Managing Your Monkey: Mind Fitness / Change Your Life / Save Your Life

By Alan Steelman

The seas of life are choppy. We can't change the external events in our lives, but we can adopt methods and techniques to navigate the choppy seas and even the periodic tsunamis that can otherwise
traumatize.

There are four critical factors in achieving a life of resilience and emotional balance: Success (managing our self-limiting beliefs), premature aging (DNA aging), physical health (undigested stress), and mental well-being (resilence and the ability to surf the choppy seas of life).

A detailed 66-day regimen based on The Six Pillars of Well-Being: Sleep, Nutrition, Exercise, Meditation, Social Networks and Nature is provided with the caution that "vision without execution is another word for hallucination". A dream of a life-changing and in some cases, life-saving experience is available if the regimen is followed and executed with discipline. Provided are life stories, with pictures of individuals whose lives have been impacted in dramatic ways by its adoption.

For those who employ the Six Pillars, awaiting them is a life of resilience and ability to adapt and even sometimes thrive in the midst of some of life's greatest challenges. The brick house and its ability to withstand the "rains, floods and winds" referenced in the book of Matthew is a good metaphor for the Pillars and what they provide us. Purpose is the roof and sleep is the foundation upon which the other pillars rest.

A dedicated ccommitment to the Six Pillars Regimen provided here will truly change your life. Go forward and execute with discipline.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Nov 3, 2022
• ISBN: 9781667852386

Book preview

INTRODUCTION BECOMING WELLTHY: MIND FITNESS

Obsession with the Emerald City and forgetting to enjoy the Yellow Brick Road

In his book titled Wellth, Jason Wachob redefines successful living as one of abundance, happiness, purpose, health, and joy. This is opposed to the pursuit of what most of us spend our lives in pursuit of: a large amount of money and possessions, often to the exclusion of the other dimensions of our lives. Yes, financial security is important and is a big contributor to peace of mind. The challenge is in knowing how much is enough, and never to the exclusion of the other more important pillars.

The late Zig Ziglar, the famous and highly regarded motivational speaker, told the story of a very wealthy Canadian man who came to see him about his life and why he was so unhappy and miserable despite being wealthy beyond any dreams he had as a young man. Ziglar asked him how his relationship was with his children, wife, friends, physical health, etc. He answered that he was estranged from his children, on his fourth marriage, had no friends close enough to confide his struggles with, and was on blood-pressure medicine and pain medication -- wealthy, not wellthy.

Money in the head, but never in the heart. —The wiseman

This is the story of so many lives today. Clay Cockrell, founder of Walk and Talk Therapy, is a psychiatrist and counselor to high-net worth individuals, including several billionaires. He says that trust issues, lack of a sense of purpose, and struggles with shame guilt and fear mark the lives of many of his clients.

Steve Job’s Final Words for Us All

"I have come to the pinnacle of success in business.

In the eyes of others, my life has been the symbol of success.

However, apart from work, I have little joy.

Finally, my wealth is simply a fact to which I am accustomed.

At this time, lying on the hospital bed and remembering all my life, I realize that all the accolades and riches of which I was once so proud, have become insignificant, with my imminent death.

In the dark, when I look at green lights, of the equipment for artificial respiration and feel the buzz of their mechanical sounds, I can feel the breath of my approaching death looming over me.

Only now do I understand that once you accumulate enough money for the rest of your life, you must pursue objectives that are not related to wealth.

It should be something more important:

For example, stories of love, art, dreams of my childhood.

No, stop pursuing wealth, it can only make a person into a twisted being, just like me.

God has made us one way, we can feel the love in the heart of each of us, and not illusions built by fame or money, like I made in my life, I cannot take them with me.

I can only take with me the memories that were strengthened by love. This is the true wealth that will follow you; will accompany you, he will give strength and light to go ahead.

Love can travel thousands of miles and so life has no limits. Move to where you want to go. Strive to reach the goals you want to achieve. Everything is in your heart and in your hands.

What is the world’s most expensive bed? The hospital bed.

You, if you have money, you can hire someone to drive your car, but you cannot hire someone to take your illness that is killing you.

Material things lost can be found. But one thing you can never find once you have lost it, is life.

Whatever stage of life where we are right now, at the end we will have to face the day when the curtain falls.

Please treasure your family love, love for your spouse, love for your friends...

Treat everyone well and stay friendly with your neighbors."

For those who think that fame and fortune bring happiness and mental balance, the irony is that those who seem to have it all are often among the most troubled. The norm for most is that external circumstances like fame, money, and social position will bring happiness."

My brain is like a hamster on a wheel, and it won’t come off. I’ve been dealing with it all my life. (Reese Witherspoon, Academy Award winning actress and successful businesswoman)

By all outward appearances, she seems stable and successful, yet she struggles like so many with achieving inner peace.

LeAnn Rimes, another famous and successful entertainer, says, I have struggled with anxiety and depression for much of my life. Amidst all the joy and success, I’ve had so much emptiness and sadness.

Examples of celebrities with mental challenges, so chronic and acute that they had a fatal end, are many: Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, Kurt Cobain, Whitney Houston, Prince, Anthony Bourdain, Judy Garland, etc.

Why this book? We manage our spiritual lives through meditation, prayer and worship, and many follow physical fitness regimens to achieve body fitness. Yet, for most of us the biggest life challenge is managing our MIND FITNESS. The pace of life in the digital age has become too much for many without self-medicating with health and life-destroying substances. Job losses, business closings, social isolation, deaths of loved ones and more total loss of life than all U.S. wars combined, except for the Civil War from the Covid-19 pandemic, added a layer of stress on what was already a mental health epidemic.

Deaths from stress-related causes are at unprecedented levels. It has been called the Black Plague of Our Age. On top of 9-11-2001, which took national stress levels to an all-time high, comes CoVid-19 and the pace of life goes from too fast to a dead stop for most. The dead stop didn’t last, but the stress and anxiety from the pace of life becomes fear and panic for some to the point of being uncertain about what the future holds. We remind ourselves that we will work through this, and we will; yet the changes to what was the norm are certain to affect all of the most important areas of our lives.

Anxiety, unmanaged, becomes chronic and, for many, debilitating. The amygdala, a small almond- shaped mass of gray matter in our brain manages our response to the events in our lives -- more on this in the chapter on the Mind and the Brain -- two different things. The amygdala is our fight or flight warning system and is triggered by events that potentially pose threats to our well-being. But a normal amount is meant to help keep us safe, experts say.

The emotion of anxiety and the underlying physiological stress response evolved to protect us, Wendy Suzuki, a neuroscientist and the author of Good Anxiety, says. Learning to manage stress is doable for most. Those with clinically diagnosed conditions should, of course, seek professional help.

My Story

There was a bipolar gene in my family on my father’s side. He and three of his brothers had it and suffered from depression throughout their lives. My only sibling, my brother, Terry, inherited it and struggled with it from the age of 10 until he took his life at the age of 36 with a gunshot. By pure luck of the genetic lottery, I didn’t inherit it. I have had event-related episodes of depression at certain intervals in my life. I lost a race for the U.S. Senate and was depressed and adrift for about a year afterward. I got fired as President of Alexander Proudfoot after leading a failed effort to oust the Chairman of the Board and have experienced a diagnosable condition called Seasonal Adaptive Depression (SAD) usually during February of each year and lasts for about three weeks. This is a condition that is pretty common among those who don’t adapt to colder weather, rain, and snow.

None of us ever get out of high