Tag: featured

We’re Holding On To Things We Don’t Even Know Are Hurting Us

Published on by The Five Minute MindLeave a comment
There’s something challenging about looking within. 

And since the only person who will ever truly be able to do it is ourselves, that makes it a pretty big challenge. 

Objectively, I think that everyone has the capability to take a look at what’s brewing underneath their own hood- and there are major health benefits in doing so. 

Being self-aware and taking the time to look at ourselves can help us notice and address things that aren’t helping us anymore; things that could actually be hurting us yet we’re entirely unaware of. I’ve been learning about how the body can store different types of emotional pain in different areas of the body.  This means that how something made you feel can literally translate to physical discomfort or pain building up in your body somewhere. 

When our hand touches a hot stove, or even feels some heat coming off of it, we immediately pull it away, or better yet keep it away from the stove altogether. This is common sense, that s*** is hot, why would we want to burn ourselves. 

The problem with emotional and psychological pain is that there’s a lot of it that we don’t see or have an idea about. And you can’t fix a problem you don’t know you have, right?

The thing with taking a look at what’s happening inside the mind is that it’s no coincidence that we’re oblivious to what’s happening. As already mentioned, we can’t see it ourselves; so unless we actively put an effort to peak at what’s inside us, it’s never going to happen. Nobody on this earth can do it for you.

So why don’t we then, if the onus is really just on us?

The answer is that it can be a pretty daunting, scary, and damn right uncomfortable thing to do. Who we are inside is between one person and one person only. We can’t blame something we don’t like on someone else, a situation, or some other thing. Which, as it turns out, is what our minds really like to do. Whether we like it or not, the conscious and subconscious parts of our mind are constantly justifying and explaining things to ourselves to reduce the amount of distress or tension that we feel. 

There’s a term for this, if you cared about these things. 

It’s called Cognitive Dissonance, and it’s a name for the mental stress we feel when we consciously do or think things that don’t jive with what our subconscious truly feels. 

For example, if you say you can’t stand when someone comes in late but had the time to stop and get themselves some coffee, and then you go ahead and waltz into a meeting 15 minutes past the start time with a pumpkin spice latte in your hand, it’s going to put some pressure on your mental (whether you know it or not). 

When things are going on that we don’t know about, there’s simply nothing we can do about solving them. I’ve found that looking deep inside of myself can be intimidating, because I find things that I like and things that I don’t. Looking at things that I don’t like about myself, for all intents and purposes, is uncomfortable. As it should be. 

Pairing that with an open-mind but more importantly, a willingness to grow can pay dividends in the long run when it comes to mental (which translates to physical) health. 

It takes courage to actively look into things about your personality and emotions and see them for what they are. And part of that is understanding who we are when we take that look. Being critical and just searching for things to criticize can deal significant blows to our psychological ego that we might not be prepared for. 

It’s like a simple form of pure observation: gently looking at everything we’re seeing with an open-mind, jotting down the things we notice. I find it just as important to be observing positive things as much as negative things, maybe even more. Fortifying the characteristics we love about ourselves by affirming them in thought, and being open and inquisitive to the things we find that we don’t like.

Authors that have influenced the way I think about these things talk about questioning these things, becoming curious about them in a non-threatening way. Simply challenging them in this way can start foraging a path for us to begin walking down.  

Pairing it with a strong perspective of a growth mindset can help us realize that growing through it and changing this aspect of ourselves is a very real possibility.

I used to struggle significantly with anger in my youth and as a young adult, and it’s through processes like this where I enabled myself to challenge it and grow. 

It’s not easy, instant, or fun; but its value is undeniable. Uncovering things about yourself might feel uncomfortable, but getting down deeper and exploring why you are the way you are about something can help take the ammo out of the gun that you don’t even know is firing. 

If it sounds like something you’re up to the challenge for, you’re going to have to do some convincing.

But only for one person.

Practice happiness, reduce your stress with a simple guided journal, whether you’re a beginner or an experienced writer.

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Why Is It Easier To Focus On Negative Things? And What Science Says To Fix It

Published on by The Five Minute Mind2 Comments

It doesn’t take a genius to explain that being happy is much more enjoyable than being miserable but, mirroring how complex the human mind is, true comprehension of happiness is the type of lifelong stuff that we may never fully figure out. Yet the nature of it, at least for me, is so interesting and worthy of study that I naturally feel compelled to learn more- and like the Rock on his “cheat day” from his rigourous diet, I’m hungry. 


As you already know, the world can be a pretty negative place. 

People that seem to enjoy sucking the energy out of places, internet trolls, and don’t even get me started on the news. Negativity breeds negativity, or so the saying goes, and for some reason or other, it just seems like we’re naturally able to listen easier to that negative voice, feeling, or person, more than the positive stuff.

Why?

One of my favourite authors, Harvard psychologist Shawn Achor, explains why we as humans just can’t help but be drawn to the negative stuff sometimes and how it’s just flat out easier to feel negativity than it is to feel happy (or else I’m sure that we all would just choose to be happy).

He basically says that way back in the day, like way, way back in the day, all that negativity was actually super helpful in keeping us alive. 

In early human times, the fella that walked around in the sun thinking about how great everything is was much more likely to get devoured by some sort of vicious predator or ignore other signs of danger, like say walking off a waterfall (I don’t know, I wasn’t there- you come up with a better example).

So as a result, those that were able to focus more on all the bad things that could be around them lived more and the others… Died. 

This repeated itself over and over until the genes of all those negative people who were pretty good at singing Bee Gee’s songs lived long enough to pass down the habit to their kids and the others either learned quick or didn’t get the chance to even have kids.

When it comes to survival, that stuff makes a lot of sense. But the reality is now that we don’t have any real threats that are hunting us down and trying to kill us each day.

Since we can’t just give the habit back to whoever gave it to us, we as humans have an innate proclivity towards sifting out all those negative messages from the good ones, as those are the ones that can do damage to us.

A huge example of this is the news. Why do they report such negative content all the time? The answer is simply because they’re doing what every business tries to do: give the people what they want, so they can make money from it.

People are just naturally more interested to read or hear about that homicide that happened the other day, or whatever else happened that was horrific in some way. The interest comes from the simple fact that we focus on it more subconsciously because our instincts make us feel like it could possibly threaten us in some way.

It doesn’t look like this type of media is going to change either, after a Russian news site decided to pump out only positivity for a week and lost two-thirds of its readership in one day. 

Anyone in charge of anything at a news company will undoubtedly avoid making the same mistake. For myself, I chose to unfollow any news outlet or source of breaking information because I simply realized that internalizing all of that negativity is likely influencing me far more than being ‘in the know’ about the horrors going on. 

I also figured that if something was big enough to actually impact me, I would almost certainly hear about it from other people– and I really don’t care if I’m the first to know.

Another idea Achor explains is that to counteract these negative messages it takes a considerable amount of effort. 

Since we are predisposed to focus more on bad things, it takes 3 positive messages to counteract 1 negative message. 

An example of this could be at work, or school, or wherever you spend the most time. Someone could tell you you’re doing a good job or give you another positive affirmation of some kind, but if the next person told you that you’re useless there, the message from that person who’s probably just taking out some of their own inner turmoil out on you would stick with you for far longer than the person who told you’re doing good work. 

We’d wonder what that guy’s deal was and likely begin questioning if he was right or what exactly he was meaning.

The same goes for the rest of the negative messages in the real world. Since we’re just instinctively more concerned about negative things, we grant them way more of our focus than the others. 

To balance this, seeking out those messages of positivity can help train our brains to see more of what we’d rather see and not what our instinctive brain thinks we want to see.

Pointing out areas of gratitude is a great way to plug this in- it can really start by taking a minute every day to think about all the things you’re grateful to have and that you’d be upset if you didn’t have. 

As we know in this world, anything can change at any minute and that thing you took for granted every day can be gone in a second.

Gratitude doesn’t have to be for all of the best things in your life either. Do you have eyes in your head right now to read this? Sweet, that’s pretty dope. 36 million people in the world aren’t so lucky. 

If you’re scrolling on a phone to read this, imagine how difficult your everyday life would be without it, and the opportunities and ease it affords you. You get the idea, and the examples are limitless.

One could even say those tiny little things that make you feel good for a moment, or longer, are worth giving more attention to, and we as privileged humans probably overlook them on a daily basis. 

As I’ve explained in this article, it’s not exactly our fault (we can blame the ancestors and their knack for surviving).

I started out a series a couple of weeks ago, and it literally just gives a shout out to those good feelings we’re all familiar with that might slip under our radars if we let them.

If you haven’t already, you can check them out here and here.

As always, thanks for reading and your help makes a big difference in the growth for The Five You Need. We’ve eclipsed over 2,500 followers across all platforms and I’m super grateful for that.

If you think anyone else might like to read about this study, you can send it to them directly with the buttons below.

The next goal is getting to 1,500 likes on the Facebook page (currently at 1,283). We’re almost there! Help a guy out and give some love to anything you see on Facebook from The Five You Need, it helps Facebook see that what the page is sharing is worth showing to more people. 

Thanks!


Sources:

  • Achor, S. (2010). The happiness advantage: The seven principles of positive psychology that fuel success and performance at work.
  • Achor, S. (2013). Before happiness: the 5 hidden keys to achieving success, spreading happiness, and sustaining positive change. First edition. New York: Crown Business.

You Can’t Always Choose Life, But You Can Choose Gratitude

Published on by The Five Minute MindLeave a comment

Gratitude comes at me in so many different ways it’s not even funny. It’s easy to be grateful for family, friends, achievements, and stuff like that- because those are some of the best things in life. Naturally, we like these things.

Duh.

Today though I found myself feeling gratitude for an event that could’ve been immensely worse had the dice been shaken differently and thrown a different way. The kind of gratitude that left me with something I cherish deeply: life.

Taking things back a bit, and I’m cruising through Thailand on a bike I rented from the mountainous Pai area to head back down to the bustling but charming city of Chiang Mai. I had trekked up about a week prior and now it was time to head south again to move on to the next leg of our journey, back down the mountain highway.

Winding through the road with the smell of a jungle-y forest and the remnants of the rain that had swept through an hour ago made for an unreal ride. After about a quarter of the way down, we stopped to grab a tea as these two particular Canadian boys had somehow already become climatized enough that temperatures in the mid-to-low twenties were actually making us chilly, in lieu of the usual high thirties.

Not even an hour after sending my mid-journey snaps and messages to people back home, winding around the corner I caught a blanket of gravel while trying to hang the curve to the right.

It didn’t work so good, and in a split second, I spilled over top of the handlebars and onto the highway, crashing to the ground.

I immediately jumped up, in a daze while I tried to make sense of what just happened. Braden had slipped in front and hadn’t seen me tumble.

The tingly-sensation of shock crept across my body as I instinctively screamed his name, hoping he would hear and come back for me.

Nothing.

I began to feel out of body as I looked over my wounds, looking but not really seeing them. Noticing the shock in my body rising, I began reassuring myself despite the fact that the pain hadn’t set in yet- this concerned me.

I watched as a few cars drove past me, my wounds beginning to bleed and my shredded poncho reduced to just a symbol of what had happened. On queue, Braden raced around the corner, and a local pulled over and ran to my assistance. I’m not even really sure how everything happened from there on, but the bike was pulled from under the guard rail and I was loaded into the local’s vehicle- a man named Te (who had at some point also enlisted the help of another local woman, who climbed in quickly to take me to the hospital. I could feel my bearings coming back to me, and while this was nice, this was accompanied by the corresponding pain.

Three doctors hurriedly but meticulously cleaned the various wounds ranging from my shoulders to my feet. Braden and Te made sure to capture the whole encounter through photos, as Te was incredulously and affectionately calling me Superman as I refused to take a photo without smiling. Albeit some were downright forced, as the skin in the right side of my body were scraped and scrambled like ground beef cooking over the stove.

Slowly, in between the winces the whole ordeal slowly crystallized in my mind. The bike jammed into the metal plated guardrail, the way I fell off the bike and protected my head, and the local who found me and came to my rescue instantly, loading me into his car, blood and all.

Sitting there finishing getting cleaned and sterilized, and the bandages relieving some of the pain, I realized how lucky I was.

Not going to lie, tears formed in my eyes.

Te waited for the duration until I was cleared to leave the hospital, and while his English was a little less developed, he understood enough for us to embrace each other and revel in the moment.

I sat there with the most tremendous and profound gratitude for life and the way I had avoided being closer to an encounter that jeopardized it. Reality hits me in different ways, but nothing could stop me from the thankfulness for the severity of the situation and the kindness shown from absolute strangers.

Toughness is a quality I’ve been both unpacking and exploring lately, and even on the ride to the hospital, however delusional it may be, I was thankful for the opportunity to show myself that I was tougher than this event. Someone dear to me explained the beauty in adversity, and how in these moments we find out who we really are and in turn presented with an opportunity for growth.

I can definitely be a big baby some times, but through this I was excited to dig down and power through it. A little unorthodox? Maybe. But after today there’s no other way to frame it.

I’m sure I could look at it all from a different lens, criticizing the roads, weather, luck, or maybe even my driving. But truthfully that sounds like such a bizarre concept that accepting that is less likely than me getting my damage deposit back on the bike I just crashed.

Not a freakin’ chance.

I’m going to keep loving life, loving today, and carry it with me tomorrow.

What about you? Leave me a comment and tell me something you’re grateful for!

Te, left side in the red shirt. The doctors/nurses who mended me. And the woman who guided Te to the hospital!

How Having The Wrong Mindset Will Kill You

Published on by The Five Minute Mind8 Comments

The human mind is crazy, and the things it’s capable of really blow me away. Having the right mindset when looking at the intimidatingly mountainous task of making something of yourself is everything; failing to do so can keep you stuck standing still. I myself used to be quite the negative guy, justifying my pessimism by attributing it to only being ‘realistic’.

“Being realistic is the most commonly travelled road to mediocrity.”

I came across this quote the other day from the legendary Will Smith, long since my favourite celebrity since he showed the world how fresh being a prince in a rich suburb really was. First, I took these words in for what they are and internalized them. Second, I posted about it to contribute to Will Smith Wednesday (it’s a real thing, and I shouldn’t even be surprised that the internet beat me to the punch on this one).

If you follow this stud through out his career, you can see just how relentlessly hard he works in order to get to where he is- and I’ve also always admired how he never hides from his emotions or feelings, regardless of what it might make people think. As being honest and vulnerable with yourself has been a pretty big theme lately, you can see why this is a big deal.

But it made me think about placebo and how well-documented it is about how much tricking the mind can really do. From things such as people feeling stronger and more balanced when they put a rubber band on their wrist, to people literally being exposed to stuff they’re allergic to and feeling nothing because they took a pill to supposedly ‘counteract’ their allergy (when it was nothing but a capsule of sugar).

Seriously, even studies were done on placebo trials with dogs suffering from epilepsy, and found that both control groups of dogs reacted positively to the medication- and again, one group of pills was nothing. I’m still trying to wrap my head around that one, but great news for the pups.

So what does that mean for us? When I heard about stuff like this I felt a burning desire to harness this in some way to really maximize what I’m capable of, plus those around me.

If someone came from the future, gave you some irrefutable evidence that they were in fact straight out of the future and McFlyin’ back only to let you know how wildly successful you were about to become in a few years- would you believe them?

This drives me wild. If there was undeniable evidence of something so definite and concrete about how we are going to achieve everything you’ve ever wanted to achieve, you have no other choice but to believe it. Making this change in your mind opens pathways in your head, and your brain sets out to work on routing the journey between where you are, and where you are told you are going.

If this sounds crazy to you- good.

But believe it or not, the visionaries and monumental innovators in this world all started as bright-eyed students of life, planning their moves that would soon change the world. Don’t think for a second that these people did not possess a grande, elaborate visual of what was to come. Thinking and visualizing all of the intricacies and tiny details about what you want out of yourself and your life is the biggest step you can take to start hiking towards that mental picture. From being the CEO of some outlandish company to fully taking control of your own happiness, whatever you want most is yours.

Allowing yourself to see the finished product before you’re done is like building a puzzle and having some of the pieces around the border put together, making it easier because you’re able to visualize the puzzle completed and whole.

Why would your dreams be any different?

Thinking for success is the first step, but it is still nothing without knowing. Converting this belief into a rock-solid knowledge is necessary and removes the doubts in your mind that might end up slowing you down. You need to let your mind know how possible what you’re doing is before you’re able to see solutions and actions to get you closer to your goal. If you think something simply cannot be done, you immediately shut down a huge chunk of your mind’s power generators that can be utilized to produce solutions to obstacles in your way. Your mind will not be creative in seeking out an answer for something you’ve already taped off as impossible. Why would it?

“I can create whatever I want to create.”

Another piece of gold from Will, and I encourage you to check out the engine underneath the hood of the people that inspire you most. Understanding what makes these people tick can shed some light on how you can help yourself improve.

And for placebo- be that friend around everyone that’s always feeding people heaps of positivity. If you’re able to tell people what they’re good at, the simple reality is that they will truly become better at it. I would say to keep things realistic, but studies have even shown how placebos still work even when the group knows they are taking a placebo. This means that even when people know that the medication or aid is completely fake, it still makes them do better than the people without it.  If that doesn’t tell you to always believe in yourself, I don’t know what will.

Now I’ll ask again: if someone all-knowing could tell you how wildly successful and happy you will be in the future, would you believe them?

Why can’t it be you?