Recently, I posted an article explaining why I am a vegetarian. The bulk of the article hinged on the ample nutritional evidence that, if not the best diet, vegetarianism was at least better than most.

Since posting that article, I’ve had a number of comments that countered my claims with different nutritional arguments. Unfortunately, it’s easy to rely on nutritional arguments that aren’t logically sound. I think these broken arguments are part of the reason people are so generally confused about what to eat.

First, let me explain that I’m strictly an amateur when it comes to nutrition. I’ve never taken a formal course, so all of my knowledge comes from a passion in the topic causing me to read more than a dozen books and hundreds of articles.

But, you don’t need a degree in nutritional science to spot flawed arguments. Most of these fallacies are easy to spot with a little common sense, despite being used frequently to promote one diet or another. While spotting these fallacies won’t tell you exactly what diet is best, it does sensitize your bullshit meter for flawed reasoning.

#1 – If It’s Good for Weight Loss, It’s Good for Health

It doesn’t take much brainpower to see the flaws in this argument. You could also lose weight by sawing off one of your legs, that doesn’t mean it’s a great health strategy.

However, frequently I see comparisons being made that demonstrate that because a diet causes weight loss, it’s also a healthy diet. True, being obese increases your risks for many diseases, so all else being equal, being skinnier is probably better for your health. However, all else isn’t equal, and losing weight isn’t the barometer for health.

#2 – If Our Ancestors Ate It, It’s Good for Health

This one works on the evolutionary argument, and it’s more difficult to see where this argument breaks down. The difficulties lies in that the argument does make sense at some level. It simply breaks down when it is applied to a logical extreme.

The flaws in evolutionary reasoning are simple. If a type of diet (let’s say one that favors more protein) had even a small advantage during a caveman’s twenties, that would outweigh even disastrous consequences later in life.

For example, if a diet caused cavepeople to drop like flies in their sixties and seventies (as many degenerative diseases  will do) but it allowed younger cavemen to be slightly stronger, that diet would persist within the evolutionary lines. But, now in the 21st century where being slightly stronger isn’t worth dying 20 years earlier, the traditional diet no longer serves our needs.

I’m not saying evolutionary arguments are completely useless, just that you can’t take them to an extreme. Vegetarians and carnivores both love pointing out evolutionary justifications for their particular diet, so be skeptical first.

#3 – If I Have More Energy, It’s Good for Health

This is an anecdotal argument where a particular person raves about the extra energy they have from eating a particular diet. The problem here, of course, is that the placebo effect is strong. Especially with qualities as subjective as energy levels.

If you feel more energized after a diet switch, that’s great. Just realize that some (or potentially all) of that effect might be from taking the initiative to change your diet. And, if someone tells you they feel great after a diet, try to find some objective research to back their claims before swallowing it wholeheartedly.

#4 – If It Contains More of Nutrient XYZ, It’s Good for Health

Science loves reductionism, breaking down nutrition into specific nutrients. Unfortunately, as has been argued by nutritional experts such as Dr. Colin Campbell and has even been made the subject of a bestselling book by Michael Pollan, reductionism has limits.

Just because a substance contains more Omega 3s, that doesn’t make it healthier. Nutrition is a complex relationship between many different nutrients, and linear addition of different components doesn’t work. As an example, Omega 3s and Omega 6s work on a balancing scale, so eating more Omega 3s reduces your Omega 6s and vice-versa. So simplistic arguments that claim a certain food item is good because it contains XYZ are bogus.

#5 – If It’s Low in Dangerous Toxin XYZ, It’s Good for Health

This is just the converse of the last fallacy. Just because something is low in sodium, does not make it healthy for you. This is a fact many food marketers hope you’ll forget when they happily label there unhealthy processed foods as health items because they are “Contain Zero Trans-Fats!” or “Low in Cholesterol!”

#6 – If Healthy People Eat It, It’s Good for Health

Correlation is not causation. Just because native inhabitants from a lonely island of Japan live to 95 eating a particular diet doesn’t mean it is healthier. Different lifestyles have thousands of different potential causes, including genetics, differing lifestyles and cultural influences.

If people die when they switch to a diet, typically, that’s a good sign it isn’t healthy. But don’t overextend correlation arguments used to explain the nutritional power of a particular way of eating.

#7 – If It Made Rats Healthier, It’s Good for Health

Many nutritional experiments involve giving rats a particular diet or nutrient in extremely high doses and watching what happens. While this has some usefulness in gauging hypotheses or pushing further research, it doesn’t translate to human nutrition.

First of all, humans aren’t rats. Second, humans don’t eat nutrients in sterile laboratory environments in extreme quantities, so the implications of feeding a mouse 20,000x the level of a particular carcinogen and observing cancer isn’t entirely relevant to human nutrition.

What Arguments Can You Rely On?

With most of the above arguments, there are weak spots in their logic. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have any persuasive power, just that they shouldn’t be relied on entirely. If a diet causes weight loss, that’s a better sign it’s good for health than if everyone who eats it becomes fat. If a diet killed rats instantly, that’s a better sign it should be avoided in humans.

The best arguments are based on experimental evidence. Particularly those which use a large sample of people and test conditions similar to how people actually consume food. Naturalistic experiments, which use large populations of people changing diets, are also a better alternative.

If someone tells you that in a large, controlled research environment that people who switched to the diet typically saw their health increase, I would put more emphasis on that than the evolutionary rants of a dietary zealot or the magic healing benefits promoted by a blogger.

Why does this matter? Well, whether you understand the confusing sea of nutritional info or not, it’s still your body and you’re the one who has to live in it.

What do you think it takes to get good luck? There are many opinions on this. One popular one is to prepare yourself so that you will be in the right position to capitalize on opportunities when they come. This is summarized in a Louis Pasteur’s quote that says “Fortune favors the prepared mind.”

But there’s an interesting take on it that I found recently in The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp. There the author gives a simple tip to get good luck: be generous. You should be generous if you want to be lucky. In other words, you should make other people feel lucky to be around you.

The more I think about it, the more it makes sense. Here are three reasons why:

1. The quality of the people around you reflects your quality
   Twyla Tharp is a choreographer and this is what she writes: To be a great choreographer (or teacher), you have to invest everything you have in your dancer… Without that generosity, you’ll always hold something back. The finished work shows it, and your audience knows it.
2. People will reciprocate
   Reciprocation is one of the weapons of influence described in Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini. The law of reciprocation is wired into us. Whenever someone does something good for us, we feel obliged to give back to her. The more you are generous, the more people are willing to reciprocate and the more opportunities will come your way.
3. You will be known as a value provider
   Not only will the people whom you help feel obliged to reciprocate, but they may also tell their friends about you. They may tell their friends about how much value they get from you. That will attract these friends to come to you. They may then tell their friends and it becomes viral. All these people attracted to you means more opportunities for you.

Here are two things you should do to apply this principle:

1. Increase your value
   Before you can give to others, you need to have something you can give. You need to have something that make other people want to come to you. If you have nothing, how can people feel lucky to be around you? So work hard to increase your value. Build your expertise in the field you choose and expand your network. Coincidentally, it means that you are also preparing for opportunities. By wanting to be generous you build yourself a “prepared mind.”
2. Share without holding back
   Now that you have something worth sharing, what you need to do is sharing it without holding back. It may take practice to do that, but over time you will feel more and more comfortable to share what you know. Again, the key here is not just to give but to be generous.

Photo by wilhei55

Photo by D Sharon Pruitt

Almost inevitably, when I tell someone I’m a vegetarian, I get a curious stare with the response, “Why?” Unfortunately, this usually comes around dinner time, so I usually try to shift the topic rather than engage in a lengthy debate attempting to justify my lifestyle choices. Most of the time, I’d rather just eat.

However, considering the bulk of email I receive about being a vegetarian, it’s probably time I explained why I don’t eat meat. But before you expect me to go into a pro-PETA rant (I won’t, by the way), I’ll explain what I’m not going to do:

First, I don’t care if you become a vegetarian or stay a devout carnivore. I’m a vegetarian for personal reasons, and while it’s always nice to meet with fellow vegetarians, your eating meat has no impact on my lifestyle.

Like my past article, Why Atheism, where I explained my lack of religious belief, this article is an explanation not a sales pitch. Instead, I’d like to explain how I believe the practice improves my life, and for me, allows me to be a happier, more productive person.

However, if after you read this, you declare I’m a nut-job and proceed to grill up a steak, more power to you.

Why I Became Vegetarian

I’ve been a vegetarian for close to four years now. I was also a strict vegetarian for roughly 4-5 months (no eggs or milk, either). My initial decision to go from happy-go-lucky omnivore to vegan was prompted after reading the book, The China Study.

Before reading this book, I assumed all vegetarians abstained for ethical reasons. As a kid that grew up in a town that celebrates a fur-trapping heritage and had been fishing and hunting, that argument never resonated with me. Animals aren’t humans, and don’t deserve the same rights as humans, such as the right not to be my dinner.

The China Study changed my perspective. Dr. Colin T. Campbell demonstrated, with a wealth of nutritional evidence that plant-eating was also far healthier. Osteoporosis, macular degeneration and even most cancers, were according to his research, linked to the toxic diet the western world had been binging on. Too much meat, too much processed foods, not enough plants.

I’ll avoid recapping the entire book, but even for a skeptic like myself, it was eye-opening. From that point, I continued reading books and blogs about the topic.

Steve Pavlina was a big influence for me in creating the connection between health and the ability to reach my goals. Now, vegetarianism wasn’t just looking attractive from the standpoint of health, but in self-actualization. A healthy body, even in a minor way, contributes to small increases in daily energy and focus. Those increases add up over months and years, allowing you to do more, even if on any particular day their importance appears small.

I also read Diet for a New America and a few other books on the veg*n lifestyle. This allowed me to finally listen to the argument I’d ignored throughout my omnivorous years. That meat-eating has a negative impact on the environment and is, at the very least, ethically questionable with cases of factory farming.

Why I’m Still a Vegetarian Today

Now, after four years, my initial piousness has diminished. I can still say I believe vegetarianism is better for health than 95% of the diets people commonly consume. I can still say I believe eating plants is better for the environment, global warming and feeding a growing population. Also, I can still say I believe meat-eating is, at the very least, in a moral gray area. By eating only plants, I sit on the more comfortable side of that debate.

However, I no longer claim vegetarianism is the perfect diet. I think there is evidence that a diet which involves a small amount of meat or animal products (so-called flexitarianism) is equally healthy.

I am also not so idealist as to believe if everyone switched to vegetarianism global warming would be avoided and world hunger would stop. People would find other ways to pollute, and in a capitalist world-economy, we waste a lot of food that could be used to feed the starving but isn’t, because of logistic, political and economic reasons.

And, as I felt with my fur-trapping cultural heritage, animals are not people. They likely have some version of a conscious mind, but ascribing them all the benefits and rights of a human, is extreme and illogical. Some conditions of factory farming may be deplorable, but the emerging practice of artisanal farming, which allow animals to live otherwise free and natural lives feels like an acceptable alternative.

My reasons for continuing as a vegetarian are simple, although they don’t have the same piousness people often ascribe to vegetarians:

• On average, it’s better for health than most other diets.
• In most cases, the environment impact of vegetarianism is lower.
  
• It eliminates the need for ugly practices like factory farming.

Perhaps more importantly, vegetarianism makes me feel good. Those are the logical reasons I have for continuing, but people don’t make choices for logical reasons. I’m still a vegetarian because I remember feeling healthier after switching. I enjoy the lightness that comes with not digesting a meat-heavy meal. I like being able to maintain a slim, fit body without calorie counting. I like the satisfaction that comes from knowing that, if only in a tiny way, my choices are better for the world at large.

Vegetarian Myths

I’d like to explain away some of the myths I’ve encountered from people ignorant on vegetarianism. My experiences aren’t a universal rule, but I feel, having read several books, hundreds of articles and having lived the diet for four years, I can share an insight or two.

Myth #1 – Vegetarians Don’t Receive Enough Protein

I’d say I need to explain this to about 50% of the people who ask me why I’m a vegetarian. Somehow, they’re under the impression that protein, the holiest of all nutrients, is under the exclusive domain of meat. And by not eating meat, I’m depriving myself of that sacred nutrient.

This is a myth for two reasons. First, it’s a myth because plants contain plenty of protein. Have you ever seen an elephant? It’s a vegetarian, and nobody’s calling it a lightweight. Second, it’s a myth because protein, far from being the nutritional holy grail, is (surprise!) just like every other nutrient and eating too much of it can be just as bad as not eating enough.

Many plants, per calorie, contain more than enough protein for the body’s daily needs. Spinach is about 40% protein by calorie. Lentils are around 50-60% protein by calorie. This is true of many other plants, so if you’re a vegetarian eating plenty of unprocessed plants, and are consuming enough daily calories, protein deficiency is unlikely.

Many plants are also complete proteins. Quinoa and soy, for example, contain all eight essential amino acids. And, because proteins can be combined within a few days of each other, even if you don’t eat complete proteins, a varied diet will supply all eight amino acids.

Second, this is a myth because the dietary need for protein is far less than what most people consume. Aside from elite athletes and bodybuilders, Dr. Campbell estimates the amount of protein required is somewhere south of 15% of your daily calories. Vegetarians will often get more than this amount if they are eating balanced diets.

Finally, my personal example is anecdotal evidence that vegetarians get enough protein. While I’m not an Olympic athlete, I keep myself in good shape. I can easily do 60-70 consecutive push-ups, run 10km non-stop and can bench-press more than my body weight. I have also successfully gained muscle using a vegetarian diet without protein powders.

Myth #2: Vegetarian Food is Tasteless Crap

Ok, this one is subjective, but I’ve found vegetarian cuisine delicious and satisfying. It does require different cooking talents, but if you are willing to invest a few weeks to practice, you can probably make some interesting dishes.

A few days ago I brought a pack lunch that consisted of a roasted pepper, mushroom and avocado sandwich. Many of my meat-eating friends had an old sandwich with deli meat on a stale baguette. I’m not trying to argue that meat cuisine can’t be tasty, just that you need to free yourself from the narrow assumption that meat is the necessary flavoring for all food.

Myth #3: All Vegetarians are Zealous Purists

No, I’m not going to freak out if there was meat touching the food I ate. No, I’m not going to throw out the soup you made because it contains a little chicken broth. I’m a vegetarian, but I’m not puritanical.

And, although I haven’t eaten a meal containing meat for close to four years, I have tasted meat on one or two occasions. Each of these times it was when I was a guest at another person’s house for dinner in a foreign country, where the host wanted me to try a small piece of the local cuisine. In these cases, the cultural experience and social etiquette trump my resistance to eat less than a teaspoon of animal flesh. (And no, it didn’t make me want to start eating meat again)

I find nothing more irritating, than know-it-all vegetarians who try to aggressively force their views onto other people. They make us all look like nut-jobs.

Why I’ll Continue Being a Vegetarian

The simple answer is: I haven’t found a reason not to be a vegetarian. Although there are downsides, I’ve found them to be far outweighed by the upsides. It took a bit of getting used to, but I’m so satisfied by my choice to be a vegetarian, that I don’t see any impending need to stop.

Will I always be a vegetarian? I can’t say for sure. I treat life as an ongoing experiment, one of which my hypotheses are frequently overturned. I don’t treat vegetarianism as a lifelong commitment, just a practice I enjoy.

I have considered pescetarianism (which in addition to eggs and milk, allows for fish) as a possible alternative, particularly if I’m living in a place where strictly vegetarian eating is difficult or if the cuisine is centered around seafood and fish. But, even for that decision, I’d like to do a lot of research to see whether the health or environmental merits warrant making a switch.

So, to answer the titular question, “Why Vegetarian,” I can only say this: all of my research shows vegetarianism, if not being the best choice, is at least a better choice than 95% of the world’s diet for health, environment and ethics. But even more, I actually enjoy being a vegetarian, and I didn’t know that fact before I started.

Here are a few links I found useful both in being a vegetarian, and in making the decision to eat only plants:

Great Books:

• The China Study
• Diet for a New America
• In Defense of Food

Free Web Resources:

• Why Vegan
• The Great Protein Myth
• Vegetarian Strength Training
• Vegetarian Recipes
• Vegetarian Website and Other Resources

photo credit: sevenfloorsdown

He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else. – Benjamin Franklin

When was the last time you made a resolve to achieve something, set a deadline and then achieved it? Can you even remember the last time? I’m struggling. And the reason I am struggling to remember such a time is because of excuses. I make them for everything; consciously and unconsciously. Without noticing it, excuses have become a habit that I am struggling to shake.

In this post I want to talk about the excuses culture that we have develop within ourselves and why we use excuses to protect ourselves from feelings of failure and fear. Hopefully it will spur some readers out there into action.

Why we make excuses

Photo credit: Franzi in der Wiese

A few years ago I was sitting in the car with a friend of mine having a conversation (argument) about how I always seem to find a way out of things. At the end of the debate he said something that has stayed at the front of my mind, something that I think about whenever I am feeling like making an excuse. He said:

“You have always found things easy. You are good at everything. But you aren’t great at anything because you make excuses. You would rather be the ‘potential’ to be great than actually try and fail. And that is sad.”

He was right. All my life I have been naturally gifted at sport and academics. I didn’t have to work hard to get good. But I never really excelled at anything. I never worked really hard to become great at a certain activity. Why? Because I was afraid of failure. I was afraid of trying and not getting there.

My parents role in this habit
I never blame my parents for anything in my life. I simply do not feel like it is a productive exercise. But I can see how certain things they did impacted the way I turned out. And one of those things was how my mother always told me how amazing I could be. She would constantly tell me how smart I was, how good at soccer I was and how I could become something truly special.

But rather than spurring me on to excellence it seemed to do the opposite. I was comfortable being the potential for greatness. I was afraid to actually give it a shot for fear that I wasn’t actually as smart, talented and athletic as she thought. So I made excuses. Excuses so I wouldn’t have to try.

And we all do it. All the time.

Fear: the reason for most excuses
So why do we make excuses? Why do we find ways to get out of things? Well, for the most part, it is because we are afraid. We are afraid of trying and we are afraid of failing. We are afraid of change and we will do anything to keep the norm functioning. Fear is the reason most of us make excuses.

If you look deep into your own mind and your own behavior you will see that you make excuses to protect your sense of self. We spend our whole lives developing and ego and decorating it with friends and family and money and success and we will do anything to protect our concept of that self. Even if it makes us depressed and unfulfilled. And ultimately that is what excuses do, they make you feel unfulfilled.

How to stop making excuses and move forward

photo credit: Triphamr

People say that the hardest thing you will ever do is quit smoking. But quitting excuses is 10 times harder. Excuses are the reason you started smoking, drinking and eating bad food. You make an excuse not to be healthy and an excuse not to be happy. Breaking the excuse culture is damn hard work. Here are some things you can do.

1. Realize that you do it all the time
As always, you need to take a look at yourself and really truly realize that you make mistakes. Find concrete examples of where you have sabotaged your progress by making an excuse and remember that incident. Bring it to mind whenever you feel like doing it again.

2. Look at your (lack of) progress
Take a look at how much progress you have made with your meditation, athletics, mortgage repayments or family weekend time. See how many excuses you have made and how that has affected your progress is a very real way. Until you can see that it is doing damage you will have no real impetus to stop.

3. Realize that death is coming
People always send me emails saying that I am too depressing when I talk about death. I always reply saying “it is depressing not to talk about it”. For too long our species has made death a taboo subject when, in fact, it is the only thing in life that is certain. Understand that death is coming and that you have no time for excuses. Not any. Its too hot, too cold, too nice inside, I’m too tired, I have a headache… all of those sound like absolute bullshit when you are on your deathbed looking back at what you didn’t achieve.

4. Realize you do it out of fear
If you go up to a fat man in the street and tell him that he is a coward he will probably punch you in the face. Men don’t like to be considered afraid, but that is exactly what we are. We make excuses because we are afraid. Why, then, do we still do it? If someone told us that we were afraid of something else we would do everything in our power to change and prove that we are brave. Do that now with excuses. Prove that you are not afraid of failure, change or losing the norm.

5. Be different in five years time
How different are you now to five years ago? Are you more loving, compassionate, patient, strong, rich, happy, thin, etc.? Take a look at whatever goal you have in your life and see how much closer you are to it now than you were five years ago. If you can say you are happy with your progress then chances are you don’t have a problem with excuses. If you are almost exactly the same then you can bet your right eye on the fact that you are stagnant because you are sabotaging your progress by saying “its too hard” or “its too cold outside”. Be different in five years time and stop making excuses.

Do you make excuses?

I would love to know how many of my readers consider themselves to be excuse makers. What kind of excuses do you come up with and how (if at all) have you dealt with them? Have your excuses held you back from being all that you can be? And how have you felt the weight of this “potential” slowing you down in life? Is it easier to not try?

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From the Web

Capital Punishment – Whether you agree in the practice or not, this is a powerfully written piece showing, in at least one case, it may have killed an innocent man. (Hat Tip: Ben Casnocha)

Motivation: Why Traditional Incentives Don’t Work – A fantastic speech by Dan Pink, who explains that traditional financial incentives (the kinds our capitalist economy are based on) do not work to motivate people outside a narrow spectrum. He does a great job of explaining that these findings are based on well-researched, scientific facts about human behavior.

From the Archives

How to Build an Ironclad Personal Discipline – “Building discipline is a lot like building strength. The times when your commitment wavers and you feel like backing down test the limits of your discipline. Every time you brush that limit and keep going, you slowly build your personal discipline.”

From the Shelf

The Language Instinct – Steven Pinker is a fantastic writer, and this book makes no exception. My favorite chapter is where he attacks the grammar zealots who complain that today’s youth fail to speak properly and the damage this will cause society. Pinker argues that, as language is an instinct, almost all people across all dialect and languages, speak grammatically. And in fact, it is many of the grammar mavens themselves who are harming language.

Note: This is a guest post by Cath Duncan of Mine Your Resources

With all the personal development books, blogs, speakers, videos, teleseminars and coaches available these days, we all have access to an abundance of information, and personal development can seem like an overwhelming task. I’ve been immersed in this literature and culture for 14 years, searching for the personal development ideas and change tools that really make a difference, and these days I believe that there are only really two skills that you need to master to progress your life:

1. Getting clear on what you really want and
2. transforming the fears that are holding you back from making what you want a reality.

In fact, I find that it often boils right down to just transforming your fears, because much of the time the only reason that you’re unclear about what you want is because you’re afraid to want what you want, so your fear obscures your vision of what you want. If you know how to handle your fear, you can have, do and be everything you want.

Fear Is Universal

Don’t get caught in thinking that being afraid means you’re a wimp. We all have a part of our brains that’s colloquially referred to by neuropsychologists as the reptile brain, because it’s similar in structure to the brain of a reptile. Our reptile brain’s agenda is to make sure that we survive, so it’s concerned with watching out for potential lack and attack, and it sets off the alarm and the stress response whenever there’s any indication of potential lack or attack. This is a really useful survival response when you’re being chased by a lion or someone’s trying to mug you on the street, but the problem is that it can prevent us from thriving by being overly paranoid and holding us back from anything that’s the slightest bit scary, including new and unfamiliar experiences and uncertain future situations, which we’re all faced with when we make changes in our lives.

We can’t ever entirely switch off this part of ourselves that produces fear (and that’s a good thing, because we need it, for keeping us safe!), but what we can do is become “fear fit.” Normally, when we’re afraid, we try to avoid the situation that’s seems scary to us, because we’re afraid of feeling afraid. Becoming “fear fit” is about practicing having scary experiences, so that you’re no longer afraid of feeling afraid. When you practice having scary experiences, you’ll be come more comfortable and skilled at handling scary situations, which will increase your “comfort zone” and the number of different experiences you feel comfortable to handle. Every time you do something scary, you build more evidence that you can handle scary situations – evidence that you can rely on to boost both your confidence and your competence in future new scary situations. So here’s how to increase your fear fitness:

Exercises for Increasing Your Fear Fitness

1. Take up opportunities to try new and different things, visit new and different places, and meet new and different people. Whenever you expose yourself to unfamiliar experiences, you’ll get more familiar with the feeling of “safe fear” that your reptile brain produces in response to new and different experiences, so that you’ll grow to understand that the feeling means you’re learning and growing, and it’s perfectly safe to proceed.

2. Set yourself a few unrealistic goals. I know that the whole “S-M-A-R-T” goal-setting process says we should set realistic goals, but I also know that “realistic” is a subjective thing, and most goals are achievable if you’re willing to adjust the deadline and give yourself more time to get there. So set yourself some unrealistic goals so that you can become comfortable with the feeling of fear that comes with being unsure that you can achieve your goals.

3. Keep a log of significant fears that you’ve faced. Write down the date, the scary thing you faced, and the positive outcomes. Part of becoming fear fit is about teaching your brain to associate positive feelings with scary situations, rather than negative feelings. If you highlight and record all the positive results of facing your fears, your brain will quickly learn to associate facing your fears with pleasurable feelings. Even if it didn’t go as well as you’d hoped, if you’re writing down the results, you must have survived the experience, so you can at least say that “I didn’t die.” When you’re feeling afraid of something new, you’ll be able to look back on your fear log and be reminded of your resourcefulness and the fears you’ve successfully faced in the past – achievements that we often forget when we’re feeling afraid and unresourceful.

4. Hang out with other people who are willing to face their fears. We all look to the people we hang out with as our reference for what’s “normal.” If it’s normal in the communities you hang out in for people to avoid doing anything scary, your reptile brain will tell you that it’s abnormal, and therefore dangerous, for you to do otherwise. And whenever you do something scary, you’ll have the added fear that your tribe will think you’re crazy, not support you, or even reject you for it. Hang out with other people who face new fears on a regular basis, and you’ll teach your reptile brain that this is a perfectly normal and safe thing to do.

5. Celebrate whenever you face a fear. This is another way to associate positive feelings with the idea of facing your fears. Have a special dinner with someone important to you, buy yourself a special gift, hold fear parties, phone your coach, or whatever else takes your fancy.

Practicing these exercises to increase your fear fitness is a lot like going to the gym. If you’ve trained regularly at the gym, over time you’ll build your ability to deal with major athletic challenges like running a half marathon or whatever other challenge you might like to take on. In much the same way, these fear fitness exercises can prepare you with the mental fortitude, stamina and skills for dealing with scary situations in the future, giving you the ability to confidently deal with whatever may come your way and use that to create more of the life you want.

Through her Bottom-line Bookclub, "Resource Miner," Cath Duncan offers accelerated learning programs for professionals who want to develop the Agile Living Strategies for thriving in these turbulent times. You can follow Cath’s blog at www.mineyourresources.com and on Twitter she’s @cathduncan

Photo by Markus_76

A lot of goal-setting advice focuses on deciding what matters to you. People exclaim, “follow your passions!” or “set priorities.” This is fine, but it misses the opposite, but equally important question: what doesn’t matter to you.

Importance is relative, so in deciding to make something a priority or importance in your life, you need to make something else unimportant. Unfortunately, few people deliberately select the things they aren’t going to care about. As a result, they end up trying to do everything and accomplish nothing.

What’s Unimportant to Me

Here are a few things I’ve decided are a low priority for my life:

• Fashion
• Following the news
• Politics, beyond the basic issues
• Academic grades, beyond a minimum level of effort
• Sports
• Religion (at all)
• Live Television
• Games

Now, I half expect to receive at least one or two comments from people attacking my list. “How can you not follow the news, care about grades or be involved in any religion?” Obviously, one of the things I’ve mentioned is extremely important to them.

I want to point out my list isn’t universal. I’m not saying the above things are always unimportant. I’m simply saying I’ve deliberately selected them to be low priorities in my life. Their absence from my schedule allows me to set time for the things I do find important such as, socializing, running a business, and staying healthy.

I’m also not implying that I’m necessarily poorly dressed, completely uninformed about world events or that I get lousy grades. Simply that, when directing my conscious activities, I put a lower weight on those things in my life. I’d rather fail at each of the things in my list, if it meant my truly important pursuits succeeded.

Deciding What’s Unimportant For You

It’s easier to color outside the lines than within them. It’s easier to try to focus on everything evenly, rather than intentionally leave parts of your life blank. But, without constraints, a picture is just a blur of colors, and life is undirected chaos.

I’d suggest trying to come up with a list of things you consider low priorities. If your list is short (or you have difficulty picking anything), you might want to take a deeper look at where you spent your time. Ask yourself questions like, “If I had to pick 4-5 things to fail at, what would I sacrifice?”

Simplicity demands constraints, and trying to do everything is more like doing nothing.

Unimportant Doesn’t Mean Disaster

Declaring something as unimportant doesn’t mean it will immediately fail. Simply that you aren’t going to invest tons of resources to ensure it succeeds. Sometimes the area of your life will just remain neutral, without getting significantly worse or better, over time.

For example, I’ve put fashion as a low priority for my life. I buy new clothes infrequently, and I have a limited wardrobe. But, every several months or year, I’ll buy new clothes and try to look presentable. Fashion, for me, is mostly in neutral territory. I put in an extremely low amount of effort which allows me to coast by.

Other times, low priority items crash and burn. When I decided advertising was a low-priority for my business, the revenue I generated plummeted. Without dedicating the best webspace real estate and working to increase revenues, my income went down by a factor of 10 over a few months.

However, the sacrifice of low priority items is usually made up by the extra effort you can put into high-priority pursuits. When my advertising revenue crashed, I was also making 3-5x the lost income in additional sales of guides and ebooks. So, even when your unimportant issues fail, they allow your truly important work to flourish.

You Can’t Do Everything

Either you declare your unimportant tasks, or the world does it for you. If you choose not to label anything as trivial, you’ll run out of time and energy. And when that happens, something has to give, and it might end up being something you actually care about.

I have a maximizing personality. Which is great, because it allows me to drag myself off the couch to pursue adventures and new opportunities. But the downside is that I like to do everything. Without spending some time deliberately omitting focuses from my life, I’d try to do everything. Indeed, often I have, and it usually goes poorly.

Pick the things that don’t matter. Or, at the very least, decide your maximum input level for those pursuits. If you stop yourself from overcommitting on the small things, you can ensure you have the opportunity to pursue the big things.

The great thing about writing articles is that I get to pick the topic. I try to only pick topics that I either have some familiarity with, have done research on or have at least spent a lot of time thinking about.

The problem with writing articles is that people assume I know everything. The 800 articles I’ve written and a few small books represents a few cherry-picked ideas I’ve obsessed over and believe in. But, there are still a ton of things I’d like to know.

Considering the power of this audience in contributing answers, I thought I’d share a brief list of some of the skills I’d like to be better at, and the ideas I wish I had. Hopefully some of you brilliant people can share answers (or at least suggestions) to some of them and we can all learn from the crowd-sourced wisdom.

Links to blog articles, books or even personal responses are all welcome if they address any of these questions.

So, here goes, a brief list of things I’d like to know:

1. How to Collaborate Productively. I’m great at managing my own time and energy. But I wish I could read a guide for how to work productively with contractors or joint ventures. Particularly in an online setting where you may never meet the other person face-to-face.
2. How to Network Online. Having spent most of my life located in the vastness of the Canadian prairie, I can say it’s often difficult to meet people with similar careers/businesses, face-to-face. As a result, almost all my networking has been online. Only problem is that I’m much more effective at meeting people face-to-face than on the web.
3. How to Get Started Writing Fiction. Beyond no-brainer advice like, “start writing,” I’d be interested in reading some basic tips for writing fiction. I’ve contemplated writing fiction as a hobby for a long time, as I think it has the ability to improve my non-fiction writing as well.
4. How to Train Yourself to Pronounce Foreign Sounds. Although, to a certain extent, it’s almost impossible to completely replicate the sounds of a foreign language after the age of 10 or 12, some people are good at getting very close. I’d like to know how they do it, as being able to soften my accent is a goal of mine in learning French.
5. How to Create Higher Quality Video/Audio Recordings, Without Tons of Time/Money. Moving beyond text is something I’ve wanted to do since starting this blog. However, my skills at creating professional recordings are far below my writing ability.
6. How to Sustain an Exercise Routine While Traveling. Admittedly, this is something I could figure out on my own. However, I’m interested to know how experienced vagabonds manage the bizarre schedule and culture shock while continuing to exercise.
7. How to Manage Irregular Income Streams. Irregularity of income can be nice (irregular income boosts), but it makes it harder to budget and plan for the future. I’d like to know how people with 10+ years of experience manage it. Particularly when they have bigger commitments such as kids or a mortgage.
8. How to Conduct a Proper Product Launch. Perhaps I’m the only one here who cares about this problem, but after only 3-4 product launches of my own, I wish I knew more.
9. How to Go From Good to Great with Writing. The bulk of my writing improvement came in my first 100-300 articles. But now, on article 800 or so, I don’t feel my writing is still improving. I’d love to know what steps other writers have taken to improve their craft once their main writing gigs have become routine.
10. How to Understand Website Statistics. I know what page views, incoming traffic and the various numbers on my Analytics dashboard are. The question is, what do I do with all that data? I’d love if there were a guide that actually went, step-by-step, in teaching how you can cut out all the noise of irrelevant data into a clear process for decision-making.
11. How to Sustain Friendships Over Long Distances. I’ve had the privilege of meeting many cool people, from all over the world. The difficulty is in keeping up ties which, realistically, I may not have a chance to reconnect with for a decade or more. Does anyone have tips they’ve gleaned from international friendships?
12. How to Do a Handstand Push-Up. Alright, this one is just a vanity, but I’ve been curious since I’ve started working out. I managed to train myself to do a one-arm pushup. However, I’m not sure the best way to go about training for a handstand pushup. Has anyone done it before? What were your intermediate steps?
13. How to Live Abroad While Running a Business. Well, this one I’m doing successfully right now. However, my year-long visa was based on a student exchange program. I know of similar visa-granting procedures for work-exchanges. But what if you don’t plan on switching your job? I’d like to know in case I choose to live in another country after I’m no longer attending university.
14. How to Cook on a Budget. My grocery expenses doubled moving from central Canada to southern France. But, more than just recipes, I’d like to know if there are any all-purpose tips that can allow you to eat frugally without completely sacrificing taste or nutritional value.
15. How to Travel Without Checked Luggage. I have friends that can do a several day trip with nothing more than a handbag. While I’m a fairly light packer, I don’t yet have the mysterious science of carry-on luggage perfected. I’d be interested to see how people pack so light while traveling, and, in doing so, what they choose not to bring with them.

photo credit: DarkB4Dawn

The last four ethical dilemmas have been really popular and some amazing discussions and insights have resulted. I really like asking these questions because I learn a lot about my readers as well as the topic we are discussing.

Today’s ethical dilemma stems from some thoughts I have thinking about the absolute nature of ethics. Many people who practice and study ethics seem to think that there is no room for movement when it comes to practicing morality. But I’m not so sure. Read this dilemma, have a think and leave a comment with your thoughts. I will be really interested to hear your ideas.

You are out for a walk one night and you see a man running towards you. He looks terrified, stressed and panicked. He comes up to you with tears in his eyes and says, “I am going to hide right here. I can’t run anymore. I didn’t do anything wrong. Please, promise me you won’t tell them where I am!” So you promise the man, he hides behind a bush and you keep walking.

Ten seconds later four men turn the corner where the panicked man had come from and head towards you. As they get closer you see that they are, indeed, police officers. They walk up to you and ask if you have seen the man they were chasing. What do you do? Do you lie? Why?

I have been thinking about this one a little bit today and I will share my thoughts once all of the regular readers have weighed in. I will be really interested to see what people come up with to justify their actions. Go for it!

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Worry does not empty tomorrow of sorrow – it empties today of strength.
Corrie ten Boom

You need to know how to stop worrying if you want to live life to the fullest. Why? Because worry doesn’t do you any good. It won’t help you live a better life. It won’t make you feel better and more energized. Instead, it will make you less happy and less productive.

But how can we do that? How can we stop worrying? Here are eight ways:

1. Focus on what you can control

Thinking about things you can’t control puts unnecessary burden on your mind. For example, why should you worry about how bad the economy is? There’s nothing you can do about it unless you are a key person in the government. No matter how much you think about it, nothing will change. So instead of worrying about it, focus on things you can control like building your network and increasing your value. Don’t worry about things you can’t do anything about.

2. Use your imagination positively

Worry is a misuse of imagination.
Dan Zadra

Your imagination is a double-edged sword. You can use it to dream big dreams and keep your motivation high, but you can also use it to discourage yourself. People often worry about something because they fill their imagination with all the bad things that might happen. The reality is often not that bad, but it looks worse and worse because they give it too much attention.

3. Expect good things to happen

Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight.
Benjamin Franklin

Not only should you use your imagination positively, but also you should expect good things to happen in your life. Instead of expecting something to fail, expect it to succeed. Instead of expecting people not to like you, expect them to like you. You should be realistic, of course, but always expect to be a winner in life.

4. Accept responsibility

You might make mistakes in the past and worry about the consequences. In this case, the solution is to accept responsibility. Don’t let your worry drag you down. Accept the responsibility and move on. You still have a lot of great things waiting for you.

5. Be grateful

It’s easy to focus on the few things that could go wrong that we forget about the many things that already go right. That’s why having an attitude of gratitude is important. It keeps your perspective in balance. It makes you realize that for one thing that goes wrong there are many more things that go right. Just start with these simple things to be grateful for.

6. Run your own race

Stop comparing yourself with other people. Comparing yourself with others will only drain your mental energy. You have your own race to run. Instead of comparing yourself with others, focus on being the best that you can be.

7. Simplify your life

The simpler your life is, the fewer things you could worry about. So instead of doing a lot of things, focus on the few things that are most fulfilling and give you the most return for your time and effort. Find your life purpose and use the 80/20 rule to choose the few important activities to focus on.

8. Have faith

You should focus on things you can control. But what about things you can’t control? What can we do to eliminate any worry about them? The answer here is faith. You need to believe that everything will go well no matter how bad it might seem. You need to believe that everything will come out better in the end. Having faith eliminates a lot of worries in your life. It gives you peace of mind.

Photo by spaceodissey