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Guy

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  • May 9, 2013 at 3:45 am in reply to: Discovering The Good Stuff #35306
    Guy
    Participant

    Yes, it is about finding joy and rediscovering all the things that are wonderful about yourself. When you have had an addiction, depression or other disorder, in most cases, you have focused on all the negative things in your life and about yourself for a long time. Once you learn to change your perspective and start looking for all the good things in and around you, you’ll not only find them, but your life will start to change very rapidly.

    May 8, 2013 at 3:21 am in reply to: Discovering The Good Stuff #35249
    Guy
    Participant

    Hi Ginger,

    I experienced the exact same things as you are experiencing now. I was an addict, suffered from depression and anxiety attacks and felt like life was passing me by. Even two counselors could not help me feel better. I hope yours is better and will be able to help you. I just thought I’d share some things that have helped me a lot:
    – start some form of intense physical exercise. This helps with physical stress and tension, and it releases serotonin into your brain which instantly makes you feel better.
    – meditate: it will help you let go of negative thoughts, fears and anxiety
    – find something you love to do and do it often. It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as you enjoy doing it.
    – stop watching TV: TV has the same effect on your brain as drugs and it is easy to get lost in it. If you really want to watch a certain show, watch in on dvd. This way you can watch in when you want and there will be no commercials. Think about what would happen if you were to spend all those hours you lose by watching tv on improving your health and the quality of your life. On average people watch 3 hours of tv per day. That’s a total of 1095 hours per year. If you work 10 hours a day, 5 days a week, it will take you more than 21 weeks to get to 1095 hours. If you spend 21 weeks a year on improving how you feel and on improving the quality of your life, there is no limit to what you can achieve.
    – eat healthier: Food has a huge impact on how you feel. Eating unhealthy will make you feel depressed. Eating healthy will make you feel good and give you tons of energy. Even adding one green smoothie to your diet everyday can make a huge difference. The more changes you make, the bigger the effect.

    These things are easy to do, cost no money and you can start doing them right away. You will start to notice changes very quickly if you follow through with them.
    The thing with fear, anxiety and depression is that they will not go away by ‘waiting’. You have to create the changes yourself. Set some attainable goals for yourself and take life day by day.

    Best of luck to you!

    April 15, 2013 at 3:47 am in reply to: Money Challenges #33838
    Guy
    Participant

    What got me out of debt was negotiating a monthly payment that was attainable for me. I found myself a job that paid enough, which still was an average salary. I automated all the payments and stuck to my budget. I didn’t have much money left to ‘live’, so shopping and vacations were out of the question for a quite some time. But The little bit of money I did manage to set aside went completely to ‘having fun’. Even though I was in debt, I enjoyed life. The automated payments helped me to no longer have to focus on or even think about my debt. I almost completely forgot about it. It was actually a very nice experience to not have any money. It showed me who my real friends were, it made me realize that you don’t need things to be happy.
    Where you put your focus also makes a lot of difference. IF you choose to be unhappy because of your debt, you are allowing it to define the quality of your life. I focused on the abundance of positive things in my life. I went back to school for about a year and started my own business after that. All while I was still paying of my debt. I could have let it get me down, but instead I chose to make it a wonderful journey.

    April 13, 2013 at 10:07 am in reply to: How do you gain "Likes" on FB? #33791
    Guy
    Participant

    If you want more likes, you’ll have to give people a reason to like you. Like Joshua said: you need content on your page.
    So, how do you get many likes? Look at what people love to share. People love ‘cute’ animal videos and pics. So, follow a couple of high profile pages with tons of followers and share their pics and vids on your page. Go on youtube and find some cool videos, click the share button and share them on your page.
    If you have the opportunity to create some pictures and videos yourself, do so. Then share them on your page and on other popular pages. If you post to other pages and share their content, they will do the same for you and exposing your page to tens or maybe hundres of thousands of people.
    Try to do this every day: share on or more of your own pictures and share a post from someone else’s (highly popular) page.
    You’ll see your number of likes growing very rapidly.

    April 8, 2013 at 2:59 am in reply to: What autoresponder do you use? #31953
    Guy
    Participant

    Mailchimp doesn’t like it if you put affiliate links in a large number of your mails. But that doesn’t mean they forbid you to do so. As long as you keep it natural there is no problem. It’s perfectly fine to mail an affiliate link now and then. Unless your intent is to spam people with affiliate links, I wouldn’t worry about it.
    I use mailchimp but will be switching back to aweber. Mailchimp is good, but aweber is better. If you are starting out mailchimp is probably the best option since it’s free 🙂

    April 7, 2013 at 2:10 am in reply to: What do you want to know about meditation? Ask me anything! #31902
    Guy
    Participant

    Hi Karmit,

    thank you for your questions.

    #1 I personally have never been a fan of guided meditations (they didn’t work for me), but that does not mean they can’t be helpful. If they help you calm your mind, then they work for you. In the beginning you have to ‘help’ your mind to relax and there are several ways to do this: guided meditations, binaural beats, mantra’s, … Whatever works for you. But it is kind of like riding a bike with training wheels. At some point you have to make the switch to ‘regular meditation’, because this will take you to the next level and give you much more benefits.

    Another great tip that I forgot to mention in the previous posts, is to make meditation a ritual. What I mean by this is that you always meditate in the same room. Make sure it is clutter free, you can even decorate it. Put on some relaxing music, burn some incense and make sure you sit comfortably. By doing this every time you meditate, you are conditioning your mind. After about a week you’ll notice that the moment you smell the incense or hear the music, your brain is triggered and already goes into a state of relaxation. It knows what is going to happen. Also, make sure that nobody will disturb you and turn off your phone. This time is just for you, to spend some time with the person you (should) love the most, yourself! 🙂

    So, yes it is ok to listen to music. But after a while you should be able to meditate everywhere without ‘attributes’. If you go on a vacation, don’t think: I can’t meditate because I’m not in my special room and I don’t have my music and my incense. Meditation is all about what goes on inside out of you, not the things outside of you. So, while it is nice to have a room and a ritual that help you relax, don’t focus to much on that. Don’t make them requirements for your meditation. Learn to meditate everywhere. And when you have been meditating for a while and are getting better at it, try meditating on the train or some other place where it is noisy and where there are a lot of people. If you can shut out the noise and everything that goes on around you in a situation like that, you’ll really know how to relax.

    #2 Good question. I have not had much experience with walking meditations, so I may not be the right person to answer this question. But I’ll give you my opinion anyway 🙂 I believe you can be mindful in any situation, no matter what it is that you are doing. But in some situations it will require a lot more practice than in others. Actually, in ‘most’ situations it will take ‘a lot’ of practice. When you are doing a very slow walking meditation on an empty beach, it is very easy to be mindful. To stay mindful during an entire average day with the kids, the family, your job and all the other things that come on your path on a daily basis, will require a lot of practice. But it can be done.
    So, can you be mindful while walking at a normal pace? I believe you can. I know of a walking meditation that is designed specifically for everyday use (meaning: while walking at a normal pace). Instead of focusing on every sensation that goes on in and around your feet, you focus on the alternation between the left and the right foot. All you have to do is be aware of the left-right-left-right motion. Give it a try and see how it goes.
    I hope this answers your question.

    And yes, it’s a Wayne Dyer quote. Thanks for clearing that up! 🙂

    Guy

    April 6, 2013 at 12:58 pm in reply to: What do you want to know about meditation? Ask me anything! #31310
    Guy
    Participant

    Hi Randy,

    good to hear you started meditating. The first weeks were the hardest for me too. But you just have to keep going. The more you do it, the sooner you will learn to relax and stop your thoughts racing through your mind. Everyone can learn it, it just takes some time. If you have any questions, feel free to post them here!

    My site is finally back online, so if you want you can subscribe on the following page and you’ll be notified once the program goes live: http://www.transformationoftheself.com.

    April 6, 2013 at 6:52 am in reply to: What do you want to know about meditation? Ask me anything! #31290
    Guy
    Participant

    Thank you for sharing your story, William. It’s great to hear meditation has helped you deal with your challenges.

    Meditating for 2 hours a day is not that hard. You start with 5 minutes and you build up from there. And an hour of deep meditation equals an hour of sleep. So I sleep less and meditate more 🙂

    I am currently working on a 8 week program with my mentor. He is the one who taught me pretty much everything I know about meditation. He has been helping people for almost 25 years and I asked him if he would be interested in turning his knowledge into an online program so everyone can benefit from his teachings. Luckily he agreed, so we are working hard on finalizing this program and it should launch in about a week or two.
    In this program you’ll learn how to meditate properly and how to deal with any kind of challenge in your life. It’s not just about learning to meditate, but meditation is the foundation of this entire program. My mentor has degrees in psychology, kinesiology, psycho-energetics, meditation and NLP, so he has quite a lot of knowledge to share 🙂 But this will be a very simple and easy to follow program. Simple, effective and fun are the keywords!

    I have a website where you can subscribe to a list, but I am having some server issues today. When I’m back online, I’ll post a link here. If you are interested, you can subscribe and you’ll be notified when we go live.

    April 5, 2013 at 2:08 pm in reply to: What do you want to know about meditation? Ask me anything! #31245
    Guy
    Participant

    Hi Jamie,

    thank you for your questions. I’ll try to answer them all to my best abilities.

    – Yes, meditation is sort of like a muscle, so you need to train it. It is a skill that you need to maintain. If you have a busy mind or have ADD, then it can be hard to get started. The key to meditation is to calm your mind down, but that is very hard to do when thoughts keep racing through your mind. I used to have a very busy mind, I over-analyzed everything. So, when I tried to meditate, it was very hard and frustrating, because I couldn’t relax. This was before I met my mentor who taught me all about meditation.

    Luckily, I found some solutions:
    1) Binaural beats: You can buy dvd’s or mp3’s that you listen to during meditation. You have to listen to them with headphones, because they play a different frequency in each ear and this way your mind relaxes automatically (there is a science behind this, but I can’t explain it that well 🙂 ). I tried those for a while and they worked great. But they do not work for everyone. On about 20% of people they have no effect. And these programs can be expensive (hundreds of dollars). There are also cheap ones, but they didn’t work at all for me.
    These programs helped me with starting to meditate, so in that regard, they are good. But I don’t recommend using them for too long, because I felt that after a while they held me back. When I started meditating without these sounds, I could meditate much deeper and longer.

    2) Mantras’s: I prefer this method, because it is more ‘natural’. The theory behind mantra’s is this: everything is energy, you are energy, your thoughts are energy and your words are energy. Mantra’s are phrases that have been used for ages by millions of people, so there is a lot of energy connected to them. ‘Om Nama Shivaya’ or ‘Om nama Shakti’ are two examples of ancient mantras. You just keep repeating (or singing) them in your head. There is no scientific proof that these words contain thousands of years of energy, but I recommend you try it for yourself. Pick one mantra and try to meditate at least ten minutes, twice a day for about a week. I have meditated many times with these mantra’s and I can tell you from personal experience that it is a very powerful (and calming) experience.

    – Meditation will reduce physical and mental stress, worry, negativity and anxiety. These will be replaced with inner peace and happiness. It can also drastically reduce your pain (read this).

    – The connection between your mind and body: I regularly do meditation retreats with a meditation master. He often demands that we do a one week apple juice diet and sometimes even a three day fast before we go on the retreat. This way, our body is completely cleansed. When I do this I feel a much greater connection between my body and mind. What I am trying to say is that if you want your body to utilize the full potential of your mind, it is important to also look at how you treat your body. Exercise and eating healthy can give your meditation experience a major boost. Try to eat a lot of raw fruits and vegetables and cut down (drastically) on processed foods, soda’s and, if possible, meat.
    The cleaner your body, the bigger the effect your mind will have on your healing process.

    When you say you can heal yourself with your mind, a lot of people will think you are crazy. When you take a homeopathic approach to your healing process, these same people will tell you homeopathy doesn’t work, that it is nothing more than the placebo effect.
    But what is the placebo effect? You take a sugar pill, thinking it is an aspirin and your headache goes away. You are so convinced your headache will go away, that you don’t even need the aspirin anymore. So, basically, you have healed yourself with your mind. Think about it, that is really what it is.

    Your condition is obviously a lot more serious than a simple headache. I am not claiming you can heal yourself completely with your mind, but I also won’t claim you can’t. What I am certain of is that through meditation you can have a huge positive impact on your state of mind, your level of pain, and the effect your condition has on your life. Even if your condition does not change at all. The key is daily meditation. Do not skip a day and try to do it twice a day. Start out slow and build from there. Try to add 5 minutes to your meditations every week. It won’t be long before you start noticing positive changes in yourself and your life!

    I hope that answers your questions? If not, or if you have more, feel free to let me know!

    Guy

    PS: Here are some links you might find helpful:
    Meditation and ADHD
    Meditation and social isolation
    Benefits of meditation in healing processes

    • This reply was modified 11 years ago by Guy.
    April 5, 2013 at 12:17 pm in reply to: How deep down the rabbit hole do you go? #31231
    Guy
    Participant

    🙂 ah ok! I am definitely going to try it out for a couple of days. Will see how it goes.

    @ Sheila: I don’t think there is an end to the rabbit hole. It’s very deep, that’s for sure. And filled with bunnies 🙂

    April 5, 2013 at 12:13 pm in reply to: Is this codependency or recovery or just plain ol’ hell? #31226
    Guy
    Participant

    What I get from this is that you are not treated with the respect you deserve. Not by your husband and not by yourself.

    You put yourself in a situation where you are completely dependent on your ex. You need him to support you emotionally, sexually and probably other ways. The moment you are alone, you are confronted with your issues. When he is around, you forget all about them. Your ex serves as a band aid, to hide your wounds.
    The best you can do is to find a way to heal your wounds. This way you are no longer dependent on the band aid. Work on yourself, never give your power or security away to someone else. Face your fears! It’s not easy, but that’s how you grow. You’ll be happier and more confident and you won’t need to rely on anyone else to feel this way. This way you’ll become more attractive to the opposite sex and attract men who appreciate this quality in a woman. By begging someone for love you are only going to attract men who need women that are weak or hopeless.
    As for your husband. I feel like he keeps you around as a backup plan. You are a sure thing, because you are desperate for him. If tomorrow his ‘perfect woman’ comes a long, do you think the situation between you two will change? If you two were going to get back together ‘officially’, it probably would have happened by now. It looks to me that he is using you the same way you are using him. You are both each others band aid.

    I could be wrong of course, but from what you wrote, these are my impressions.

    April 5, 2013 at 11:24 am in reply to: How deep down the rabbit hole do you go? #31214
    Guy
    Participant

    That’s it? I thought it would be much harder. I will definitely give it a try.
    Thanks for the tip 🙂

    April 5, 2013 at 9:42 am in reply to: What do you want to know about meditation? Ask me anything! #31190
    Guy
    Participant

    You are exactly right Sheila. Meditation is observation. You don’t judge, label or get emotionally involved. That is why meditation is such a powerful tool for transforming yourself and your life.

    Guy

    April 5, 2013 at 2:15 am in reply to: What do you want to know about meditation? Ask me anything! #30712
    Guy
    Participant

    Hi Sheila,

    great question. The most important shift in thinking I have experienced is that things don’t happen ‘to’ me. Things just happen! And they are neither bad or good. How I deal with them determines what they are. There used to be a lot of things that would make me feel bad, angry, scared, … And I would always think: Why does this always happen to me? Now I know, that no matter what happens, it does not have to affect how I feel. My inner joy and happiness are not dependent on outside things. This also allows me to deal more efficiently with situations that I used to label as ‘a problem’ or ‘negative’. I accept them, see what I can learn from them, and then do what I have to do to ‘fix’ them. And I won’t feel stressed or unhappy about it, not for one second. This is a very powerful and fun mindset to have 🙂
    I don’t know who said this, but it is very true for me: Change the way you look at things and the things you look at will change.

    What kind of changes have you experienced as a result of meditating?

    April 5, 2013 at 1:55 am in reply to: How deep down the rabbit hole do you go? #30704
    Guy
    Participant

    Cool! I have been intrigued by lucid dreaming for a long time, but haven’t gotten around to actually trying it.

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