The Spiral of Success (or Failure)

To be successful in anything in life you need to address a few key factors. First up you need to have a clear goal. I have produced a mini guide on how to do this, if you would like a copy, just e-mail me with the subject heading ‘Achievement Guide’, and I’ll ping it into your inbox.

No matter how clear that goal, it absolutely needs to be a ‘must’, not a ‘should’. You can learn more about this pivotal mindset here http://humanperformanceconsulting-uk.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/stop-lying.html. Simply put, set your benchmark to a higher standard.

Here’s a quick fact, less than 50% of people with chronic disease actually comply with their treatment protocol. So even what is considered a ‘must’ is actually a ‘should’ in the majority of the population. I do not doubt this statistic at all, on many occasions I’ve seen people being treated for cancer, outside the Oncology department building still hooked up to I.V. drips…smoking…

If you want to succeed, you need to make a proper decision, not a preference. A preference results in a ‘should’, which then leaves the doors open for the option of taking action, or not. A decision though, is vastly different. A real decision leaves no room for ambiguity, it essentially burns all other bridges on your journey, so that you have to use the only bridge left, no matter how decrepit and rickety. There are reasons why a preference is often made over a decision, but that’s not the focus of this article.

It’s not enough just to have a clear goal, and for it to be a ‘must’. You have to embody ‘why’ it’s a must. It has to be compelling for you, not repelling. So your goal must be generated by passion, and also generate passion within you, so that you are pulled, not pushed towards your goal.

However, this is often still not enough for people to succeed. Why? Because it doesn’t account for probably the most important feature in success: Belief.

‘Whether you think that you can, or that you can’t, you are usually right.’ ~ Henry Ford

I created HPC-UK to help people realise their potential. However what people don’t understand, and it is way beyond the scope of this piece to cover, is how much potential they have. When you look into what Humans, all of us, are capable of, it’s phenomenal.

And this potential phenomenal ability is really absolutely governed by your belief.

Trouble is the word ‘belief’ is usually attached to the wrong meaning. The way belief is usually used, actually means to ‘wish’ or ‘hope’ something is a certain way; ambiguity again, right? True belief, on the other hand, even if it’s based on faulty knowledge, means absolute certainty that something is a certain way.

The usual meaning is actually a limiting or conflicting belief, and this has fundamental implications on how much potential you can realise.

Let’s see how this works.

Take a look at the DNA double helix image alongside this article, and consider the four words that are present: Potential, Action, Results and Belief (or Attitude). Now considering the amazing ability that all Humans possess, does the usual person’s result’s reflect their potential? No, otherwise we’d all have a name similar to ‘Jordan Mozart Einstein-Ghandi’.

So why is this? Well, we’re all probably not taking enough action to make this a reality. No Action = No Results (or at least not the results we wanted).

But sometimes you can take loads of action, but still not get the results you want. And this is because the actions you’re taking are not aligned with your goal, for instance would you go on an African safari to see a Penguin? You can, and invest a lot into it, but I’m not sure you’d get much return on your effort.

However, let’s say you’re taking action and they’re the right actions, do people’s results now reflect their potential. Nope.

So we’ve got immense potential, we’re taking action and it’s the right action, and we’re still not getting results. If this is the case there’s only one place left to look, your belief.

Whenever you try to achieve a goal, if you believe it’s not going to work, or you don’t think you’re capable of doing it, then you’ll find ways to meet your own belief. In this mindset, how much do you think you’ll draw on your potential, a little, or a lot? A little, right? Why would you invest (time, effort etc) in something you didn’t truly believe was going to work. So you invest little (weak action), and get little results. Now you’ve validated your initial belief, which means you’ll draw even less on your potential, invest even less action, and get even less results. Now you’ll further reinforce your limiting belief, and so the cycle continues.

This is called a Vicious Spiral and it’s a slippery slope.

It’s not that there wasn’t potential there, it just wasn’t tapped into due to the conflicting belief.

But people who are successful generally do things a little differently. People who are successful often have unbounded beliefs. Potential can’t be changed, it is what it is, but how much you can express, as we’ve seen above is down to your actions. And the quality of your actions is determined by your belief.

We have already seen that true belief really means absolute certainty. So let’s look at the four words again in this mindset. We’ve set a goal which we are passionate about achieving and that we are absolutely certain we can nail. In this situation, how much (action) would you invest? A lot, after-all you’re certain you can achieve it. If you invest a lot in the (right) action, you’re going to get better results than had you invested little. So now you’ve smashed your goal, and cemented your initial belief. You’ve now proven to yourself that you can achieve goals that you set for yourself, so now you believe in your ability even more. With this improved state of mind do you think you’ll draw upon your potential more or less? More of course, so you take even more action which leads to better results and so on through the cycle.

This process is called the Virtuous Spiral and it’s the foundation of success. Make sure your beliefs aren’t holding you back.

Conceive. Believe. Achieve.

HPC-UK Bitesize (Health): Tele-tubbies?

Recent findings are suggesting that television viewing time is a risk factor for excessive weight gain among adolescents.

Television isn’t the innocuous pastime many assume it is, although a seemingly passive activity, it can stimulate many pathways in the brain that real-life activity utilise. An example of this phenomenon is found in sport, where athletes are advised by their coaches to visualise the perfect execution of movements within and outside of training sessions. Why? Because motor imagery (thinking about movement) and motor action (performing actual movement) engage overlapping brain systems.(1) The act of thinking about movement stimulates and reinforces the exact same neural pathways that are used when the actual movement is performed. And television works in a similar manner.

Television is primarily a visual context, to which your eyes are the key conduit. The optic nerves that transmits information from the retina to the brain, not only wraps around the hypothalamus but also give off connections to the very areas that control your neurotransmitters and hormones. As I’ve shown in previous articles the hypothalamus is a key area for metabolism and especially hunger and thirst regulation. The intensity, colours and shape of the light hitting your eyes have numerous effects on your brain and the hormonal systems it controls. And so research is unveiling.

Television is linked to two cognitive functions that go part way to explaining the link between viewing exposure and overweight. These two cognitive functions are called reward saliency and inhibitory control. Television stimulates ‘wants’ (reward salience) and lessens the ability to dampen down or stop a particular activity or response (inhibitory control) to these ‘wants’.(2) And because junk food is readily available in current society and strongly taps into these reward pathways, that (junk) often becomes the focus of our hunting and foraging expeditions into the deepest, darkest recesses of our kitchens. And so again, the research is showing.

Recent studies are showing that increased television viewing was associated with an increased intake of sugary drinks, energy dense foods and trans fat consumption, with a concomitant decreased intake of fruit, vegetable and fiber.(3, 4) Which is no surprise, since as I’ve shown in previous articles, food manufacturers purposely create what is known as hyper-palatability in certain lines of food to tap into these powerful evolutionary drives.

This has an especially potent effect in young children as they haven’t developed the mechanisms to detach themselves from present stimuli as much as (some) adults, so are more at the mercy of strong biological drives than the rest of us. Therefore with increased exposure to television and its incentivising of ‘wants’, combined with a weakening of the ability to resist these ‘wants’ in a child who is already undeveloped in this regard, and the ‘super-charging’ of food to reward the consumer, you have a perfect storm for excessive eating.

The storm however, can be weathered, it just requires a first rate skipper to guide the vessel. And ‘Mon Capitan’, that is where you come in…

As adults I believe we should take responsibility for our children until such a stage where we have helped them develop their own ability to control their own drives. I’m not telling you what to do; I’m just presenting the information and possible solutions. What you do with that information is entirely, and to paraphrase Bobby Brown, your ‘prerogative’.

References:

1- Baeck JS et al. (2012) Brain activation patterns of motor imagery reflect plastic changes associated with intensive shooting training. Behav Brain Res: Sep 1;234(1):26-32.

2- Chapman CD et al. (2012) Lifestyle determinants of the drive to eat: a meta-analysis. Am J Clin Nutr. Sep;96(3):492-7.

3- Miller SA et al. (2008) Association between television viewing and poor diet quality in young children. Int J Pediatr Obes.;3(3):168-76.

4- Ford C et al. (2012) Television viewing associated with adverse dietary outcomes in children ages 2-6. Obes Rev. Dec;13(12):1139-47. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-789X.2012.01028.x.

HPC-UK Bitesize (Health): Fat Screen TV

Current figures (2010/2011) have estimated that 30% of children in the UK are now either overweight (31%) or obese (29%). As you can hopefully appreciate, there isn’t one simple factor (although the common perception is to try to find one) that contributes to obesity, regardless of whether that person is an adult or a child. There are, however, a few overarching factors that are certainly strongly correlated, and in a lot of cases causative, to this outcome.

One significant feature found in current life is television.

One recent study set out to determine whether reducing television viewing time would have any effect of the rate of weight gain in the subjects. The researchers observed a clear association between reduced hours spent watching television and decreased weight gain over one year. The findings suggest that television viewing time is a risk factor for excessive weight gain among adolescents.

As suggested above overweight and obesity is multi-factorial, so there are other key influences that need to be addressed in order to assist our children in maintaining a healthier weight. However it seems that the simple action of moderating time spent viewing television actually creates an impetus for these other factors to fall into place.

So a logical first step would be to moderate television exposure time. This doesn’t mean that you have to confine your children to a monk-like life, as I’ll show you in a following Bitesize piece, it may be as simple as a very brief activity exchange.

Reference:

Simone A. French, Nathan R. Mitchell, Peter J. Hannan. Decrease in Television Viewing Predicts Lower Body Mass Index at 1-Year Follow-Up in Adolescents, but Not Adults. Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, 2012; DOI: 10.1016/j.jneb.2011.12.008

HPC-UK Bitesize (Fat Loss): Forging a Lean Body with Iron

Intra-abdominal obesity (visceral fat) is an important risk factor for low-grade inflammation, which is associated with increased risk for diabetes, cardiovascular disease as well as most prevalent disease states.

Generally, recommendations to treat or prevent overweight and obesity via physical activity have focused on aerobic endurance training, as it is was once thought that aerobic training was associated with much greater energy expenditure during the exercise session than resistance training. This vestigial thought process of the last century is now changing in part to our better understanding and ability to measure less accessible workings in the body.

The metabolic consequences of reduced muscle mass that accompanies normal ageing and/or decreased physical activity is currently one of the key ideas thought to lead to a higher prevalence of metabolic disorders.

Because evidence suggests that resistance training promotes a negative energy balance and may change body fat distribution, it is possible that an increase in muscle mass after resistance training may be a key mediator leading to a better metabolic control.
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It has also been recently shown that resistance training has considerable effects on reducing visceral fat and the inflammatory response across a broad spectrum of intensity ranges.

So whether you train in a more typical hypertrophy specific manner, or a use a protocol geared towards maximal strength, both have benefits in protecting the body against excessive inflammation.

Whatever your personal taste in fitness, make sure you flavour it with some variety of iron.

References:

Strasser, B., Arvandi, M. and Siebert, U. (2012), Resistance training, visceral obesity and inflammatory response: a review of the evidence. Obesity Reviews, 13: 578–591. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-789X.2012.00988.x

Çakir-Atabek, Hayriye et al. (2010), Effects of Different Resistance Training Intensity on Indices of Oxidative Stress. Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research, 24 (9): 2491-2497 doi: 10.1519/JSC.0b013e3181ddb111

HPC-UK Bitesize (Fat Loss): Liposuction Increases Visceral Fat

Liposuction is one of the most popular elective surgeries in the world. However a recent study shows that Nature does not like to be fooled.

Researchers at the University of Sao Paulo found that liposuction of subcutaneous (under the skin) fat in the abdomen caused an increase in visceral fat (fat surrounding the organs).

Visceral fat is a significant risk factor in metabolic syndrome (also called Syndrome X or the CHAOS series of disorders). So by attempting to take a short-cut to leanness, you’re stimulating the body to produce a sub-set of fat that is particularly potent in its effect on physiology. Visceral fat is extremely pro-inflammatory, and if you’ve been following HPC-UK for a while, you’ll know how devastating chronic inflammation is to your health and how it is a driver of a majority of disease states.

Yet reducing body-fat can be achieved in pretty much anyone (99.99%) with the right approach. The problem is most people have been seduced by commercial company’s lies, which really have no interest in you succeeding or finding out the truth of how to succeed, as by doing so they’ll lose a repeat customer.

The key to losing body-fat is essentially two-fold:

(1) Provide the body with nutrients that it needs to optimise physical structures and their metabolism. You can’t do this by reducing intake of food; that would cause a deficit in nutrients required for optimum functioning. You have to eat the right food, in the right amounts, at the right time.

(2) Perform the right exercise to stimulate the body to absorb and utilise the nutrients in the right way, and optimise the expression of your genome to create a blueprint for a lean body architecture. The majority of the exercise promoted by weight-loss companies actually creates a body set up for fat gain, rather than loss.

If you’re intending to lose fat, be careful from whom you receive your information; otherwise you can be figuratively jumping out of the frying pan into the fire.

Reference:

Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (2012). 97 (7); 2388-2395

What is Real?

Reality is a funny old thing. The universe that we see, hear and feel is a tiny percentage of what is actually there. Take for example vision. Humans have the ability to perceive wavelengths of lights between 390 (Violet) -750nm (Red), with the most clarity at 555nm. The wavelength 555nm is right smack dab in the middle of the green portion of the spectrum.

This range makes up the most necessary colours we need to operate and survive in our natural environment. We haven’t always had this ability though, or rather we have, but we lost it, and then re-gained it again. Contrary to what most people think Evolution isn’t a straightforward gaining process, sometimes if an adaptation becomes superfluous to needs (and thus costly to maintain) it can be ‘evolved out’. Our ancestors (not Human) actually went through stages of acquiring colour vision when it became a survival advantage, and then lost it when it was not (during a stage where our ancestors were mainly nocturnal), and then re-gained the ability when it once again gave our ancestors an advantage.

Most mammals still haven’t regained a large range of colour vision, whereas other species of animals can see wavelengths outside of the Human range of perception. Bees and birds for example, can see in the ultraviolet range of light, which is totally invisible to us. Yet these species take advantage of it to navigate their world. However ‘invisible’ and ‘does not exist’ are not two interchangeable terms. The reality of different life forms is no less, or more real, than each other. Reality simply ‘is’ whether we can understand and appreciate it or not.

Perception is a key process in how much, or how little of reality you can interact with, how much you can control, and how much it can control you. Your perception of the world influences ‘your’ reality.

In the past few years the research into stress and health has been growing rapidly, especially in the field of genetics and epi-genetics. Many papers have demonstrated that there is a direct link between the stress response and health. The key word here is response, which we will get to in a bit.

There are different forms of stress: physical, chemical and emotional, all of which can profoundly alter your reality, for better or worse. But here we will concentrate on emotional (or psychological) stress.

The term stress isn’t inherently negative (or positive), but the common understanding usually falls more to the former of the two expressions, which is another evolutionary safety mechanism we shall not explore here. Emotional stress comes in two forms: positive stress, which many people do not know about, is called eu-stress, and negative stress, which many DO know about, is called dis-tress. They are two sides of the same coin; however, it is the distress side of the coin that is most linked to ill-health and disease.

Stress like all other emotions, does not exist in any object or situation. Some people have a terrifying fear of cats (Ailurophobia), whereas others (usually ladies of middle-age and beyond) have an obsessive love for them (Ailurophilia). The emotion of fear (or love) has no physical existence at all, except in a person’s expression of the emotion. And that emotion, be it fear, love, excitement etc is created by the ‘meaning’ that a person gives (or attaches) to that object or situation. Emotions therefore are generally created by memory and triggered by environment.

So if you change your perception (or the meaning you attach to something) you can change your emotional response to pretty much any object or event.

And so a recent study is proving. Researchers at Penn State University, as part of a much larger study, surveyed 2000 people, once a day over 8 days, at two points 10 years apart. The survey covered such things as the use of their time, their moods and any physical health symptoms they had felt in the previous 24 hours. They also asked about their productivity and any daily stressful events they had experienced, such as being in a traffic jam, having a row (quarrel) with somebody, or looking after a sick child.

As well as the data collected from the surveys, the researchers also collected data on the participant’s cortisol (one of the key stress hormones) levels throughout these days.

The study was cleverly designed to not only look at short term stress reactions, but also how this could possibly manifest a decade later. And the study showed an interesting result; people who become upset by daily stressors and continued to dwell on them after they had passed were more likely to suffer from chronic health problems -- especially pain, such as that related to arthritis, and cardiovascular issues -- 10 years later.

The key finding of the paper was that it isn’t stressor ‘exposure’ that caused the chain of processes that led to ill health, but rather stressor ‘reactivity’.

Think about a time when you’ve been driving, if you’ve been doing it long enough chances are that at one time or another you’ve probably had a near-miss (near-hit really?). When this happens there usually is an automatic reaction of fear and often anger. The more enlightened amongst us, almost immediately, realise that they are unhurt, calm themselves and continue along their path in life in quiet serenity.

Those who do not realise this, allow the fear and anger to remain and build, sometimes to the point of what is called ‘road rage’. Not only do they occasionally hurt others, but every…single…time…they hurt themselves. Here’s how.

Your brain wasn’t always as it is now, but unlike many items in history that no longer exist and require speculation of their once upon a time existence, our heritage is still firmly in place and fully visible with the right approach.

If you slice a brain straight down the middle, separating the left and right sides (or for the squeamish use an MRI scanner), a lot of our history is revealed. These images are plentiful on the internet, so do a search for a visual representation of these structures; look for what is called a ‘mid-saggital section’.

The brainstem (pons and medulla oblongata) is our most primitive brain; it’s a mass of nerves that unlike our brain today, formed the entire brain of our ancestors. The medulla’s primary function is to stimulate the vacuuming up of food and reject the bits that might cause us problems, although we now call these gagging, vomiting, coughing and sneezing. Together with the pons, the brainstem is the fundamental structure involved in breathing, and heart function. This relatively simple nervous system supports a very basic form of life; essentially eating, pooping and a bit of locomotion.

As we evolved, additional components and layers were added to these basic structures, the next component being the cerebellum. The cerebellum adds to the brainstems function by providing the ability to further control the body’s function, especially in regards to movement. The cerebellum allows for further refinement in motor control such as co-ordination, precision and timing of movements.

Just in front of the cerebellum is the forebrain which contains the R-complex, so called because they first evolved in the (r)eptilian brain. This area of the brain is responsible for instinctual behaviours such as aggression, dominance, territoriality, and ritual displays. It still serves the same purpose in reptiles, and us, today.

Above and surrounding this area, are the paleo-mammalian and neo-cortex. The R-complex plus the paleo-mammalian complex are commonly (but not quite accurately) grouped together as the limbic system. The limbic systems adds to the above R-complex behaviours with additional feelings of motivations (drives) and emotions surrounding love, hate, joy, sadness, hope, despair and sexuality. The neo-cortex adds to this further as does the cerebral cortex.

The cerebral cortex is what most people in the public consider to be the brain; it’s the wrinkly, cauliflower looking bit that most of us know comes in two half’s (hemispheres). It is the area of the brain that is involved in producing functions that most people would recognise as what makes Humans ‘Human’. It plays a key role in memory, attention, perceptual awareness, thought, language, and what we call consciousness.

The ancient structures of our brain have been within our genetic lineage for around 60 to 200 million years, depending on the structure. The cerebral cortex in contrast has only been around for 6 million years. And the Human version of the cerebral cortex is thought to have occurred only 150,000 years ago in our evolution.

Because most people don’t consider the components and layers under the cerebral cortex when thinking about the brain, they also don’t realise the powerful influence these structures have on the newer evolved structures and therefore function (perception being one) of the brain. As a result of their deep seated rooting, the primitive structures hold a lot of sway, and can easily over-ride the higher functions of the recently evolved Human parts of the brain. If you let it.

If you need persuading of this primitive brain ability to distort perception, consider the use of substances that are commonly called social drugs such as alcohol, nicotine, or more potent drugs such as cocaine, amphetamines and other chemicals. These substances all work by tapping into the primitive parts of the brain, so while under the influence the feelings of confidence, fear, panic, ease, rage, and pleasure can be amplified. But because the primitive brain in intimately linked into the higher brain, the perceptions of the user also becomes distorted as a consequence of these more fundamental changes. So distorted thoughts occur in response, which is different for each individual based on their personal memories and make-up. Sometimes these perceptions can be experienced as heightened pleasure and ease, and others depending on the past and current state of the individual can be rather more unpleasant such as paranoia or abject terror, amongst others.

This happens because anything that alters the input’s into the brain, be it a chemical substance, a thought or a programmed perception changes the neuronal function of your brain, the sum of which absolutely governs the way your body functions and the thoughts that you experience as consciousness.

A final example, just to clarify how tapping into the primitive brain can profoundly distort your perception of reality, is the chemical lysergic acid, colloquially known as simply ‘acid’. ‘Acid’ is an extremely potent chemical, that can cause an extreme change in the chemical functioning of your neurons so that the user experiences altered thinking processes, synesthesia (the stimulation of one sense causing an experience in another, such as seeing sounds or hearing movements) and altered sense of time. Reality hasn’t changed one bit, only the user’s perception of it.

Now, it’s not a one way door, it certainly swings both ways. The primitive parts of the brain can definitely influence the higher functions but so can higher functions feed into the primitive structures. And once triggered they (the primitive brain parts) cause not only altered thought processes, as described above, but rapid and powerful changes to the functioning of the rest of the body (for which they were originally evolved), which left uncontrolled will certainly lead to ill health and disease.

But being Human we are not as directly tied into moment to moment stimuli as more simple life-forms. As suggested before, we can understand that emotional (psychological) stressors do not exist in any object or event. The stressor lies in the meaning we attach to it. So by deciding to attach a different meaning we can alter our perception of reality and our response to it, so that it not only doesn’t harm us, but if we attach the right meaning can actually be advantageous to our reality and our existence within it.

By controlling your perception of life and how you respond to life events, you can open up doors that either seemed locked or did not appear to exist at all. The potential within most Humans is vastly untapped, yet we all have the ability to claim this prize if we so choose. And therein lies the crux, it all starts with a choice.

Learn to make the right ones.

Reference:

Annals of Behavioral Medicine 2012. DOI: 10.1007/s12160-012-9423-0

HPC-UK Bitesize (Health): Shining A Little Light On The Big T

A recent study at Harvard University of almost 1,500 health professionals showed that the men with the highest blood levels of vitamin D also had the highest levels of Testosterone. In the 25% of men with the highest vitamin D levels, total and free Testosterone were on average 3 percent greater than the men with the lowest 25% of vitamin D levels.

Vitamin D, as well as being found in dietary sources, is also synthesised by an interaction between the skin and sunlight. The researchers did not find a seasonal variation in Testosterone, unlike they found with vitamin D. This could partly be attributed to the fact that at lower levels the association between vitamin D and Testosterone is linear, but not at higher levels of vitamin D. A certain level of vitamin D is required for optimal Testosterone metabolism, but levels beyond this do not stimulate supra-physiological levels. This is because vitamin D is one of the many links in the chain of synergy required to manufacture Testosterone. Beyond addressing a deficiency (in vitamin D), any extra vitamin D will not further raise Testosterone levels.

Higher levels of vitamin D are beneficial for other reasons though, so don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Also add to this that the majority of people in the higher latitudes of the Nothern Hemisphere are vitamin D deficient (ask your Doctor for a blood test to determine this), in which case you could probably assume you might need a little boost in that area, which will give you a 'boost' in others.

Reference:

Clinical Endocrinology. Volume 77, Issue 1, pages 106–112, July 2012