increase my basic six breaths in the morning up to at least 15 breaths.
In fact, what I decided to do is look at the Wim Hoff method, the guy known as the ice man. That was my commitment for Monday episode.
Tuesday was an interesting episode because I’d had a bit of a relapse into learned helplessness.
I was trying to do a task I’ve been putting off for ages, which is handling the receipts from my business, which I detest and I had a backlog of stuff that needed dealing with.
I found myself thinking things were too difficult. I felt really bad about it and I struggled that day with it. I think I called it Echoes Of The Past because I started to feel some of the same feelings that have led me down to some dark places before. I was slightly positive because I recognise I have made progress, but at the time I could feel myself being in the same situation I’ve been in before. And I didn’t like it.
On Wednesday in episode 018 I had done a little bit more research on the Wim Hoff method. I had watched a couple of videos just to understand what the basic technique was. He has an online programme you can invest in to teach the whole method, but I just wanted to find enough of what the technique was to start applying it into my own life.
Fundamentally here’s approach. It has three components.
The first is gradual, non forced exposure to cold water immersion. The second component is a series of deep breathing exercises. And the third one is having the right mindset, a degree of mental focus.
Essentially his method is a series of 30 breaths repeated three times. The aim he says is to become your own alchemist and change your own body chemistry by oxygenating and alkalising your blood. He’s done research backed experiments to prove it does.
I tried out the breathing exercises that morning and shared my experiences which were quite positive. I think I’ve already mentioned the experiences of working with cold water and how I gradually increased my exposure so now every day and I’m having about 45 seconds to a minute under cold water at the end of my shower.
It is invigorating.
If you’d have told me six weeks ago that I’d be doing that, I would have said, “No way!”
There’s no way you can get me to have a cold shower because I just do not like the cold. However, we are adaptive creatures. We adapt very easily to new circumstances providing there are small and gradual changes.
With the cold showers I started by slowly putting luke warm water on my feet and then reducing the temperature a little bit over a couple of days. Then I started to move it up to the lower part of my legs. Then the next day I took it up to my knees and the day after to the top of my legs.
Then I started to allow my abdomen and the lower part of my back to get a little bit wet. Eventually I was able to fully immerse myself in the cool water. Now I’ve been doing that at the end of my shower and turning the temperature down even further each time. That’s how I’ve evolved into it.
The combination of that, coupled with the breathing exercises, it was astonishing to see how long I could hold my breath for having done the series of 30 rapid breaths. On the first day I counted up to 120 after completely exhaling and then holding my breath. Two days later I was counting up to 150 which was incredible.
Wednesday was also a counselling day, and I think I said at the time the jury is still out on the direct impact that’s going to have on dealing with the underlying issues because it seems so passive. It seems so indirect and at the moment we’re just talking around lots of stuff. So I’m not quite sure about it at the moment.
On Wednesday I also wrote a poem looking at my feelings about the stigma of my suffering. I have written poetry in the past and I felt the need to express myself about an aspect of the way I’ve been feeling. I wrote it at night and the words came pretty easily. I edited them slightly the following day just to make it more succinct. I took out repeated words and then felt the need to record it.
It’s more for myself than for anyone else. It just allows me to express some of the more emotional aspects of what I’m feeling. I was reasonably happy with it because it expressed how I felt in a way different than me just rambling on here or writing out long winded paragraphs on the blog.
In Thursday’s episode I did an update on the Wim Hoff method. I shared I was still having some procrastination issues but was making some progress.
At the beginning of the week I’d said I would be writing out 10 ideas a day. I hadn’t done that and I was struggling to fit that in. I’ve only done it twice this week and I still haven’t found the groove with that.
This means for some reason I’m clearly avoiding that thought process. Perhaps because I perceive it to be too much effort. Maybe it’s because I’m trying to change too much in one go. However, I will be working on that this week.
On Friday I talked about a Tony Robbins video with him supposedly curing a woman of depression. I talked about how I didn’t think he “cured” of depression. He merely interrupted her pattern of depressive state and got into a more positive state. If she doesn’t changes her underlying thought patterns, she’s going to get back into that again
Tony Robbins shared that whatever state you are in, there are three things that are causing that state.
1. How you’re using your body.
2. What you’re focusing on and
3. the story you’re choosing to tell yourself.
He demonstrated how you can use any of those to break out of the pattern. He also said that people “do” depression. It is a set of actions you do through how you use your body, what you choose to focus on and what your story you tell yourself.
The woman in the video resisted his attempts to do an intervention to break her free of that pattern. He suggested she might be married to the identity of being depressed. To some this might be a shocking assertion.
However from my own experience, I know I have hung on to feelings of depression because I felt that’s who I am. I know I also “do” depression. It’s triggered by something outside of myself but I react and follow a pattern that sends me down there.
In order to break out of that pattern, I’ve just got to use the same components but different versions of them.
And finally in episode 021 on Saturday, I stayed in bed longer than necessary because of a late night on Friday. I was overthinking again though I used the term rumination for yesterday.
Essentially I overthink stuff either negatively, which is classic “rumination” where you think negative thoughts and start to feel bad. Because you feel bad, you’re more prone to thinking negative thoughts, which get even more negative, you feel even worse. So there’s this downward spiral.
There’s also the neutral level of rumination where I just ponder.
And then there’s the positive one, which is more like daydreaming.
So I spent a couple hours in bed just doing that. And because of that, I felt guilty and bad about waking up late and not getting up and all of a sudden I did not feel like doing my usual morning routine.
So I did a token version of it.
And again, I was in this loop of beating myself up and I think the conclusion I came to was I need to be kinder to myself. On one hand I need to give myself some slack and some love and some care and ease up on myself a little bit because I’ve been way too hard on myself in the past.
But by the same token, I’ve also got to operate at a higher level of discipline to get the right things done on time. Otherwise these things are going to deteriorate again.
The other thing I did Saturday is to start expanding the website I have for this podcast.
As you can see if you are reading this, I’ve been posting these episodes on there with the transcripts or at least the show notes from each episode. I’ve now added to the site by creating pages for some of the resources I intend to gather to help me.
There’s a hope page, a help page and a happiness page.
I’m going to put resources up there I’ve found that give me hope, that give me help, and that ultimately will move me closer to happiness. You might want to go and have a look and see if there’s anything of use to you.
So that’s Today’s episode. Normally these things are just going to be a short summary, but I’m finding myself talking longer and longer each time – that was 16 minutes which is a little longer than I’d expected.
Until tomorrow.
