#9

‘Simply by telling 44 hotel maids that what they did each day involved some serious exercise, the Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer and Alia J. Crum, a student, were apparently able to lower the women’s blood pressure, shave pounds off their bodies and improve their body-fat and “waist to hip” ratios. Self-awareness, it seems, was the women’s elliptical trainer’ NY Times 2007.

It's astonishing to comprehend that just believing something to be the case can make it have some benefit. I wonder how often we approach a task and our belief about that task invokes the placebo effect – positively or negatively? 

Something worth considering.

Read the New York Times article here, The Harvard Paper here and another article about this paper here.

2. Quote of the week: "Remember when you wanted what you currently have?"

This hit me quite hard this week. In my striving, I’m prone to forgetting where I’ve come from. When I pause, breathe and reflect on what it was I was dreaming about a number of years ago and connect it to what I have now - real and perceived - it serves as a good reminder.

I now have a lot of what I thought I wanted way back then. What I wanted has certainly changed and the balance between tangible and intangible has certainly shifted.

How lucky am I! What about you? What did you want all those years ago that you now have?

3. Question of the week: What's a great life for me?

I’m constantly exposed and exposing myself to the views and methods of others that educate, inspire and occasionally frustrate and confront me!

They educate me about things I didn’t know and help me connect things in my head that were previously un-connected. They inspire me to keep going, to resolve to get better bit by bit. They frustrate me because I’m not there yet and there are so many divergent views about what success looks like. They also confront me by holding up a mirror and exposing my blind spots, imperfections and things I’ve put in the too-hard-to-deal-with-now bucket.

The conclusion, I’m attempting to lean more and more into, is getting clarity about what a great life for me looks and feels like. Selfish I know! But if I can get clarity, congruent and comfortable with looking after my hopes, dreams and desires then I think I can probably be in service to others in a better more inspiring way. It’s a challenge when there’s constant and relentless opportunity for comparison but, if I can use other views as a framework to guide rather than a cage to constrict, then I might be OK 😊.

4. Freedom Fridays - My weekly experiment with time and focus

This week was an enlightening and terrifying week. Episode #7 is predominantly all about how prone we are to pick up on the energy and beliefs from others and society’s expectations of us.

Click below to listen to Episode 7.

That's all for this week and I hope you enjoyed Weekly Whisper #9 - let me know if you did.

Cheers

Pete