Wellness or Sickness Medicine

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What kind of healthy choices will you make, those based on Wellness Medicine or Sickness Medicine? Will you be proactive about your health or reactive?

 

Wellness or Sickness Medicine

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What health choices will you make? Those based on wellness medicine or sickness medicine? We all know our health is influenced by what we eat, drink, and other well-known lifestyle choices that we make. The latest scientific research shows that for each of us, these choices can have greatly differing effects on our health. Small differences in your genes can influence how well your body metabolizes food, utilizes nutrients, and excretes damaging toxins. All of which can affect your general state of health. By finding out if you have any of these small variations, you can modify your diet and lifestyle choices to achieve optimum nutrition and health. After many years of the American Medical Association saying that three square meals a day could fill your nutritional needs, the statement totally repudiates the stand. The AMA has been forced to revise this stand in view of this new evidence. They say it takes 25 years before a new idea takes hold in medicine. In 25 years, every medical doctor will be studying nutrition thoroughly. The average medical education spends seven to twelve hours out of a seven-year education on food, vitamins and minerals. Although that may be changing. This is out of Journal of the American Medical Association in 2002.

They say that vitamin deficiency syndromes such as scurvy and beriberi are uncommon in modern Western societies. However, suboptimal intake of some vitamins above levels causing classic vitamin deficiency is a risk factor for chronic diseases and common in the general population, especially in the elderly. Suboptimal folic acid levels, along with suboptimal levels of vitamin B6 and B12 are a risk factor for cardiovascular disease, neural tube defects, colon and breast cancer. Low levels of vitamin D contribute to osteopenia and fractures. Low levels of the antioxidant vitamins A, E, and C may increase the risk for several chronic diseases. Those of you reading this, this may seem very commonplace but this was a total turnaround from what the AMA was saying many years ago. Do you ever wonder what’s in the food store and the grocery stores around the world? People keep asking me, “What ingredients should I avoid?” I put together a short list that covers all the most toxic and disease-promoting ingredients in the food supply. These are substances causing cancer, diabetes, and heart disease leading to tens of billions of dollars in unnecessary health care costs across America and around the world. If you want to stay healthy and out of the hospital, read ingredient labels and make sure you avoid these ingredients.

You have to clean up your lifestyle and diet to not develop cancer.

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Acrylamides are toxic cancer-causing chemicals found in foods and carbohydrates exposed to high heat like frying and grilling. They are present in everything from bread crusts to snack chips. Because they aren’t intentional ingredients, acrylamides do not have to be listed on labels. Aspartame or NutraSweet are chemical sweeteners that cause neurological disorders, seizures, blurred vision, and migraine headaches. Autolyzed proteins are highly processed proteins containing free glutamate and used to mimic the taste-enhancer chemical MSG. Bisphenol A, a hormone-mimicking chemical found in nearly all food packaging plastics promotes cancer, infertility, and hormonal disorders. It also feminizes males promoting male breast growth and hormone disruption. Casein milk proteins hilariously are widely used in soy cheese products that claim to be alternatives to cow’s milk. Nearly all of them are made with cow’s milk proteins. Corn syrup is another name for high fructose corn syrup. It is frequently used in infant formula products. Food colors FD&C Red 40, for example, is linked to behavior disorders in children. Nearly all artificial food colors are derived from petroleum and many are contaminated with aluminum.

Genetically modified ingredients are not listed on the label because the GMO industry, Monsanto and DuPont, do not want people to know which foods contain GMOs. Nearly all conventionally grown soy, corn, and cotton are GMOs. They are linked for severe infertility problems and even fast bacteria in your body to produce and release a pesticide in your own health. If you’re not eating organic corn, you’re eating GMO corn. The average naturopath spends 1.5 to two years of a four to seven-year degree diploma program on herbs, vitamins, minerals, amino acids, nutrition and diet. This is why naturopaths and natural health practitioners focusing on nutrition and diet excel at prevention and medical practitioners at pathology. By the time you have a heart attack or a gastric ulcer or a lump in the breast, you may need medical intervention, drugs or surgery.

These conditions do not happen overnight. They take anything from five to fifteen years to develop. In the meantime, subtle changes occur. In fact, people become used to these changes and they put it down for aging. Once you put it down for aging, then you can’t do anything about it. What will early intervention do for you? It will ensure you will be healthy and well enough to make your next million or more between 45 to 65. For others, it will mean they can be healthy enough to run and play with their grandchildren instead of waving at their family from the bed of a hospital or nursing home. While doing a health check is a good practice, conventional medical testing does not provide a full picture. Functional medicine testing will often identify hidden health conditions long before they show up on conventional medical tests. Most medical doctors will look at the standard tests and be satisfied with this result most times, possibly dismissing nagging pains or discomfort that the patient has experienced over long periods of time. Only a small percentage of medical doctors will look at functional testing to get a truer picture of health. They will also talk and check about the quality of life the client has.

LBD 26 | Wellness Medicine
Wellness Medicine: Doing a health check is a good practice. Conventional medical testing does not provide a full picture.

 

I was once talking about early wellness screening to one of my ex-wife’s good friend. She helped me politely and showed me this shadow I rather not know. About a year later, she discovered a lump in her breast and had to see a surgeon to remove it and biopsy it. Fortunately for her, it was benign. It could have easily been otherwise. If you think that a healthy lifestyle and eating fresh organic food protects you, think again. There are more than a hundred thousand chemicals in the environment that our grandparents did not get exposed to. There was a sweet radio personality who used to interview me on the radio many years ago. She was famous for a healthy and organic lifestyle. She was diagnosed with cancer. She came to see me for a visit and a few months later, there was a report about her death. I can’t say that I’ve prevented people from developing cancer because of the early method of detections I used in my practice work so well, they will never develop cancer. I can say I found individuals who have come in with cancer markers. Those who clean up your lifestyle and diet to not develop cancer. Those who find I did not make the necessary changes early enough or rigorously enough often do go on to develop cancer. These are general statistics from a sample population of 15,000.

The most common reason for cancer terminal and chronic illnesses included a modern lifestyle and exposure to the industry with antibiotic use and toxins like pesticides and heavy metals. In 2010, the US President’s Cancer Panel, an advisory group that considers testimony from several cancer researchers to inform the president’s policy on cancer prevention concluded that environmental toxins are a greater cause of cancer than previously believed. I turned out to be right many years later. This lady flew in from Bangkok. She was incidentally an A blood type. She had a great diet, exercised well and wasn’t stressed. She discovered she had a breast lump. She had it removed and biopsy revealed that it was malignant. When we examined and tested her, we found mercury filling in one of her teeth was leaking. It happened to be on the tooth that was on the left side that was involved in the stomach meridian. The left stomach meridian also influences the left breast, which was where she had the cancerous tumor removed. If she had come in earlier, she could have even bypassed cancer. One month later, she came in for a second visit feeling wonderful and almost well.

I’m going to help you design a life that works so you are able to say yes to the things that matter and eliminate everything else that slows you down. The more clear you can be about how to organize your daily life to support your bigger vision, the more you step into your true potential, stay on track, and accomplish all that you want and deserve. Are you ready to make that happen? Feel free to reach out to me to ask a question at AskDrSun.com. Your life is a gift, design it. Do what matters and join me each episode as we get closer to designing the life of your dreams. Join me next time on Your Life By Design.

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The Power Of Creative Imagination

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There is power in creative imagination. How can you use this power to design and actualize your ideal life? Although there is no universal formula for success, there is a range of approaches that are well suited to a variety of temperaments and environments, some certain elements of strategy that are useful to remember and will help you. Get ready to unleash the power of your creative imagination as Dr. Sundardas guides us to find out what works for you and make that your method.

 

The Power Of Creative Imagination

 

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“Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocracy. The latter cannot understand that the man does not thoughtlessly submit to inherit the three prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence and fulfill the duty to express the results of his thoughts in clear form.” Albert Einstein quoted that in New York Times, March 19, 1940. Are you ready to unleash the power of your creative imagination? Wish fulfillment. Our wishes and desires are defining attributes of our individuality, but how many people can make their dreams come true?

Many people don’t even know what they really want, much less how to accomplish their goals. There are others who know exactly what they want but still can’t quite get their acts together to accomplish their heart’s desire. Wish fulfillment is something that first enters human consciousness at an early age indeed. In fact, we all learn to desire long before we learned to speak. We form wordless impressions of what we want or don’t want, and this is the earliest concept we have of this subject. These impressions persist and they constitute part of the underlying structure that shapes all our future wishes.

There is no universal formula for success, but rather a range of approaches.

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The nature of desires. From the moment we are born, most of us, we begin to wish for the warm, safe environment of the womb from which we had been violently pushed or pulled into this world. The personality before and from that moment on is largely shaped by our desires. These fall into two broad categories. Those things we like to have more of and those things we rather get rid of or get away from. In general, people feel they’re more attracted to pleasurable things and try to avoid painful things, but it doesn’t always work as we expect it to. As long as we continue to be attracted or repelled, however we will continue to endeavor to satisfy the desires that arise as a result. We developed theories in our minds for what actions might yield results. As infants, long before we have any concept of what words mean, we soon learned to use words however in our strategy to gain our heart’s desire. At some point, words and actions become connected. As we find there’s a word for almost anything, we can do or possess. Later, as we learn more complex behaviors, we are supplied with phrases and sentences to describe other things as well.

This also gives each of us tools to aid in obtaining what we wish to have in our lives. On the other hand, where words bring us some things, they don’t help us to obtain other things at all. Many things are possible to attain or obtain only if we take correct action at the right time and place. Sometimes strategies that worked well with one person or one group of people are poorly adapted to the temperament of the other and make life tough to understand. Similarly, differing situations demand differing solutions to the same problems. It seems that there is no universal formula for success, but rather a range of approaches particularly well-suited to a variety of temperaments and environments. Although there is no single strategy for getting what you want that works for all people and all situations, certain elements of strategy are useful to remember and will help you to find the best approach to a given task. The idea here is not to merely adopt a policy based on someone else’s method but to find out what works for you and make that your method.

The Law of Attraction. The phrase the Law of Attraction although used widely by esoteric writers does not have a conceptual definition. However, the general consensus among new thought thinkers is that the Law of Attraction takes the principle of like attracts like and applies it to conscious desire. That is a person’s thoughts, conscious and subconscious emotions and beliefs cause a change in the physical world and attract positive and negative experiences that correspond to the aforementioned thoughts with or without the person taking action to attain such experiences. This process has been described as a harmonious vibration of the Law of Attraction or you get while you think about your thoughts in your experience.

LBD 30 | Creative Imagination
Creative Imagination: The general consensus among new thought is that the Law of Attraction takes the principle of like attracts like and applies it to consciousness.

 

Principles of the Law of Attraction. Many people had said the Law of Attraction is a guide for living on the basis of their faith in the universe, in the universal laws. That’s to them the nature of the law is not one to be settled scientifically and the word “law” carries the same belief based on non-scientific laws from other religions such as the Law of Karma and the Ten Commandments. This is especially true among those who have adherence to various new thoughts.

One common way that new thought adherence utilizes the Law of Attraction is through a practice of positive affirmations. In essence, it is to know what one desires and ask the universe for it. The universe is mentioned broadly stating it can be anything the individual envisions it to be from God through an unknown source of energy. Focus one’s thoughts upon the thing decided with great feelings such as enthusiasm or gratitude. Feel and behave as if the object of one’s desire is already acquired. Be open to receiving it. Thinking of what one does not have, they say manifest itself in the perpetuation of not having. While if one abides by these principles and the voice negative thoughts, the universe will manifest the person’s desire.

The seven steps, desire. You have that strong enthusiasm for that which you want in your life. A real longing for something which is not there. Decision. Know definitely what it is that you want to do or have? Ask. When you are enthusiastic, ask for it in a simple, concise language. Believe. Believe in the accomplishment with strong faith, consciously and subconsciously. Work. Work at it a few minutes daily, seeing yourself in the finished picture. Never outline details, but rather see yourself enjoying that particular thing. Eventually, we’ll see a time it will just appear as a gift or such, or you may see an opportunity to get what you were asking for.

People are more attracted to pleasurable things and tries to avoid painful things.

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Feel gratitude. Always remember to say, “Thank you, God, universe,” and begin to feel the gratitude in your heart. The most powerful prayer which you’ll ever make are those three words provided. Feel as though you already have what you want. Feel expectancy. Train yourself to live in the state of happy expectancy. Find a way it will appear in your life and keep believing that maybe somebody gives it to you or you’re finding initiation to get it. Part of this is about training your attitudes and emotions. The other part is about training your habits. The last part is about creating the right environment. Enough studies have shown that the vividly and sensory-based imaginative training is indistinguishable from actual experience. This is the principle of mind training that all top-class Olympic champions, those who do extensive rehearsal like actors and dancers. I know of a surgeon who had to operate on twins who were joined at the hip level. In order to prepare for the incredibly rare surgery, he created a plasticine model and rehearsed for the final surgery. Needless to say, the surgery went well.

On this podcast, I’m willing to help you design a life that works so that you are able to say yes to the things that matter and eliminate everything else that slows you down. The clearer you can be about how to organize your daily life to support your bigger vision, the more you step into your true potential, stay on track and accomplish all that you want and deserve. Are you ready to make that happen? Feel free to reach out to me and ask a question at AskDrSun.com. Your life is a gift, design it. Do what matters. Join me as we get closer to designing the life of your dreams. Join me on the next episode of Life By Design.

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Is Your Environment Safe?

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I have been writing on health for almost 30 years. One of the very first articles I wrote was on Environmental Toxicity. Bear in mind that this was 25 years ago and the world was not that savvy about toxicity (at least in Singapore). In those days, magazine articles were supposed to be about 2000 words. When I finished my article it was more than double the length at about 5000 words.

 

Is Your Environment Safe?

 

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Welcome to this Podcast “Your Life by Design: A proven system to live fully and finally achieve your Best Year Ever”. I am going to help you get more productive, set awesome goals and achieve the life of your dreams.

Hi I am Dr Sundardas D Annamalay, CEO of the NTC Alliance Group of Companies, author of “Life by Design”and founder of “The Freedom Formula – Mastering, Energy, Money and Leverage in 9 Steps”. I am a Naturopathic Physician and professor of Natural Medicine practicing in Singapore. I also mentor coaches, trainers and experts.

How safe is your environment?

I have been writing on health for almost 30 years. One of the very first articles I wrote was on Environmental Toxicity. Bear in mind that this was 25 years ago and the world was not that savvy about toxicity (at least in Singapore). In those days, magazine articles were supposed to be about 2000 words. When I finished my article it was more than double the length at about 5000 words.

On one hand, I was relieved because I had worked really hard on that article. On the other hand I was horrified. The information I had penned down provided a nightmarish picture of what was going on right beneath our eyes. I couldn’t eat or sleep properly for the next two days.

My editor called me up and grumbled about the length of the article. I told her very politely to feel free to edit it to her heart’s content. I knew she could not. I had written the article too tightly. I was also secretly hoping that I would get paid for two articles instead of one because they would have to run this article as part I and part 2.

My wish came true. Not before she called me a few days later in a state of shock. She could not eat, sleep or rest properly after she read that article either. In a way I felt validated. In another, I felt sick and horrified.

I spent the next 10 years studying, researching and doing post graduate work in Clinical Ecology, Environmental Medicine, Allergies, Cancer and Autism. Along the way I discovered that the same principles of reducing toxic loads would also help couples get pregnant more easily.

In those 10 years, I wrote and accumulated hundreds of pages and documentation on environmental toxicity, illness and pollution. I think I was about 35 when I realized that the sheer volume of literature was so sickening, disheartening and frustrating that it would overwhelm anyone to read it in one book unless it became a reference text. Alternatively I would be branded, tarred and feathered (metaphorically speaking) like the author of “Silent Springs” Rachel Carson was for talking about environmental toxicity long before it was fashionable.

By now as I looked at the epidemic of autism, increase in cancers and strange and bizarre neurological illness, the avalanche of conditions like Chronic Fatigues Syndrome, Fibromyalgia, the increase in liver related toxicity cases, everything started fitting together in a bizarre fashion. Symptoms of environmental toxicity can include the following;

Oily Skin
Weight Gain
Cellulite
Fatigue
Lethargy
Sore and tired eyes
Arthritis
Cataract
Infertility
PMS
Mood Swings
Cancer
Fibroids
Tumours
Atherosclerosis
Heart Disease
Fibroids
Birth Defects
Endometrosis

According to present usages, the term “ecologic illness”, refers to chemically induced disease. The term is used to describe some of the subtler devastating health effects of chemical exposure in the workplace, the home and outdoors. These illnesses, according to San Francisco immunologist Alan S. Levin, appear to stem from damage to the immune system, either from acute poisoning by toxic chemicals or from chronic, low-level exposures that ultimately overwhelm the system. As reviewed by Earon S. Davis, the exact symptoms may vary from person to person, but generally involve an increasing intolerance to wide range of chemicals, including substances like formaldehyde, pesticide, natural gas fumes, perfumes and scents, solvents, tobacco smoke and auto exhaust, to mention the more common offenders.

Exposures to small amounts of substances like lead, mercury, or polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), which have no discernible impact on adults early exposures to dioxin or polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), chemicals from industrial activities that accumulate in dietary fat, damage the developing immune system, making the child more prone to infections. Risks of asthma and high blood pressure are increased by early environmental exposures. All of these significantly affect the reproductive systems of both men and women. Every year there are 2000 new chemicals being introduced into the environment.

We are being exposed to 100, 000 chemicals that our grandparents were not exposed to. Most of the toxic chemicals that are fat soluble are also xenoestrogenic. These include
The PCBs, DDT, PBB not to mention lead, mercury, chlorine, fluoride, antibiotics and steroids in too large amounts as well as toxic tampons and breast implants .

There is a global crisis of potable water, but most people in the industrialized nations either don’t know about it or simply don’t care about it. This lack of awareness about the severity of the problem is short sighted and puts humans all over the globe at risk.

Water is not an inexhaustible resource; in fact, there is a finite amount of water on the Earth which is rapidly being depleted thanks to worldwide population growth and contamination due to the infrastructure that allows humans to drive cars, fly in airplanes, heat their homes, and more.

How critical is the problem? Look at these statistics and judge for yourself:

1.2 billion people get sick each year due to polluted water

At least 10 million people die from dysentery, diarrhea, and other diseases caused by impure water

25 million children under the age of five die each year due to impure water and its related illnesses

According to the United Nations and leading scientists, half of the wetlands on the planet have been destroyed and the rate of destruction is increasing. Our rivers and our streams are polluted and the increasing demand for potable water is leading to serious water shortages. As you can see, there is a real urgency to finding effective ways to conserve and purify water.

Contaminated Water

Modern technology is rapidly destroying water’s life-giving capacities. Increased population, industrial wastes and agricultural chemicals are contaminating our water sources. Examples can be found in chemical spills, landfills, excessive herbicide and pesticide sprays, chemical dumps and nitrate fertilizer run off that affect our lakes, underground aquifers, and rivers. Time Magazine reports “over 4000 chemicals” have already been found in drinking water. All levels of government have been slow to act. Meanwhile, more and more chemicals are showing up in the water supply of America’s cities and towns.” Each year in the U.S., 18 billion pounds of pollutants and chemicals are released by industry into the atmosphere, soil and groundwater.

Researchers studying water have identified a progression of the disease process in our body. We can call this the “cycle of disease,” because a direct progression of deterioration in the body as it becomes susceptible to disease can be seen. It begins with water that is contaminated with toxins and chemicals that can’t be neutralized and as a result, changes the chemistry of body fluids.

Public water treatment systems rely on chlorine to kill harmful bacteria. Until recently, concerns about drinking water focused on eliminating pathogens. Chlorination of drinking water was a major factor in the reduction in the mortality rates associated with waterborne pathogens.

The use of chlorine was believed to be safe until recent years, when halogenated organic compounds, such as chloroform, were identified in chlorinated drinking water supplies. Recent surveys show that these compounds are common in water supplies throughout the North America. These concerns about cancer risks associated with chemical contamination from chlorination by-products have resulted in numerous epidemiological studies.

These studies generally support the notion that by-products of chlorination are associated with increased risk of cancer and other health problems. These risks arise from both drinking and bathing in chlorinated water.

Following are quotes from a variety of sources:

U.S. COUNCIL ON ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY: “Cancer rates for people on chlorinated water systems is 93% higher than for those on non-chlorinated water systems…”

U.S. NEWS &WORLD REPORT – July 29 1991 Is Your Water Safe–The Dangerous State of Your Water “A long hot shower can be dangerous. The toxic chemicals are inhaled in high concentrations.”

High levels of THMs (trihalomethanes) may also have an effect on pregnancy. A California study found that pregnant women who drank large amounts of tap water with high THMs had an increased risk of miscarriage. These studies do not prove that there is a link between THMs and cancer or miscarriage. However, they do show the need for further research in this area to confirm potential health effects.”

Make sure your water is safe and life giving.

On this podcast I’m going to help you design a life that works. So you are able to say yes to the things that matter and eliminate everything else that slows you down. The more clear you can be about how to organize your daily life to support your bigger vision, the more you’ll step into your true potential, stay on track and accomplish all that you want and deserve. Are you ready to make that happen?

Feel free to reach out to me to ask your questions at AskDrSun.com. Your life is a gift. Design it. Do what matters and join me each week as we get closer to designing the life of your dreams. I am Dr Sun. Join me next week on Your Life by Design.

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What Game Are You Playing?

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What type of game are you playing with your life? The long game or the one of immediate gratification? It’s easy to overestimate the importance of luck on success and underestimate the importance of investing in success every single day.

 

What Game Are You Playing?

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What type of game are you playing with your life? Is it the long game or one of immediate gratification? It’s easy to overestimate the importance of luck and success and underestimate the importance of investing in success every single day. Too often, we convince ourselves that success was luck. We tell ourselves that government employee that left millions behind were lucky. No, she wasn’t. She was playing a different game than you were. She was playing the long game. The long game isn’t particularly notable and sometimes it’s not even noticeable. It’s boring, but when someone chooses to play the long game from an early age, the results can be extraordinary. The long game changes how you conduct your personal and business affairs. There’s an old saying that I think of often but I’m not sure where it comes from. If you do what everyone is doing, you will get the results they all get. Ignoring the effect of luck on outcomes, the promo bill, lottery ticket and doing what everyone else is doing ensures you’re going to be average. Not average in the world, but average to people in similar circumstances.

There are a lot of ways not to be average. One of them is a trade-off between the long game and the short game. That’s why lottery tickets’ general rule of thumb is those who never learn to manage money often end up significantly poorer after winning the lottery in a few years after they have run through the money. What starts small compounds into something more? The longer you play the long game, the easier it is to play and the greater the rewards. The longer you play the short game, the harder it becomes to change and the bigger the bill facing you when you do want to change. The short game is what leads you to obesity, diabetes, and heart disease because of the easier choices you made about what you ate, drank, and the exercise you did not do. The Stanford Marshmallow Experiment is a famous study on young children. They could predict in advance which group of four-year-olds was more likely to have better life outcomes as measured by a set of scores, educational attainment, body mass index and other life measures.

The longer you play the long game, the easier it is to play and the greater the reward.

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The short game is putting off anything that seems hard for doing something that seems easy or fun. The short game offers visible and immediate benefits. The short game is seductive. Why learn something boring that doesn’t change when you can learn something sexy that impresses people? Finally, you reach a level of incompetence and you can pull the wool over the eyes of your customers and your corporate career is over. Why bust your butts at work to do the work before the meeting when you can read the executive summary and pretend like everyone else? Until one day, your boss asks to see if you hit the meeting and the truth comes out. Why invest in your relationship with your partner now when you can work a little bit extra in the office and then you wonder why your partner walked out on you. Why do your homework when you can go out and play? This leads to poor grades and all the anger and rage at the school system and does not allow you to be authentic. Why wait to pay for full in cash when you can put it on credit card? This is a shortcut to credit card debt and impending bankruptcy. Why go to the gym when you can go drinking with your friends and many years later comes the heart attack.

The effects of the short game multiply the longer you play. On any given day the impact is small, but as they turn into months and to years the result is enormous. People who play the short game don’t realize the costs until they become too large to ignore. The problem with the short game is that the costs are small and never seem to matter much on any given day. Doing your homework now only give you straight A’s tomorrow. Saving $5 now only makes you a millionaire overnight. Going to the gym and eating healthy now only makes you fit tomorrow. Reading a book only makes you smart. Going to sleep on time will make you healthier tomorrow. We might try these things when we are motivated, but since the results are not immediate, we revert back to the short game. As the weeks turn into months and the months into years, the short game compounds into disastrous results. It’s not the one-day trade-off that matters in values accumulation.

In the Stanford Marshmallow Studies, a child was offered a choice between one small reward provided immediately or two small rewards if they waited for approximately fifteen minutes during which the tester left the room and then returned. The reward was some type of marshmallow, but often a cookie or pretzel. In the follow-up studies, the researchers found that the children who are able to wait longer for their preferred rewards tended to have better life outcomes. While the original study was that the test was a measure of pure willpower, later studies suggested it was a measure of economic background and intact family background. Children from such an environment learn from very early to play the long game rather than go for immediate gratification. Playing the long game means suffering a little now. Why would we want to suffer now when we can suffer tomorrow? If our intention is always changed tomorrow, then tomorrow never comes. All we have is now. Looking at how the Millennials are brought up, I’m somewhat concerned. They were encouraged to go for what they wanted immediately.

Often, they grew up in a school environment where winning and getting good grades without playing. Everyone was a winner from day one. There was no need to play the long game because there was instant gratification. They often did not learn about the messy things, about making friends and relationships because of social media. When I grew up, I hung out with three other guys and then four others I could call friends. I have a few thousand friends on my social media sites. I’m not a Millennial. I know the difference between social media friends and real-time friends. The Millennials are likely to struggle when they go to work in corporations because they will expect instant gratification and recognition for their abilities. They will not know how to play the long game. They’re likely to champion for shorter working hours and work that is more meaningful and impactful. They will struggle in real-time relationships because all they had was social media-type connections.

The long game is the opposite of the short game. It means paying a small price now to make later easier. If we can do these long enough to see the results it feeds on itself. From the outside, the long game looks boring. Save money and investing it for later, leaving the party early to get some sleep. Investing time in your relationship now, so you have a foundation when something happens. Doing your homework before you go out to play, going to the gym rather than watching Netflix and countless other examples. In the simplest form, the long game isn’t debatable. Everyone agrees that we should spend less than we make and invest the difference. Playing the long game is a slight change. One that seems insignificant at the moment, but one that becomes the difference between financial freedom and struggling to make next month’s rent. The first step to the long game is the hardest. The first step is visibly negative. You have to be willing to suffer now in order not to suffer tomorrow. This is why the long game is hard to play.

LBD 27 | The Long Game
The Long Game: Playing the long game means suffering a little today in order not to suffer tomorrow.

 

People rarely see the small steps when you’re looking for enormous outcomes. Deserving enormous outcomes are mostly the results of a series of small steps that culminate into something visible. In everything you do, you’re either playing a short-term or long-term game. You can opt-out and you can play a long-term game in everything. You need to pick what matters to you. In everything you do, time amplifies the difference between long and short-term games. The question you need to think about is when and where to play a long-term game. A good place to start is with things that compound like knowledge, relationships, and finances. One lucky audience that posts a review in iTunes will win a private confidential consultation and coaching with me on discovering your soul’s purpose. I will lead you on a personal journey to discover your unique mind-body psychosomatic map of your life. You will get a detailed report and a personal 45-minute consultation with me that’s worth thousands.

I’m going to help you design a life that works, so you are able to say yes to the things that matter and eliminate everything else that slows you down. The clearer you can be about how to organize your daily life to support your bigger vision, the more you step into your true potential, stay on track, and accomplish all that you want and deserve. Are you ready to make that happen? Feel free to reach out to me to ask your questions at AskDrSun.com. Your life is a gift, design it. Do what matters and join me each episode as we get closer to designing the life of your dreams. Join me next time on Your Life By Design.

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The Science of Happiness

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Compared to 500 years ago, before the exponential explosion of science, technology, wealth, inventions, and access to resources granted us near mastery over our environment, enabled us to meet all our survival needs, and allowed us to enjoy a level of personal comfort and safety unprecedented in human history. Are we any happier?

 

The Science of Happiness

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Over the last several years, a new field of research has gained popularity, the science of happiness. Legitimate researches are dabbling and have published countless studies, books and articles on the topic. My curiosity on the subject has led me to dive deep into the literature on this new state of being. Some scientists conclude that happiness comes from our environment. Some claim that it’s determined by behavior. Some believe it is an evolutionary phenomenon and others are certain that the key to understanding happiness lies in our genetic profile and our biology. No matter what they call it and regardless of their point of view, they all attempt to answer the following question. Compared to 500 years ago, before the exponential explosion of science, technology, wealth, inventions and access to resources granted us near mastery over our environment. It enabled us to meet all our survival needs and allowed us to enjoy a level of personal comfort and safety unprecedented in human history. Are we any happier? There’s no way to summarize all the disparate and contradictory threads on research in one episode.

I’ll share what I’ve discovered about happiness as it relates to the evaluation process we had been going through. All these quality studies in the world mean nothing unless you find a way to connect them to personal experience. A lot of my research into happiness felt abstract until I stumbled upon the golden nugget of insight that makes a huge difference in nearly every facet of my life. This pearl of wisdom informs how I approach wants, desires, relationships, material possessions and important decisions. Here’s the common thread that runs through all the research. Happiness depends on the correlation between your objective conditions and your subjective expectations. Happiness doesn’t depend solely on factors you might expect like wealth, health, community, environment or happiness. Happiness doesn’t depend on your bank balance or whether you live in Hawaii or India. It doesn’t matter if you had a happy childhood or you’re battling cancer. Those things are part of the picture but they’re not as critical as most of us believe. Here is my takeaway from all of that.

Happiness depends on the correlation between your objective conditions and your subjective expectations.

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The pearl of wisdom and this is how I frame all of it in my mind. Expectations are like disappointments in disguise. Expectation management. You might expect a used Dodge minivan. If I get a used Dodge minivan, then I’m content. If I want a brand new Porsche and I get a Dodge minivan, I’m far from content. I’m unhappy. I feel deprived, but not because of the presence of the minivan or the absence of a sports car. I feel deprived because I miscalculated. I failed to calibrate the instrument of my happiness, my expectations from my subjective conditions, reality. You might expect my partner to provide the support I need after a crappy day and the dog gets more love than I do, I’m unhappy. You might expect my boss to respect my work but got nothing but a grunt and a new impossible deadline when I turned in a big project, I’m unhappy.

To put it simply, it’s all about calibrating our calculations and managing your expectations. Most of us aren’t aware of the scores of expectations we have swirling around in our head every day from little things to big things. Expectation management is huge, but expectation mismanagement can break our backs. When reality hits, whether we wake up to realize we’re out of coffee or we don’t get an amazing job we applied for, we wonder why we feel crappy. The reason we feel crappy is the distance and the dissonance between what we expected to get and what we thought. Hence my conclusion that expectations are merely disappointments in disguise. I discovered early in life I was an anxious person. It had to do with being autistic. My life was not about being happy. It was feeling safe and calm. When I knew what I had to do and I could predict what will happen next, it means I could relax and enjoy the moment. I found people illogical and unpredictable. A lot of my time was tied up working out with someone who would do next if it was relevant to me. If not, I did not bother.

LBD 25 | Science Of Happiness
Science Of Happiness: Being satisfied with what we have is far more important than getting more.

 

After a while, I realized that if I set my goals and expectations to be functional, I minimize disappointment and being frustrated, angry or disappointed. The only person who had to rise to the occasion was me because I could control and manage me and the rest were outside of my control. The clearer I became about my expectation and the tyranny of shoulds and musts and so on and the more aware I became, the more relaxed I got. I’ve covered the tyranny of shoulds and musts in previous episodes. I’m not saying that all of this happened overnight. What did happen is I got a handle on this once the world became less and less unsafe and more and more unpredictable. I started enjoying my life more. People noticed how much calmer I became. Hitting the jackpot, two things happen to lottery winners over time. They spend irresponsibility and go broke. They go back to the same level of happiness or unhappiness they had before. Life improved for the lottery winners. Their objective conditions changed significantly, but something else changes through their expectations.

Despite the dramatic improvement in their condition, the lottery winner still managed to feel miserable. This happens because of the entire frame of reference shifts. After the honeymoon period of wealth is over, they return to the default mode of mismanaging expectations even though they have more money than they had before. Similarly, when things deteriorate, they go broke and slide back to the pre-jackpot financial situation. The expectations shrivel up and they return to where they started. On the flip side, expectations are closely associated with anticipation, wanting and the desire for achieving great things. In that way, the fireworks of anticipation are one of the coolest aspects of being human. We imagine, we plan, we work, we accomplish. We set foot on the moon and we cure diseases that not long ago killed millions and that’s all because we expect more. As far as we know, we are the only species gifted with such incredible quality.

Expectations are disappoints in disguise.

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Sure, my wife’s best friends, cats and dogs expect things but the expectations are different. They are thinking about a tasty treat or anticipating the mistress’s imminent return home. The cat is not planning or expecting to cure cancer or send her kittens to Mars. We humans are crazy enough to expect and plan for both of these things. I find it amusing that we have created an entire industry dedicated to finding out what makes us happy. It’s amusing because prophets have been telling us for thousands of years that being satisfied with what we have are far more important than getting more. It’s how all this talk of happiness relates to decluttering. Mismatched expectations creep into the gap between what we want in the world in which we live. Declutter a space that should be simple and clear. Rather than accept the moment, expectations create illusions that have nothing to do with reality.

My personal solution and guiding philosophy around all this is to appreciate, love, and enjoy what I have while balancing it all with the knowledge that’s more out there. This is the skill I’ve had to develop and practice over time. Managing the balance is like an acrobatic team on the tight rope managing the walk across the wire. They maintain constant, dynamic, mindful and vigilant attention to the process. You can believe they didn’t wake up one day doing the art. They had to practice the skill just like I practiced gratitude and work by managing my expectations every day. One last thing I found in my research on the topic is money won’t buy you happiness, but it might buy you a ship to sail and rise up to it.

One lucky audience that posts a review in iTunes will win a private confidential consultation and coaching with me on discovering your soul’s purpose. I will lead you in a personal journey to discover your unique mind, body, psychosomatic map of your life. You will get a detailed report and a personal 45-minute consultation with me that is worth thousands. I’m going to help you design a life that works so you are able to say yes to the things that matter and eliminate everything else that slows you down. The more clear you can be about how to organize your daily life to support your bigger vision, the more you step into your true potential, stay on track and accomplish all that you want and deserve. Are you ready to make that happen? Feel free to reach out to me to ask questions at AskDrSun.com. Your life is a gift. Design it. Do what matters and join me each episode as we get closer to designing the life of your dreams. Join me next time on Your Life By Design.

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