Jamie Fellrath | Practical Mindfulness

Are you one of those people whose brainstorming abilities are barely under control?  When you have an idea, do the details come pouring forth in a tidal wave, and get lost as they crash to the shore and pour back into the sea? That is me in a nutshell.  I'm full of ideas, but when they come it's hard for me to get them under control and organize anything.  I've tried notepads, using my good friend Evernote , and a whole host of other stuff to get those crazy ideas under control and in some semblance of readability.  But that's tough sometimes when you have eighty things going on at once.  Enter my new favorite tool, the mind map .  I don't know if you've ever come across this concept, but basically it's something like this:   The basic idea is that the shape at the middle is the "main topic" at hand.  The branches out from the main topic are the subtopics, and then the smaller branches are the details, etc. It's a simple enough conc

It sort of goes without saying that if you want to know more, you have to learn more.  And despite the influx of blogs, podcasts, videos, e-newsletters, etc. as sources of great knowledge in any and all topics, nothing beats the good old-fashioned book. Format of books aside (paper or digital is entirely up to you), books provide a complete look at a topic as an author intended - something that short blogs and random articles can't do.  If you're learning a personal development system, for example, you'll generally get an entire system to work with.  If you're learning an exercise program, you'll get the whole program at once and always have it at your fingertips.  The value and benefit of books can't really be overstated.   However...  The love of books generally translates into the creation of reading lists.  And reading lists can take a number of forms - from a group of books physically sitting on a shelf to detailed topic-driven lists of books

What would you say if I told you that the lifestyle choices you're making today affect not only yourself, but possibly the next four generations of your descendants? Think about that for a minute.  Many people start their health-related thinking with the point of view that they're only hurting themselves, so they'd much rather "just enjoy life" than take care of themselves properly. But, there may be more to it than that.  Check out the video below from The Bulletproof Executive podcast, where host Dave Asprey is talking to Doctor Terry Wahls (author of the recent book The Wahls Protocol: How I Beat Progressive MS Using Paleo Principles and Functional Medicine ). At about the 35-minute mark, the subject turns to epigenetics, which is the study of how various genes are expressed.  For example, you'll hear people talk about how they have a particular disease gene, and they're just waiting for it to manifest as the actual disease.  Epigenetics is s

Last night, I forgot to bring my Kindle Fire HD home with me from the office.  I generally let it charge while I'm at work all day and of course I use it during lunch, commutes, etc. when I'm reading.  It's a wi-fi only model, which means that I can only do offline activities with it during my commutes and whenever I'm out of wi-fi range. And guess what?  The sky didn't fall.  And I got a whole lot more stuff done this morning before heading to work. The Kindle Fire is a great little tablet, don't get me wrong.  I use it for lots of stuff, including books, magazines, social media, my Evernote usage, and more.  It's really convenient to have all that in one package wherever I go - as long as I remember to take it with me. :) But there's almost nothing I need on it that I don't also have available via a PC or my iPhone.  So it's more used out of convenience, and for when I want to read and not blind myself with the tiny text on my phone.  A c

Over the past 30 days, I've been doing one of these internet meme athletic challenges, in this case the #PlankChallenge.  I'm sure you've seen them.  These are the challenges where someone posts a picture like this: It's pretty easy to see how this works.  You basically just do the prescribed amount of reps/time for the exercise in question for each day, and then announce your progress on social media using the indicated hashtag.   I think these are a great idea, but not necessarily for the reason you think they are. Yes, they help you get in better shape, especially when it's a challenge on a core muscle group like planks above.  That can't be denied.  I will take issue with the amount of rest this particular challenge allows you, however.  Some of these challenges will actually do a hard day, then drop back to an easier day as a rest of sorts... the one I just completed did not do this, as you can see.  That got to be pretty tough in the second ha

I got a tweet to my @Train4AutismCLB account the other day, just out of the blue, that really got me thinking about goals and motivations.  For those who aren't in the autism community, there's a bit of a rift regarding the charity Autism Speaks, which is the biggest, most visible autism charity out there.  Many people who are higher-functioning autistics believe that one of the organization's stated goals of "curing" autism would only take away a facet of their personalities that make them what they are.  Then there are those who would love to have a cure for autism or at least some way to relieve some of the nastier aspects of autism and help their loved ones to have an easier time functioning in today's society.  It's a fine line, no doubt.  But the tweet I got was from someone whose profile said they were an aspie, which is shorthand for someone with Asperger's Syndrome.  This is a high-functioning form of autism where people are very smar