Home

Every now and then we have stuff that purports to enhance athletic performance, there is the skins body suit garments for example, now we have “Power balance” that people swear makes a difference to their performance. A very impressive list of athletes can’t rave enough about it.

Is it a case where the wearer truly believes it makes a difference so the psychological change in the brain creates the belief and there is an improvement. So is it more like a lucky charm, similar to athletes who wear a religious cross around there neck and upon winning a race, ie cycling, they kiss the lucky charm.

Sports people have for years had similar rituals that give them the confidence to succeed. Think about tennis/football players who must bounce the ball “x” numbers of times before making a crucial serve, or the cricketers who rubs the ball against there groin to the point they will wear a hole in their trousers.

There is a famous experiment from Jane Elliot in 1968 who used and an experiment in demonstrating prejudice to highlight the psychological effects of feeling superior and all the bad stuff associated with that situation as well. Children in a classroom were divided based on there eye colour whereby blue eyed children were treated as being more intelligent and the brown eyed children lacked intelligence.

The blue eyed group experienced better grades with their understanding of reading and mathematical tasks being greater than what they had previously achieved. Conversely there was a negative relationship with the brown eyed children who experienced a decrease in there grades.
Ultimately it came down to the psychological benefit, the belief system that having blue eyes made them smarter and more superior, sound familiar?

The test that is often sited to test the benefits of the Power Balance is to hold your arm out at 90º to your body and for someone to push down on it, then you repeat the experiment after placing the bracelet on and miraculously it’s harder to push the arm down.

Well try this experiment in reverse and you will get the same outcome, I would like to see the scientific evidence that there is a measurable improvement in a controlled environment with at least 500 people to get a true sample size, not testimonials from athletes.
All I have to say is “SHOW US THE EVIDENCE”?

The weight loss industry is another example of where being unregulated unsubstantiated claims can be made, often if there are clinical trials, it is based on there on testing guidelines with an extremely small sample group.

Well for a limited time we are offering the “Fitstyler” hologram technology, just $99 plus we will throw in some steak knives:))

In the Age today was an article about how there is a movement away from owning physical stuff such as DVD’s, CD’s and books to digital versions or electronic formats.

What is being experienced is by owning less stuff and having less attachment to physical stuff is leading to lower levels of stress and more freedom. The other benefit is saving on $$$ as you don’t need such a large house to accommodate all of this stuff and less time to organise and manage all of this stuff.

So having less possessions and things is actually creating more freedom both physically and mentally. A crazy concept in today’s world of mass consumption.

Kelly Sutton, who was featured in the article commented that “The less you own, the less you have weighing you down and the less that’s stressing you so I couldn’t be happier and more mobile . He has a website documenting all of this at “www.cultofless.com/items”.

So by having more time in your life you can look after yourself with more exercise and have the time to cook healthy meals and more importantly something we are all missing, “me time”.

It’s a bit of a cliche but you have to treat your body like a temple and worship it regularly, quite often we place higher importance on everything other than our own body, working long hours, poor diet, too much stress, limited R & R, so ultimately what we put into our body we get out, GIGO, Garbage in Garbage out.

I meet a senior partner from a law firm who was a keen cyclist who road 250-300km per week which included a daily commute from his house 18km from the Melbourne CBD.

Like most of us, stuff happened and what was a healthy lifestyle quickly turned into a life of long working hours, deadlines and before you know it, something has to give, well it’s your health and fitness goals.

This person was in his 50′s with his stomach girth in excess of the 100cm waist measurement for men (85cm for woman) that places him in the high risk category for cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

After chatting to him, there really was the time to ride to work, to do the weekend bike rides and to lead a healthier lifestyle but it was more about the lack of motivation.

Well after our chat, he was so confident about getting back onto the bike that I gave him some home work, I would call him in a weeks time to follow up on whether he successfully got back onto the bike.
Well to his credit, he had ridden to work 3 times and enjoyed a further 2 rides on the weekend but like all good starts to achieving goals it’s a marathon not a 50m sprint so as Mr Lawyer acknowledged, its about maintaining the momentum, something which is particularly hard.

When setting your goals write them down, statistically it has been shown that those people who write down there goals, whether in their diary, a vision board, or even a piece of paper they keep in their pocket will have a higher chance of success.

David Ogilvy was the original “Mad Man” who started from humble beginnings from a small office in 1959 on Madison Avenue with 3000 other advertising agencies all competiting for that lucrative advertising dollar. Over the course of 15 years David Ogilvy grew the business into the advertising giant of Ogilvy & Mather.
How can a young salesman who was a university drop out go onto achieve such mountains of success?

Well he wrote his goals down.

David Ogilvy wrote down his goals on a piece of paper he carried with him, a dream of being a major adverting company in 20 years with 5 blue chip clients, but not just any old clients but 5 of the biggest corporations in the world, General Foods, Bristol-Myers, Campbell Soup Company, Lever Brothers, and Shell. Today all five are clients of Ogilvy, Benson & Mather.

Well Ogilvy got there 5 years ahead of time and today has 450 offices across 152 cities, now that’s big things coming from a belief system, anything is possible:))

After talking to a friend who had a totally random event happen for the second time in their life, a pattern started to emerge that may have seemed a coincidence but was it really?

With concepts like the “the universe” and books like “The Secret” creating some consciousness about the “Laws of attraction” and projecting energy and thoughts, the events that happened to my friend may make some sense.

About 6 months ago, my friend was riding home from work innocently, minding his own business in the late afternoon, the sun was setting on the horizon when “BANG”, a motorist blinded by the glare, lost his view momentarily and not wanting to miss the lights speed up to make a right turn in front of my friend.

The results were a broken collar bone which will require surgery after not showing any improvement in healing naturally.
Well last week, it happened again, while being safely away from the traffic in his house, a totally random event happened, a motorist had a heart attack after returning from the local leisure centre (doing morning laps in the pool) and veared of the road into my friends parked car outside his house.

This time though although there was damage to his car, absolutely no damage to his body.

Mmmmm, so a random event or maybe there is a hidden meaning, it’s open to interpretation but maybe it was something about what thoughts were being projected at the time or over a period of time.
Personally I find this random event super positive, it means that what was ever being projected that had resulted in the body being directly impacted has know lowered in intensity.
My friend may have been walking to his car, been in the car or entering the main flow of traffic, so many possibilities.

While it’s still annoying and inconvenient (And horrific for the driver), it means having to get quotes for the car repair, contacting the insurance companies, getting the car repaired and being without a car while being repaired.
Ironically when I quizzed him about it, this year has had numerous things go wrong with these 2 events just being one of many.

The point being is what ever you want to achieve, whether it’s weight loss, getting more balance in your life between work and life or improving your health and fitness in general, you will keep throwing up these random events that make it difficult to achieve your goals.

Think about people you may know who are going through a financially difficult time, about to lose the house, car, job, no money in the bank then suddenly a random event, the car engine blows up, a fraudulent credit card transaction, the washing machine dies, all these events are really the end results of what is being projected and ultimately what ever you project you attract back into your life.

Well something to think about:)))