Get on top of your busy mind. Our phones have infiltrated our lives in such a profound way. We no longer switch off. They are with us 24/7. So take charge by using your phone for good... ...simply download a meditation app like <a href="http://www.calm.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: var(--ricos-custom-link-color,var(--ricos-action-color,#0261ff));">Calm</a> or <a href="http://www.headspace.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: var(--ricos-custom-link-color,var(--ricos-action-color,#0261ff));">Headspace</a> and start a daily meditation program of 10 minutes a day. Best to do it first thing in the morning in your 'hour of power'. Don't like the idea of meditation? Don't want to pay for another app on your phone? Rebelling against technology? No sweat. There is growing evidence around the benefits of meditation or if you're not into meditation, stillness. Spending 10 minutes a day without distraction, just sitting, away from the noise, the screaming kids, demanding people, emails, beeps, buzzes, flashing apps demanding your attention. Get away from it all. If you've got a meditation app for a guided meditation, that is likely to be very helpful but it is not critical. You just need to take some time each day, for you. Just stop. Commit to doing nothing for 10 minutes each day. Get in nature if you can, find somewhere quiet if you can't. No pressure of spiritual enlightenment, no crossed legged Pretzel pose, no loose fitting fishermans pants, no hands together in prayer. Just sit comfortably. Just be. Just switch off. Just 10 minutes. No pressure and remember to breath in through your nose, into your stomach, out through your mouth. You've got this.

meditation

Turn your phone from distraction to calm enabler.

Forge ahead with stillness

It's just over 24 hours since my return from an epic adventure in Nepal. Along with me, Wellteam members from across the globe embarked on an incredible expedition, mountain biking up over the 5416 metre Thorong La Pass, high in the Himalayas in Nepal. Crossing one of the worlds highest mountain passes was exhausting both mentally and physically. Reaching the top was a surprisingly emotional experience that felt like a transition for me. Perhaps it represented a type of closure for the first 50 years of my life. <img src="https://dl2vy1zx2qtgi.cloudfront.net/public_image/b61010cc3dd14ce05810391a5c2daa6d16059c83.jpeg" width="340" height="238.79481589147287" style="display: inline; float: right; margin: 0px 0px 1em 1em;" data-align="right"> Upon returning back, I've felt the need to reflect upon the journey and some of my life lessons to date. When I was a young man someone handed me a photocopied A4 sheet from a Santa Fe Newspaper titled 'Solutions to Everything' by Michael Ventura. It's simplicity stuck in my mind all these years and I often recall some of the passages. In response to this trip, coupled together with my years of curiosity, study and focus on health, wellbeing and the plight of modern men, here’s my "Solutions to everything". (In the order with which they came out of my mind). <h1 class="ql-align-center">SOLUTIONS TO EVERYTHING</h1>BY TROY FLOWER<ol><li>Reduce focus on money/wealth. Money is simply a tool to facilitate transactions between the things you have and the things you need/want. It has no value in and of itself. Focus instead on the goal or objective you are trying to achieve. Focusing on the objective opens up more opportunities and solutions. </li><li>Reduce your desire for possessions and ownership - for none of those things can ever be permanent. Ownership is a false ideal built to inflate the market value for something and enable the fallacy of wealth creation. Ask anyone who’s dead if that’s true. </li><li>Increase your sense of gratitude for what you have - this is the absolute key to being truly happy. </li><li>Treat the health of your mind and body as your highest priority. Without either… nothing else matters. </li><li>Embrace death. Know it will come. Have no fear of it. Accept it may happen at any time. Doing so will sharpen your desire to live better today.</li><li>Build and cultivate relationships with those aligned to your values. Emotional connections and shared <img src="https://dl2vy1zx2qtgi.cloudfront.net/public_image/ddf3e9b0d7f944890817aa273fa8ac8f4e9d80d3.jpeg" width="267" height="200.25" style="display: inline; float: right; margin: 0px 0px 1em 1em;" data-align="right">experiences are the greatest value exchange in life.</li><li>Know that every person has something to offer, but not every person knows what that is and how to unlock it.</li><li>Question why you are doing something. Don’t do anything big that consumes energy without an honest interrogation of why.</li><li>Understand that life is about energy. Life is not about time or money. Energy is circular, it is always transferred from one source to another. You don't create energy, you transfer it. It is give and take. </li><li>Be loyal to those you care about. Relationships are the fuel you need when things get tough. </li><li>Appreciate that while science can help us understand things… many things can’t be explained by science. Basing our knowledge on science is like assuming that all language can be captured within the English alphabet. </li><li>Commit to meaningful 'epic' shit. Seriously, big things that require courage, unlock energy and ensure that our <img src="https://dl2vy1zx2qtgi.cloudfront.net/public_image/41e4c5e74ce4ded5b7de392ec868886b7e10e395.jpeg" width="270" height="202.5" style="display: inline; margin: 0px 0px 1em 1em; float: right;" data-align="right">actions engage us fully. Without purposeful, meaningful action… what else is there?</li><li>Eat simple food. Drink simple drinks. Don’t make it hard for your body systems. Simple is what your body needs. Complex is what others needs to ensure higher profit.</li><li>The happiest people are not those who have the most, but those who want the least. Be grateful and take a regular stock-take of what you already have/are.</li><li>Start that thing today. Do what you can, where you are, with what you have. </li><li>Recognise that the earth and universe has a time and space expanse that makes everything we do irrelevant. It was here billions of years before us and will be here billions of years after us. Nothing we do is permanent…ever so start living your life. </li><li>Appreciate that ‘societal rules’ are driven, governed and reinforced by self-interested people.</li><li>Understand that everyone is right and wrong. It is our perspective that governs our position and our perspective is neither right nor wrong. </li><li>Be inquisitive around the concept of ‘soul’ and ‘mind’ even though they are impossible to prove or disprove. Not being able to prove or disprove something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. We can’t prove/disprove love as an example, but we think we know when we experience it. You don’t need to be religious to explore the idea of ‘soul’ or ‘mind’… just be curious.</li><li>Have rituals. No matter what they are. Rituals are a safe, reliable place to connect back to something that has value and meaning to us. Rituals ground us and remind us of things that are important.<img src="https://dl2vy1zx2qtgi.cloudfront.net/public_image/dd1fc3120a66cde60ecf8668d3cf4b16c0019580.jpeg" width="326" height="238.64202960322382" style="display: inline; float: right; margin: 0px 0px 1em 1em;" data-align="right"></li><li>Cultivate a calm mind. A state of calm is a rare, accessible and desirable state. Calm gives us access to the input from our senses. Our senses bring meaning into our lives. Without sight, sound, smell, taste, feeling, there is no value/joy. To enjoy our life… we must calm our minds. </li><li>Embrace challenges. Every challenge is a test, an opportunity to learn and grow. As with games, the longer you play, the harder the challenge. Without challenges, the game ceases to be interesting. </li><li>Get outside your comfort zone. Comfort is a modern-day killer. Discomfort triggers our senses to be on higher alert, we become more aware of our surroundings, adding more richness to our lives, and opening us up to more opportunities.</li><li><img src="https://dl2vy1zx2qtgi.cloudfront.net/public_image/e7734fff4ab8eca78ca1d38cf8471f510af1b672.jpeg" width="212" height="282.66066576086956" style="display: inline; float: right; margin: 0px 0px 1em 1em;" data-align="right">Be kind to everyone and everything. You never know what others are experiencing. Helping others with no expectation of reward is ironically, one of life's great rewards. </li><li>Appreciate that every living thing is significant in the life of another. All living things consume energy, produce energy and become energy for something, somewhere, sometime. Our stomach (technically outside our body) is like a galaxy to one hundred trillion living organisms (our micro-biome). Primarily bacteria, they breakdown what we eat. Without them… we’d be dead. </li><li>Forgive people. Anger, hurt, disappointment and frustration are emotions that eat away at us, not them. They close opportunities, trap us in the past. Forgive people and move on. You only have one life. </li><li>Don't take life too seriously. There is no rule book. There are no winners or losers. There are only those who enjoy and appreciate what they have and those who don't... that's all. </li></ol> "One day of life lived fully... beats a lifetime of envy and regret." Troy, Welteam Founder.

relationships

mortality

challenge

goals

making time

energy

mindset

attitude

purpose

Mind

After a 21 day expedition in the high himalayas, here are the solutions to everything. Enjoy.

What 21 days in Nepal taught me about life.

Solutions to everything

The biohacking market globally is forecasting 19% - 23.5% CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) over the next 5-10 years. That's huge. What's driving that growth? If you're not familiar with the term, biohacking is when individuals take a greater interest in their own biology and use targeted methods to improve their personal health and wellbeing. What's the difference to normal health and wellbeing you might ask? Personalisation and optimisation. The model of modern medicineTraditional medicine typically uses a very broad brush to help a very broad range of people target what is usually a very specific symptom...not cause. To enter the kingdom of modern medicine, one typically requires a diagnosis of a specific disease state or condition, ie you must be 'unwell' and proven to be so. Take type 2 diabetes as an example. The disease itself is generally diagnosed after ongoing and undetected issues with insulin resistance (the body's inability to lower blood sugar levels despite elevated insulin levels). When the body loses sensitivity to insulin, and sugars are consumed, blood sugars rise and stay high. Over time, symptoms develop and a blood test confirms it. At this point, modern medicine rides its white horse into the room. Treatment options are generally either artificially replace insulin, artificially increase insulin production (or secretion) or try to artificially reduce the body's resistance to insulin. Remember, the primary measure of type 2 diabetes is the symptom (elevated blood glucose), not the cause of the prolonged reduction is insulin sensitivity. Type 2 diabetes is however reversible and preventable... but not by using medication...but by lifestyle modification. You see, the cause of type-2 diabetes is a reduction in insulin sensitivity. What causes a body to be less sensitive to insulin? Prolonged lack of exercise, weight gain (particular around the belly) and generally poor diet choices. Interestingly, you don't need to be overweight to have insulin resistance. There's an increasing number of people with insulin resistance who are not overweight...not yet. So treatment for type 2 diabetes is focused on treating the primary symptom of type 2 diabetes...not the cause. Modern Medicine, has an "evidence-based treatments" fortress protecting it. Producing evidence to satisfy 'modern medicine' is expensive. The extensive research required typically targets interventions that help most people, with a specific measure/condition, most of the time. With 46% of the population likely to develop at least one chronic disease, it's also a very, very profitable model...with very high barriers to entry. Enter biohacking. Biohacking on the other hand assumes that as an individual, you can consciously take back control of the factors that might influence your health in the first place. Not only to prevent disease, but to take you close to optimal health. Biohacking typically targets the 'cause' of future disease, not the symptoms. It requires people to become more curious and invested in their own health. In short, you're working out how to optimise your biology to live better. While the medical model separates the human into separate body systems or organs, biohacking tends to focus on treatments that work across systems. That's because biohackers are not focused on individual diseases, or disease in individual organs, but how to get the greatest benefit across systems from specific activities/intervention. The healthy skeptic wonders why more money isn't invested in prevention strategies and optimisation strategies like biohacking? Well preventing disease has historically, not been lucrative. You do it once...that's all you can charge. Symptom treatment on the other hand is highly lucrative and has an ongoing revenue stream...which is a great strategy...if you're selling treatment for symptoms. The biohacking industry, while it's been around for a while now, is really ramping up. Why? Because many of us are now waking up and realising something we've always known... ...prevention is better than cure. More than that, prevention is so much better than symptom management. Just ask users taking the new 'wonder-weightloss' drugs at the moment. Wouldn't energy, vitality, ability to run and play with your kids be better than an injection of drugs, diarrhoea, vomiting, nausea, obesity, lethargy, low self-esteem, risk of heart attack and early death? While at&nbsp;<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/wellteam-me/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: var(--accent-color);">Wellteam.me</a>, we don't use the term 'biohacking'...it's what we do. The Wellteam Global Challenge is in essence a global biohacking competition. Wellteam itself is a global community (club) that aims to support, educate, guide and give people a safe and effective way to explore biohacking. Soon we'll be introducing specific biological tests to help members determine and measure progress...using science, pathology and biology to validate that what you're doing is working. Of course, biohacking isn't for everyone...the choice is yours...swallow the pill made for the masses...or hack your way to a sharper, clearer, calmer, stronger, fitter mind and body. I chose biohacking years ago...I am now back in control of my mind and body.

Forge ahead with stillness

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