Category Archives: Daily Hotline Message

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Message #304

Veteran’s Day and impact vs intent

I imagine you noticed that I didn’t mention veteran’s day yesterday. That was intentional.

Why?

Because I’m not sure how I feel about my service right now. There’s so much going on in the country right now and much of that involves the military. I don’t want this call to be political but I feel I have some ability to address things that affect the military.

In case you didn’t know it, the National Guard is an integral part of the military. And they have been deployed into cities to exert force against American citizens. And you all know that the administration has said the military – I guess the mean other parts of the military
into the same cities. To keep Americans from protesting amongst other things.

And I guess my biggest problem was the speech to the 800 or so general officers, essentially telling then what they had to think and do.

What do you think “thank you for your service “ really means in light of that possibility

I served for nearly 30 years and took my job and my oath very seriously. I sure didn’t stay all that time for the money. I loved my country and wanted to take care of the others who were protecting me and all Americans. Not attacking them.
I don’t consider this a time for celebration.

Enough on this.

I wanted to mention a phrase I heard the other day that I think all of us can benefit from.

It’s that there is a difference between impact and intent.

How often do you hear someone say “I didn’t mean it” after they did something hurtful or said something hurtful. That’s the intent. But the impact has already occurred. And no matter what the intent was it won’t change that impact.

This is a primary reason for you to take a pause before you react or respond to something someone has said or done.

When you take that pause think about what you want the impact to be. Then you can tailor your response to ensure that you act or talk so that impact you want has a better chance of occurring.

It’s ok to be angry but the key point is not to express that anger in a harmful way.

Can you start practicing that pause ?

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Conditioned responses and routines

A conditioned response is a learned response to a previously neutral stimulus that has been paired with an eliciting stimulus.

So what you’re probably asking? Well the “what” is that there may be things happening in your life that you’re not happy with. These may be conditioned responses and with a fair amount of effort – sometimes a lot of effort – you may be able to reverse them.

Here’s some examples in my life. The funniest one is that if I pick up a book to read in the morning and start to read, I will begin to yawn. This happens without fail. Maybe you’re thinking it’s becaue I’m tired in the morning. But that’s not it. I’ve been up and working at my morning routine long before I pick up a book. It’s that someone a few a years ago my brain associated yawning with a book. I can read online a nothing happens.

This is the breakdown:
There’s pairing. I started reading a book and I yawned at the same time.

Then there’s association. My brain associated a yawn with opening a book.

The conditioned response develops so that when my brain sees me open a book it thinks it’s time to yawn

Then when I’m walking on a certain route – one where i know the porta potties are as soon as I get to a certain point on that route, my bladder begins to send messages to my brain that “it has to go”. When I’m on another route – leaving under the exact same conditions like how much I drink and when I pee at home, I’m fine at the same distance because the porta potty on that route is not for another mile. It took me a while to realize this one but when I found that I was feeling fine all the way until about 1/2 mile from the potty and all of a sudden I really had to go.
So what does this have to do with routines?

I have been having chronic daily headaches for the past 5-6 weeks and I have associated most of it with my daily morning routine. There’s more to it though because it’s most often there when I wake up.
But i decided to change my morning routine and see what happened. It’s been less than a week so I can’t really tell about the effect on my headaches except that so far they have not occurred when I wake up. But what I have noticed is that I feel a sense of freedom and excitement now that I’ve changed up that routine. I do parts of it in the evening or throughout the day so I haven’t eliminated anything. I’ve just reordered my routine.
Take a look at your days and see if there are things you might be doing “just because”. You started doing them sometime but maybe they have become stagnant. It’s important for the things we do to be stimulating and exciting so analyze your activities and see if there’s any shaking up you can do. And maybe you’ll find some conditioned responses that you weren’t aware of either.

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Message 300 and my anniversary

Here’s to a fantastic week! I know mine will be phenomenal and I affirm the same for each of you.

Saturday was the 300th message but I didn’t do anything special since it was the weekly roundup

I am grateful that you all have hung in there with me for 15 hours! That’s like taking a one hour class once a week for almost 4 months. Maybe it’s time for a final exam. Just kidding.

I have learned a lot and I hope you have too. Your comments certainly have enriched my life and increased my knowledge base. I am in awe of all the brilliant minds out there.

Now let’s see if I can make it to a year in the middle of January. You get to experience another race with me too. Aren’t you lucky. It’s a 6 day race but it’s one of those where I walk around in a mile circle for six days. Even though it sounds crazy, it’s great for practicing mental discipline. More about that as we get closer.

The significant thing about today, though, is that it’s the 15th anniversary of my weight loss surgery. If I hadn’t had that I wouldn’t be here to do this message today. I am 4 11 and I weighed 300 pounds at the time of my surgery. Needless to say my heart was having problems handling that load.

I was extremely fortunate to have a pioneer do my surgery. And as with all pioneers in medicine, he was ridiculed and not accepted by mainstream medicine in the US. And this procedure still isn’t.

But he was welcomed with open arms in countries all around the world and spent his last several years traveling and teaching his technique.

What’s special about it? Well there are different types of weight loss surgery and many are fraught with complications. This procedure has less. It’s done laparoscopically whereas the others are generally done by opening the abdomen. My procedure was less than 45 minutes. I was capable of going back to work the next day. It’s also easily revisable and reversible.

It angers and frustrates me when the medical establishment refuses to embrace new concepts like this and the neuroplastic theory of chronic pain. I’m reading a book titled “Cured” by Jeffrey Rediger and it’s by a doctor who investigated so called miracles meaning spontaneous remissions. And he talks about why this hadn’t been checked out before and when some doctors did have theories they were blackballed.

It’s important when you have something that means a great deal to you that you continue to pursue it and push as hard as you can. Don’t let others knock you off your horse. If they do, get back up and ride away Into the sunset. Even George Strait has a song about that – the cowboy rides away.

Have a diamond week and build on your diamond collection.