Here is a rather short essay that I found at The Fellowship of Reason website that I felt I could relate to very well.
Live More, Worry Lessby Nick Wiltgen
I have resolved to live more and worry less. What does that mean?
I want to live more. I want to do more with my life than I have been doing. I want to go out more, talk to more people, keep in better touch with my friends. I want to read more books and watch less television. I want to get in better physical shape and stay that way. I want to eat delicious food but maintain a health-conscious diet. I want to be creative and to revere the creativity of others. I want to travel more. I want to broaden my horizons. I want more out of life.
Worry less. I want to be less afraid of people. I want to take more chances. I want to do things that make me a little uncomfortable. I want to put myself out there and risk rejection. I want to be myself and not worry about my minor flaws or mistakes. I want to stop comparing myself to everyone else. I want to break paradigms and push boundaries. I want to stop pigeonholing myself into my preconceived notions of what is in my character and what isn't.
So now, I have some self-training to do. I will turn off the TV and call up a friend. I will hop on the stationary bike with a good book in hand. I will schedule time off from work, catch a flight and explore new places on my own. I will sing in the car even if my windows are rolled down in heavy traffic.
I'm going to live more and worry less.
I was the website tonight because a similar fellowship is slowly being born in Central Florida. More on that later. ;-)
Well, it's been quite a while since I've posted an update, and that could be for a lot of reasons. I've been slightly busier than usual, but a few things stick out in my mind as being the primary factors.
(1) I started to attend psychotherapy once a week with Peter, the teacher of the meditation group that I attend, to address some motivational issues I've had for quite a long time.
One of the issues I first brought up with Peter was that I could never finish a book. I would become very interested in a book, and then after a couple days, my interest would drop off the face of the planet. It wouldn't slowly fade away, it would just vanish -- the emotional fuel tank would be empty. I never even finished High-Intensity Training the Mike Mentzer Way, which I was obviously so interested enough in that I sat down and spent a couple hours writing a blog entry about it. One day I spent 4 hours reading it; the next day, I didn't care about it anymore. This was the same problem I've had for years, no matter what the book; I couldn't even tell you the last book I finished -- until now! (I'll get to that in a second.)
(2) I (re)started a new diet -- The Zone. I say restarted because I had originally been on it in high school when my friend Richard bought me the book for my birthday (I'm still supposed to buy him a Pink Floyd shirt -- I know, I'm a bad friend), but I lacked the motivation to continue on it (surprise surprise) and I didn't have the same appetite for the science that I do now. I had asked Cindy Heroux about how apt the South Beach Diet was for strength training, to which she advised I check out The Zone Diet, because of reported success from many athletes. So I went and got The Zone off the bookshelf, and I started reading it. I then realized that this book was written in 1995, and noticed that Dr. Sears had written several new books since then. I asked Cindy which one to read and she recommended The Omega RX Zone: The Miracle of the New High-Dose Fish Oil, otherwise known as "The first book Marshall has finished in years." (I'll get to that in a second.)
The Zone is primarily about balancing your hormones through the food you eat, and amazing things happen your hormones are balanced. You burn excess fat, your mood improves, you can focus better, you have more energy, etc. After looking at the nutritional guidelines, I realized that this diet looked rather familiar, and then I read something where Dr. Sears described the South Beach Diet as "Atkins for the first two weeks, and The Zone for the rest of it." I've been "Zoning" for a few weeks now, and it's made me feel really great, especially compared to the tired feeling I was used to having on the South Beach Diet. I think this is because I spent a large part of the diet (albeit, not very strictly) in Phase One, where fruits and grains are completely omitted, which induced a state of ketosis in my body, which is an abnormal and unhealthy metabolic condition (though very normal to Atkins) in which your body feeds off of your brain, slowly turning you into a mindless zombie.
The Zone basically consists of eating lean protein, and lots of fruits and vegetables, to balance your levels of insulin (the storage hormone in your body prompted by carbohydrate intake) and glucagon (the mobilization hormone in your body prompted by protein intake). If you'd like to know more about The Zone, learn how to enter the zone, or check out what a day in the zone looks like. Zone Perfect also has a lot of good information, though they're no longer affiliated with Dr. Sears.
Dr. Sears also touts high-dose pharmaceutical-grade fish oil as being "as close to a medical miracle as we will see in the 21st century" in The Omega RX Zone, the book I recently finished. (I'll get to that in a second.) I bought some high-dose, phamaceutical grade fish oil for Brittany, Jason and I from a Narcissistic Baby Boomer.
After I began reading The Omega Rx Zone, something very strange happened. About a week into reading it, I found it very odd that I was still interested in the book -- after all, it was just a book on nutrition and fish oil, with heavy doses of science that I was sure to get bored of. I didn't think anything of it, and I expected to get tired of it soon. But another day passed. And another, and another. Before I knew it, it had been two weeks since I had started reading this 250 page book that was packed with science and I was only a couple chapters away from finishing it. A day later, I had completed it -- the miracle of the new high-dose fish oil became the miracle of the first book I had finished in years.
Though I wasn't very excited, because I'm very skeptical by nature (I probably learned not to trust anyone or anything at some point), which is an issue I'm also now addressing in therapy. I recently began reading Emotional Alchemy to aid in my therapy, as well as in my meditation practice -- I'm on chapter six right now, so it's coming along nicely. (Hopefully, this will be the next book I finish). It's a book about the application of mindfulness to therapy, and particularly schema therapy. (3) One of my schemas happens to be perfectionism (Check out this list of schemas -- I'm sure you can find a lot of them in yourself, just as I did), which inhibits me from writing blog entries because I start to feel overwhelmed by the requirements I place on myself. In fact, during this entry, I've thought about how I should explain the diet more, or talk more about fish oil, or discuss the other things I've done in therapy (including systematic desensitization for my fear of flying -- I'm going to Texas in 4 days), but I'm going to let that go -- If you're interested, you can ask me. I've also always felt that I've had to come up with really creative and interesting titles, so in writing this entry, I've taken a step towards resolving my perfectionism by letting this entry have a really boring title. *grin*
Note: The original title of this entry was "Therapy, The Zone, Fish Oil and Schemas," but I decided at the very end that I would change it to something I thought was rather clever. But it still counts, right? I didn't make it a requirement -- I decided to change it at the very end!