It’s amazing how few people realize how much what you eat (or don’t eat) affects your mental state and clarity. Eating the right foods, and avoiding the wrong ones, can make you more creative, and help you with finding solutions to difficult problems.

Before we get into anything about which kinds of foods are good or bad, let’s first discuss not eating. There are two types of not eating: skipping meals and fasting. The first one is unhealthy, while the second, if done properly, can be very healthy indeed.

Skipping meals causes your body to slow down its biological processes in order to conserve energy. Your mind will tend to follow suit. This effect isn’t instantly fixed when you do get around to eating something, either… it tends to hang around for quite some time, even up until you go to sleep for the night. Your body doesn’t trust you to not do it again.

Fasting actually starts out by having the same effect, which is why short fasts are not particularly effective. Once you get two or three days into your fast, however, your body starts to get the chance to clear itself of all built up waste (providing that you’re drinking enough water… fasting is USUALLY consuming nothing other than water, although some people even stop that). As your body clears itself of all toxins and waste, your mind clears and your focus sharpens. This tends to start being very noticeable around the third day. You are also likely to start noticing that your mind seems to shift into hyper drive, going much faster than normal, and coming up with solutions to problems that seemed unsolvable before.

So that covers not eating. The next thing to cover is frequency of eating. The American standard is to eat either two or three meals per day. Anyone who has looked into nutrition or body building, and even many dieters, can tell you that this is not the most effective way to eat, though. It’s much better to eat a smaller amount every three to four hours, so that your body keeps moving along on all eight cylinders.

When you eat a lot, or you eat “heavy” foods (this isn’t in reference to weight, this is in reference to the heavy feeling it leaves in you), your body slows down to process all the food you have just given it. Your mind, as in other circumstances, will follow suit, slowing down a short time later, making it hard to focus. It can be difficult to get yourself back into focus afterwards, too.

Meats, especially red meats, can have the heavy feeling. But they generally only do so in large amounts, and you get certain nutrients in a much more usable fashion from meat than from vegetable sources. So while you can substitute some sort of vegetable matter for just about any meat, it isn’t always a good idea, and some scientific research suggests this is particularly so for men.

Foods that spike your blood sugar also cause problems. A blood sugar spike can provide a very short-term boost to your energy and focus, but just a short time later, it drops you far below where you were prior to having the spike, and it will take some time to recover your balance. The benefits of the spike are far outweighed by its penalties.

Do you feel like you’re stuck in a rut? Want to give your life a kick in the butt so it gets up and starts moving ahead again? Try a few of the following techniques.

1. Don’t Procrastinate
   As soon as you have something important come up, such as having a bill arrive in the mail, take care of it immediately, as in don’t even wait until that night. Take care of it as soon as it “hits your desk”… you’ll get more done and have less stress due to having less stuff hanging over your head in the “pending” mental file.
2. Expand Your Network
   A great way to break out of a rut is to go meet new people. New people can provide inspiration and/or motivation to get out of a rut, either by example (they are successful, possibly even successful at the same thing you want to do, or you really don’t want to end up where they are) or you might be motivated by a desire to impress this new person you have met.
3. Do Something New
   Another great way to unstick yourself from that rut is to do something you’ve never done before. It can be a great stress relief, it can inspire you to do other new things (which, by itself, could be considered getting out of your rut), and it can just restore your motivation that you need to do what you need to do.
4. Re-Evaluate Your Goals
   Look at the goals you have, especially the long term ones. Is it even something you still want? Letting go of a goal that no longer appeals to you can be a big weight off your shoulders.
5. Break Down Your Goals
   Now that you only have goals that you still want to accomplish, write them down and break each of them into smaller goals that are more easily accomplished. Accomplishing a smaller goal on the way to your desired end goal provides a feeling of progress, a feeling of NOT being stuck in a rut, thus providing motivation to keep moving forward.
6. Find A Creative Outlet
   Find a way to express your creativity… and don’t say “I’m not a creative person”. Everyone is a creative person, they just express it in different ways. Unused creativity builds up and puts pressure on you internally, increasing the feeling of being trapped, not going anywhere… or “stuck in a rut”.
7. Change Your Definition Of Success
   People who feel they are currently successful seldom have a feeling of being stuck in a rut. Take advantage of this by changing your definition of success. Success doesn’t have to be measured by society’s standards… you can be successful by being a good person, by taking care of the people you care about, by producing creative output (see above item), or many other things. Don’t just stick with the default definition society gave you, choose your own.

So there you go… seven different things you can do to kick your life in the butt and get it moving. Get to work and stop being stuck in your rut.

There are many factors that, together, determine how deep your relationship with someone can be. I’ve been listing them, one at a time, for a while, so here is a consolidated list of five ways to deepen your relationship, with links to the more in-depth articles.

Separating The Who From The What

The first thing you need to do, if you want a deeper relationship with someone, is separate out who they are from what they do. Any relationship based on what someone does is based on a falsehood, because they may have many, many different reasons for doing what they do.

Communicate More

If your relationship isn’t deep enough, then you need to increase the amount and depth of your communication. This means opening yourself up, allowing the person more opportunity to hurt you. It also means starting talks even when you don’t feel like it.

Remember The Message Received May Differ

There are differences between the ways that people receive and send messages, particularly between men and women. Make sure that you keep this in mind when you are choosing how you send the message you want them to receive, and when you receive a message from someone else… they may not mean it the way you subconsciously receive it.

Don’t Let Communication Stop

Don’t let communication fade into a lower priority. If you let the amount or depth of your communication fall, the depth of your relationship will slowly fade, too. It’s an easy habit to form, and a hard habit to break… so watch out for it.

The Power Of Human Touch

Make sure that you make physical contact with the people that you want to keep close to you. One touch can do the work of a hundred, or even a thousand, words. Keep the touch appropriate to the current depth of your relationship, the desired depth of your relationship, and what is comfortable to both of you.

Ever have a relationship where you wonder why you feel like you’re not as close as you used to be, but you don’t know why? You talk regularly, you spend time together, but still have trouble feeling close? You might not be touching enough.

The feeling of being touched by (or touching) another person is amazingly powerful. It is one of the strongest forces bringing two people together, bringing an instant depth of connection unavailable by any other means. It brings a communication that would require hundreds or even thousands of words, all in the space of a moment.

Physically speaking, human contact causes your body to release a slew of different chemicals. Many of these affect the brain, thus affecting your mood. While that is the “scientific” explanation, it’s very hard to describe in scientific terminology the mental connection that is facilitated through physical touch.

Touching another person brings instant intimacy (not necessarily in the sexual sense). That is why many people are uncomfortable touching strangers, and some people even have trouble touching the people with whom they are close. They are afraid of opening themselves up to possible hurt, and touching opens you up much deeper and faster than words. Words allow you to keep a safe difference… touch obliterates that distance.

The type of contact makes a difference as well, type being differentiated by three things… the surface area of the contact, the length of the contact, and the points of contact. The depth of the contact varies directly with the surface area if the other two factors remain the same. The same is true for the length of contact… longer contact brings deeper connections. The third factor, the points of contact, though, is by far the largest factor. Skin on skin contact is, generally far more intimate than through clothing, even when it’s shaking hands versus sitting close enough that your legs touch (through clothing). There are a few areas, however, that are special… one is the leg above the knee, another is the face (especially the lips), and the third major area is the torso. These areas bring deeper intimacy of touch, even if it is through clothing, though of course skin on skin contact in these areas is even deeper than that.

If you want to get closer to someone in your life, make sure you touch them more often. However, make certain that the other person is not uncomfortable with your touch, or it will cause them to push you away, rather than draw you closer. Also, touch them at appropriate times, in appropriate ways… in other words, don’t just spontaneously go up to a casual acquaintance and give them a big, long-lasting hug. Keep all of your contact, your touch, in a zone that’s comfortable to both of you… though you’re safe pushing the edge of what’s comfortable to you, that’s not necessarily the case with pushing the edge of what the other person is comfortable with… you might overstep the bounds accidentally and cause them to distance themselves instinctively.

With that in mind, if you want deeper contact, a deeper connection, with someone, find ways and times that you can touch them more without making them uncomfortable.

Communication is a vital part of life, as it’s necessary for any of our daily interactions. So how do you easily expand your ability to communicate?

Communication is based out of things that two people have in common. If you actually met someone who had literally nothing in common with you, you would be completely unable to communicate. As it is, that is not possible, since you will at least share the traits common to all humans.

So, you know that you have something in common with anyone, and that that makes communication at least possible. The next step is to start speaking with more people. You can start conversations with people you’ve never seen before, or if you’re not ready for that yet, get to know people better whom you have already met. As you have more conversations with more and different people, your ability to identify what you have in common with them, or someone new, will improve.

People who seem to be the least like you before you get to know them are the best people to talk to when trying to improve your ability to find what you have in common. It makes you work harder, and just like with muscles, as you work harder you get more benefit. You come to realize that if you have that much in common with people who are that much different from you, then you can find such things in anyone.

Each thing in common that you discover is another starting point from which to convey your message. When you have more starting points, you have more ways to get there, and therefor an ability to choose which one is most effective.

As you have more conversations with more people, the ability to know which starting point is most effective also improves. You will also find that you are better able to tell whether the message received was the same as the one you sent.

That’s three ways by which your ability to communicate can expand… you can find more points in common to start from, you can better choose which one of those is the right one to start for this particular message, and you can better read if the message sent was received intact. All of these benefits come from having more conversations with more people. You also get the added benefit of expanding your social network, making it more likely you can contact someone able to help you with anything for which you need help.

So go find someone new with whom you can have a conversation. It can be online, on the phone, or in person, although in person is the most effective way to learn, since you get better and more immediate feedback. Even leaving comments on a web site can be effective, if they get a response.

When you are headed somewhere, whether in a car or in life, you have two potential statuses. You can be on your journey or at your destination. Which one is a better target upon which to focus your attention?

When you set a goal, you are setting a destination. In order to reach that destination, you must begin a journey from your current location. This may be a long journey, with many intermediate places along the way, or a very short journey, the shortest being a single step.

On a very short journey, there is little difference between the journey and the goal. There is not much upon which to focus your attention along the way, so on very short journeys the focus is really the same… it has to be on the destination because there’s so little journey.

On long (or even medium) journeys, however, there is a significant difference between focusing on the destination and focusing on the journey. If you focus on the destination, it’s like a race… you’ll probably get there faster, but miss out on things along the way. You may miss out on other opportunities and paths that are available to you, possibly including alternative paths to the same destination, which might be more enjoyable, or even faster than your original path. You may even find out along the way that you are no longer interested in reaching the original destination… you might find something better to head toward.

There are other benefits to focusing on the journey, as well. One of these is that you can be aware of where you are now, and enjoy the scenery. Another is that you feel less urgency, and therefore less stress. You have more opportunities in general… to meet new people, have new experiences, learn new things, and to gain enjoyment from each of these things.

So focusing on the journey brings these benefits in exchange for less certainty and potentially less speed in reaching your goals. It’s your choice… if you want to focus your energy on quickly reaching specific goals, then you will probably do so more rapidly and will have a more certain path. If you want to focus on the journey, you will gain many more opportunities and be able to more easily reassess your path to see if the original destination is still where you wish to go. If you enjoy personal growth, and if you are reading my web site you probably do, then the choice should be obvious.

This morning I was considering the relationship of the subconscious mind to the conscious mind, and the best way of describing it that I could come up with is saying it’s like the evil mastermind’s less intelligent henchman… essentially it’s your conscious mind’s Igor.

The subconscious actually has more involvement in our every day, every little action, life than the conscious mind. It’s where the conscious mind sends tasks that are beneath it or too commonplace to be interesting. The subconscious, on the other hand, if it comes across a situation that’s interesting enough, or, alternatively too new and unprecedented, will flag the attention of the conscious mind.

As we go through life, we form experiences, and from these experiences we form patterns. The more experience we have in a certain area, the more detail the related patterns have, making fitting new experiences in those same areas into that pattern easier, or even finding a more specific pattern for that experience possible (ie making a cherry pie vs making a dessert vs baking vs cooking). When we have a pattern with enough detail for a new experience to fit easily, the subconscious mind takes care of handling that experience. For instance, though you may be changing lanes in a place you never have before, it probably fits the pattern of changing lanes enough that it’s handled by your subconscious, with your conscious mind being involved only in telling your subconscious mind to do it. On the other hand, if there’s a car coming right at you in your lane, this most likely doesn’t fit any pattern that you have much previous experience with (If it does, I don’t want your life!), so your subconscious spikes it back up to your conscious mind (“Hey, what do I do, what do I do?”).

Some patterns become so detailed, with so much experience, that your conscious mind doesn’t even get involved to the point of giving your subconscious mind the orders, it just expects it to be done. This would include things like breathing, chewing, and swallowing. In other areas, if your conscious mind is busy, your subconscious mind will make guesses based on previous orders from the conscious mind in similar experiences. This is what we refer to as habits. Fortunately, it weighs the most recent decisions more heavily, so that changing habits is merely difficult, not impossible.

Part of the being aware (in the sense that I use the term, here and in previous posts) is that less of this last category of experience is handled by the subconscious. As should be fairly obvious, the more situations, experiences, and choices the conscious mind is involved in, the more the likely the outcome will be what you consciously want. Also, the subconscious mind listens to (and obeys) the physical self far more often than the conscious mind… and can even influence the conscious mind in the direction of doing the bidding of the physical self. The conscious mind, on the other hand, is far more likely to listen to the spiritual self, and do what it suggests (which is, in my opinion, superior). As a matter of fact, I think the subconscious does what the spiritual self wants only when the conscious mind has set that pattern by many previous decisions… the subconscious tendency to follow the physical self makes forming habits to do so easier than forming habits to follow the spiritual self (which explains why even long-established habits fitting that description need occasional reinforcement from the conscious mind).

So, knowing that the subconscious is your conscious mind’s henchman, make sure that you keep it obedient. Being more aware means making sure that it’s keeping in line more often. Check in on it regularly, and make sure that you don’t confuse it… if you want to handle certain situations in a certain way, be consistent about doing so, and the subconscious will learn that that is the way you want it, and in the future will default in that direction, if there is no conscious direction for that specific experience.

As we go through life, when we receive a deep wound, many times it doesn’t heal perfectly, leaving us with scar tissue. This scar tissue is tough, but also is more likely to have something catch on it to cause annoyance or pain. The above is true regardless of what type of wound it is: physical, mental, or emotional.

The scar tissue will keep the wound from ever completely healing, but at the same time, it keeps it from hurting too much, too. It protects the remainder of the wound, but generally there will be an ongoing, or recurring, ache or pain. Many times this pain is below the conscious level, so that you only notice when something draws your attention to it. Despite this fact, any minor pains, even when not consciously noticed, draw away small pieces of your energy, so that when they add up, you become tired far more easily.

So, now with the title of this post… how to heal old wounds. Unfortunately, to heal old wounds completely, you have to begin by tearing off the scar tissue. In case you haven’t done this lately, let me warn you: It hurts! Still, you can’t do any more healing as long as the scar tissue is there, so if you’re not willing to deal with the pain, you might as well stop reading this right now.

Let me differentiate here between physical wounds and mental/emotional wounds. While you still have to remove scar tissue to heal physical wounds properly, you probably don’t want to be going and literally “tearing” off the scar tissue. There are lasers that are used for this these days, and allow for much better healing than do-it-yourself style work. Regardless of whether it’s physical or mental/emotional, though, having help from someone who knows what they’re doing is always good advice.

So, on to mental and emotional wounds now. There are two ways to remove the scar tissue, and one of them is a lot harder to deal with than the other. The first way is when someone does something that rips it off when you’re not expecting it at all. This is incredibly painful (or can be), and if that’s not enough, it’s often when you can’t do anything about it, and can’t even take it as an opportunity to heal… you just have to patch it back up as best you can until you have time to do it the second way. The second way is choosing a time and place, preferably where there aren’t too many people and it’s relatively quiet.

It can, depending on the wound, be very helpful to have someone with you to help you heal. Sometimes, though, it’s something that you need to deal with on your own. The techniques are different, depending on whether you have another person helping or not.

I’ll cover doing it on your own first. When you want to (or need to) heal on your own, you can start by deliberately sending your mind back to the time of the injury. This is the beginning of tearing off the scar tissue. When your mind is there, just let yourself feel whatever emotions come up. Don’t try to suppress them, don’t try to feel what you think you should, just let them come as they will, and let them have their time. Even if it really hurts, just try to stay there, mentally, and let the pain come. If you let it, it will wash over you and through you, and then fade away as it heals. It may take several times of doing this to heal a wound, and you may have to do it in pieces (a wound may be formed by multiple inputs, or situations).

Healing with the help of another person is very similar. You have to go back, mentally, to the time of the injury. Then you start telling the other person about it, about what happened, how it made you feel, WHY it made you feel that way, etc. You need someone who can mostly just listen for this… someone who tries to “fix” everything will interfere with your healing (not necessarily prevent it, but definitely interfere). As you are telling them, and they are listening, let yourself feel whatever emotions arise. If you are comfortable with it, having the person you are with touch you can be helpful, too, as it provides an anchor in this time, a reminder that the injury is NOT happening now, and that someone cares. Again, this technique may take several times to heal an injury completely, especially if the injury was compounded over time.

Once you bring up the memories, and the emotions, and you let those emotions have the time, attention, and energy they need from you, that wound will begin to heal completely, with no scar tissue. In time it will fade away completely, leaving only a memory of its presence. Suppressing, ignoring, or otherwise trying to NOT deal with emotions is a bad practice that leads to mental and emotional injury. It may (or may not, I’m not enlightened enough to be certain at this point) be necessary at some times, but should be avoided whenever possible.

So, try one of the techniques listed above, and let the healing begin… it’s amazing how much difference in your every day life healing from old wounds can make.

Ever wonder why you’re here? What your calling is? What you’re meant to do? There’s a relatively simple exercise that can give you a pretty good idea of the answer to those questions.

First, clear your mind. Take a few minutes somewhere quiet, by yourself, and just breathe deep and relax. You’ll know when you’re ready when your mind quiets down a bit.

Now, get something to write with. This can be pen and paper, or a computer, or whatever else, as long as you can write stuff down. Now, think of what seems like it would be the most meaningful, satisfying thing you could do. Write down ANYTHING that comes to mind, and pay no attention to how realistic it is. This is what would be meaningful and satisfying if you had no other obligations to anyone or anything.

After freely writing down anything that comes to mind until you start drawing a blank, take a minute and look back over the list. Cross out (or delete) whatever seems less important, and write down any new ideas that come up as you re-read and refine your list.

Repeat this process as many times at it takes to get down to where you can’t really eliminate any of the things left as less important, meaningful, etc. than the others. If there’s one, great. If there’s more than one, look at what they might have in common (building houses for the homeless and feeding the hungry might have in common helping the “least of these”).

Whatever you end up with, when you really think about it, imagine it, and visualize it, it should move your heart, wake up emotion, and possibly even bring tears to your eyes. When you get something that really means something to you where it involves and fuels every part of you (mind, body, spirit, and emotions), you know that you found it.

Knowing your purpose can be a great motivator and really make clear certain choices that otherwise might be difficult. Some things just obviously contribute to you fulfilling your purpose, and others obviously take away from it. You might even want to post it somewhere, or something that makes you think of it (if you’re concerned about someone else seeing it, though it’s a more powerful motivator if other people know, too), to keep it in your mind and awareness every day.