Quiz: Name the Golfer that NEVER choked on a putt?

In the book, Finding Your Zone, Michael Landon tells the story of Jack Nicklaus when he had to make a critical putt. Jack read the green, made a perfect putting stroke, but the ball hit a bad patch of grass and veered off course. His playing partner later said, “Too bad you missed that putt Jack.” Jack replied, “I didn’t.”


Why didn’t Jack miss the putt in his minds eye?

Because he was fully committed the putt. Jack knows how to putt and trusts his ability to putt every time he steps up to the ball, to put it in the hole. When things go wrong or he hits a “bad patch”, he doesn't start changing things. He doesn't run out and buy a new putter, try a new ball or start changing his stroke in the middle of the match.

On the next hole, he repeats what he knows how to do, becomes fully committed to making the putt in his mind and then he putts. The ball may or may not go in. There are forces beyond his control, but he never misses the putt in his mind's eye before he makes the putt.

Here are the three steps:

1. Did you visualize the shot you wanted to hit before you executed it?

2. Did you hit the shot without any doubt or ambivalence (fully committed)?

3. Did you back away from the shot and let your mind clear if you incurred any negative or distracting thoughts?

That is golf, how does this apply in the “real world”?

How do you get into the flow of your genius and stay there?

The state of flow is the delicate balance between conscious effort and innate reflexive trust. Jack has made some many putts, spent so much time on the green his body knows and feels how it is to make a putt from any distance on any green. So now he just has to make the conscious effort to make the putt without putting too much effort into the action.

Choking on a putt, a sales call or getting a kiss goodnight at the end of a date is simply a matter of “over thinking” in the mind and overriding the innate reflexive trust of knowing what to do. If you do not know what you you need to do, you need to practice. After you have found that deep and profound sense of trust that comes from “knowing” how to do something, forget about thinking and just do it!

When you over think, especially under the pressure of performance, you choke!

When you make the commitment to be your best at what ever you decided to do, you too will never miss a putt again, even when you hit a patch of bad grass.

When you are not sure if you can trust yourself or if you feel you have lost that trust in something you know how to do, that is great time to call me and see if I can help you find your commitment again!

And feel good about doing it! 

A coaching client came to the session with the challenge of procrastination. She is single and lives alone. She has important papers that need to be organized and filed in case she passes away, so that her next of kin can easily settle her estate.

How morbid, how depressing! Who would want to do that?!?

Here is the plan we came up with step by step to help you accomplish the less fun things on the to do list this year!

1. When are you going to do it?

Tomorrow at 10 AM!

2. How long will it take?

4 hours

3. What can you do for fun as a reward for completing the task.

I want to go see a new movie.

Great, so here is what you do!

First: Set an appointment with yourself at 10 AM in your calendar to interrupt whatever you are doing. Make sure you eat a big breakfast because you will not be stopping in the middle of the project.

Second: Go to Fandango and buy the movie ticket for tomorrow for the 4 PM mantinee and print out the ticket.

Third: Put your phone in airplane mode (no interruptions) and set the timer (next to the clock function) for 4 hours. Sit the phone next to the printed movie ticket.

You ONLY have 4 hours to get the task done. If it is NOT done by the time the timer expires. You cannot go to the movie and you will lose your money! If you do the task, the movie is your present or reward for a job well done.

“But I hate to loose money,” she protested, why not just buy the ticket after I finish. I am sure they will still be available?

The very “hatred” of losing money IS the very motivation that will help you get the task done! In fact, I could guarantee you will get the task done, 100%, no worries.

How?

You may walk away from a $12 movie ticket or even a $16 Movie bistro ticket. So write me a check right now for $1000 and give it to me with  you commitment written in the memo field. If you make your commitment, I will tear up the check. If you do not, I will cash it and keep the money!

Now go back to the your to-do list. Put a dollar amount that would be painful enough for you to lose that you would do the task no matter what, for each task?

Any task at $1000 range is high priority, one of those per day is enough.

Any task at $75 is medium priority and two of those per day is enough.

Any task at $20 or lower is low priority and not even worth bothering about. They are just the “shoulds” you think you should do, but really has no value to you.

Delete any $0 tasks right off the list, right now.

Then I wished her good luck! I can’t wait to read her movie review!

So last week I shared the secret to happiness. Click Here if you missed that post! Today I’ll share the secret of the universe. At the beginning of the workshop, the swami asked us three questions: 




1. Does the past exist? 

2. Does the future exist? 

3. Does the present moment exist? 

No cheating, think about your answers before reading more...

The answer is “no” to all three questions. I got #3 wrong as I previously thought that the present moment was all the truly existed. Here is how the swami explained it to me. 

The past does not exist; once it is gone, all that exists is our memory of it. We often chose to define ourselves from some past event, but in absolute truth it no longer exists. 

The future has not come yet; so it does not exist either. Now, the choice we make today will affect our future, but it is not set in stone, and there are forces way beyond our control that could have a bigger affect on it than we could ever imagine. 

Does the present moment exist yet? Here is why I got that answer wrong. The present moment does not exist because we never stop. We never stop and say, “this is the present moment.” The present moment is the blur of non-existent future moving into the non-existent past. 

At this point, the swami conceded that he is talking about the absolute reality of existence. The present moment existence in what he calls the “Relative Reality” is all we experience. Because it is relative it is also referred to as an illusion.

Here’s an example, think about a movie being projected on a screen. The screen is the absolute reality of existence. It is pure white, static, cloth. But when a movie is projected on it, it becomes the movie. Therefore, the absolute screen can be anything in the relative world depending on what is projected on it. 

You and I confuse the relative movie of life we experience daily with the absolute nature of true selves. If the movie screen had consciousness, it could choose to be happy at anytime, even when a tragedy or horror movie was being reflected upon it. 

So the future does not exist, but I can anticipate your next question. “Matt, how do I experience the Absolute Reality instead of just the Relative Reality of existence?”

Meditation

Meditation is the art of turning off the relative reality’s movie projector and experiencing the absolute blank emptiness of the screen.

What does the screen represent in the metaphor I’m using? Well, there are two possible answers. One is simply energy. Another is more complex, love!

I had two really big “Aha” experiences at the Ashram in upstate New York several weeks ago. The first was the secret to happiness. I will share that with you this week. Next week, I will share the secret to existence itself!

When was the last time you felt happy? Take just a moment and reflect on what the moment was like, and who or what was involved with it? 

My answer was scuba diving. My team was drifting off a great, rare, deep wreck ,and I spent 25 minutes ascending in pure happiness, while I finished my decompression stops. When going out for a deep technical dive, there is a lot of stress in planning, assembling the gear, and organizing a dive team. Add the pressure of things way beyond my control like wind, weather, ocean currents and visibility, and diving becomes a real gamble. In over 1000 dives I have learned to be happy by experiencing the dive instead of how the dive was. I couldn’t control the weather, so I stopped letting the weather determine my level of happiness with the dive.

A few times we do all this work and miss the wreck. There is nothing to look at but sand. What anyone would consider the ultimate frustration seeking blame in the team, captain, or the GPS coordinates again became a lesson in my ability to learn to choose to be happy. 

I thought I had found and understood the secret to happiness, but he swami did a better job of explaining it, ready?

Happiness is the cessation of thought and additional decisions.

Now apply that concept to the last time you felt happy. Can you see it now? 

The feeling of external happiness comes at the end of accomplishing a task. A project at work, a personal goal, or the end of a game, when we have the results, and there are no more decisions to be made. 

In my scuba diving, the happiness came at the end of the dive. When all the planning was over, my tank was empty, and I had the memories of the experience. 

Here’s an example of a more common experience. You decide to buy a new car, you shop, compare prices, negotiate with the dealer, and eventually drive home in a new car. Ah, the happiness, the car is finally yours! Then we become attached to the car, and the first scratch in the paint or repair and all the happiness is gone. The car no longer has the power to make us feel happy anymore. Worst yet, a new model comes out with better features, and a neighbor parks one in the driveway as a reminder of how old your car is.

So the lesson is that external happiness is fleeting and can be costly. It happens naturally at the end of accomplishing a task. But true happiness, internal happiness is under our control at all times because it is a choice. If you want to feel more happy, chose to. Break the steps of any goal or progress down so that it is an easy choice. Chose to be happy that you can afford a new car. Choose to be happy to explore all the opportunities. Choose to be happy during the negotiations. If you don’t feel happy at any time, walk out and try again or try a new dealer. Choose to be happy with each dent and ding, and let it serve as a reminder of a happy choice you were making at the time of its occurrence. The first ding in my new car happened in the mall parking lot, when taking my boys to see Madagascar 3. They loved the movie and had a great time. I chose to feel happy instead of ruining a great experience with the family.

As I write this post, I feel happy after each click of the keyboard. I can’t wait for you to read it and I hope to hear your comments on the blog, facebook, or emailed directly back to me! 

Remember: Happiness is the cessation of thought and additional decisions.

PS: Now can you guess why it is said mediation is the pathway to bliss and happiness? Meditation is the practice of turning your rational mind “OFF” to experience the cessation of thought.

Two weeks ago Andrea and went on a trip with 7 other yoga students to the Sivananda Ashram Yoga Ranch. We practice Hatha Yoga for two hours, twice daily. In the afternoon we also did Karma Yoga, selfless service to the ashram. 


My first task of Karma Yoga was to help in the garden. The garden was planted and bountiful, but the rows needed to be mulched. Cardboard boxes were broken down, soaked in a smelly pond and then laid out in the rows and covered with hay. The hay had to be pitched from the goat shed into a cart and hauled over to the garden and spread out. I was looking for God and caught hay fever. 

Last year I tried to set up a garden in front of my townhouse. I have two 4 x 8 ft planters in the front of my townhouse. They seemed perfect for growing some vegetables and spices plants. I cleared the beds and prepared the soil. I purchased lettuce, mint, tomatoes, and a few other seeds and planted them neatly in the late spring.

The florida rains came and I did not foresee the failure point. My roof funnels the rain to the beds and the beds have no drainage. The first serious Florida rain pounded the soil, flooded the seeds and washed them to the sewer. 

I gave up. The garden went to weeds until several months later when I cleared it again, put down plastic weed block fabric and rocked the garden it. Just as in my spiritual life, I tried it, nothing happened or life flooded me out and I quit. Purchased a simple plastic Buddha statue and placed in the rock garden to give it a spiritual look on the outside. Done, move on, what’s next?

The next day of Karma Yoga at the ashram I asked for harder labor as I felt I could give more of my body. I was asked to dig a new trench in front of the first row at the top of the hill. Heavy rains come down the hill and the first row of baby spinach was washed away several weeks ago. The story touched me as a reflection of my life. I gathered the shovel, wheelbarrow and found another garden up the road that needed the dirt. 

I only completed a quarter of the row on the first day and I only had one more day of service in which to finish it. I meditated on it and decided that I must finish before I go. My leg was sore from the previous day’s work and hike later in the afternoon. I dedicated my evening and next mornings Yoga practice to breathing in space in healing into the areas of my body that were tight and sore. 

 The Swami was giving a talk right after service and I didn’t want to show up dirty and sweaty. I left brunch (we only ate two meals a day at (10 AM and 6 PM) early to get to work. I felt like 100% when I got to the garden.

I finished digging the trench and hauling the heavy clay dirt uphill to the other garden. My leg was hurting and I was asked to help dig another trench in the back to make a new raised row for planting. I focused, breathed, and worked diligently chanting kirtan songs I had learned from satsong. I was labored with joy and happiness in my heart. I finished 3/4 of the row before it was time to get ready for the talk. 

I left the last day with a great feeling of accomplishment. My ego felt large that for one day I had done the most work! At dinner I ran into Kalimani, the yogi in charge of the garden. She suggested I go down and look at the 2nd row that I had prepared. She had finished the digging, leveled the row and planted it while I was at the lecture. She was grateful for what I had done for the garden. I was humbled that my brief strong work was nothing compared the diligent hours other yogis spent in the garden. I did not see all the work that was being down while I was in lecture, at satsong, or in a yoga class.

Like the rabbit I was strong and fast, but slow and steady always wins the race. It also overcomes obstacles and doesn’t walk away at the first sign of trouble, setback, or outright failure. 


On the flight home I took a vow to grow one head of lettuce in my house. That seed will serve as a reminder of all the lessons I learned in this weekend at the yoga ranch. I look forward to harvesting it and posting a photo of the salad I make out of it. 
Two weeks ago Andrea and went on a trip with 7 other yoga students to the Sivananda Ashram Yoga Ranch. We practice Hatha Yoga for two hours, twice daily. In the afternoon we also did Karma Yoga, selfless service to the ashram.

My first task of Karma Yoga was to help in the garden. The garden was planted and bountiful, but the rows needed to be mulched. Cardboard boxes were broken down, soaked in a smelly pond and then laid out in the rows and covered with hay. The hay had to be pitched from the goat shed into a cart and hauled over to the garden and spread out. I was looking for God and caught hay fever.

Last year I tried to set up a garden in front of my townhouse. I have two 4 x 8 ft planters in the front of my townhouse. They seemed perfect for growing some vegetables and spices plants. I cleared the beds and prepared the soil. I purchased lettuce, mint, tomatoes, and a few other seeds and planted them neatly in the late spring.

The florida rains came and I did not foresee the failure point. My roof funnels the rain to the beds and the beds have no drainage. The first serious Florida rain pounded the soil, flooded the seeds and washed them to the sewer.

I gave up. The garden went to weeds until several months later when I cleared it again, put down plastic weed block fabric and rocked the garden it. Just as in my spiritual life, I tried it, nothing happened or life flooded me out and I quit. Purchased a simple plastic Buddha statue and placed in the rock garden to give it a spiritual look on the outside. Done, move on, what’s next?

The next day of Karma Yoga at the ashram I asked for harder labor as I felt I could give more of my body. I was asked to dig a new trench in front of the first row at the top of the hill. Heavy rains come down the hill and the first row of baby spinach was washed away several weeks ago. The story touched me as a reflection of my life. I gathered the shovel, wheelbarrow and found another garden up the road that needed the dirt.

I only completed a quarter of the row on the first day and I only had one more day of service in which to finish it. I meditated on it and decided that I must finish before I go. My leg was sore from the previous day’s work and hike later in the afternoon. I dedicated my evening and next mornings Yoga practice to breathing in space in healing into the areas of my body that were tight and sore.

The Swami was giving a talk right after service and I didn’t want to show up dirty and sweaty. I left brunch (we only ate two meals a day at (10 AM and 6 PM) early to get to work. I felt like 100% when I got to the garden.

I finished digging the trench and hauling the heavy clay dirt uphill to the other garden. My leg was hurting and I was asked to help dig another trench in the back to make a new raised row for planting. I focused, breathed, and worked diligently chanting kirtan songs I had learned from satsong. I was labored with joy and happiness in my heart. I finished 3/4 of the row before it was time to get ready for the talk.

I left the last day with a great feeling of accomplishment. My ego felt large that for one day I had done the most work! At dinner I ran into Kalimani, the yogi in charge of the garden. She suggested I go down and look at the 2nd row that I had prepared. She had finished the digging, leveled the row and planted it while I was at the lecture. She was grateful for what I had done for the garden. I was humbled that my brief strong work was nothing compared the diligent hours other yogis spent in the garden. I did not see all the work that was being down while I was in lecture, at satsong, or in a yoga class.

Like the rabbit I was strong and fast, but slow and steady always wins the race. It also overcomes obstacles and doesn’t walk away at the first sign of trouble, setback, or outright failure.

On the flight home I took a vow to grow one head of lettuce in my house. That seed will serve as a reminder of all the lessons I learned in this weekend at the yoga ranch. I look forward to harvesting it and posting a photo of the salad I make out of it.  

I’m Addicted To Facebook

The first step in the classic 12 step program is to admit you have a problem. I’m addicted to Facebook. When my friends mentioned it, I thought they were just teasing me. When my wife mentioned it, I thought she was just bugging me. When I noticed blocks of work time fading by and nothing getting checked off my to-do list for the day, I started to get worried.

“Worry” is nothing more than my mind telling me I need to be more mindful about my actions. What was Facebook giving me that I needed?

At the time of writing, I have 125 notifications waiting for me. I know 87 of which are my mother-in-law liking every photo of my twins boys I took this weekend. For me, the strongest pull is the comment on my photos (please keep commenting) or knowing who “liked” the point I just made on a wall post or group discussion. It’s a form validation artificial or otherwise.

How do you know if you are addicted to Facebook? Click here for a quick test!

I scored a 9, which is just barely in the “healthy use of Facebook” range. Now what did I do before Facebook, I read. I read a lot! I still have a goal of reading 500 books and I noticed a sharp decline this year over last year. Instead a grabbing a chapter here and there on Kindle, I’m scrolling through my news feed.

Here are some tips that I used to reduce my Facebook time.

1. Delete the app from your smart phone and Ipad 

Now I check on my desktop computer, or I have to log on via the web browser which is just inconvenient enough to keep me from sneaking a quick fix.

2. Turn off all notifications

The flashing icon on my phone or Ipad triggers my deep cravings to know, now! The same tip that worked for email-aholics also works for social media. Now I check it when I make time. Not when someone responds or posts.

3. Facebook free day

This is the new one for me. Monday is going to be “Facebook Free Day” for me. That is the biggest day of the week for everyone to be on, so I’m getting off.

So when I talk about MORE Made Easy, I just walked myself through the process. I stopped and become MINDFUL of what I like about Facebook, and what I did before spending so much time on the site. I created OPTIONS to change how much time I spent there. I found over 30 different ways of dealing with Facebook Addiction. I REFLECTED on how serious the problem was and how far do I have to go to regain balance again. I narrowed it down to three things to start with. Now I’m going to ENGAGE those options and see what happens?

Need help implementing MORE Made Easy in your life? Click here to schedule a strategy session this week.

In college my mother gave me a Franklin planner. She worked for Cargill and had attended the corporate organization training. That little planner saved my life and stayed with me for many years. The power of the system was that the key things were all on one page.


1. To-do list, prioritized with three levels

2. Calendar, broken down by hours and month view (required a double entry)

3. Notes, what happened in meetings indexed back on one page by day

4. Contact list

Summary of my solutions:

1. Evernote
2. Remember the Milk
3. Google Apps
4. Google Drive, Dropbox, or Yousendit
5. DocsToGo
6. Kindle
7. Calorie Counter
8. Google Cloud Connect for MS Office

Notes were the core strength that held me to paper up to a year ago. I saw the “next generation” master the art of thumb typing, but I always prefered writing when note taking. Laptops were too big and slow to take to most meetings.

After purchasing an Ipad last year, I have fulfilled my quest to rebuild my franklin planner in a digital and cloud based way. I am so thankful I never lost my planner. I had left it behind a couple of times and always ran back to grab it. Now with the ability to keep data on a device and backed up to a server in the “cloud” I never have to worry about a crash, lost device, or what computer I’m working on again!

Even better all the applications I’m recommending work locally on the device without a network connection and they sync when the network is available. All the applications are available for what I call the “Holy Trinity” of Ipad, Android, and Windows computer. I’m running an Ipad 2, HTC EVO 3D phone, and Windows XP on my home desktop and netbook.

Since notes were the most important paper based item, I’ll start with Evernote. I pay the $40 per year for professional level service, which is the cost of my old paper based planner refill. Evernote allows you take notes on any device and then read or edit later. You can create notebooks to organize meeting notes, content, marketing, personal. You can “tag” notes with keywords that allow for indexing and searching later across notebooks. Tagging is a higher level of organization that probably make old Ben Franklin jump for joy. You may also install a plug in for your web browser that allows you to clip links to websites, selections of text, or the whole page off a site and store it in Evernote. It makes for an amazing research tool!

For the to-do list, Remember the Milk can do everything my paper can and more. You can add tasks at any time and then add a due date, priority, add it to a list, allow it to repeat, and estimate how much time it will take. Then you can go back and sort your to-do list based by day, week, tag or, or list. They just added “location” based tagging so you can also search by location. There is a free level or service or $20 per year for the professional level. That is what I used to spend on the storage binder and box to archive my old paper planner.

The old name and address book seems so outdated. Now a simple google account can do some much more for you. All your contacts from one google email account will sync across all the platforms. If you have a web domain, I highly recommend Google Apps. For $60 per year you will have your email, calendar, documents, pictures, and storage drive (5gb) all in one place. There are additional features like “Cloud Connect” that sync all documents between Microsoft Office and Google Docs. I write a Word documents, click save, and it is automatically sent to the cloud and is available on my mobile devices. No more dragging and dropping into a shared folder like Dropbox or YouSendIt. Google Drive will replace Dropbox eventually once they finish the ipad support. In the meantime you can purchase “DocsToGo” for $16 on Ipad and $5 on Android to view and edit all your google docs on the go.

The other benefit of the Franklin Planner was purchasing other planner pages for additional functionality. Here are a few bonus apps I use a lot.

YouSendIt and Dropbox for offer 2gb of free storage and have great apps to make the data available on any of my three devices. I have these installed to make it easy to collaborate with others who have a preference of one over the other. Both are highly recommended, but I will be using Google Drive in the future to keep all my data in one basket.

Ben Franklin was a voracious reader. He organized the first paid subscription library in the United States. Now with an Amazon Kindle Account, I have access to my books on any device. The last page read syncs over the cloud, so I never have to remember what page I’m on. That makes for good reading in those periods of normally wasted time like waiting in line at the bank or the doctor’s office. The Miami Dade Library now allows patrons to check out Kindle books via Overdrive. You can request a book, download it, and then it is active to be read for 3 weeks.

Two years ago I lost over 60 pounds using “Calorie Counter” by Fatsecret. This app works across all the platforms including Blackberry and is a great way to track what you are eating, how much exercise you get and how much you weigh. The data has a create calendar view so can see how many calories you are plus or negative over a week or a month. Averaging out the data also helps a lot. Now that I’m no longer tracking my food intake, I still use the weigh in feature to graph my weight. The scale is like watching a stock price up and down on a daily basis. Our weight can vary by 4 pounds based on the food we eat and water intake. Watching the scale daily will drive you nuts and you only remember the good, not the bad. By graphing my weigh over time I can see the average and easily track if I’m trending up or down? I gained back 20 pounds when I stopped tracking my weight over time because the trend is harder to see and very easy to ignore.

I just switched from constant contact to iContact for email marketing, can you guess why? Because they have apps for my mobile devices to write an email when I chose and check the tracking reports. I can also subscribe people at events directly instead of writing it down and typing it in later.

I also just installed a Western Digital 2 TB “My Book Live” network drive. I have moved my photo library off my hard drive and onto the network drive so I can access the information anywhere with a network connection. Western Digtial has apps for all devices so my music, video, and photos are all available on all my devices. Next time I won’t feel like I need to buy the $100 upgrade on the ipad for 32gb over 16gb, knowing that I have 2 tb in reserve and available to me.

I hope, if Ben Franklin was alive today, he would be impressed by the system I’ve created based on his time tested ideas of organization and efficiency.

You get your email and calendar as well. Last year I walked into pool to play with my kids and had my Blackberry on my waist. It was a good 15 minutes before I noticed. I purchased a new phone and was back up and running in 15 minutes.

If you need a technology makeover. I would be happy schedule a strategy session with you to discuss what you need to do and which apps and devices will help you the best.  

“Fasting is scary. It forces you to think about food and develop an awareness of your body. It brings the present moment to the front of your mind. The past is forgotten and the future becomes clearer. It is a pause to face all the demons we force down with distractions of work, food, alcohol, and other desires. It is the first step to freedom and peace that few actually experience.”

I wrote this to a friend who was interested in my experience, but afraid to fast. Food is such a powerful force in our society. It is at the core of our economy, one of the chambers of the heart of a good american capitalist. Food is social, a reason to come together with friends and family or to spend time with someone special. Food is a reward for a hard days work and dessert is the centerpiece of any birthday party.

Here is the summary for those with a short attention span!

1. First two days are hell, then it clears up.
2. You body will “feel” wrong due to a lack of chewing. This is normal and goes away after three days.
3. Beware of social eating situations.
4. Your other senses will increase in sensitivity.
5. Enjoy food with all your other senses, don’t deny yourself with negative thoughts.
6. Empower yourself with good thoughts.
7. Normal sleep returns and feels great
8. Start a vegetarian lifestyle.
9. Eat less food.
10. Blood test from my doctor

What most people fail to face is that food is also medicine. Most disease and discomfort in our body is related to the foods we eat. We can be addicted to the effects of sugar on the brain in the same way alcohol or opiates can fill our brains with pleasure and leave us wanting more, more, more!

"Let your food be your medicine and your medicine your food "
--Hippocrates 460 - 359

Even worse now is the search for the holy grail of “energy” in food and drink marketing. As if soda wasn’t bad enough for us, a new category of “perceived benefit drinks” have flooded the market with new and improved dose of poisons of caffeine and sugar with hyper active marketing, promising cures to being tired by feeding you with the same stuff that made you tired in the first place. Too much caffeine and sugar to make up for lack of sleep, eating fruits and vegetables, and exercise.

So first, when someone asks me why I do the lemonade fast I have to explain that I have been addicted to all these things. I remember times of being stressed at work and dealing with the stress by smoking, drinking, and really unknown to me at the time, going to McDonalds and feeling really “good” after eating a quarter pounder, fries, and a soda.

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Click here to schedule a “Master Cleanse Myself” Strategy Session. In just 45 minutes we will discover how to:

• Create a sense of clarity about what YOU really need to feel happy and fulfilled
• Find the building blocks you already have to get MORE
• Discover the #1 thing stopping you
• Identify the most powerful action you can take to make the life you dreamed of in just three weeks
• Know exactly what you need to do to make it happen!

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As I dig deeper into my addiction, I’m beginning learn about how our bodies react to certain foods that cause headaches, sluggishness, and even worse symptoms due to allergies to the inability to digest certain foods or compounds like gluten.

So I needed a baseline of feeling. How will I feel if I remove all “food” from my body for a period of time? The only way to know is to have a personal experience, so I decided to fast for the third time.

"If we doctors threw all our medicines into the sea, it would be that much better for our patients and that much worse for the fishes."

-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, M.D.


Here are the directions I followed for the Master Cleanser Lemondae Fast from Jill Ayn Schneider’s Website www.circle-of-life.net

The first two days are hell. I suggest starting on a Friday and keeping yourself locked up over the weekend. It takes some time to learn how to mass produce the lemonade and get used to keeping it with you and drinking it.

Jill suggests “not telling anyone about what your are doing” and she is half right. Due to the social implications of food, no one will understand. Everyone will think you are nuts, but you cannot “hide” out for two weeks and not interact with anyone.

Eventually you will have to go to dinner and face the awkward situation of not eating anything. I always asked for mint or chamomile tea to sip on during the meal and had some lemonade. I suggest coming straight out and telling everyone that you have a negative reaction to food and you are doing a test to discover what the issue is? Make it sound scientific. Feel free to use me as an excuse, “My friend Matthew suggested I try this fast to regain my energy.” After weird looks, comments of craziness and suggesting that this is completely “unhealthy” eventually the conversation moves on in a different direction. Just go through it and don’t try to hide it. That gets it over faster.

The greatest gift of the fast is awareness, awareness of your body, your senses and the fear and control food has in other people. when you jump off the food bandwagon for a couple of months, you will trigger a fear response in the people you interact with on a daily basis. They will project that fear on to you but you do not have to accept it. See that they are a mirror of you and you are a mirror of them. The fear they put on you is coming from inside of them. You do not have to do anything about it. Let it pass like a rainstorm.

Your other senses will start to get more powerful once your shut down the sense of taste. You will smell food. Good food will smell wonderful and inviting. Bad food will smell greasy and fatty. Just like a ex-smoker learns to hate the smell of smoke, you will learn to hate the smell of bad food. Good food will turn on your eating system and you will feel hungry. That is normal, drink some lemonade and I suggest enjoying the food with your other senses. Smell it deeply and see what you can pick up. Feel the food with your hands, what is the texture? Look closely at the food, what are the colors and patterns in the food.

The default reaction on the fast is to “reject” food or “deny” it. “No, I can’t have that!” is the powerful self talk that destroys diets and attempts at changing eating patterns. Don’t deny it, go into the food, through the food, and feel it. Go so deep that you see it for what it really is! Visualize all the negative qualities of the food and see it in your mind. Doritos, birthday cake, and soda are very easy to see all the acid, sugar, chemicals, and emptiness. Empty of any value to your body. When you repeat this exercise a few times, food loses its power over you.

Then I suggest writing down why you are doing the master cleanser lemonade fast? Remind yourself of the powerful benefits. You are cleaning your body. You are ending addictions to food. You are most likely losing weight, which is a welcome benefit to most people. You are in control of what goes in your mouth!

After about a week, normal sleep returns. I lay down on the pillow and just fade off to sleep. In the morning, I awake and I’m just switched on. No more grogginess, no more snooze over and over, just up. Waking up without “needing” a cup of coffee or anything else is another wonderful side effect. Now I keep in mind that if I drink coffee, it will take two days for my body to be free of it. Is there anything I need the coffee for today that I’m willing to give up two days of bliss for? With the proper costs in mind, the decision in the moment becomes much easier.

The break the fast, you start with orange juice and then move on to a homemade organic vegetable soup. My stomach shrank and it took very little food to feel full. You will have a baseline of “how much you need to eat” that you can reset to much smaller portions now. I used to think, I “need” to eat more because of any number of excuses. Now I see I do not and now I try to not push myself.

This time I even started cooking for my wife. I couldn’t taste the food, but I learned to really enjoy the experience of cooking with all my other senses. Here’s a great cookbook to get started with. So simple, anyone can make these dishes and they taste great!

This time I scheduled a physical and basic blood work from my doctor after 19 days of fasting and 10 days of eating vegetarian. I’m really curious as to the results. I’ll make a separate post about that after I talk with my doctor and compare last year to this year.

Click here to schedule a “Master Cleanse Myself” Strategy Session. In just 45 minutes we will discover how to:

• Create a sense of clarity about what YOU really need to feel happy and fulfilled
• Find the building blocks you already have to get MORE
• Discover the #1 thing stopping you
• Identify the most powerful action you can take to make the life you dreamed of in just three weeks
• Know exactly what you need to do to make it happen!

Learn how breaking ALL your bad food habits at once will lead you to deeper love for yourself!

Fasting is a tool used by seekers of spiritual knowledge since the beginning of time. 

FREE Yoga Class suitable for all levels 

• Learn the 4 secrets why all diets fail
• Discover and break addictions you are not aware of
• Train your body to crave healthy food
• Create a personal dietary transformation without a guru or spending lots of money

Agenda:
8:00 am - 8:30 am Guided meditation to relax your mind
8:30 am - 9:30 am Insightful video lecture by Dada J. P. Vaswani: "Management Moment by Moment"
9:30 am - 10:45 am Gentle and relaxing Yoga class - suitable for all levels
10:45 am - 11:00 am Break
11:00 am - 12:00 pm Pot luck brunch of fruits, salads, juices, and vegetarian dishes.
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm Main Lecture by Matthew Hoelscher: "19 Days Without Food"  

Sadhu Vaswani Center (map it)
2470 NW 102nd Place, 2nd Floor
Doral, FL 33172 
(behind Miami Free Zone) 
Click HERE for more info