Conscious Dating And Relationships Teleseminar
One of the biggest complaints men have at some point in their life involves relationships and women. Finding “the one” can be a huge pain point for many men. Dating can be an arduous process for many men. Marriage can be strenuous. Long term commitments can be both profound and deadening.
So, what should you do about your dating and relationship challenges?
For starters sign up for my free teleseminar called Relationships with Heart: Dating for Evolving Men on October 20th at 430 PM MST.
I’m psyched once again to be teaching along side my good bro Tripp Lanier, host of the New Man Podcast. We have been invited to teach a teleseminar on dating and relationships with some big wigs in the personal development field.
You’ll get to hear about my own relationship challenges and how I broke through them.
Maestro Conference is a unique platform so you will be in small groups talking to other men from around the world rather than just sit and be a passive listener. It’s super interactive.
I’d recommend checking out their other presenters as well. They have some heavy hitters like Dan Milman, Deepak Chopra, T. Harv Ecker, Decker Cunov and so many other talented gurus. So many awesome calls–go check it out here.
To register for the free call click here.
If you are single, you’ll also want to check out Gaia Soulmates and set up a profile there. Word on the street is that the women far out number the men, so get your profile up and running.
Friday, October 9, 2009
Conscious Dating And Relationships Teleseminar
TED Talks - Sam Martin on Manspaces
From TED.
Author Sam Martin shares photos of a quirky world hobby that's trending with the XY set: the "manspace." (They're custom-built hangouts where a man can claim a bit of his own territory to work, relax, be himself.) Grab a cold one and enjoy.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Andrew Parkes - Dear Men: I Struggle . . . with Male Friendships
[As a side note, Andrew and Tripp need to work out who gets to call their site the New Man - both are using the phrase, granted Tripp's is a podcast.]
Taking it all in...
Dear Men: I Struggle… with male friendships.
I struggle with making new friends - sometimes I judge potential friends incorrectly. Other times, I just don’t want to put myself out there - there is a part of me that is shy and withdrawn when meeting people for the first or second time.
I struggle with developing existing friendships – I never seem to get around to doing this despite my best intentions.
I struggle with being ‘inconvenienced’ by a friend or potential friend – if you call me right now to grab a coffee at Starbucks, I will probably say no because I didn’t plan for it in advance (I am working on being more spontaneous.)
I struggle with including friends in things happening in my life – I usually just do it and then think about including people afterwards.
I struggle with putting enough effort into friendships – I don’t seem to make time for friendships unless where we are meeting, when we are meeting, and what we are doing fits into my schedule, under my own terms.
I struggle with staying in touch enough or on a regular basis. I don’t know what a lot of my friends from high school and university are doing right now because I haven’t put in the effort to stay connected with them.
I struggle with friends that keep our relationship at a surface level.
I struggle with the question: ‘How many of my friends would I feel comfortable calling at 3 AM for support if I was in a crisis situation?’
I struggle with this question: ‘How many of my friends would call me at 3 AM?’
I struggle with wondering how many of my friends truly know me.
Above all, I know I need male friendships and that I can be a good friend. I am just not good at them.
Dear Men: I Struggle. And I know you do, too.
Check out his site for more good content, or to contact him for coaching.
I can relate all too well to much of this. I too am not spontaneous, and am more than a little shy (social anxiety kind of shy). So I feel him here.
But I also know that working on developing a friendship, even just one, over the last year has been very good for me. He and I met as trainer and client, but he lost his job at one point and since I liked him, I offered to work out with him from time to time. Now we work out several days a week.
I've seen him get married and have children. If I needed help moving, I could call him and he would do it, even if it sucked.
I don't know about the 3 am call, though - I don't know anyone other than my girlfriend that I would call in that situation. But that has more to do with who I am than with friendships.
But seriously - how do you make and maintain male friendships? Leave a note in the comments, please.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Humor - Never Judge a Man by His Clothes
Read more.Thugs attack two transvestites... who turn out to be cage fighters wearing fancy dress
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 5:31 PM on 07th October 2009Two thugs who attacked what they thought were a pair of transvestites picked on the wrong men - when their intended victims turned out to be cage fighters on a night out in fancy dress.
Dean Gardener, 19, and Jason Fender, 22, singled out the two men walking along a street in wigs, short skirts and high heels.
Bare-chested Gardener was caught on CCTV confronting one of the men in a pink wig, black skirt and boob tube - then seen swinging a punch, a court heard.
Taunts: Dean Gardener, 19, and Jason Fender, 22, are punched to the ground after attacking two cross-dressing cage fighters
But the other cage fighter, wearing a sparkling black dress and matching long wig, sprang to his friend's help, delivering two lightning-quick punches to the two stunned yobs.
The cage fighters were then seen teetering away in their high heels, stopping only to pick up a clutch bag they dropped during the melee.
Gardener and Fender were left dazed and seen staggering to their feet after their failed attack.
Knockout: One of the cross dressers casually feels for his clutch bag before walking away
CCTV cameras followed the pair as they weaved along The Kingsway in Swansea, South Wales, before being arrested by police.
Mark Davies, defending, said: 'You know it cannot have been a good night when you get into a fight with two cross-dressing men.
'Unfortunately they were extremely drunk.
Dazed: The two cage fighters teeter off on their high heels as their two attackers struggle to get to their feet
'They had been out drinking jugs of cocktails and Fender had drunk at least 10 pints of cider.'
Police later discovered the two drag queens were cage fighters on a fancy dress stag night out with other friends.
Both Gardener and Fender, from Bonymaen, Swansea, pleaded guilty to using abusive words and behaviour.
Marsha Lucas - Fire that Judge: Moving Your Brain Towards Love
Rewire Your Brain For Love
How to change your brain in ways which support healthier, more satisfying relationships.
Marsha Lucas, Ph.D., a psychologist and neuropsychologist, is the author of an upcoming book about mindfulness meditation. See full bio
October 6, 2009, NeuroscienceFire That Judge: Moving Your Brain Towards Love
Can firing the judge in your brain improve your chances at love?We all know that being judgmental isn't a relationship-enhancer. And still, most of us step into that trap, doing damage to our relationships and friendships on a stubbornly regular basis. How about knocking that judge out with a one-two punch -- taking the latest neuroscientific findings about the brain and judgments, and then bringing in a Buddhist nun to finish things off?
Take a look at this new research study in the November 2009 issue of Brain Topography. The title is "Meditators and Non-Meditators: EEG Source Imaging During Resting." The researchers looked at the patterns of brain activity in people who meditate (that is, who practice noticing what their busy, defensive brains are up to and not getting carried away by it), and compared them to non-meditators. You'd expect that meditators would have different patterns of brain activity while meditating than non-meditators do.
What was different in this study? Even when they were at rest, when they were not meditating, the brains of the meditators behaved differently than the control subject. In the brains of the meditators, "appraisal systems were inhibited, while brain areas involved in the detection and integration of internal and external sensory information showed increased activation."
In other words, the meditators' brains weren't judging. They were tuned in to, and integrating, what they were actually experiencing, inside and out -- what could be described as being "in the moment."
Even when they weren't meditating, the brains of the meditators were not getting hooked into patterns of judgment, and the activity recorded on the EEGs suggested that they were more aware of what was really happening in the moment, more present -- even during plain old rest.
This is another piece of evidence which supports that meditation is not just some state you get into for twenty minutes, but that you are changing the way your brain is wired -- so that even when you aren't meditating, you're more mindful and present, and less "stuck" in judging.
I liked that finding, but I liked it even more when, later in the same day, I came across the following "non-scientific" quote, from Pema Chödrön, an American ordained Buddhist nun in the Tibetan Vajrayana tradition:
"Love and compassion are like the weak spots in the walls of ego."
What I take this to mean: The defensive walls that stand between you and deeper, more loving connections with yourself and others will tumble if you let go of judgments and see the humanity of yourself and the person you're with.
Pema Chödrön managed to say in one simple sentence what the neuroscience researchers found: Practicing love and compassion, as we do in meditation, allows you to find the weak spot in the wall. When you meditate regularly, your ego (the wall) isn't as caught up in judging -- which makes room for something more real. Your brain becomes wired differently: It becomes less likely to get into a pattern of judging and being somewhere other than the present moment.
Fire the judge -- and your brain's capacity to be in the moment with your partner goes up.
Down comes the wall.
And that means there's less standing between you and a healthy relationship.
If you'd like a funny and meaningful glimpse of Pema Chödrön, here's a great short video of her, titled "This Lousy World".
And if you'd like to try a simple mindfulness meditation, I invite you to download a free one at RewireYourBrain.com.
Tags:
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
The making of the male brain (estrogen required)
Hmmm . . . seems like we might see this as a metaphor for psychology, as well, that we might be masculine, but we also need some feminine to be whole, mature men.
The making of the male brain (estrogen required)
It's often said that overly macho males suffer from "too much testosterone." But a new study in mice reveals how estrogen might share in that blame.
The report in the October 2nd issue of Cell, a Cell Press publication, reveals how early estrogen exposure "masculinizes" the brain circuitry, predisposing boys to be boys as it were. That early event is specifically critical in producing male mice that will pick fights with other males and that dutifully mark their territories with urine.
"It's been known for decades that estrogen may play a role in making males behave like males," said Nirao Shah of the University of California, San Francisco. "What we do here is to provide insight into the logic of how estrogen regulates that behavior."
The basis for differences between the sexes in such behaviors, they show, may reside in the neurons that are equipped with an enzyme, called aromatase, that converts testosterone into estrogen. The masculine brain has more of those testosterone-converting neurons in certain regions. The researchers now show that these neurons establish a unique neural circuitry in males, and that this difference in wiring depends on estrogen.
The researchers found that female mice exposed to estrogen as pups get wired to behave as "tomboys" of a sort. Their aromatase neurons now look like what is seen in the male brain, and the female mice take on aggressive and territorial behaviors typically reserved for males.
But if estrogen, the female hormone, establishes male behavior patterns, why don't girls act like boys? Shah explains that the ovaries normally don't pump out any hormone that early in life, but males do see a surge in testosterone at a young age, at least some of which gets converted by aromatase to estrogen.
The findings indicate that adult gonadal hormones are not the entire story when it comes to determining masculine versus feminine behavior, Shah said. "Rather than the gonadal hormones telling the adult brain what do to, the brain interprets signals based on its prior history," he said. Thus, female mice exposed to estrogen as pups respond to estrogen as adults by switching on the aggressive and territorial behaviors typically observed in males.
As for whether differences in early estrogen exposure or in the resulting brain circuitry can account for variation among males in stereotypically male behavior remains to be seen, Shah says.
"About eighty percent of male mice will fight with other males routinely, but there is always a fraction that fight poorly or not much at all," he said, a difference that may be explained by some combination of social experience along with early developmental events that wire the brain differently.
Testosterone itself isn't off the hook yet, however. Shah's team suspects it is also likely to have direct effects. As evidence of that, Shah notes that female mice whose brains are masculinized by exposure to estrogen in early development do fight, but they tend to fight with less intensity than males. But when these females have their ovaries -- their adulthood source of estrogen -- removed and are treated with male levels of testosterone, their will to fight goes up. "It suggests testosterone acts on its own receptor to increase the intensity of male-like fighting," Shah said.
###The researchers include Melody V. Wu, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA; Devanand S. Manoli, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA; Eleanor J. Fraser, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA; Jennifer K. Coats, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA; Jessica Tollkuhn, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA; Shin-Ichiro Honda, Fujita Health University, Toyoake, Aichi, Japan; Nobuhiro Harada, Fujita Health University, Toyoake, Aichi, Japan; and Nirao M. Shah, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA.
Monday, October 5, 2009
My Personal Growth - Using Meditation for Personal Growth
Go to the site to get Kevin's tips for beginners.
For centuries, meditation was used, is still in use and will continue to be used by many people in search of their inner selves and inner saints, of peace and quiet in body and mind, of awareness and attention to their environment. Indeed, it is time that you, too, apply the benefits of meditation to advance your lifelong quest for personal growth. However, before you do so, it is important that you acquire as much knowledge as you possibly can about meditation. After all, you want to gain optimal benefits from meditation, of which education will start you on the right path.
Definition of Meditation
Generally speaking, meditation is a mental discipline whereby your body and mind becomes attuned to each other and to the environment, hence, creating deeper self-awareness. In turn, your personal growth is promoted simply because you are more in touch with, more in tune to, and more in control of your inner self, which drives virtually everything that you perform in this life.
Although the popular notion we have of meditation is one of yogis in various states of body contortions, and various stages of mind awareness, the reality is simpler. You can mediate virtually anywhere, anytime! You will need practice, of course, to do so but the benefits are well worth the time and effort expended in learning the techniques of meditation.
Benefits of Meditation
Medical science has uncovered the physical benefits of meditation. These benefits include lowering blood pressure and slowing down breathing, both of which significantly contribute to an enhanced state of physical relaxation. Meditation has also been shown to improve the immune system, thus, leading to the ability of greater resistance to diseases and stress. And let’s face it – the better your physical health, the better you can pursue personal growth!
On the mental side, meditation makes it possible to tune in to your inner self and, hence, tap into the power that lies in each one of us. Yes, we are all pods of a powerful God, pods that we can harness to promote personal growth with the welfare of others in mind. Indeed, when you meditate, you promote a clearer mind and a healthier body, both of which are requisites for personal growth to commence onward and forward. And the best part – it is completely free and safe to apply in everyday life!
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Therapy to End a Relationship
But there is a new movement to make break-ups (especially marriage) easier for everyone involved. In my opinion, men need this more than women. So if you have tried everything and the relationship is doomed, yet you would like to handle this as maturely as possible (without all of your - and hers - childish parts getting activated) maybe a therapist can help. Maybe.
Therapy to Help Couples Break Up?
Counseling couldn't keep Rebecca and Philip's relationship together so they decided to see if it could help them break up. "We both knew the relationship was over, but after 10 years together, we were having an extremely difficult time letting go," says 35-year-old Rebecca. "We'd been in counseling but we couldn't save the relationship, so we asked our therapist to help us split up."
If you're going through a tough breakup, and say, throwing yourself off a bridge, while tempting, just isn't practical, therapy might not be such a bad idea.
"I'm all for it," says Anne Robinson, a Montreal psychotherapist who specializes in couple therapy. She's even tried it herself. During her last big breakup, Robinson and her beau went to a therapist "so we could learn to appreciate each other's positive side." (To me, this sounds like a nice way of saying, "So we wouldn't take each other's eyes out.")
"The relationship is an entity unto itself, something you've created separate from the two of you, something you've invested time and energy into," explains Robinson. "When you break up, you almost have to mourn the loss of it."
According to Robinson, therapy can help you through the process. The classic breakup starts with denial (when you try to convince yourself things are better than they are) and is followed by anger (the aforementioned eye-plucking or, more likely, when you're screaming at each other about why he or she is not the person you want them to be, says Robinson).
Then there's the bargaining stage when you try to make up, and be what the other person wants you to be. Which rarely works and you end up getting depressed. Finally, somewhere down the line, you realize the person was never who you wanted him or her to be and you accept them as they are. "It's like waking up from a dream," says Robinson. "Then you can really move on. Once you've divested yourself from the other person, there is closure."
These stages can take years, she admits, especially if you've been together a long time and losing each other is a bit like losing your left foot. Therapy, whether as a couple or alone, might help you get through the process more quickly - or at the very least, make you feel a little less like a basket case. "It can provide a positive, supportive, encouraging relationship, something a lot of people don't have, or a couple has stopped providing for each other."
Robinson says many therapists feel like failures if they can't keep a relationship together, "but really they can be just as big a help when all hope is lost and the relationship must end." In other words, when you realize you're flogging a dead horse.
Apparently, Robinson rarely sees people who know it's over and want help breaking up. "Most come in with some hope," she says. "It's almost sacrilege to look at the possibility of breaking up. In fact, many couples stop therapy prematurely when they realize a breakup is imminent. Better to live with the demons you know and all that. "Sometimes, what we consider commitment," Robinson continues, "is a fear of being single. For some couples, married 20-30 years, the prospect of being single is too scary, so they pretend things aren't so bad and stop the therapy."
Part of the problem is the status we give to being hitched. "Coupledom is like a God in our culture," agrees Robinson, who's single. "If you're not in one, you're made to feel like half of you is missing, you're not as accepted."
With what she sees in her practice, Robinson says she'd rather be single. "Working as a couple therapist, you realize it's not so much better on that side of the fence," she laughs. "Whether you're in a couple or single, it's work. They're just different sets of challenges. Being single you combat loneliness and isolation and being in a couple you fight to hang on to your individuality."
Therapy can help you feel better about yourself, it can help remind you that you're not alone and it's not the end of the world (honest, it's not), whether you're going through a breakup or a life change. The key word here, though, is "can" - therapy doesn't always work.
These days, Rebecca and Philip aren't speaking at all.
Saturday, October 3, 2009
Being in Love Gives Us a "Global" Perspective
This article looks at research that shows that the feeling of romantic love offers a long-term global perspective, making us more creative, while sexual attraction is more of a cognitive experience that limits us and reduces creativity.
Does Falling in Love Make Us More Creative?
A new study demonstrates that thinking about love--but not about sex--causes us to think more "globally," making it easier to come up with new ideas
Adam Kazmierski
By Nira Liberman and Oren Shapira
Love has inspired countless works of art, from immortal plays such as Romeo and Juliet, to architectural masterpieces such as the Taj Mahal, to classic pop songs, like Queen's “Love of My Life”. This raises the obvious question: why is love such a stimulating emotion? Why does the act of falling in love – or at least thinking about love – lead to such a spur of creative productivity?
One possibility is that when we’re in love we actually think differently. This romantic hypothesis was recently tested by the psychologists Jens Förster, Kai Epstude, and Amina Özelsel at the University of Amsterdam. The researchers found that love really does alter our thoughts, and that this profound emotion affects us in a way that is different than simply thinking about sex.
The clever experiments demonstrated that love makes us think differently in that it triggers global processing, which in turn promotes creative thinking and interferes with analytic thinking. Thinking about sex, however, has the opposite effect: it triggers local processing, which in turn promotes analytic thinking and interferes with creativity.
Why does love make us think more globally? The researchers suggest that romantic love induces a long-term perspective, whereas sexual desire induces a short-term perspective. This is because love typically entails wishes and goals of prolonged attachment with a person, whereas sexual desire is typically focused on engaging in sexual activities in the "here and now". Consistent with this idea, when the researchers asked people to imagine a romantic date or a casual sex encounter, they found that those who imagined dates imagined them as occurring farther into the future than those who imagined casual sex.
According to construal level theory (CLT), thinking about events that are farther into the future or past - or any kind psychological distancing (such as considering things or people that are physically farther away, or considering remote, unlikely alternatives to reality) triggers a more global processing style. In other words, psychological distancing makes us see the forest rather than the individual trees.
A global processing style promotes creative thinking because it helps raise remote and uncommon associations. Consider, for example, the act of finding a gift for your partner. If we think about a gift while in a local mindset, then we’ll probably focus on more literal and concrete options, most of which involve a tangible object wrapped in colorful paper. We’ll probably consider the usual suspects, such as a watch, a book, or perfume. However, thinking about a gift more globally might inspire us to consider a gift as "anything that will make him/her happy". This may, in turn, bring to mind more diverse and original ideas, such as going on a joint vacation, writing a song, or cleaning and remodeling the house. Of course, this doesn’t mean we should always think globally. While local processing might interfere with creativity, it also promotes analytic thinking, which requires us to apply logical rules. For example, if you are looking for a piece of furniture in a big display according to a pre-defined list of criteria (e.g., size, color, price), a local mindset may help you find a match, by preventing you from being side-tracked by attractive but irrelevant options and by making you pay more attention to relevant details.
In sum, the authors suggest that, because love activates a long-term perspective that elicits global processing, it should also promote creativity and impede analytic thinking. In contrast, inasmuch as sex activates a short-term perspective that elicits local processing, it should also promote analytic thinking and impede creative thinking.
The authors present two studies to support this model. Participants in the first study first imagined one of three situations: a long walk with their beloved one (the love condition), casual sex with a person to whom they were attracted but not in love with (the sex condition), or a nice walk on their own (the control condition). Participants then attempted to solve three creative insight problems and four problems that assess analytic thinking, which were logic problems from the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) (e.g., if A <> B then ?) As predicted, participants in the love condition solved more creativity problems and less analytic problems than those in the control condition. Participants in the sex condition, on the other hand, solved less creativity problems and more analytic problems compared to participants in the control condition.
The second study examined whether more subtle reminders of love and sex can also elicit similar effects. First, as part of an alleged attention task, participants were subliminally presented with words related to love (e.g. "loving"), words related to sex (e.g., "eroticism"), or a non-word letter string (control condition; "XQFBZ"). Next, analytic thinking was measured using the same GRE problems as in the first study. Creative thinking was measured this time using a generation task, in which participants had limited time to generate as many uses for a brick as possible. Replicating the findings of the first study, participants in the love condition generated more creative uses and solved less analytic problems than those in the control condition, whereas participants in the sex condition displayed the opposite pattern.
One of the most noteworthy implications of these experiments is that love and sex don’t simply influence the way we think about the people we love or desire. Instead, they influence the way we think about everything. The same researchers demonstrate this tendency in yet another experiment. When in love, it seems, we struggle to distinguish between the different qualities of the beloved person (e.g., "If he is so handsome, he must also be kind!"), a phenomenon that is often labeled the halo effect. Does love also promote halo effects for other objects? It seems that the answer is yes. The same group of researchers reasoned that the halo effect reflects global processing, and therefore it should increase when people think of love and decrease when they think of sex. They found the predicted pattern of evaluations (that is, less differentiation between distinct qualities after thinking about love and more differentiation after thinking about sex), not only in evaluations of a romantic partner, but also in evaluating different aspects of a chair!
The takeaway lesson is that thinking about love, or anything that promotes a distal perspective or global processing, can make us more creative. Perhaps love is an especially potent way to induce in us a sense of transcendence – being in the here and now yet also contemplating the distant future and maybe even eternity.ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)
Nira Liberman is a professor of psychology at Tel Aviv University. Oren Shapira is a graduate student in the Liberman lab.
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Rob McNamara - Relaxation & Performance
Nice post from Rob on finding the balance between getting things done and taking care of ourselves. For many men, this can be a hard balance to find.
Many people whom are unconsciously caught in their conditioning make the mistake of pushing harder in the attempt to get more done in their life. While the initial effort may yield some short term benefit, as an enduring strategy for productivity and performance this approach is severely misguided. Getting stuck in this modality of functioning is the equivalent of being in first gear and pressing the peddle down harder and harder to go faster. Sure you’re going to go a little bit faster initially however you’re going to top out at 25 miles an hour and if you keep doing this day in and day out you’re going to do tremendous damage to your engine.Relaxation & Performance - 9/30/09
The most efficient and effective way to enhance your performance is to refine your recovery. Wether you are trying to grow a company 7% above and beyond your annual organic growth or make an NFL roster by cutting your 40 time down by two hundredths of a second while refining your understanding of defensive assignments the formula remains the same: Relax!
Any integral approach to performance must include efficient and densely effective forms of accelerated recovery. Relaxation cuts stress levels and its associated biochemicals cortisol, ACTH, lactate and adrenaline. A potent dose of recovery also reduces muscular tension, heart rate and oxygen consumption. Relaxation increases the sensitivity of your brain and nervous system, increases your capacity for memory formation, quickens your reaction times by refining neuro-efficiency and facilitates brain growth and plasticity. When we look at individuals who have a consistent strategy for relaxation and efficient recovery we find individuals who are operating in life with much more adaptive skills and capacities for execution than individuals who fail to relax.
Just as when you go from first to second gear and from second to third, forth and fifth gear you must put the clutch down. Before you can ramp up your productivity to the next level, you must relax, you must put your clutch down and allow your conditioned RPMs to drop. When you set your physiological and psychological faculties to be more responsive, adaptive and refined you’ll start to explore performance from a new perspective and territory.
Performance as you will come to see is dependent not upon more contracted habituated effort to push through, but rather your ability to relax, open and thus generate true force in your life and in the world.
Thu, Oct 8, 2009