Chapter 19 "Brain Chemicals"

Holiday over and back to Steve Chandlers 100 ways to motivate yourself. Brain chemicals, looks at how we look outside ourselves to find things. When in fact those things exist within us. Something funny happens on TV and we laugh, well some of us laugh because what we see or hear makes a few connections within us and out comes the laugh. We love or hate and everything in-between because of connections that happen in our heads. Back to fun, Steve illustrates that without fun being part of the equation of our lives we're not doing it right and will lack motivation. So everything we need exists within us, so no need for a wide spread search. Start by finding how your mood is affected by singing, dancing, hugging someone or just jumping up and down. Find the fun in things and make the promise to find the fun or create the fun. Then you will have solved the problem of motivation.
   In other news .... I've followed Fulham football club since I was a kid. For the last few years just after Christmas on one of it's fan websites there's been a bit of a competition to loose a few of the pounds (kilo's) added over the holidays. There are no prizes and nobodies checking, so most of us lie a bit, in fact some lie a lot. This year though I've been thinking about my diet and the fact I've no energy and how this impacts on my mood. So I looked around the web and found the Ketogenic diet. Its a high fat, moderate protein and low (or no) carb diet that encourages the body to stop burning carbs and protein for fuel in favour of burning fat. It has an interesting history. It was used in the 1920's and 30's to help people with epilepsy control their seizures and it was very successful only falling out of favour as new drugs became available to treat epilepsy. It's made a bit of a comeback recently as it's similar to the Atkins diet, which also fell out of fashion. So I've made a start. I've lost about 20lbs in the last eight weeks and seem to have more energy. Well I would wouldn't I, not having to drag around that 20lbs for a start. I'm slowly getting to grips with the whole Ketogenic thing and changing my regime accordingly. The weight loose is good but it's more about finding food that suits me. I don't want to have to think about calories or eat things I don't like or stave. The other thing that springs to mind and ties in with chapter 19 is a mood diet. Adding good thoughts and cutting down on the bad fatty thoughts. It's just an idea.
   Something else that caught my eye was a programme about Bipolar disorder. A psychotherapist looked into the dramatic rise in the condition. There were three people who suffered in very different ways but were diagnosed as Bipolar. The psych came to the conclusion that the Bipolar label didn't help. It was a huge catch all tag that didn't help the sufferers. Not exactly rocket science. Dyslexia is a word that's used to cover so many problems/issues by people not trained in the subject. In fact life as we know it has become a whole series of umbrella terms. People who should know better, lump all kinds of disparate conditions together and as a result we don't seem to be solving anything. We have just become very good at coming up with new catch all terms whilst not solving any of the previous problems. Because time, or more correctly the wasting of time has become so important. We shorten everything. "coffee?" instead of "would you like a drink?" or "Hi" instead of "good morning/afternoon/evening" which itself is a shortened version of "Are you having a good morning/afternoon/evening?". We do it because we don't really want a reply, we're too busy. From a young age we learn that good things take longer. So why are we all so hellbent on speeding things up, where are we going?

Onwards and upwards in search of fulfillment :-)))