I found myself earlier this year not finding enough time to return to regular meditation and to try bring my fitness back up to where I would like it to be, as I found my evenings are almost a complete loss with other activities and spending time with my family.

I decided to start getting up earlier and finding some time to look after myself mentally and physically.

But I’ve been unable to find time for both (although I have been considering getting up even earlier to achieve more) but from my karate training days (I’ll get back there again soon), I remembered an instructor talking about the founder of Kyokushinkai, the late Mas Oyama, comments on meditation and martial arts training and the one comment that stuck with me was that through correct training a state of meditation was possible while the body is active, and as I’ve had trouble finding time to be physically active and to meditate I decided to try and experiment, by listening to different meditation, affirmation and positive audio while walking early in the mornings

How many times have we heard about being an early riser to become more successful, and how often do we just brush it off with things like “how could an extra hour help”, “I wouldn’t get any productive work done anyway at that time of morning” and other such comments.

Well after reading about and hearing about early rising, I read an article by Steve Pavlina about early rising and not having it affect you at the end of the day and for some reason this time it stuck, so along with reading Steve’s article I also needed to look at some physical activity and get back to meditation as I’d been snowed under with a few things over the last few years (study) and I recognised that I needed to make some changes, but I was finding I had no extra time in the evenings (Study, Family, Meal time, bath time for daughter, clean-up after daughter goes to bed) so I needed to find some time and the morning seemed to be the answer.

Well I’m now on about the 3rd week without any coffee, an experiment I decided to try to see what effect it had on my health and concentration.

The result, well to start with, I did not suffer the reported withdrawal symptoms that I’ve heard of from many people, and I used to drink reasonable amount of coffee, usually 2 for breakfast (instant, 2 spoons of coffee) and at work I have a 4 cup coffee plunger, that was usually gone within the 1st hour, then top ups for the rest of the day.

Just before starting on my no coffee experiment I was tending not to drink it from mid afternoon, so that may have contributed to no withdrawal symptoms, as I was already sending my body into shock by drinking large amounts for ½ the waking day and then stopping. Probably the most noticeable effects noticed were:

Is it a good thing to put parts of your life on hold to achieve a goal?

Especially your health (physical, spiritual and mental)

Well having done it for the last 7 years while growing a family, studying for my Bachelor of Engineering (4 years full time) while working full time, suffering some serious losses in my life, changing jobs, etc.. the answer is…….

both Yes and No....

If you are like me and have trouble finding time for exercise, the below article from www.hiptobefit.com might be useful,

I rarely have to opportunity to do even a quick workout during the day due to the nature of my work, but I do get up earlier each morning and combined with meditation while exercising I've managed to fit in around an extra 2 hours per day Enjoy this article....

Gain an extra Month Each Year!

If you had 13 months to accomplish your business projects would that be helpful?

Just think about it…30 extra days to meet all those deadlines, complete unfinished plans etc. Maybe you could use that time as extra vacation time?

I’ve had the sad situation recently where I’ve had to farewell a person I had a lot of respect for and have known throughout my working life from my original trade as an electrician through to working as a manager to now as an engineer.

But the one thing I never realised until his passing, was what an ideal role model he was…..