Episode Summary
Yesterday I decided to review the daily practice from James Altucher’s book “Choose Yourself”. His simple daily practice got me started back on the road to recovery all those weeks ago so I know the full version has value. Today I share my thoughts as I review the four “bodies” targeted by this Daily Practice.
Episode Transcript (Edited)
Hi and welcome to today’s episode of Hope Help, Happiness.
Now, in yesterday’s episode I talked about working out what I need to do next? I think the episode was called, So What Now?
I realised I’d been in a holding pattern and I wasn’t sure how to move forward. So I thought I’d go back to where my journey started in terms of the recovery, which was the book, Choose Yourself by James Altucher.
He talked about his daily practice focusing on four bodies. He said:
“It is from a foundation of health in all four bodies that you build the platform to Choose Yourself.
The four bodies are our physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual bodies. That’s his foundation and if you get all those right, you can then start moving forward.
He has a simple daily practice, which is just starting with one thing from one of the bodies. Doing that was what kick started me out of my funk and into doing things more positively.
Once I got going, I started looking at the other bodies, but I didn’t really move forward with them as much as I would like. So I thought I’d come back and review those again, which is why I’m here.
The physical body is the easiest one for me. It’s the one I got back into the quickest and my physical body is in good shape. I eat well, I exercise through walking and dancing. I stretch, I do yoga and I don’t drink. My diet is excellent and so I hydrate well. So all that is in place.
I think I have a little bit of tension here and there, but then who doesn’t? But I think my physical body is in good shape.
Now for my emotional body, I initially wasn’t quite sure what he really meant in the terms of his context. Of course I understand what emotions are. Part of my challenge is facing up to those emotions. But in the context of the four bodies he’s talking about, it’s about being around positive people.
He says, you can’t be beautiful unless you get rid of the ugliness inside. By surrounding yourself with positive people who bring positive things out of you, you can develop your “emotional body”.
I reflected that the social life I’ve started to develop. The people I spend most time with are people who are uplifting. And so I think I can tick that box as well.
Now the next one is the mental body.
Altucher says that we should tame the wild horse because the mind wants to be the boss. A way of doing that is by taxing it mentally. His approach is to come up with 10 ideas a day. It can be ideas on just about anything.
In fact his wife has written a book just about the 10 idea principle. And it gives you a subject every day for which to come up with 10 ideas. Ironically, I realised I’d bought that book a couple of years ago and tried it but never really clicked into it.
I still haven’t addressed that properly this time either. I remember there were a few episodes I did shortly afterward introducing the book on this podcast where I talked about struggling with applying myself to the task.
So I’m going to revisit the 10 ideas a day. Rather than doing it randomly, because I think I was looking at finding ways of giving ideas to other people as a way of getting back into the workplace, I’m going to focus them on my new business.
So that’s the plan for that. And I’ve got to work out how I’m going to do that, although I’m already working on my next project and I’m having to tax my brain regularly. I’m having to come up with ideas so I’m already there, but am going to start formalising the idea capture so I can really see the progress I’m making there.
And finally there’s the spiritual body. I love his quote about the past and the future not existing.
His general take on the spiritual body is there is only the now and it is about surrendering to what happens to you. It is also about trusting that you’ve made the preparations you need to.
I’m not quite sure about all of that as a way of developing my spiritual body.
What I am more interested in is this concept of the past and future not existing and there is only the now. That’s about being mindful. I’ve done a mindfulness course in the past so I’m aware of it. I’m going to explore being more mindful. I’m going to see things as they are rather than as I want them to be, which I think is an application of mindfulness.
And then there’s the principle of gratitude. I have been experimenting with this. Whenever I’m enjoying something e.g. when I’m out walking and I’m enjoying the countryside, I’m grateful for that. Whenever I have a good experience, I’m grateful for it. I’d been exercising gratitude about all sorts of things both the good and the bad. I’m starting to work on that.
So to summarise my spiritual path, it’s about being more mindful and it’s about expressing gratitude more often.
That’s a revisit of where I’ve been before. I know this stuff works. I know this stuff has value. I’ve now got to make it work in my life, harness it and not just pay lip service to it, which is something I’ve been guilty of in the past.
So that’s Today’s episode.
Until tomorrow.
